Literature and Ethics

There is a novel which presents a general scheme for the development of a poet but this paper presents a problem for it. The problem is: can a believer in the scheme both account for the universality of some poets and the association it makes between poetry and revolutions?

Quixote is a caricature of a knight errant; steeped into his fictional heroes, he undertakes to revive a tradition long dead, and in the process leaves behind some unforgettable images of knightly virtue turned sour. This caricature, however, is not simply a ploy meant to arouse laughter, but also an occasion to revisit the emphasis on knowledge and good sense with which virtue has been aligned in the Socratic/Platonic tradition. The challenge Quixote represents concerns the relation between reasoning and the (...) ability to “get it right” in practice; by sundering these apart, Cervantes forces a reconsideration of the unity of thought and action. (shrink)

Dieses Kapitel handelt von der Empathie in der Kunst. Ich beginne mit einer Reflexion über die Ursprünge des Begriffes und seine Verwendung in der Ästhetik. Es folgt eine Analyse der Empathie im Vergleich zu anderen Formen der Anteilnahme an Kunstwerken. Im dritten Teil untersuche ich die Mechanismen der Empathie in der Kunst und die Funktion der Imagination. Der vierte Teil widmet sich der Bedeutung der Gefühle bei der Empathie für Kunstfiguren. Schließlich thematisiere ich den epistemischen, moralischen und ästhetischen Wert der (...) Empathie für die Kunst. (shrink)

Pretende-se auscultar a possibilidade de instrução moral pela literatura. Defender-se-á que a arte narrativa é capaz de instruir moralmente pois 1) proporciona um tipo de conhecimento não-proposicional que permite o acesso a novas perspetivas, e 2) é capaz de cultivar e refinar os valores e as práticas morais dos leitores, através do engajamento emocional. Tentar-se-á mostrar que o poder inverso — o poder de corromper moralmente — não se verifica (ou não se verifica tão facilmente): apelar-se-á à resistência imaginativa humana (...) que parece impedir que o Homem exporte perspetivas morais que violentam o seu próprio posicionamento axiológico. (shrink)

Raquel Cascales and Luis Echarte focus on the development of practical wisdom and what they call ‘seeing with the heart’ for science students by means of reading science fiction literature. They argue that literature can bring the student into contact with the reality of moral life as moral dilemmas are made concrete by the characters and circumstances in a novel. They provide an analysis of how Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World can be read in the classroom and show how the (...) novel invites students to think about the role of science in society, the evolutionary paradigm, advances in genetic and psychological manipulation, as well as questions concerning human emotions,suffering, and friendship. (shrink)

This book chapter in Neon Genesis Evangelion and Philosophy (Open Universe) draws parallels between the main anti-heroes in Albert Camus's The Stranger and Neon Genesis Evangelion, and introduces common existential concepts such as facticity/transcendence and bad faith, aimed at a general readership.

Convergindo para uma existência em si irredutível às condições histórico-culturais e aos seus limites, ao ser humano em sua infância enquanto arquétipo refém do sonho e senhor da solidão se impõe o devaneio que envolve o transcendente como telos em uma experiência de “iluminação” cujo caráter dizível, na rememoração enquanto vivência do fenômeno primordial, somente se torna possível nas fronteiras mítico-poéticas e na correspondência dialética envolvendo memória e imaginação em uma construção epistêmico-simbólico-existencial que encerra como fundamento a concepção baseada na (...) perspectiva de Gaston Bachelard de que “um excesso de infância é um germe de poema”. Implicando o transcendente como telos na autoafirmação que perpassa desde o outrora até o “por-vir”, o devaneio constitui o locus da consciência da liberdade em um movimento de auto-expressão que guarda raízes no fundo da memória e na inata beleza da infância enquanto impulso vital que se sobrepõe ao paradoxo da existência enquanto acontecimento passível de produção volitiva e domínio intelectual, convergindo para a experiência epistêmico-simbólico-existencial envolvendo a condição humana de habitat de uma infância enquanto infância potencial em um processo irredutível a sua realidade concreta histórico-cultural que no onírico como modus essendi dialoga com o tópos autobiográfico e mítico-poético, guardando-se no “entre” que acena com as fronteiras do intra-histórico e intra-lendário. Nesta perspectiva, baseado na noção envolvendo infância potencial em um movimento epistêmico-simbólico-existencial que converge para as fronteiras que encerram como paradigma hermenêutico o Começo Primordial, Munguengue se torna o nome do devaneio na construção mítico-poética do Professor-Pesquisador Luiz Carlos Mariano Da Rosa em um processo irredutível a sua realidade concreta histórico-cultural que envolve o transcendente como telos na autoafirmação que perpassa desde o outrora até o “por-vir”. Implicando a iluminação enquanto instante de existência mítico-poética, Munguengue se sobrepõe ás idealizações das recordações da infância e à relação de causa e efeito do processo, encerrando um núcleo de infância que perdura na alma enquanto fenômeno que escapa às fronteiras da hermenêutica lógico-racional da realidade prático-objetiva e converge para a realidade subjetivo-existencial e o seu caráter vital de um animus indômito em um movimento que dialoga com o tópos autobiográfico e mítico-poético, guardando-se no “entre” que acena com as fronteiras do intra-histórico e intra-lendário. (shrink)

La entrevista al doctor Darío Villanueva es sobre el panorama literario del siglo XXI. A partir de cuatro tópicos fundamentales y reincidentes: los libros, los escritores, las editoriales y la realidad. Estos han sido incorporados en las preguntas para desentrañar el sistema literario que se ha originado en los últimos años. Frente a estas interrogantes, se notará que existen algunos obstáculos que han tergiversado y entorpecido la labor de la escritura, así como el canon literario, tal como la cultura de (...) masas y la diversificación que se aprecia desde la posmodernidad. (shrink)

Decamerón ha causado una reacción convulsa por su contenido social y la burla a patrones adscritos a la religión y la moral medievales en Italia. Por ello, se propone fundamentar esas razones que acarrearon el asombro de la obra literaria de Giovanni Boccaccio. Se retoma el concepto de la función social de la ironía, que a la vez parte de tres principios básicos desarrollados por Bergson. Una situación cómica requiere inteligencia, insensibilidad y crítica social. Con ello es posible explicar que (...) la ironía se encuentra condicionada a la cosmovisión del autor. (shrink)

Este artículo tiene como propósito corroborar la cosmovisión de Octavio Paz, a partir de la inacción de la sociedad cotidiana, que es notoria en un fragmento del poema “Máscaras del alba” de La estación violenta (1958). Su crítica contra el sistema por la ausencia de compromiso social y político revela dos conceptos que fundamenta Mijaíl Bajtín en Estética de la creación verbal: su intencionalidad como autor y la expresión concomitante en función del género discursivo empleado. Para comprobar estas dos premisas, (...) incluiré como instrumento metodológico los campos figurativos o las provincias figurales que aborda Stefano Arduini, que comprenden los tropos de la metáfora, la metonimia, la sinécdoque, la metonimia, la elipsis, la antítesis y la repetición, además de sus variaciones. (shrink)

Esta entrevista retoma la experiencia de enseñanza de la profesora María Luisa Roel en función de la producción literaria de España. El objetivo es interiorizar sobre cómo esta se ha transferido en el ámbito de educación universitaria. A partir de la trayectoria de la docente, se brinda un panorama de cómo los estudiantes de la carrera profesional de Literatura acatan el conocimiento y la lectura de autores españoles, como Miguel de Cervantes. De igual forma, se mencionan dos momentos históricos en (...) los que se vería la presencia o la ausencia de esta producción: en la Literatura del Virreinato y la creación literaria contemporánea. (shrink)

Este artículo tiene el propósito de argumentar cómo se logra una contribución eximia a la Literatura al abarcar la universalidad de sus recursos. Para demostrar ese acápite, he tomado como referente la perspectiva de Mario Vargas Llosa en relación con el debate que se efectuó entre Julio Cortázar y José María Arguedas. De ese encuentro académico, es asequible auscultar tres tópicos perentorios que se orientan a preservar la condición literaria desde una volición global. El primero de ellos consiste en reanudar (...) un conocimiento sobre la realidad mundial para poder interactuar con una audiencia compatible. El segundo se basa en considerar los estilos y las técnicas que no claudican de la tradición ni la evolución literaria. Para finiquitar, se mencionará la diatriba biográfica como una muestra del desarraigo de lo fundamental en la exégesis. Estos temas buscarán validar la propensión del autor a abordar múltiples realidades. (shrink)

Este artículo se adscribe a la percepción conservadora que trabaja Mario Vargas Llosa para la construcción discursiva de La ciudad y los perros. Esa ideología política caracterizada por su autonomía e imparcialidad permitirá reconocer el propósito del autor al abordar el talante de la violencia en el desempeño de los personajes. Para su fluctuación efectiva, este estudio comprenderá tres tratamientos neurálgicos y conexos en torno a esta obra literaria: la contextualización extratextual, la epistemología de la violencia y el análisis narratológico (...) desde los actantes concomitantes. Esta taxonomía convencional que se formula será de utilidad para justificar en qué medida la violencia adquiere una valía medular para el desarrollo humano. (shrink)

En este trabajo, se realizó una entrevista al docente Ángel Misari, quien explica cómo aplica sus conocimientos adquiridos en la Maestría en Escritura Creativa que hizo en la Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos. Su intervención es de utilidad, ya que profundizará en la transferencia oportuna de ese saber en tres ámbitos: en su función como crítico de la producción artística, en su interés ficcional en la parte creativa y en la educación con estudiantes. En suma, la experiencia que manifiesta (...) revela su formación literaria, así como las influencias y los motivos que lo impulsaron a desenvolverse en esta carrera. (shrink)

La entrevista al doctor Camilo Fernández Cozman se realizó el 19 de julio de 2021, a 9 días del 28 de julio, fecha en la que se conmemora la Independencia del Perú.

José Hugo Burel Guerra nació el 23 de marzo de 1951 en Montevideo (Uruguay). Desde 2017 es miembro de número de la Academia Nacional de Letras del Uruguay (ANL), institución a la cual ingresó con su discurso titulado «Ismael». Es licenciado en Letras por el Instituto de Filosofía, Ciencias y Letras (que se conoce en la actualidad como UCUDAL) y la Pontificia Universidad Católica de Río Grande do Sul. Aparte de ser escritor, se ha desempeñado como músico, publicista, diseñador gráfico, (...) profesor y periodista. Dentro del ámbito literario, ha publicado cuentos, novelas y ensayos. Entre su producción, algunos títulos son los siguientes: Esperando a la pianista y otros cuentos (1983), Tampoco la pena dura (1989), Los dados de Dios (1997) El autor de mis días (1999), El guerrero del crepúsculo (2001), Tijeras de plata (2003), Los inmortales (2004), El corredor nocturno (2005), El desfile salvaje (2007), El caso Bonapelch (2014) y La misteriosa muerte de Eleanor Rigby (2019). Asimismo, ha sido merecedor de múltiples distinciones. Algunas de ellas fueron el segundo premio del concurso literario de Radio Carve (1975), el Premio Juan Rulfo de Radio Francia Internacional (1995), el Premio de Inéditos del MEC-Ministerio de Educación y Cultura (1995), el VII Premio Lengua de Trapo de Narrativa (2001), el Premio Bartolomé Hidalgo (2004), el Premio Alas (2008) y el Premio Libro de Oro (2014). (shrink)

El propósito de este artículo es sistematizar los estudios críticos acerca del adiestramiento castrense en los personajes de La ciudad y los perros (1963). Para conseguirlo, se confrontará con la hermenéutica de Gadamer, orientada a la propalación de estrategias heurísticas y taxonomías que consoliden el corpus de la novela cotejada. Así, se reconocerá el efecto que cumplen las variantes extrínsecas de la lectura, tales como las jerarquías y las percepciones idóneas y erróneas de la educación del Colegio Militar Leoncio Prado. (...) Por ello, la adecuación de este contenido permitirá una mayor dilucidación del tema cuestionado con su respectivo soporte crítico. (shrink)

Considerando el contexto bélico y el surgimiento de las vanguardias a inicios del siglo XX, fundamento en este trabajo las razones por las cuales la presencia del concepto de nivola, atribuida por Miguel de Unamuno para hacer referencia a la técnica literaria que emplea en su novela Niebla (1914), suscita una confrontación posible entre universos compuestos por elementos de la realidad y lo virtual. En ese sentido, será propicio explicar el procedimiento que origina esa colisión de planos establecidos. Para ello, (...) recurriré a categorías literarias que sustentan las teorías de la ficción, según la percepción de Thomas Pavel y Marie-Laure Ryan. (shrink)

Durante años, el estudio de la retórica ha incluido figuras que permiten el análisis de la poesía, como también, la creación diversificada según los múltiples estilos. Al respecto, en este artículo, se extraerá la propuesta fundamentada por Stefano Arduini, quien establece la noción de campo figurativo, como un ordenador de lineamientos subjetivos, propios del raciocinio, de la que se infieren seis subclasificaciones: la metáfora, la metonimia, la sinécdoque, la elipsis, la antítesis y la redundancia, además de los tropos internos que (...) las componen. Ante ello, se recurrirá a los planteamientos elaborados por los críticos y los teóricos de la Literatura para la confrontación hermenéutica que configuran estos conceptos difundidos por la poesía. Los autores a los que se recurrirán son Aristóteles con Retórica, Marco Fabio Quintiliano con Instituciones oratorias (1887), Pierre Fontanier con Les figures du discours (1977), George Lakoff y Mark Johnson con Metáforas de la vida cotidiana (1995), Jacques Lacan (1998), Stefano Arduini (2000), Oldřich Bĕlič (2000), Tomás Albaladejo (2008) y Camilo Rubén Fernández Cozman (2010). (shrink)

Este artículo examina La ciudad y los perros (1963) de Mario Vargas Llosa para fundamentar cómo se logra la estratificación teórica de estilos y técnicas que se emplean para abordar la violencia en el texto. Sobre la epistemología, recurre principalmente a Todorov, Hamburger, Lotman y Genette. Y, para argumentar la manifestación de la violencia, considera las eventualidades que padecen los personajes del Colegio Militar Leoncio Prado; en especial, el Jaguar, el Poeta y el Esclavo. Esas acciones serán justificadas por la (...) instrucción castrense, la evolución humana, la necesidad de una conducta hegemónica idónea y la búsqueda del efecto perlocutivo en el lector. Para sistematizar esas peculiaridades, se opta por una metodología adscrita al cotejo de información teórica para que sea confrontada con el discurso literario. El análisis que se desarrolla es complementado con fragmentos representativos para que las formulaciones sean más directas y convincentes. Como resultado, se confirma esa correspondencia entre las teorías heterogéneas, la novela y la interpretación, por lo que el concepto de violencia adoptaría una multidimensionalidad que evidencia su existencia y su requerimiento esencial en los personajes. Con ello, se sustenta como conclusión que la violencia en ese contexto debería ser permanente e imprescindible para subsistir. (shrink)

Nous savons bien que le long chemin de La Divine Comédie est celui qui conduit le Poète à se détacher des tentations humaines et du péché, à s’élever jusqu’aux hauteurs de l’amour le plus absolu qui soit : celui qui se concrétise dans la rencontre avec Dieu. La philosophe américaine Martha Nussbaum, dans son beau livre L’intelligence des émotions (aux pages 657-693 de l’édition italienne que j’ai consultée), en fait une interprétation très intéressante.

Romance novels are primarily aimed at, written about, and written for women. They have been accused of being fantasies which feature sexually objectified heroines who are passive recipients of overwhelming masculine sexual energy. After shoring up these critiques of romance novels with A.W. Eaton’s account of how art can objectify its subjects, we examine a challenge to romance novels: does the sexual content in romance novels objectify its heroines? There is strong reason to think so. However, we argue that careful (...) attention to the ways art can objectify its subject reveals that romance novels are structured to make it impossible for their heroines to be objectified. In many cases, individual signs of objectification are raised as possible outcomes and dismissed as part of the plot of a romance novel. Satisfying sex in a romance novel does not appear until it is impossible for the romantic heroine to be objectified. Understood in this way, romance novels serve as a model for one way that objectification could be avoided. The fantasy of a romance novel is not objectifying sex. It is sex free of objectification. (shrink)

This paper explores jealousy in Unamuno’s drama El otro. Drawing on contemporary philosophy of emotion, I will argue that for the Spanish author jealousy gives the subject a sense of self. The paper begins by embedding Unamuno’s philosophical anthropology in the context of contemporary emotion theory. It then presents the drama as an investigation into the affective dimension of self-identity. The third section offers an analysis of jealousy as an emotion of self-assessment. The final section discusses how this drama can (...) be regarded as a piece of philosophical work. (shrink)

The topic of my dissertation is satire. This seems to excite many people, and over the past four years I have heard many variations of a similar refrain: “Oh, wow. You’re studying satire? That’s very topical. You must have a lot of material to work with.” There is a way in which this is true, though I suspect in a way that diverges from the way that most of my interlocutors believed. I suspect that the material they imagined me to (...) be working with was the output of Donald Trump, first a candidate for and now holder of the office of President of the United States. That is not the material I find interesting. More interesting to me is their statement. It evinces a number of beliefs that I find interesting, chief among them that Trump makes the current period particularly apt for satire, as if a doddery and incompetent ruling class is somehow a recent phenomenon. And I suspect that underneath this belief in the aptness of satire is a belief in the power of satire. Satire is somehow how people are going to strike back at the vice-governed fools who rule us. Those beliefs are the material I want to work with. This is my interest in satire, then: not so much what it is about satire that makes it powerful, but what is it about satire that makes people think it is powerful? And what is it about satire that makes people think it is powerful when there is pretty powerful evidence that it is not? Unfortunately, here is where I run into the problem that in a very important way I do not have a lot of material to work with. There is not an awful lot on satire within the analytic tradition: outside of a few references to satire, analytic discussions of satire are limited to two short articles. Accordingly, I have taken the task of my dissertation to be to create an account of satire that helps to bring forward why satire is a thing that people can imagine to be powerful, that they can imagine to be politically effective. My dissertation will effectively have two halves, one where I build my account and one where I begin to apply it. The purpose of applying my account, which will comprise the final two chapters, will not be to show its implications so much as how it can be used. My goal will not so much be to give definitive answers about the nature of satire, but rather to give a demonstration of how my account facilitates engaging questions about the role of satire in social and political context. (shrink)

The nature and consequences of readers’ affective engagement with literature has, in recent years, captured the attention of experimental psychologists and philosophers alike. Psychological studies have focused principally on the causal mechanisms explaining our affective interactions with fictions, prescinding from questions concerning their rational justifiability. Transportation Theory, for instance, has sought to map out the mechanisms the reader tracks the narrative experientially, mirroring its descriptions through first-personal perceptual imaginings, affective and motor responses and even evaluative beliefs. Analytical philosophers, by contrast, (...) have largely focussed on the problems fiction poses for traditional theories of rationality (as in the ‘Paradox of Fiction), challenging fiction’s wider epistemic value. The result has been a theoretical impasse in which the power of fiction to affectively ‘transport’ a reader is at once often lauded (by psychologists) as a privileged route to interpersonal understanding, and condemned (by philosophers) as an abdication of the authority of reason. This chapter surveys some of the central claims on both sides, tracing the source of the debate to competing conceptions of rationality. (shrink)

Why do things happen as they do in the universe of Oedipus Tyrannus, consisting of the play itself coupled with the myth that surrounds and informs it? Why is Oedipus fated to kill his father and marry his mother? What part does Oedipus play in his own destruction? What role do divinities play? And what of human free will? In what follows I consider the power of curses, prophecy, prayer, fate, the gods, and human self-determination as they serve to effect (...) the action.Generally accepted is the notion that the Greek audience knew the Oedipus myth before entering the theater. Sophocles's use of dramatic irony depends on this. But where does the myth begin? Sophocles starts in medias res with the plague, but the myth... (shrink)

During his period of exile in Scandinavia, Bertolt Brecht wrote “I don’t think the traditional form of theatre means anything any longer. Its significance is purely historic; it can illuminate the way in which earlier ages regarded human relationships […] [but] a modern spectator can’t learn anything from them”. To create a modern theatre fit for a modern audience, Brecht holds that not only would the content of plays have to change, but the experience of theatrical spectatorship itself. To fully (...) capture how Brecht’s work differs from that of previous playwrights, a close analysis of spectatorial experience and perception is required. In this paper, I compare the aesthetic techniques used in Brecht’s epic theatre to the genetic phenomenology of Edmund Husserl. Reading Brecht’s Verfremdungseffekt through a Husserlian lens, I argue that Brecht mobilizes phenomenological methodology in order to suspend the audience’s preconceived notions of theatre and to cultivate self-conscious, critically aware, and socially motivated spectatorship. Just as Husserl describes phenomenology as a presuppositionless science, so too does Brecht offer epic theatre as a way to free “[…] socially-conditioned phenomena from the stamp of familiarity”. (shrink)

In recent decades, the philosopher William Desmond has offered both insightful readings of individual tragedies and a striking reformulation of old Aristotelian standbys like hamartia and catharsis. This reformulation grows out of his wider philosophy of the “between,” which stresses humans’ fundamental receptivity or “porosity.” For Desmond, tragedy strips away characters’ self-determination and returns them to porosity. The audience is returned to porosity as well, a process of exposure that can be harrowing, and at times leads to despair, but that (...) can also lead, in Desmond’s take on catharsis, to a renewed sense of the worth of fragile beings. Both tragic “being at a loss” and catharsis are important for philosophy because they resist determinate conceptualization. Tragedy reminds philosophy of its limits, and it challenges philosophy to attend to the intimate and the singular. This essay situates, synthesizes, and extends Desmond’s many reflections on tragedy. It focuses in particular on Shakespeare's Macbeth and King Lear. (shrink)

We offer an account of the generic use of the term “porn”, as seen in recent usages such as “food porn” and “real estate porn”. We offer a definition adapted from earlier accounts of sexual pornography. On our account, a representation is used as generic porn when it is engaged with primarily for the sake of a gratifying reaction, freed from the usual costs and consequences of engaging with the represented content. We demonstrate the usefulness of the concept of generic (...) porn by using it to isolate a new type of such porn: moral outrage porn. Moral outrage porn is representations of moral outrage, engaged with primarily for the sake of the resulting gratification, freed from the usual costs and consequences of engaging with morally outrageous content. Moral outrage porn is dangerous because it encourages the instrumentalization of one’s empirical and moral beliefs, manipulating their content for the sake of gratification. Finally, we suggest that when using porn is wrong, it is often wrong because it instrumentalizes what ought not to be instrumentalized. (shrink)

One of the vexed questions in the philosophy of wonder and indeed education is how to ensure that the next generation harbours a sense of wonder. Wonder is important, we think, because it encour- ages inquiry and keeps us as Albert Einstein would argue from ‘being as good as dead’ or ‘snuffed-out candles’ (Einstein 1949, 5). But how is an educator to install, bring to life, or otherwise encourage a sense of wonder in his or her stu- dents? Biologist Rachel (...) Carson suggests that exploring nature and specifically undertaking walks along the rocky coast of Maine would keep alive a person’s inborn sense of wonder (Carson 1984). Philosopher Jesse Prinz thinks that exposure to art will encourage wonderment because artworks, as he puts it, are “inventions for feeding the appetite that wonder excites in us” (Prinz 2013). Weird fiction (a subgenre of speculative fiction) – and in particular the work of one of its greatest exponents, the early-20th-century American author How- ard Phillips Lovecraft – is likewise a catalyst for wonder. The reason behind this is that Lovecraft’s ‘wonder-stories’ are densely packed with wonder per design; and in support of this claim I shall in what is to come 1) provide a brief introduction to Lovecraft and weird fiction; 2) present a working definition of wonder; and 3) clarify what is meant by something being ‘densely packed with wonder’ via bringing to the fore evidence of Lovecraft’s literary wonder- mongery. The paper ends with some reflections on the notion of ‘dark wonder’, why this peculiar label might be suitable for the kind of wonder we find in Lovecraft’s work, and why exposure to ‘dark wonder’ can be edifying, and in that sense educational. (shrink)

Как насчет другого взять на богатых и знаменитых? Во-первых, очевидное - романы о Гарри Поттере - это примитивные суеверия, которые побуждают детей верить в фантазию, а не брать на себя ответственность за мир - норма, конечно. JKR как раз как clueless о себе и мире как большинств люди,но около 200 времен как разрушительно как средний американец и около 800 времен больше чем средний китаец. Она несет ответственность за уничтожение, может быть, 30000 гектаров леса для производства этих романов мусора и все (...) эрозии последующем (не тривиально, как этопо крайней мере 6 и, возможно, 12 тонн / год почвы в океан для всех на земле или, может быть, 100 тонн на американских, и так около 5000 тонн / год для книг Роулинг и movies иее 3 детей). Земля теряет по крайней мере 1% своего верхнего слоя почвы каждый год, так как она приближается к 2100, большая часть его потенциала выращивания продуктов питания исчезнет. Тогда есть огромное количество горючего сжигается и отходов, чтобы сделать и распространять книги и фильмы, пластиковые куклы и т.д. Она показывает ее отсутствие социальной ответственности, производя детей, а не использовать ее миллионы для поощрения планирования семьи или скупить тропический лес, а также путем поощрения обычных либеральной глупости 3-го мирового превосходства, что разрушает Великобритании, Америки, мира и будущего ее потомка. Конечно, она не сильно отличается от остальных 7. 8 миллиардов невежественных - просто шумнее и более разрушительным. Это - не бесплатная проблема обеда, большая. Толпа просто не может видеть, что нет такого понятия, как помогать одному человеку, не причиняя вреда другим. Права или привилегии, предоставленные новым абитуриентам в переполненном мире, могут лишь приглушить правадругих. Несмотря на массовые экологические катастрофы, происходящие перед ними повсюду каждый день, они не могут приколоть их к безудержной материнства "разнообразных", что составляет большую часть прироста населения в прошлом веке, и все это в этом. Им не хватает определенного сочетания интеллекта, образования, опыта и здравомыслия, необходимых для экстраполирования ежедневных посягательств на ресурсы и функционирование общества на возможный крах индустриальной цивилизации. Каждая еда, каждая поездка на машине или автобусе, каждая пара обуви является еще одним гвоздем в гроб земли. Он, вероятно, никогда не приходило ей в голову, что одно место на самолете из Лондона в Сан-Франциско производит около одной тонны углерода, который тает около 3 квадратных метров морского льда и в качестве одного из перепривилегированных она, вероятно, пролетел сотни таких рейсов. Не только богатые и известные, но почти любой общественный деятель на всех, в том числе практически все учителя, давление, чтобы быть политически корректным, что в западных демократиях, в настоящее время означает социал-демократической(неомарксистской т.е. разбавленный коммунист) третьего мира превосходства, работающих на уничтожение своих собственных обществ и их собственных потомков. Таким образом, те, у кого не хватаетобразования, опыта, интеллекта (и основного здравого смысла), которые должны запрещать им делать какие-либо публичные заявления вообще, полностью доминируют во всех средствах массовой информации, создавая впечатление, что умные и цивилизованные должны способствовать демократии, разнообразию и равенству, в то время как истина заключается в том, что это проблемы, а не решения, и что они сами являются главными врагами цивилизации. Смотрите мой Самоубийство демократии 2nd ed (2019) и другие. (shrink)

Che ne dite di una diversa ripercorrere i ricchi e i famosi? Prima l'ovvio: i romanzi di Harry Potter sono una superstizione primitiva che incoraggia i bambini a credere nella fantasia piuttosto che assumersi la responsabilità per il mondo, ovviamente. JKR è altrettanto all'oscuro di se stessa e del mondo come la maggior partedelle persone , macirca 200 volte più distruttivo come l'americano medio e circa 800 volte più di cinese medio. È stata responsabile della distruzione di forse 30.000 ettari (...) di foresta per produrre questi romanzi spazzatura e tutta l'erosione che ne deriva (non banale come'è almeno 6 e forse 12 tonnellate / anno suolo nell'oceano per tutti sulla terra o forse 100 tonnellate per americano, e così circa 5000 tonnellate / anno per i libri e mov ies Rowlinge isuoi 3 bambini). La terra perde almeno l'1% del suo suolo superiore ogni anno, così come si avvicina a 2100, la maggior parte della sua capacità di coltivazione alimentare sarà andato. Poi c'è l'enorme quantità di carburante bruciato e rifiuti fatti per fare e distribuire i libri e film, bambole di plastica, ecc. Dimostra la sua mancanza di responsabilità sociale producendo figli piuttosto che usare i suoi milioni per incoraggiare la pianificazione familiare o acquistare la foresta pluviale, e promuovendo la tradizionale stupidità liberale della terza supremazia mondiale che sta distruggendo la Gran Bretagna, l'America, il mondo e il futuro del suo discendente. Certo, non è poi così diversa dalle altre 7. 8 miliardi all'oscuro - solo più rumoroso e più distruttivo. È il problema nessun pranzo gratuito scritto grande. La folla proprio non può vedere che non esiste una cosa come aiutare una persona senza danneggiare gli altri. I diritti o i privilegi concessi ai nuovi operatori in un mondo sovraffollato non possono chedim inish quelli degli altri. Nonostante i massicci disastri ecologici che accadono di fronte a loro ovunque ogni giorno, non possono fissarli alla maternità sfrenata del "diverso", che rappresenta la maggior parte dell'aumento della popolazione del secolo scorso e tutto questo in questo. Non hanno una combinazione di intelligenza, istruzione, esperienza e sanità mentale necessarie per estrapolare gli assalti quotidiani alle risorse e al funzionamento della società fino all'eventuale collasso della civiltà industriale. Ogni pasto, ogni viaggio in auto o in autobus, ogni paio di scarpe è un altro chiodo nella bara della terra. Probabilmente non ha mai attraversato la sua mente che un sedile su un aereo da Londra a San Francisco produce circa una tonnellata di carbonio che si scioglie circa 3 metri quadrati di ghiaccio marino e come una delle overprivileged che ha probabilmente volato centinaia di tali voli. Non solo i ricchi e famosi, ma quasi tutti i personaggi pubblici, compresi praticamente tutti gli insegnanti, sono spinti ad essere politicamente corretti, che nelle democrazie occidentali, ora significa socialdemocratico(neomarxista, cioè comunisti diluiti) terzo suprematisti del mondo che lavorano per la distruzione delle loro società e dei loro discendenti. Così, coloro la cui mancanzadiistruzione, esperienza, intelligenza (e buon senso di base), che dovrebbe proibire loro di fare qualsiasi dichiarazione pubblica a tutti, dominano totalmente tutti i media, creando l'impressione che l'intelligente e civile deve favorire la democrazia, la diversità e l'uguaglianza, mentre la verità è che questi sono i problemi e non le soluzioni, e che essi stessi sono i primi nemici della civiltà. Vedere il mio suicidio per democrazia 2nd ed (2019). (shrink)

ABSTRACT Mary Shelley (1797–1851) developed a ‘Romantic Spinozism’ from 1817 to 1848. This was a deterministic worldview that adopted an ethical attitude of love toward the world as it is, must be, and will be. Resisting the psychological despair and political inertia of fatalism, her ‘Romantic Spinozism’ affirmed the forward-looking responsibility of people to love their neighbors and sustain the world, including future generations, even in the face of seeming apocalypse. This history of Shelley’s reception of Spinoza begins with the (...) fragment of the otherwise lost translation of the Theologico-Political Treatise (1670) on which she collaborated. It extends through her journals, letters, poetry, and her second great work of speculative fiction after Frankenstein (1818): a post-apocalyptic novel set in the year 2100, The Last Man (1826). Through a creative synthesis of Spinoza with Plato, Cicero, Wollstonecraft, and Glasite Christianity, Shelley developed an anti- apocalyptic conception of love as apocatastasis: a cyclical restoration of an ethical attitude of stewardship toward the whole world and its necessity. Through this recovery of a vital chapter in the history of European ideas, Shelley emerges as a central figure in Spinozan philosophy, especially the ethics and political philosophy of love. (shrink)

In his book Iris Murdoch: The Saint and the Artist, Peter J. Conradi suggests that “a task for critics today would seem to be to understand the indebtedness of her demonic, tormented sinners and saints and of the curious coexistence in her work of malevolence and goodness, to the dark tragi-comedies of Dostoevski.”1 In his 1986 essay “Iris Murdoch and Dostoevskii,” Conradi goes even further to argue that Fyodor Dostoevsky has been “unnoticed by commentators, a hovering or brooding presence for (...) at least two decades.”2 Both here and in his book Fyodor Dostoevsky, Conradi demonstrates “convergence” through a number of remarkable similarities: the parallels between Dostoevsky’s holy... (shrink)

What is the relation between democracy and second nature? What, that is, is the relation between a form of government that places a premium on a people shaping their shared destiny and a people who have been shaped by their past inheritance—an assortment of traditions, customs, perspectives, and practices? Does democracy fundamentally seek to escape custom and practice—the oppressive yoke of tradition—or does it, in fact, depend on a cultural inheritance, a second nature?In many standard accounts, Romanticism frees itself from (...) the encumbrance of tradition and discipline and thereby soars, unshackled, to the lofty heights of subjective expression, unrestrained imagination, and self-creation.1 In this view... (shrink)

I mention this story also as the best method I can advise any person to take in such a case, especially if he be one that makes conscience of his duty, and would be directed what to do in it, namely, that he should keep his eye upon the particular providences which occur at that time, and look upon them complexly, as they regard one another, and as all together regard the question before him: and then, I think, he may (...) safely take them for intimations from Heaven of what is his unquestioned duty to do in such a case; I mean as to going away from or staying in the place where we dwell, when visited with an infectious distemper.Daniel Defoe's fictional narrator H.F. introduces his account of the 1665 plague with the... (shrink)

Camus is defined by many as an absurdist philosopher of revolt. The Plague, however, shows him working rigorously through a well-known division between ancient and modern ethics concerning the relation of reason, feeling and happiness. For Aristotle, the virtues are stable dispositions including affective and intellectual elements. For Kant, one’s particular feelings are either that from which we must abstract to judge moral worth, or are a constant hindrance to proper moral activity. Further, Kant claims “habit belongs to the physical (...) nature of the determination of the will,” which seems to imply habit cannot be a moral determination at all. A related disagreement regards virtue and happiness. Aristotle’s happiness is “an activity of the soul in accord with virtue.” For Kant and other moderns, happiness is an ideal of imagination, “a maximum of well-being in my present, and in every future, state,” all the elements of which “are without exception empirical.” Thus happiness seems more the constant counterweight to moral action than its fulfillment. Kant and Aristotle agree, however, in their judgment of many characters and actions, as is illustrated in The Plague. The novel provides realistic insights into a philosophical agreement between these supposed oppositions. In particular, I show how both philosophers would agree in their judgements concerning both the relative goodness and relative happiness of Joseph Grand and Raymond Rambert. The illustration of this agreement proves Camus is valorizing a traditional ethic. (shrink)

Both Aristotle and Tolkien are authors of short works seemingly concentrated on one form of literary art. Both works contain references which seem to extend further than that single art and offer insights into the worth and purpose of art more generally. Both men understand the relevant processes of mind of the artist in a similar way, and both distinguish the value of works of art based on their effect on the audience. But Tolkien figures the natural human artistic bent (...) as an elvish strain in us, and in his legends the elves are passing away to make way for the new—human beings. The legendary tales are an image of the natural pagan man giving place to the new man coming to be after Christ. This implies that what Aristotle called the mimetic nature of man—the source of all artistic play and work—is being given a new shape and orientation. Further, the master of those who know, in explicating catharsis, must have been reaching for something that exceeded his grasp and he did not know it. The aim of this essay is to explore the agreements (seeming and real) and disagreements (seeming and real) between what can be built up as each author’s general literary and aesthetic ideas—so, the relation between pagan and Tolkien’s Christian poetics. This will include evaluating where each is more or less adequate to the task of a general aesthetic, ending in an exploration of the purpose of art for the “new man.”. (shrink)

In recent work, Walton has abandoned his very influential account of the fictionality of p in a fictional work in terms of prescriptions to imagine emanating from it. He offers examples allegedly showing that a prescription to imagine p in a given work of fiction is not sufficient for the fictionality of p in that work. In this paper, both in support and further elaboration of a constitutive-norms speech-act variation on Walton’s account that I have defended previously, I critically discuss (...) his objections. In addition to answering his concerns and developing the account further, I provide additional abductive support for its explanatory virtues vis-à- institutional accounts like Walton’s, and Gricean speech-act proposals. (shrink)

Rumi’s story of the elephant in the dark room is the story of the reception of Ralph Waldo Emerson. Depending upon where they have touched, which constitutes their vantage points, commentators have come to believe Emerson to be, among others, the “philosopher of Democracy”, the theologian of the American religion of self-reliance, the philosopher of the ordinary, the “friend and aider of those who live in spirit”, a genteel soul “impervious to the evidence of evil”, or a naïve writer whose (...) essays “are already an encumbrance”. Was Emerson somehow all the above—a man for all seasons or a “Professor of Things in... (shrink)

Mr. Darcy spoke with affectionate praise of his sister's proficiency.I never spoke to you without rather wishing to give you pain than not.Pride and Prejudice has been read in many ways. I argue that this well-known love story not only foregrounds the battle of the sexes but also places center stage the pros and cons of different types of family systems and reciprocal altruism. Humans have long evolved to become homo familiaris. In its Latin origin, the word family does not (...) necessarily refer to blood relations or kinship. Rather, the ancient Romans used familia to refer to "household property—the fields, house, money and slaves owned by a man. The Latin word famulus means 'servant.'"2In Family and Friends in... (shrink)

Suddenly, my research was brusquely interrupted by romance. Conceptually, that is.The precipitant was an essay by Becca Rothfeld about the collected letters of Iris Murdoch, a philosopher at Oxford who strayed, and flourished, as a novelist. “Her scholarly area was ethics, and her primary preoccupation was love, both romantic and platonic,” Rothfeld writes. “This was a topic whose manifest importance she felt was chronically neglected by her peers, most of them analytic philosophers.”1Murdoch is right, I thought. Socrates and friends, lolling (...) around the Symposium talking about beauty and boys, downplayed the physical side of romantic love. Dante chastely chased his beloved Beatrice into... (shrink)

Is it possible to forgive oneself? If so, should the person who has done so, for a serious wrongdoing, be fully at peace with herself? Some philosophers, perhaps most famously Hannah Arendt, have denied the coherence of the very idea of self-forgiveness.1 Others, such as Charles Griswold, have recognized it as both coherent and important: a distinct phenomenon from accepting the forgiveness of others, and vital in circumstances where seeking such forgiveness is morally problematic. Yet Griswold still holds self-forgiveness to (...) fall short of what he calls "paradigmatic" forgiveness.2 One of the key ideas behind this article is that part of the problem with understanding self-forgiveness is a mistaken tendency to... (shrink)

Dedicated to the memory of Professor David Knight, a great storytellerRing the bells that still can ring Forget your perfect offering There is a crack in everything That's how the light gets in.In his "Thoughts on Poetry and Its Varieties,"2 John Stuart Mill suggests that an interest in narrative—plain, unadorned narrative for narrative's sake—betrays an uncultivated mind, and is at its most prominent in what he regards as unsophisticated cultures. Mill holds that literature can have two components: description of "outward (...) circumstances," consisting of narrative, chronological portrayals of events; and description of "inner feelings," conveyed poetically. These elements may be present in the same piece... (shrink)

In Romeo and Juliet, William Shakespeare examines the relationship of the political realm to the things that are outside or beyond politics: family, society, religion, friendship, and love. The play is thus a work of political philosophy, and no less so because it is a work of art in which these things are portrayed concretely through the relationships of the play's characters. The difficulties of interpreting the play are due in part to its aesthetic particularity, but more to the familiarity (...) of its plot, the common understanding of which has been shaped by misleading statements made by the Chorus. The Chorus is persuasive, but wrong: the Capulets and Montagues are not "both alike in dignity" ;1 Romeo... (shrink)

Skepticism about other minds is typically presented as a straightforwardly epistemological thesis. Eliminativism about folk psychology is typically presented as a straightforwardly metaphysical thesis. But having moral status entails having, or having had, some mental states. And relating to persons as persons presupposes the application of folk-psychological concepts. So neither view can be divorced from ethics.Mary likes watching others. She always has. "Stop," her mother said. "It's rude.""What's rude?""Staring like that. Making people uncomfortable.""How do you know they're uncomfortable?""Because they just (...) are.""But how do you know they're uncomfortable unless you stare at them?""Enough."They were in a... (shrink)

Erin E. Edwards’ "The Modernist Corpse: Posthumanism and the Posthumous" offers a unique study of the critical and creative potential of the corpse in the context of (primarily) American modernist literature and other media. Dead bodies, oftentimes “radically dehumanized” (p. 1) and depicted en masse in direct relation to atrocities of colonialism, slavery and World War I, populate modernist literature and art. While many literary theorist whose work focuses on American modernism (as Edwards herself notes), looks at death and corpses (...) through the critical lens of studies on mourning, loss and trauma (e.g. Moglen 2007) and are clearly anchored in the traditional idea of the human subject, Edwards grounds her own “necrocentric perspective” (p. 14) in (feminist) posthumanist theorising. For her, “the corpse in American modernism is involved in a trenchant re-examination of who – and what – counts as human and as ‘alive’ in the early twentieth century” (p. 2). (shrink)