This essay explores a modern American poem—its verse form, imagery, diction, and rhythm, and, in particular, its cultural echoes, resonances, and overtones. I examine the poem’s explicit invocation of Apelles and crow mythology, but I also show that the implicit context from which it arises, and the one that allows it to speak with the great- est fullness and power, is work that Shakespeare wrote or published between 1606 and 1609. This context allows us to see that, at the heart (...) of the poem, lies the Shakespearean and Platonic analogy between the creation of children and the creation of intellectual work. (shrink)

... all probability, Plato's own statement; made indeed to be read by friends in Syracuse in explanation of the role he had played ...

Despite the ubiquity of bees in Dickinson’s work, most interpreters denigrate her nature poems. But following several recent scholars, I identify Nietzschean/Dionysian overtones in the bee poems and suggest the figure of bees/hive/queen illuminates as feminist key to her corpus. First, (a) the bee’s sting represents martyred death; (b) its gold, immortality; (c) its tongue, the “lesbian phallus”; (d) its wings, poetic power; (e) its buzz, poetic melody, and (f) its organism, a joyful Dionysian Susan (her sister-in-law and love interest) (...) to Emily’s flower. Second, the hive represents her individual poems (with slants/dashes as stingers, wings as hymn meter, honey as rhymes, variant words as exiled bees, and accompanying flowers their Darwinian coevolution with bees), constituting her writing persona as a multi-voiced self-swarm, as organized in the apiary of her letters and fascicles. And third, the queen represents her Western cultural and religious inheritance wherein bees are symbols of the soul, reincarnation, poetic-philosophical vocation, and a Nietzschean, trans-Dionysian naturalist ontology—symbolized by apiarian Artemis. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:What Has Cartesianism To Do with Jansenism?Tad M. SchmaltzMy title is modeled on the famous query of the third-century theologian, Tertullian: “What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?” Tertullian’s question asks what pagan Greek learning has to do with the theology of the early Church. By comparison my question asks what philosophical Cartesianism has to do with theological Jansenism, and more specifically what these movements had to do with (...) each other in the France of Louis XIV. To anticipate, the answer is: not much and plenty. I say not much, in the sense that there are profound differences in the approaches and interests of the namesakes of these two movements: in the case of Cartesianism, the French critic of scholastic natural philosophy, René Descartes, and in the case of Jansenism, the Louvain critic of Jesuit theology, Cornelius Jansen (Jansenius). Yet I also say plenty, in the sense that there was in the second half of the seventeenth century a fairly widespread belief in France of an intimate link between the two movements that the work of Descartes and Jansen inspired. What we need here is a story that shows how despite the differences between these two thinkers, their French followers were commonly associated with each other.In order to tell such a story I need to consider some basic difficulties in pinning down the nature of the movements themselves. There are of course familiar problems with the appeal to generic “isms” in the history of ideas, but I also want to consider special concerns pertaining to the definition of French Jansenism and French Cartesianism. In the course of this consideration I suggest that since both movements are to some extent constructs that emerged from intellectual battles in late-seventeenth-century France, they must be understood in light of the political, theological, and philosophical goals of the polemicists involved in these battles.Perhaps the most obvious reason for the connection between the Jansenist and Cartesian movements is that one of the most prominent of the Jansenist theologians, the Port-Royalist Antoine Arnauld, was also an enthusiastic defender [End Page 37] of Descartes’s metaphysical system. But while Arnauld undoubtedly played an important role in the emergence of this link, I think that the full story of its emergence must include a consideration of the different role played by a somewhat neglected figure in the history of early modern Cartesianism, namely, the Lorraine Benedictine Robert Desgabets (1610–78). Desgabets was more deeply involved than Arnauld in the 1671 “Eucharist affair,” which was important for the polemical linkage of Jansenism to Cartesianism in France. Whereas Arnauld attempted to separate Jansenist theology from Cartesian philosophy, Desgabets tried to provide Cartesian foundations for a theology with strong Jansenist overtones. It was Desgabets more than Arnauld, then, who was concerned to apply Cartesian principles to issues of importance for the Jansenist theologian.What Has Descartes To Do with Jansen?A primary trigger for the bitter “Jansenist controversies” in France during the seventeenth century was the posthumous publication in 1640 of the Augustinus of Jansen, the late Bishop of Ypres in the Spanish Netherlands. This technical three-volume work attempts to draw from Augustine responses to Pelagian and semi-Pelagian views concerning the prelapsarian state of innocence, the fall from this state, and the grace required to overcome that fall. Jansen’s emphasis is on the pervasive corruption of original sin and on the impossibility of meritorious action that does not derive from God’s grace to the elect. The Jesuits in Louvain saw the work as a throwback to the theses of Michel du Bay (Baius) that Pope Paul V had condemned in 1567 due to pressure exerted by their order, and they made an unsuccessful attempt to stop the publication of the book. 1 After its publication this text drew the suspicion of Cardinal Richelieu, who (correctly) believed Jansen to be the author of Mars Gallicus, an anonymous pamphlet protesting Richelieu’s anti-Habsburg policies. Richelieu chose a theologian of Notre-Dame-de-Paris, Isaac Habert, to launch an attack against the Augustinus. In a series of sermons starting in 1642 Habert criticized Jansen’s assertion of the necessity of contrition... (shrink)

Li Zehou and Vera Schwarcz argue that key political events in twentieth century Chinese intellectual history, like the May Fourth Movement, separate one generation of intellectuals from the next.1 I have also frequently heard contemporary Mainland intellectuals speak of generational differences among themselves. In lectures, Liu Binyan often contrasts the idealism and suffering of his generation with the disillusionment of the younger group of intellectuals and writers that grew up during the Cultural Revolution. This notion of generation seems to distinguish (...) between an older group and a younger and unproven one. The relationship between these successive generations has taken a variety of forms, but one can also argue that it has two paradigms. On the one hand, there is a relationship based on the idea of continuity, on the idea that a pupil from the younger generation obediently carries on a tradition or school of thought his older master inherited or created. The best example of this master-disciple relationship is Confucius's relationship to his followers. This idea also has strong familial overtones, and can be seen in the stress Confucian texts give to the bond between father and son, and to the values that underlie this bond: the notions of xiao, or filial piety, and zhong, or loyalty. This idea of chuan or transmission from one generation to the next is a strong element in sinicized religions like Chan Buddhism. Transmission of an idea, or even a family name, is a value informing many aspects of life in late imperial society. Mary Rankin and Hilary Beattie's work on family lineages shows how local elites used all the financial, cultural, and political means available to them to preserve the elite status of their extended families over several hundred years.2 Education, provided by teachers in local village and lineage schools, was the key to transmitting and inculcating these ethical values of loyalty, obedience, filial piety, and ethical behavior. The values informing this intergenerational relationship obligated the teacher to act in a morally conscious way, but also gave him power over his pupils, who were taught to obediently follow him. (shrink)

I M M Gregory; The Right to Education, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 7, Issue 1, 30 May 2006, Pages 85–102, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9752.197.

I M M Gregory, R G Woods; Indoctrination, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 4, Issue 1, 30 May 2006, Pages 77–105, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9752.

In Plato’s Theaetetus , Socrates is portrayed as a midwife to the intellect, a metaphor for his task as a dialectician as he seeks to help give birth to wisdom. Thus it is that the author refers to Plato as the midwife’s apprentice. This volume represents an attempt to provide a more manageable account of the author’s two volume magnum opus, An Examination of Plato’s Doctrines . An accessible and lucid introduction to Plato’s ideas is provided which nonetheless challenges traditional (...) interpretations. In particular the author is concerned to offer an interpretation of the significance of what Plato said. The chapters are arranged by topic, for ease of comprehension. (shrink)

In Plato’s _Theaetetus_, Socrates is portrayed as a midwife to the intellect, a metaphor for his task as a dialectician as he seeks to help give birth to wisdom. Thus it is that the author refers to Plato as the midwife’s apprentice. This volume represents an attempt to provide a more manageable account of the author’s two volume magnum opus, _An Examination of Plato’s Doctrines_. An accessible and lucid introduction to Plato’s ideas is provided which nonetheless challenges traditional interpretations. In (...) particular the author is concerned to offer an interpretation of the significance of what Plato said. The chapters are arranged by topic, for ease of comprehension. (shrink)

In Plato’s Theaetetus , Socrates is portrayed as a midwife to the intellect, a metaphor for his task as a dialectician as he seeks to help give birth to wisdom. Thus it is that the author refers to Plato as the midwife’s apprentice. This volume represents an attempt to provide a more manageable account of the author’s two volume magnum opus, An Examination of Plato’s Doctrines . An accessible and lucid introduction to Plato’s ideas is provided which nonetheless challenges traditional (...) interpretations. In particular the author is concerned to offer an interpretation of the significance of what Plato said. The chapters are arranged by topic, for ease of comprehension. (shrink)