The paper proposes that the narrative functions of magical transformations and the characters’ articulated beliefs in the ways of spirits and ghosts in Alejo Carpentier's The Kingdom of this World and Ben Okri's The Famished Road represent polar extremes in magical realist writing. In the former text, spirits serve as the main measure of responsibility and responsiveness, enabling social actors to plot the ordinarily unimaginable. Spectral bodies transform marvelously in furtherance of the work of freedom and enchanting events proliferate so (...) that the spirit of independence set loose with physical struggles can flourish unhindered. The latter text blurs the borders of spirituality and literality; humans aspire to ghostliness and ghosts compete with humans. Nevertheless, human physical struggles for freedom long for a direction which the story's plentiful, flourishing spirits and ghosts seem unable to provide. The paper concludes that the different functions of spirits and ghosts in these novels reflect fundamental changes in the apprehension of historical progress in the postcolonial world since WWII. (shrink)

近世を代表する思想家・伊藤仁斎。諸稿本に残る書き入れや訂正を基に、「庶民の道徳」を追究した仁斎の思想構造を浮き彫りにする。.

Every Christian who carefully reads the message of St. Apostle Paul, can not do it pay attention to the number of times he uses, so to speak, military terminology. Suffice it to read the sixth chapter of the epistle to the Ephesians - the words, which is also St. Mr. Patriarch Joseph finished his Testament: "Fix in the Lord and in the power of his power. Put on a full armor of God so that you can resist the tricks devilish (...) For we have to fight not against the body and blood, but against the beginning, against the authorities, against the rulers of this world of darkness, against the spirits of malice Therefore, take a full weapon God so that you can resist and... stand firmly. Stand, then, girth Your hips are right, putting on the armor of justice, and putting your legs ready preaching the gospel of peace. (shrink)

A genuine Copernican turn in Kantian and Marxist theory and practice.