The Holy City of Medina: Sacred Space in Early Islamic Arabia. By Harry Munt. Cambridge Studies in Islamic Civilization. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014. Pp. xvii + 226. $95.

Taking the story of Jesus seriously means relocating holy people, holy city, holy land on our map of reality.

Malls have become social magnets for people of all social strata, young included, and, in this guise, they apparently emulate churches in their function of ritually congregating people at weekends or on Sundays. In the following we shall endeavour to read the city malls (in Transylvania) from a Cultural Studies perspective with the goal of showing that they function as cultural loci for youth congregation, as well as powerful agencies of identity construction. We aim to prove that through their (...) ritual presence in malls and their consumption and reassignment of meaning to mall space (teens make special use of mall space quite often contrary to, or at least different from, the original intentions) adolescents perform and display self-identities. The underlying assumption is that consumption is symbolic and that teens in malls consume signs and meanings rather than just commodities. During the process, there occurs a construction of sorts, that of self- or group identities, for this is an era where young people increasingly define themselves through what they consume, be it commodities or signs. Our concern is with how malls are appropriated by teenagers, and how through the ritualistic pursuit of leisure and pleasure therein Romanian teens consecrate the function of malls of symbolising a specific world view, a system of beliefs, and a set of attitudes, very much like religion does. Thus, while primarily secular temples (now a commonplace syntagm for malls), malls may be said to epitomize the sacred symbols of young people today1 although, at face value, they seem to tend to mundane rather than spiritual needs. (shrink)

A new translation of Emanuel Swedenborg's short work The New Jerusalem and Its Heavenly Doctrine. In it, Swedenborg discusses our inner natures, how we can develop as spiritual people, and the true meaning of observances like baptism and the Holy Supper.

This new translation of _De Novo Hierosolyma Et Ejus Doctrina Coelesti_ by Emanuel Swedenborg presents the ideas of this Swedish visionary in simple, modern English. In the short work, Swedenborg discusses our motivations and inner natures, love and selfishness, and ways in which we can develop ourselves as spiritual people. He also covers different aspects of religion, such as the Bible, observances like baptism and the Holy Supper, the nature of heaven and hell, and how we can apply all (...) these ideas to our daily lives. (shrink)

................English....................... The purpose of this study is to reveal university students’ perceptions regarding Holy Qur’an through metaphors. The survey group of study consists of 194 participants who were studying in Theology Department and Social Service Department at Gümüşhane University in the 2014-2015 academic terms. Both quantitative and qualitative methods are used together. The study’s data was collected through a form with the phrase “The Holy Qur’an is similar/like…, because...” and some demographical variables. The Content Analysis Technique was used (...) to interpret data. Results of this study determined that 44 different metaphors regarding Holy Qur’an were given by participants. Theme of these metaphors were compiled as 9 categories consisting of directional, life source, explanatory, key, protective, curative, instructive, speech, and other categories. Top metaphors are in the directional, life source and explanatory categories. Key words are metaphor, perception, The Qur’an perception, religious concepts, and religious symbols. Getting data through comprehensive and in-dept analysis can help to have information about concepts of holy books in the human mind. The purpose of this study is to pick out perceptions of university students with regard to the Holy Qur’an through metaphors. For this reason, these questions are searched by researchers: 1) What are the metaphors which used by university students on description of perceptions regarding the Holy Qur’an? 2) How are the metaphors regarding the Holy Qur’an categorized in terms of common characteristics which produced by university students? 3) Are there any links between socio-demographic variables and composed metaphoric categories? One of the qualitative data collection technics, data collecting through metaphors method is used, and is asked open-ended question in the study. Picking up similarities and diversities under thematic topics is quite easy in the method. Therefore, this method has a functional feature in the sociology, psychology and anthropology, and it gives a wealthy and qualified image about matter, phenomenon, event and situation (Yıldırım & Şimşek 2005, 212). The target population of the study consists of students who were taking education at Gümüşhane University. Easily accessible and availability principles pursued in the sample choosing. In the distribution of participants according to the demographical features, females have 61.9 percent (n:120) and males have 38.1 percent (n:74) in terms of gender. Students who graduated from religious vocational high school is 61.3 percent (n:119), and others who from other high schools is 38.7 percent (n:75) in terms of graduated from different high schools. Students in theology department have 68.0 percent (n:132), and students who were educated in the social service department have 32.0 percent (n:62). Research data is gathered through survey form includes “The Holy Qur’an is like/similar to…, because…” sentence and demographical variabilities. Data, gathered from 194 survey forms, is transferred to the Excel and the SPSS program. In an attempt to reliability of study, gathered metaphors is examined by four area expert. Frequencies (f) and percentages (%) is taken into consideration in the process of replacing metaphors to the tables. Data analysis technique is used on the getting relationships and explaining gathered data, while content analysis technique is used on the interpreting of data. The SPSS program is used in the analysis of quantitative data. Obtained data from the surveys and composed categories is associated with descriptive statements in the verses of the Holy Qur’an. In the composed categories demonstrate distribution of produced 44 different metaphors with regard to the Holy Qur’an as 9 categories. According to this, the sample is represented in the categories as 64.4 % (f:125) is in the ‘directional’, 11.3 % (f:22) is in the ‘life source’, 7.7 % (f:15) is in the ‘explanatory’, 3.1 % (f:6) is in the ‘key’, 3.1 % (f:6) is in the ‘protective’, 2.1 % (f:4) is in the ‘curative’, 2.1 % (f:4) is in the ‘instructive’, 2.1 % (f:4) is in the ‘speech’ and 4.1 % (f:8) is in the ‘other’ categories. Distributions of composed categories are represented according to common characteristics as frequencies and percentages in the next tables. In the distribution of produced metaphors in the ‘directional’ category, university students produced 7 different metaphors (f:125). Frequencies of produced metaphors in the category are such that: guide (f:41), advisor (f:25), mentor (f:19), compass (f:16), road map (f:8), route (f:3) and other (f:13). According to the result, it is understood that aspects of guide, advisor, mentor and compass stood mostly out in the category. In the ‘life source’ category, 6 different metaphors (f:22) is developed by participants. Developed metaphors’ frequencies in the category are the following: life (f:4), lifeblood (f:4), weather (f:2), water (f:2), inheritance (f:2) and others (f:7). So, life and lifeblood aspects stood mostly out in the category. In the ‘explanatory’ category, 5 different metaphor (f:15) is developed by participants. Frequencies of produced metaphors in the category are such that: light (f:5), sun (f:3), flashlight (f:2), torch (f:2) and other (f:3). According to the result, it is understood that aspects of light and sun stood mostly out in the category In the ‘protective’ category, 5 different metaphors (f:6) is developed by participants. Frequencies of produced metaphors in the category are such that: saver (f:2), lifeguard (f:1), hereafter-saving (f:1), escapeway (f:1) and branch to catch (f:1). According to the result, it is understood that aspect of saver stood mostly out in the category. In the ‘instructive’ category, 4 different metaphors (f:6) is developed by participants. Frequencies of produced metaphors in the category are such that: reference book (f:1), dictionary (f:1), priceless book (f:1) and life encyclopedia (f:1). In the ‘speech’ category, it is seen that 4 different metaphors (f:6) is developed by participants. Frequencies of produced metaphors in the category are such that: divine message (f:1), speaking truth (f:1), Allah’s dialogue with us (f:1) and final word (f:1). In the ‘key’ category, 3 different metaphors (f:6) is developed by participants. Frequencies of produced metaphors in the category are such that: a key (f:4), the key of heaven (f:1) and the key of salvation (f:1). In the ‘curative’ category, 2 different metaphors (f:4) is developed by participants. Frequencies of produced metaphors in the category are such that: a pill (f:3) and doctor (f:1). In the ‘others’ category, 8 different metaphors (f:8) is developed by participants. Frequencies of produced metaphors in the category are such that: world (f:1), the friend of lonely passenger (f:1), the tree with fruit (f:1), hereafter (f:1), priceless treasure (f:1), miracle (f:1), philosophy (f:1) and mirror (f:1). Participants composed of 44 different metaphors regarding the Holy Qur’an. The metaphors were summed up in the 9 categories as ‘directional’, ‘life source’, ‘explanatory’, ‘key’, ‘protective’, ‘curative’, ‘instructive’, ‘speech’ and ‘other’ To results of the study; guide, advisor, mentor and compass aspects of the Qur’an came into prominence at most in the ‘directional’ category, when life and lifeblood aspects of the Qur’an came into prominence at most in the ‘life source’ category. Light and sunny aspects of the Qur’an came into prominence at most in the ‘explanatory’ category, while saver aspect of the Qur’an came into prominence at most in the ‘protective’ category. Instructive aspect of the Qur’an came into prominence at most in the ‘instructive’ category. Speech aspect of the Qur’an came into prominence at most in the ‘speech’ category, while key aspect of the Qur’an came into prominence at most in the ‘key’ category. Moreover, pill aspect of the Qur’an came into prominence at most in the ‘curative’ category. Whatsoever world, friend of single traveler, tree with fruit, hereafter, priceless treasure, miracle, philosophy and mirror aspects of the Qur’an came into prominence at most in the ‘other’ category. It is inferred that significant relationships between demographic variables and metaphor categories. In terms of major variable; theology students were composed of more metaphor in the ‘explanatory’ and ‘instructive’ categories, while social service students were composed of more metaphor in the ‘life source’ category. In terms of gender variable; females composed of more metaphor in the ‘curative’ and ‘other’ categories, while males composed of more metaphor in the ‘directional category. In terms of graduating high school variable, students who graduated from religious vocational high school composed of more metaphor in the ‘key’ and ‘speech’ categories, when students who graduated from other high school composed of more metaphor in the ‘directional’ category. Whatsoever, in terms of having the Qur’an education in their life status variable, had the Qur’an education in their life students composed of more metaphor in the ‘curative’ and ‘other’ categories, while other group composed of more metaphor in the ‘directional’. Moreover, in terms of perception of subjective religiousness, students who think themselves are ‘religious’ composed of more metaphor in the ‘key’ and ‘other’ categories, while students who think themselves are ‘less religious’ composed of more metaphor in the ‘explanatory’ category. In terms of perception of family religiousness, students who think own family ‘less religious’ composed of more metaphor in the ‘directional’ and ‘life source’ categories, when students who think own family ‘religious’ composed of more metaphor in the ‘key’ category. It can be suggested by the results of this study; perception of the Qur’an can be studied with the different study techniques, or it can be studied in the different research groups with the same technique. Muslims’ perceptions regarding the Holy Qur’an can be examined with intercultural comparative studies. Perceptions regarding the Holy Qur’an can be researched through interviews. Members’ perception regarding holy book that have different religious faith can be comparatively examined. Individuals’ perceptions regarding different religious concepts can be studied through metaphors. .................. Turkish...................Bu araştırmanın amacı üniversite öğrencilerinin Kur’an-ı Kerim’e ilişkin algılarını metaforlar aracılığıyla ortaya çıkarmaktır. Araştırmanın çalışma grubunu, 2014-2015 eğitim öğretim yılında Gümüşhane Üniversitesi İlahiyat Fakültesi ve Sosyal Hizmetler bölümünde öğrenim gören 194 katılımcı oluşturmaktadır. Araştırmada nitel ve nicel yöntemler birlikte kullanılmıştır. Araştırma verileri, “Kur’an-ı Kerim……gibidir, çünkü……” cümlesini ve demografik değişkenleri içeren bir form aracılığıyla toplanmıştır. Verilerin analizi ve yorumlanmasında içerik analizi tekniği kullanılmıştır. Araştırmada Kur’an’a ilişkin 44 farklı metafor geliştirildiği tespit edilmiştir. Bu metaforlardan ‘yönlendirici’, ‘yaşam kaynağı’, ‘açıklayıcı’, ‘anahtar’, ‘koruyucu’, ‘öğretici’, ‘derman’, ‘kelam’ ve ‘diğer’ olmak üzere 9 farklı kategori oluşturulmuştur. Üretilen metaforların ‘yönlendirici’, ‘yaşam kaynağı’ ve ‘açıklayıcı’ kategorilerinde yoğunlaştığı görülmüştür. Demografik değişkenler ile metafor kategorileri arasındaki ilişkiyi ortaya çıkarmak araştırmanın ikincil amaçlarındandır ve bu yönüyle sonuçlar değerlendirildiğinde değişkenler ile kategoriler arasında anlamlı ilişkiler olduğu tespit edilmiştir. Demografik değişkenler ile kategori ilişkisinde fakülte değişkeni açısından ilahiyat öğrencileri ‘açıklayıcı’ ve ‘öğretici’ kategorilerinde daha fazla metafor üretirken sosyal hizmet öğrencileri ‘yaşam kaynağı’ kategorisinde daha fazla metafor üretmiştir. Cinsiyet değişkeni açısından ise kız öğrenciler ‘derman’ ve ‘diğer’ kategorilerinde daha fazla metafor üretirken erkek öğrenciler ‘yönlendirici’ kategorisinde daha fazla metafor üretmiştir. Lise mezuniyeti açısından bakıldığında da İHL’den mezun olanlar ‘anahtar’ ve ‘kelam’ kategorilerinde daha fazla metafor üretirken diğer lise mezunları ‘yönlendirici’ kategorisinde daha fazla metafor üretmiştir. Kur’an Kursu eğitimi alma değişkeni açısından ise Kur’an kursu eğitimi alanlar ‘derman’ ve ‘diğer’ kategorilerinde daha fazla metafor üretirken Kur’an Kursu eğitimi almayanlar ‘yönlendirici’ kategorisinde daha fazla metafor üretmiştir. Ayrıca öznel dindarlık ve aile dindarlık algılarıyla metafor kategorileri arasında da anlamlı ilişkiler elde edilmiştir. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:THE POLITICAL PHILOSOPHIES OF AQUINAS AND AWOLOW0 1 FRANCIS I. 0GUNMODEDE Semlnary of SS. Peter and Paul Ibadan, Nigeria Introduction W:HAT POSSIBLE connection is there between the hought of Aquinas and that of Awolowo? We must first observe a sharp difference in personality and approach to politics between the two men. Obafemi Awolowo ( 1909-87) was a recent Nigerian philosopher and politician whose works on politics include The People's (...) Republic (1968) and Thoughts on the Nigerian Constitution ( 1970), among others.2 St. Thomas, on the other hand, was a medieval Italian priest who, because of his intensive academic pursuits and religious calling, did not engage in practical politics. In fact, it has been said that St. Thomas was the greatest philosopher that ever lived after Plato and Aristotle, but one without a political theory. This opinion is drawn from the fact that he has left no complete work on politics to which we can turn as we do to the Politics of Aristotle or to the Social Contract of Rousseau. Thomas never completed his Commentary on the Politics of Aristotle or his treatise De Regimine Principum (De regno). There is another good reason to say that St. Thomas does not provide his readers with an adequate political doctrine. This is 1 This is an adaptation of an original lecture titled "Elements of St. Thomas's Politics in Awolowo's Social Philosophy" given to mark Aquinas Day at the Dominican Institute of Philosophy, Ibadan, Nigeria on January 28, 1989. 2 For other works and writings by Awolowo, see F. Ogunmodede, Obafemi Awolowo's Socio-Political Philosophy (Rome, 1986), pp. 269-272. 265 266 FRANCIS I. OGUNMODEDE his " essentially theoretical " 3 approach to the study of politics. Aquinas's political reflections did not arise from any practical issue. The impact of philosophy was the determining factor. His views on state and government were part of a philosophical system. The approach of Awolowo to politics is quite different. It is empirical and practical. For, as D'Entreves says, modern man, unlike his medieval counterpart, has " become so entangled in particulars, in the practical side of politics, that it is only with an effort that we can be brought to realize the existence of the more general issues which lie behind our immediate predicament." 4 Nevertheless, one can relate the political thought of both men. History is already filled with cases of scientific discoveries made at the same time by men in different places without any prior knowledge of one another's achievements. For instance, the controversy over the discovery of calculus was resolved by crediting both Newton and Leibniz with the discovery at the same time, each in his own country. Perhaps we can add that fundamental ideas about man and society can be shared, because of their universal nature, by people in different ages, places, and circumstances. This is the basis for the present comparison of Awolowo 's and St. Thomas's socio-political philosophies. This position is favored by the fact that, whichever way one looks at it, both have a political theory, a set of propositions systematically related to one another in such a way and manner that it is meaningful and realistic for us to talk of a "theory." Perhaps the contribution of this paper is to demonstrate that Awolowo and Aquinas do share many basic ideas and concepts about reality, about religion, and especially about polity. This view is supported by the fact that, even though Awolowo wrote no treatise on metaphysics,5 as Aquinas did, he nonetheless built on sound 3 A. P. D'Entreves, Aquinas: Selected Political Writings (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1959), p. viii. 4 Ibid. 5 Unfortunately, Awolowo died before he could write works setting out his metaphysics systematically. But he gave a very long interview to Dr. Makinde of the 0.A.U., Ile-Ife, just before he died. This gives some insight into his AQUINAS AND AWOLOWO 267 fundamental postulates and principles which are metaphysical in nature in his thinking about politics.6 Now, there are many approaches and methods in the study of any political theorist. According to B. J. Dudley, " we can concern ourselves with the sort of assumptions... (shrink)

SummaryJudith Montefiore's life has attracted attention principally by association with that of her husband Sir Moses Montefiore (1784–1885), the pre-eminent Jewish figure of his age. This article emphasises instead Judith's pioneering role as a Jewish woman travel-writer and influential female voice in the world of Jewish letters and international Jewish politics. To Jews in the Holy Cities of Palestine and the ghettos and shtetls of Eastern Europe, Judith was—like her husband—a beacon of hope, an example to follow and an (...) instrument of change. Her activities drew on a rich vein of Jewish tradition and a series of profound encounters with Middle Eastern and, to a lesser extent, Eastern European Jewries, which shaped her spiritual world. These paradoxes are easily conceptualised by the contrast between Judith's different worlds: the Jewish world that underpinned her marriage, structured her spirituality and infused her life with meaning, and the world of the English gentry and dissenting middle classes, with whom she mixed socially, and whose spiritual style, values, expectations, and mode of life shaped her in other, equally profound ways. This article argues, however, that it was the interaction and cross-fertilisation between these different worlds that enabled Judith to carve her distinctive path in life. (shrink)

This chapter attempts to differentiate between types of monumental representations of Jerusalem, to locate them historically and to explore the reasons for their extraordinary density by deciphering the essentials of their function as mnemonic devices in the framework of medieval devotionalism. Conditioned by historical events such as the Crusades, Franciscan canonization of the Stations of the Cross and the Counter-Reformation, representation of Jerusalem gradually expanded from copies of Christ's tomb in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre to commemorate the (...) Stations of the Cross and other holy places in Jerusalem and the Holy Land. The holy landscapes are multimedia representations: they combine topography and architecture with life-size figural groups and wall painting to identify the holy places. Groups of such representations could form separate sites at a certain distance from settlements, or encompass a city with a network of reproduced loca sancta. (shrink)

Translated by Drew S. Burk and Anthony Paul Smith. Excerpted from Struggle and Utopia at the End Times of Philosophy , (Minneapolis: Univocal Publishing, 2012). THE END TIMES OF PHILOSOPHY The phrase “end times of philosophy” is not a new version of the “end of philosophy” or the “end of history,” themes which have become quite vulgar and nourish all hopes of revenge and powerlessness. Moreover, philosophy itself does not stop proclaiming its own death, admitting itself to be half dead (...) and doing nothing but providing ammunition for its adversaries. With our sights set on clearing up this nuance, we differentiate philosophy as an institutional entity, and the philosophizability of the World and History, of “thought-world,” which universalizes the narrow concept of philosophy and that of “capital.” We also give an eschatological and apocalyptical cause to this end, of “times” or “ages” rather than those of philosophical practice. Last but not least, it is the Future itself in the performativity of its ultimatum that determines this end times, reversing these times from the Identity the Future accorded to it, withdrawing the thought-world from the lie of its death. Why this style of axioms and oracles, these more or less subtle distinctions, old and debased, with an appeal to the ultimata , to end times and last words? We fight to give, parallel to the concept of Hell, its new theoretical position, for its philosophical return and its non-philosophical transformation. No more so than any other word, Hell is not a metaphor here, just the Principle of Sufficient World. Every man, no doubt, has his “hell” readily available, connivance, control, conformism, domestication, schooling, alienation, extermination, exploitation, oppression, anxiety, etc. We have our little list that the Contemporaries established in the previous century in the same way one used to construct lists of virtues and vices or honors and wealth. They invented it for us without knowing it, for us-the-Futures who have as our responsibility to invent its use. In the Christian and Gnostic tradition, the struggle of the End Times takes place “on earth.” The most sophisticated of believers have it taking place in Heaven as well, above all in Heaven. The various kinds of gnosis imagine infinite falls and vertiginous highs, the vertigo of salvation. On Earth as in Heaven, a hell is available. The Marxists have the law of profit and the control of production, the class struggle Capital imposes on man. The Nietzscheans, the dull grumble of the struggle in the foundations of World and History, the domestication of man, the society of control. The phenomenologists, the capture of being, the most superficial amongst them, the age of suspicion. But all of these “hells” are taken from World, History, Society, and Religion. What we call Hell is no longer of the order of these specific and total intra-worldly generalities, it is both more singular and more universal, no longer being at all of the same order, it is the determinant Identity of these small hells strung out through history but unified here in the name of the last Humaneity. It is even found within the French idiom for hell [ enfer ], en-fer literally means “in-irons.” We are as much “in-irons” as we are “alive” [ en-Vie ]. We believe in Hell but as non-philosophers and it is even because we are non-philosophers that we can believe in it outside of any sort of religion. Hell is less mythological than ideological, it combines philosophizability with universal capital. Under what form? A single term could work for them without being a metaphor or something they would participate in by analogy, a more innovative and conjectural term than control, more universal than profit. It would denote the growing and permanent extortion of a surplus-value of communication, of speed and of urgency in change, in productivity and in work, in the pressure of images and slogans. It would be worse than solicitation, more tenacious than capture, more active and persecutory than control, softer and more insidious than a frontal attack, just as perverse as questioning and accusation, less brutal and offensive than extermination, less ritualized than inquisition, it would be soft and dispersed, instantaneous and vicious, it would be a crime without declared violence. Collusion and conformism, it would be afraid to show itself. Related to rumor, from which it borrows its infinite and tortuous ways. It is harassment. As a modernized form of Hell, perhaps harassment has a long future in front of it, of innocent torture, slow assassination, in short the fall, but radical with no way of recovering and which tolerates only salvation. THE PHILOSOPHICAL PAST OF NON-PHILOSOPHY Non-philosophy is thus Man as the utopian identity of the philosophical form of the World, a utopia destined to transform it. We still have to understand these equations, in particular that of the being-uni-versed from Man, and this book adheres to this by re-exposing non-philosophy in a different way via one of its new possibilities. It uses this opportunity to once again take up formulations that lead to objections answering certain external critics, as well as revisiting diverging interpretations specific to non-philosophers. A portion of this book is devoted to going through these theories via a strict or “lengthy” presentation of non-philosophy, and its defense against more expeditious solutions. This work of rectification is the occasion, merely the occasion, for refocusing non-philosophy on Man (the “Man-in-person,” “Humaneity”), and in a more innovative manner, on its utopian vocation established since the book Future Christ . As for this “occasion,” it is quite obvious. A school of posture, not to say a school of thought, supposes a minimum of closure from the most liberating of knowledge, a heritage, its utilization, and its no less certain dispersal. Within its development, a variety of interpretations will no doubt appear, deviations that are as much normalizations, and a struggle against this multiplication of divergent tendencies. These are perhaps not inevitable evils, especially here, merely a normal development according to the twisting paths of history. But the problem is made worse by the fact that this school of non-philosophers is that of utopia. Not the former attempts devoted to commenting on the worst authoritarian and criminal forms of the past and the present, but utopia as the determinant principle for human life, or to put it another way, of the Future as an irreducible presupposition of (for) thinking the World and History. Non-philosophers are engaged in an aleatory navigation between the respect for the most rigorous utopia, whose rules are not that of the reproductive imagination but those from the Future determining imagination itself, as well as the temptations, diversions, and remorse of history. Little by little, we will begin to understand that the Future as we understand it no longer has any temporal consistency or positive content, without being an empty form or a nothingness, but that it is foreclosed to past and present History, just as it is foreclosed to the place of places, the World, and that it is the only method for establishing the practice of thinking in a non-imaginary instance. Because it is the World and History that are imaginary and have a terrible materiality, it is not necessarily utopia. We will overlap two objectives here: the defense of non-philosophy against the (non-) philosophers that we are, only occasionally, and the introduction of philosophy to a rigorous future. Together they set out to definitively render, without any possible return to philosophical conformism or towards the facilities of the past and present, the non-philosophical enterprise understood as utopia or uchronia. Imagination and speculation, left to themselves and thus undistinguished, are quite good for participating in the grand game of History but have little value or worse for the Future which is unimaginable and unintelligible and must be maintained as such. MAN-IN-PERSON AS SUSPENSION OF THE PHILOSOPHICAL CHORA The point where philosophical resistance is concentrated is without a doubt the invention of the Name-of-Man, first name, oracular as much as axiomatic, of the determining cause for the non-philosophical posture. And that which concentrates the differends is the style of non-philosophy as identity that possesses the dual aspect, of discipline and of the oeuvre, of the theorem and of the oracle. But the real difficulty in understanding the simplicity of non-philosophy is profoundly hidden in the depths of philosophy itself. Because philosophy, from Parmenides to Derrida, even Levinas, continues to be a divided gesture, without a veritable immanence, transforming its thematic contents of transcendence in also forgetting to transform the operative transcendence in the element from which the ontology of surface is established which we will call, in memory of Plato, the chorismos. The general effect of the chora literally gives place to philosophy, demanding binding and sutures to which we will once and for all “oppose” the Man-in-person, his power of cloning, and his future being. All philosophy contains a hinter-philosophy in which it deploys its operations and weaves its tradition like an understudy of a topographical nature and in the best of cases being itself topological. Philosophy as well consists of two levels, its pre-ontological operative conditions on the one hand, and its superficial theme on the other, it too has its presupposed, but is not aware of it or erases it within the unity of appearance named Logos. Rightly, the Logos, and its flash or lightning nature, possesses a “dark precursor,” the chora, which is as much a virtual image, and philosophy, dazzled by its own lightning flash, seems to completely forget about it at the same time it sets itself up within it. Non-philosophy risks taking this same path, of confusing what it believes to be the real with its phantom double, contenting itself to working on the thematic level of philosophy, not its surface objects and its idle chatter (we stopped talking about this a long time ago and in any case they are merely simple materials for inducing a work of transformation), but the transcendence-form of its objects. In the end it risks, through precipitation, taking back up the heritage of philosophy, a heritage of a misunderstood presupposed, even more profound than the play of transcendences. This is what the imperative of the radicality of immanence meant, to treat immanence in an immanent manner, not to make a new object out of it. And from here we get non- (philosophy) and its refusal of the Platonic chorismos , symbol of all abstraction, and thus all transcendental appearance. There are no illusions. The message will leave a heritage in tattered pieces and interpretations. But it was difficult not to dispute the differend to its core. There will be complete confusion of the multiple, possible, and necessary effectuations of non-philosophy with its interpretations. The non-philosophical or human freedom of philosophical effectuation and the philosophical freedom of interpretation. Effectuations demand non-philosophy to return to zero from the point of view of its philosophical material and thus also but within these limits the formulation of its axioms , but in no way providing from the outset divergent interpretations of the aforementioned axioms. They are divergent because they do not take into account the material from which these axioms are derived within non-philosophy, and because they do not see themselves as symptoms of another vision of the World. The utterances of non-philosophy are not mathematical theorems and pure axioms, they merely have a mathematical aspect . They are, by their extraction or origin, mathematical and transcendental. And by their determined function in-Real, within non-philosophy, they are identically in-the-last-Humaneity entities which have an aspect of an axiom and an aspect of interpretation (or an oracular aspect as we say) that attempts (sometimes it is ourselves who provide the occasion) to isolate and transform, in complete freedom of interpretation. There will be an opportunity to complain about the complex character of the language of non-philosophy, an idiom saturated with classical references, sophisticated in a contemporary way. Its freedom of decision up against the whole of philosophy demands these effects of “complication” and “privatization,” as the saying goes. But it also demands fighting against the drift [ dérive ] of the pedagogical-all and the mediatic-all that leads philosophy into the shallow depths of opinion, which is the site of its impossible death. The noble idealism of “pop-philosophy” has been consumed into a “philo-reality;” against this we propose philo-fiction. Parricide, which is at the bottom of these interpretations and which we can judge as being quite fertile, although it has informed tradition, only takes place once or within one lone meaning. In regards to Parmenides, it was possible; Plato introduced the Other as non-being and language, bringing into existence the philosophical system of the World, but is it possible to repeat it again with the same fecundity in regards to non-philosophy, this time in introducing (non) religion or (non) art, still mixing them without taking into account this mixture, alternatively as a philosophical or religious resentment? If philosophy begins via a crime, it is no doubt obliged to continue down similar pathways, to the effect that the crimes of philosophy, once the founding crime has been committed, are a reaction of self-defense. It is undoubtedly from this that we get Marx’s declaration that history begins by tragedy and repeats itself or ends in farce. The preservation of rigor and fecundity is, in every respect, a psychologically difficult task within a theory such as non-philosophy. Having posited an essential objective of liberation in regards to philosophy and its services, one has often understood this objective as an authorization of providing particular interpretations of its axioms and ends up obliterating their scope. This ends up confusing, on one hand, two kinds of freedoms in regards to non-philosophy, the freedom of its interpretations and the freedom of its effectuations. On the other hand, any defense of “principles” against precipitated interpretations is immediately taxed with a will to orthodoxy, a prohibitive objection when we are dealing with, as is the case here, a heretical theory of thought. Nevertheless, it is time to stop confusing heresy as the cause of thought with an ideology of heresies, which is certainly not at all our object, but rather a form of normalization. As for the “disciplinary” aspect, which is not the only aspect, it demands something other than philosophical “answers to objections,” a precision in the definition and use of its procedures in the formation of utterances, since non-philosophy is neither a supplementary doctrine interior to philosophy nor a vision of the world but one whose priority is a “vision of Man,” or rather Man as “vision” that implies a theory and a practice of philosophy. In the end, struggle is only one aspect of non-philosophy, not its whole or telos, struggle coming only from its materiality. In particular, if the discipline of non-philosophy is inseparable from struggle, it is not a question of reducing the monomaniacal obsession of its “marching orders.” This would reduce its complexity and kill its indivisibility, deploying it in a “long march” and a form of Maoization whose philosophical presuppositions no longer have any pertinence here, a case of the One and the Two, which are now cloned and no longer tied together. More generally, non-philosophy is a complex thought composed of a multitude of aspects, which is to say, unilateral interpretations, of a philosophical origin but reduced by their determination in-the-last-instance . The “liberalism” of non-philosophy is merely one of the aspects of which it is capable, not an essence. Similarly, it is only capable of having a “Maoist” aspect. Let us generalize. The weakness of non-philosophy is due to a specific cause, the determination-in-the-last-Humaneity of a subject for the World. Everything that has a right to the philosophical city can be said about it in turn and in a retaliatory mode since Man contributes nothing of himself that Man takes from the World. We can consider non-philosophy as being pretentious, absurd, idealistic, empty, materialistic, formalistic, contradictory, modern, post-modern, Zen, Buddhist, Marxist; it endures or tolerates, perhaps “appeals” to, or at least renders possible, sarcasms, ironies, and insults without even talking about the misunderstandings, partly for the same reason as psychoanalysis. All of this goes beyond simple “deviations.” They are its aspects, which is to say, its “unilateral” philosophical interpretations in both senses of the word, being either sufficient coming from the mouth of philosophers, or reduced to their absolute dimension of sufficiency and totality in the mouths of non-philosophers, and both times due to the weakness and strength of Man-in-person as their determination only in-the-last-instance. The non-philosopher is certainly not a Saint Paul fantasizing about a new Church. The non-philosopher is either a (Saint) Sebastian whose flesh is pierced with as many arrows as there are Churches, or a Christ persecuted by a Saint Paul. What is engaged in here is the practice of retaliation. A negative rule of the non-philosophical ethics of outlawed discussion by way of argumentation (the sufficient is you, the orthodox one is always you, you are the fashionable one, and when a master you are someone else) that is founded on the confusion of effectuations of non-philosophy and of its overall interpretations. Retaliation is the law but as with any too-human law, it must acquire a dimension that displaces it, or rather emplaces it and takes away its authority but not all of its effectiveness. If the non-philosopher is only authorized by himself, which is to say by philosophy but limited by the Real-of-the-last-instance, its critique of other non-philosophers can merely be retaliatory under the same conditions, only by the Real limited in-the last-instance. THE TREE OF PHILOSOPHICAL SAINTLINESS The thematic horizon or material of these debates is in the relationships between philosophy, religion as gnosis, and non-philosophy. It is inevitable, regarding non-philosophers in general (whether they are non-philosophers by name or simply its neighbors) that we often end up evoking Marx’s Holy Family and imagining, arranged on the neighboring branches of the tree of philosophy and annexed, sometimes abusively, to non-philosophy, authors who would quite evidently and quite rightly refuse this label. So it is that we find, for example, a Saint Michel, a Saint Alain, a Saint Gilles 1 without even mentioning the youngest who aspire as well to the freedom of “saintliness” and who make their muted voices heard here. If there is a Holy Family of non-philosophers, it extends completely beyond these three, provided that the sectarian spirit can save us. This book is organized in the following manner: To begin, in order to recall the essential part of the problematic, we have organized a Summary of Non-Philosophy , a vade-mecum of notions and basic problems, in a classical style. Secondly, there is Clarifications On the Three Axioms of Non-Philosophy , designed to posit their proper use as much as to elucidate their meaning. Thirdly, an analysis of Philosophizability and Practicity , both being extreme constituents of philosophical material or the contents of the third axiom. Fourthly, the heart of this work: Let us Make a Tabula Rasa of the Future or of Utopia as Method . Fifthly, we have a theoretical outline of a non-institutional utopia, The International Organization of Non-Philosophy, L’Organisation Non-Philosophique Internationale, (ONPHI) already created in practice but under the conditions of possibility and functioning from which here we put into question “de jure,” thus not without a perplexity concerning “facts,” in any case, without the capability of “getting to the bottom of things.” Sixthly, an essay characterizing The Right and the Left of Non-Philosophy , a brief topology of several philosophizing and normalizing positions of proponents or tenants of this problematic. Seventhly, Rebel in the Soul: A Theory of Future Struggle , a systematic discussion starting from a confrontation of non-philosophical gnosis and non-religious gnosis to the extent that they pose, posed or perhaps still will pose themselves as rivals to non-philosophy in a mixture of fidelity and infidelity. Despite the fact that it can also be read as putting non-philosophy into perspective: it pits against a standard Platonism two contemporary appropriations of Gnosticism. On the basis of the paradigm of Man who never ceases to come as the Future-in-person, each one of these moments strives to reestablish not the “true” non-philosophy and its orthodoxy, but the minimal conditions to respect in order to allow for its maximum fecundity. And in order to bring about one of the last possibilities of its development, making explicit Humaneity as a utopia-for-the-World. In introducing these considerations in the form of a “testament” and “ultimatum,” we want to indicate two things: First, that this is the last time we will intervene in order to caution non-philosophers against the temptation of returning and looking backwards towards philosophy. Only a disillusioned nostalgia for the former World and its traditions barely remain permissible to us.… Secondly, that non-philosophy is also a sort of ultimatum for considering one’s life and transforming one’s thought from the perspective of a uni-version rather than a conversion. Man as future is this ultimatum in action, not an impatient self-proclaimed genius, and philosophy is his testament. It is obviously the ultimatum that determines this testament as “old” with a view towards a life that is, itself, non-testamentary. In and of itself, the “old” can never bear a veritable eschaton. Thus, this book intersects according to the logic of this paradigm, under the sign of the ultimate or “last” as future, philosophy as testament and cautionary note for maintaining the non-philosophical oeuvre as “future” or “utopian.” We will see that between these two dimensions it cradles a theory of struggle. In the end, this book envisions non-philosophers in multiple ways. It inevitably sees them as subjects of knowledge, most often academics insofar as life in the world demands, but above all as close relatives of three great human types. The analyst and political militant are quite obvious, for non-philosophy is close to psychoanalysis and Marxism insofar as it transforms the subject in transforming philosophy. Here again, one must have a sense not of certain nuances but of aspects (of the interpretations, albeit unilateralized) and not in order to construct a simple proletarization or militarization of thought as theory. To be rigorous, rather than authoritarian or spiteful, is its task. And lastly, non-philosophy is a close relative of the spiritual but definitely not the spiritualist. Those who are spiritual are not at all spiritualists, for the spiritual oscillate between fury and tranquil rage, they are great destroyers of the forces of Philosophy and the State, which are united under the name of Conformism. They haunt the margins of philosophy, gnosis, mysticism, science fiction and even religions. Spiritual types are not only abstract mystics and quietists; they are heretics for the World. The task is to bring their heresy to the capacity of utopia, and their utopia to the capacity of the paradigm. NOTES We will recognize allusions, and sometimes references, to closely related or distant themes, but which are related, in the work of Michel Henry, Alain Badiou and via the representative of “non-religious” gnosis of a Platonic origin, in Gilles Grelet. It goes without saying that these discussions are current and local, neither concerning the ensemble of doctrines nor prejudging the eventual evolution of certain amongst them. This concerns defining certain proximities with non-philosophy (rather than adversaries which in some sense they are) and typological and emblematic differends (rather than conflicts with a certain author). (shrink)

And I . . . saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.Experience” begins with a puzzling prefatory poem in which “the lords of life” pass, as if in a dream, before the speaker’s eyes.3 His names for them include “Use and Surprise,” “Succession swift,” “spectral Wrong,” and “Temperament without a tongue.” We then awaken with him on a series of stairs, able to see neither (...) whence we have come nor where we might be headed. Emerson confesses that his imagination has gone dark. He is having trouble acting in the world at all. The third paragraph refers chillingly to the death of his son, little Waldo, two years before, an experience that has thrust .. (shrink)

Adomnán of Iona's work on the holy places of Jerusalem and surrounding regions has been used as a guide to seventh-century Palestine. In particular, its plans of monuments such as the Church of the Holy Sepulchre have been used by archaeologists for information about buildings, while their form interests historians of cartography. However, these plans must be read with the book's several purposes in mind. They attempt to harmonize biblical data visually. In addition, they project elements of Iona's (...) monastic liturgy into an alien liturgical space. The plans are not simply illustrations to clarify the text but constitute a distinct, parallel text of their own, with elements shown that Adomnán would not have asserted in writing. They indicate that, for Adomnán, there were different orders of verification for written texts and visual materials such as plans. (shrink)

Tourism, as an industry, has become one of the most dynamic sectors of the world economy these days and has specific features that are different from other industries. In the tourism industry, production and consumption points occur spatially at the same time. In addition, the tourism industry contributes to the economic growth of developed regions and can simultaneously distribute the wealth created geographically. It is notable that the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has caused many challenges in the tourism industry (...) regarding the presence of tourists in tourism centres and the closing of all tourism service chains, including food, entertainment, transportation and travel services worldwide. Tourism-related businesses, which are considered as invisible export and one of the engines of development and occupation, have been rendered obsolete. In other words, the businesses, as well as multiple units and activities in the related chain, have been damaged and employees of this industry have lost their jobs. This has led to the recession and regressive course of the developing and large industry of tourism in the world. It is worth noting that the tourism industry includes various sections, the most important of which is religious tourism. All religions in the world have different religious places, works, traditions and customs, which have become amongst the most important tourist attractions. Meanwhile, Muslims and the religion of Islam play a significant role in this branch of tourism. The Hajj, pilgrimage to holy places and the existence of mourning ceremonies or religious celebrations of Muslims are amongst the largest religious tourism events in the world. Given the importance of this issue, the present study aimed to evaluate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on religious tourism in Iraq in 2021. This field study was conducted on 4500 Muslim managers and staff of restaurants, hotels, grocery stores, clothing stores and souvenir shops around the holy shrines of imams and religious places in Karbala, Najaf, Kufa, Samarra and Kazemi. According to the results, the tourism of Iraq, which is mainly limited to Muslim religious sites in several major Iraqi cities, has also seen a decline in the number of religious tourists. The negative effects of COVID-19 on religious tourism have also been proved statistically by the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS), as µ ≥ 3 has been counted in all indices.Contribution: Our findings offered new insights into the impact of COVID-19 on tourism, based on statistical analysis. In this study, the authors showed how COVID-19 affects various aspects of religious tourism, which has not been addressed in previous researches. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:THE EUCHARISTIC THEOLOGIES OF LAUDA SION AND THOMAS AQUINAS'S SUMMA THEOLOGIAE THOMAS J. BELL Emory University Atlanta, Georgia MANY works associated with Thomas Aquinas stand both the Office and Mass for the Feast of Corpus Christi.1 The earliest witness to this association comes from two of Thomas's Dominican brothers and younger contemporaries, Tolomeo of Lucca and William of Tocco. Around 1317 Tolomeo wrote in his Historia Ecclesiastica: " Thomas (...) composed [the Corpus Christi Office] in full, including the lessons and all the parts to be recited by day or night; the Mass, too, and whatever has to be sung on the day." 2 William, in his Historia beati Thomae completed around 1320, lists the liturgy of Corpus Christi among Thomas's works and informs us that Thomas wrote the liturgy " at the request of Pope Urban [IV]." 3 It is known that on August 11, 1264, Urban, in the bull Transiturus, declared that the Feast of Corpus Christi was to be celebrated throughout Christendom according to a "new, Roman," liturgy.4 Thomas had returned from Paris to Italy, his 1 This does not mean that Thomas created the liturgy for the feast de nova. Rather it means that Thomas selected and combined older elements from the Scriptures, the Fathers, and existing liturgies, only venturing to write from scratch those hymns and prayers necessary for expressing the theological and devotional views central to the Feast of Corpus Christi. In other words, Thomas wrote or pieced together texts " proper " to the feast and united them with the " ordinary " texts of the Mass and Office. 2 James A. Weisheipl, Friar Thomas d'Aquino: His Life, Thought and Works (Washington, D.C., 1974), p. 177. a Ibid., pp. 132, 177. 4 Ibid., pp. 179, 183. For a partial translation of the bull Transiturus see also Darwell Stone, A History of the Doctrine of the Holy Eucharist (London, 1909), vol. 1, 344-46. This "new, Roman" liturgy promulgated by Urban IV was, indeed, a new 163 164 THOMAS J. BELL homeland, five years before the bull was published. Furthermore, by 1264 he had developed a "warm friendship" with Urban, whom we know to have commissioned Thomas to write several works between 1261 and 1265.5 These facts have led most scholars since the early fourteenth century to conclude that Urban's "new" liturgy was the work of Thomas.6 In recent years, however, Cyrille Lambot has questioned whether Thomas wrote or compiled the liturgy promulgated by Urban. He has noted that Reginald of Piperno, Thomas's amanuensis and companion from 1259 to 1274, did not include the liturgy for Corpus Christi in his list of Thomas's works. Moreover, the Dominican Order, like most Orders and dioceses, did not adopt Urban's liturgy for the Feast of Corpus Christi until 1317, when John XXII required its use throughout Western Christendom.7 If Thomas had written the liturgy, argues liturgy composed for the celebration of Corpus Christi. Around 1246 a certain John, a religious of Mont-Cornillon, had compiled a liturgy for the " Body of the Lord " that was in place throughout the diocese of Liege. Being so impressed by the solemnities of the Liege eucharistic celebration, Hugh of Saint-Cher, a Dominican and the cardinal legate of Germany, declared in 1252 that the feast of Corpus Christi was to be celebrated throughout the territory under his leadership. Jacques Pantaleon, the future Urban IV, knew the solemnities of Liege from his time as the city's archdeacon. It seems that upon his election as Pope, Urban was urged by many people to establish the Feast throughout Christendom. Eventually he did this with the publication of the bull Transiturus. For more details, see Weisheipl, Friar Thomas d'Aquino, pp. 178-79. 0 Weisheipl, Friar Thomas d'Aquino, p. 147. 6 The liturgy for the Feast of Corpus Christi that is associated with Thomas is not identical with the one currently used in both the Roman rite and Dominican rite. The modern texts for the Feast reflect the liturgical reforms that have occurred since Thomas's day. Notwithstanding these reforms, the Mass for the Feast (Cibavit eos), which includes Lauda Sion, has for the most part... (shrink)

In the last decade, the activities of various extremist organizations have intensified, which use religious slogans to achieve political goals, sometimes even deliberately distorting the basic tenets of religion. Researchers argue that such organizations put forward some position and then, in order for it to gain weight in the eyes of Muslims, reinforce it with a distorted interpretation of the ayat from the Qur'an or the sayings of the Prophet Muhammad. This is most characteristic of supporters of the extremist trend (...) of Wahhabism. Even during the life of the founder of the current, Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab, theologians of the Muslim holy city of Mecca issued a fatwa about the Wahhabis' retreat from the faith because of their beliefs. This conclusion was made by Islamic scholars in connection with the fact that many of the provisions of the teachings of Ibn Abd al-Wahhab contradict Islamic doctrine; Wahhabis also unprovenly accuse Muslims of unbelief, which leads accusers of unbelief. This principle follows from the words of the Prophet Muhammad and is well known among Muslims. (shrink)

continent. 2.1 (2012): 22–28. Jeroen Mettes burst onto the Dutch poetry scene twice. First, in 2005, when he became a strong presence on the nascent Dutch poetry blogosphere overnight as he embarked on his critical project Dichtersalfabet (Poet’s Alphabet). And again in 2011, when to great critical acclaim (and some bafflement) his complete writings were published – almost five years after his far too early death. 2005 was the year in which Dutch poetry blogging exploded. That year saw the foundation (...) of the influential, polemical, and populistically inclined weblog De Contrabas (The Double Bass), which became a strong force for internet poetry in Dutch in the years to follow. In the summer of that year, a lively debate raged in the aftermath of Bas Belleman’s article “ Doet poëzie er nu eindelijk toe ?” (“Does poetry finally matter now?”), on a blog specifically devoted to this question. Up to that point, the poetical debate in the Netherlands had largely been confined to literary reviews (which were often subsidized), having become mostly marginalized in more mainstream media, where poetry could be covered by only a small number of so-called authorities. As a result, literary debate had acquired a rather placid quality. Though a variety of camps with different aesthetics could be discerned, most poetical positions shared a general acceptance of poetry as a form of art somewhat apart from fundamental political concerns. Late modernists would pursue subtlety and density of reference. Others would insist poetry was best understood as a form of entertainment that should ideally be accessible and work well on the stage. Still others would insist that poetry is mostly a play with forms. Linguistically disruptive strategies were valued highly by some, but mostly for their aesthetic effect. Values of disinterested playfulness reigned supreme everywhere. Any idea that poetry could be a field in which one confronts politics and the world was decidedly marginal. This led to a climate in which most attempts at polemics were DOA, often based on far too superficial positioning and analysis. The greatest polemical debates were revolving around the question of whether poetry should be difficult or easy, with both camps defining their ideas of difficulty and accessibility in ways that were so utterly shallow as to make the entire point moot. Debates were performed, rather than engaged with. It was a postmodern hell of underarticulated poetics. Half-consciously, people were yearning for new forms of criticism that could put the oomph back into poetry. Weblogs provided for ways to explore debate directly outside of the clotted older channels of the reviews and the newspapers. Belleman’s essay and the resulting online activity had shown that there was a widespread eagerness to take poetry more seriously as a social art form. It was in this environment that Mettes started his remarkable project Dichtersalfabet . At that moment, Mettes was active mostly in academic circles, having become noted at Leiden University as a particularly gifted student of literary theory. Within the Netherlands, the field of literary theory has a very odd relationship to literature as it is practiced in the country. Academic theory tends to have a mostly international view and engage with international debates of cultural criticism, literary theory, and philosophy, with academics often publishing in English and attending conferences around the world. Literature itself however is much more concerned with domestic traditions. Consequently, in the Netherlands, there exists a language gap between academic theoretical practice (as it is studied in the literary theory departments) and literary practice (which, academically, gets studied in specialized departments of Dutch literature). The Dichtersalfabet can be seen as Mettes’s attempt to close this gap. It is also an attempt to bridge the divide between theory and practice, in which he could apply his theoretical knowledge in a very unorthodox and unacademic critical mode that moreover could reach far beyond the domain of conventional criticism. Mettes’s goal was to trace a diagonal through Dutch poetic culture, to “strangle” what he perceived to be its dominant oppressive traditions of agreeable irrelevance, in order to see whatever might be able to survive his critical assaults. But he could only do so by means of a very serious engagement with poetry itself. To this end, he would go systematically through the poetry bookshelf of the Verwijs bookshop (part of a mainstream chain of booksellers) in The Hague, buying one publication per blog item, starting from A and working his way through the alphabet, reading whatever he might encounter that way in the restaurant of the HEMA store (another big commercial chain in the country). He would subsequently write down his reading experiences, refraining however from trying to write a nuanced book review. Rather, he would write about anything that caught his attention and sparked his critical interest. This way of working would yield vast, at times somewhat rambling, dense, lively, and generally brilliant essays, in which he held no punches. He never hesitated to pull out his entire arsenal of concepts from the international theory traditions, while never degenerating into mere academic exercise and pointless intertextualities. The attempt was rather to live the poetry that he read, and to engage it with the full range of political, academic, cultural, and personal references that he had at his disposal—all that composed the individual named Jeroen Mettes as a reader. Often what he wrote would not be according to the standards of what we usually think of as a critical review of a book of poetry. Sometimes he would even be a little sloppy in his judgments of poets or representations of the books he read, for example by basing an entire essay on the blurb of a book rather than its poetry content. But what he did was always brilliant writing nonetheless—virtuoso riffs on poetic fragments randomly found within capitalist society, exposing an incisive and insistent poetical sensibility. Mettes read poetry for political reasons, to see whether poetry could offer him a way to deal with a political world he detested. The right-wing horrors of the Bush years, the Iraq war, and the turn of Dutch public opinion towards ever more conservative, narrow-minded, and xenophobic views alongside a complete failure of the political left to present any credible alternative, were weighing heavily on the times in which Mettes reported on his reading. Poetry was to measure this world, diagram it, to lay bare its inconsistencies and faults, to indicate where lines of flight might be found. Amid the ruins of a world wrecked by imperialist policies, corporate capitalism, and doctrinal neoliberalism it would have to show the possibility of a new community. And it was, through its rhythmical workings, to release the reading subject from his confinement to ideologically conditioned individuality and lead him into the immanent paradise of reading. The stakes were high. Much higher than anything Dutch poetry had seen for many years. Mettes’s blog was widely read from the start. His posts sparked lively debates. Some of these subsequently led to the publication of extensive essays on a few key poets in some literary journals, particularly Parmentier and the Flemish journal yang , for which Mettes would become a member of the editorial board, a few months after starting the Dichtersalfabet . This could have been the start of a brilliant career, but this was not to be. The initial manic energy that fueled the blog gradually subsided. The Alfabet was updated less and less regularly. Mettes sometimes just disappeared for many weeks, then suddenly returning with a brilliant essay. Until, on September 21, 2006, he posted his final blogpost, consisting of no text whatsoever. That night I learned from his mentor at Leiden University that he had committed suicide. Mettes and I had had some fruitful exchanges on poetry, rhythm, music, and form, mostly on the blogs, but also by email. Three weeks before his death was the last time I heard from him: a very sudden, uncharacteristically curt note saying “My old new sentence epic.” Attached to that message I found a DOC-file of a work so major that I felt intimidated. This was N30 , a text he had been working on for over five years. After his death, it took me a long time before I dared to read it in its entirety. In the meantime, the work of preparing the manuscript for publication was entrusted by his relatives to his colleagues at yang magazine. It took them a few years to brush up the text and to edit the Dichtersalfabet -blog (which, apart from the Alphabet project itself, incorporated many other fragments of political, polemical, and theoretical writing) into book form along with the essays. The result of this labor was finally published in 2011 as a two-book set, and Mettes burst onto the Dutch poetry scene for the second time. The work was widely reviewed, on blogs, in journals, magazines, and newspapers. Many critics who had not followed the blogs in 2005 showed themselves surprised, baffled even, by the intensity of Mettes’s critical writing. But for those who had read the blog, the main surprise was in the poetry. During Mettes’s lifetime, some of his poems had already been published in Parmentier . Although these were strong texts by themselves, in no way did they prepare readers for N30 . Nothing like it had been written in Dutch before. Instead, N30 explicitly follows the American tradition of Language Writing, directly referencing Ron Silliman and his concept of The New Sentence. However, it would seem that much of the poetical thinking around his use of this technique puts him closer to a writer such as Bruce Andrews. For Mettes, using non sequiturs as a unit of poetic construction was not only a way of reinventing formal textual construction, but it was another way of finding the fault lines in the social fabric. From the perspective of the Language tradition, one may put N30 somewhere between Silliman and Andrews. N30 shares an autobiographical element with Silliman’s New Sentence projects, and as in Andrews, there is a concern for mapping out social totality within text—what Mettes refers to as a “textual world civil war.” Again this shows a formal textual strategy for allowing the person “Jeroen Mettes” to be absorbed by the world, which here appears as a whirlwind of demotic and demonic chatter, full of violence, humor, intensity, beauty, disgust, sex, commerce, and strife. Influenced as it may by American precursors, Mettes’s tone and form end up quite different from his American counterparts, consistently referencing a world that is Dutch, all too Dutch, taking on the oppressive orderliness of Dutch society with its endemic penchant for consensus by introducing chaos into its daily life and laying bare its implicit aggressions. The work’s 31 chapters each have a different feel and rhythmical outline, but none of them follow a predetermined pattern. Rather, Mettes would consistently edit and reedit the text, randomly rewriting parts of it, as he explains in his poetical creed Politieke Poëzie (Political Poetry). N30 – referring to the 1999 antiglobalist protest in Seattle – was to be the first text of a trilogy. The work itself was written “in the mode of the present.” A second text was to be written in the mode of the future, and a third one, in the mode of the past, was going to be an epic poem about the Paris Commune, and to form an alternative poetic constitution for the European project. I still deeply regret that Jeroen Mettes never got to complete those projects, just as I would be very keen on knowing what he might have had to say about more recent political developments. Instead, in 2006, he remained stuck in the horrors of the present, that ended up consuming him completely. He left Dutch literature with some of its most piercing criticism and its most profoundly moving, exciting and powerful poetry. Excerpts from N30 Translated by Vincent W.J. van Gerven Oei from Jeroen Mettes. "N30." In N30+ . Amsterdam: De wereldbibliotheek, 2011. Published with permission of Uitgeverij Wereldbibliotheek, Amsterdam. Chapter 1 1999. A day is a space too. And another man, who had chained himself, had his ribs crushed, and a motor has driven over somebody’s legs. Dutch health care system spends ±145 million guilders per year on worriers. A spiderweb vibrates as I pass by. Randstad renovating. She slaps her bag against her ass: “Hurry up!” OPINION IS TRUE FRIENDSHIP Your skin. It doesn’t express anything. “But the use of the sword, that’s what I learned, and you’ll need nothing more for the moment.” Just try to interrogate a guy like that. Gullit in Sierra Leone. Codes silently lying all around. But that’s simply what belongs to “that it’s just allowed”: that sigh of “world” (a word expressing that the trees are now standing along the water like black men with white bags in their hair); that’s nothing else right? And you see how everything has to move, and first of all what cannot do so. Without Elysium and without savings, barbarians lashing out, horny for an enemy, staring across the water, staring into the air—staring to get out of it. “You’ve never showed me more than the mall,” she said. All those “dreams” in the end—and now? It was lying on the stairway, so I picked it up and took it upstairs. Chapter 3 “You know what?” Telecommunication. For love… I don’t really like that cheap cultural pessimism, but… The holy city is on pilgrimage in the earthly bodies of the faithful until the time of the heavenly kingdom has come. The end of an exhausting autumn day behind the computer, my eyes filled with tears of fatigue. KITCHEN / INSTALLATION / SPECIALIST. Network integration. In the sun, stretched out on a sheet. (…) I don’t believe what I’m reading, because I want to believe something else. An illusion? Suits me. There’s a variety of shapes and tastes… “So what?” you may think. 102 dalmatians can’t be wrong. But I want more, dear… A feel good movie. I’m smashing the burned body. So what? We continue to save the European civilization. What’s there to win? Plato with poets = Stalin without gulag? Ball against the crossbar. No wonder. She comes straight to her point. She’s standing in the kitchen eating an apple. (…) The godless Napoleon had used her as a stable and wanted to have her taken down. “Our” Rutger Hauer. Ready or not here I come. Psst… are you also wearing a string? Nobody understands our desire. Cliffs breaking the waves and shattering the sunset. I used to be a real romantic (as a poet). A typical fantasy used to be the one in which I brutally raped mother and daughter Seaver from the sitcom Growing Pains . Nevertheless you only contain bad words. Eyelashes. Automatic or manual? That your skin always in the afternoon. Integration. The air is empty. Too bad! Hand in hand on their lonely way. Alaska! Chapter 12 May 5, 2001 [10:00-10:30] A dust cloud on a hill. Globe. Indian (British) (tie) / pope. Damascus. Rape. We’re carrying the ayatollah’s portrait through the streets. At the moment the girl is mostly suede jacket with white ribbons on her sleeves. A small explosion flares up/impact. Camouflage. Close up. We’re analyzing the situation. He’s dead right? Dead dead. Dead. Everything without, these, and only with the body. Indices signal death. Dollar bills are printed in factories. Holes. Light patch. Globe in a box. Microphone. What’s the situation? Grey impact on a green hill (field?). The water is blue. He has no lips. Interns on the background with skirts that are too long. This is an example of a sonnet. An Islamic woman pushes against the door of an electronics shop. Arrows (percentages (prices)). Is this what awaits the American? Touch screen interface. The word, an island, can only be a sign in that situation. We pull up a chair, join in on the fun. On the shelves only books about computers. One glance in the distance is enough to lighten up a luna park in the distance. She’s really desperate, especially when she laughs. Click. Ah. Next. And now it’s raining, but that’s ok. Yellow stains sliding over the south. Shallow caves light: clothes, boots, electrical equipment. 45. 22:10. Nothing gives you the right to eat more than people starving to death. The Hague. Slam dunk. Traffic light. Two H’s, one L (standing for the L (little prick)). We’re happy to say something. Clouds, small suns, temperatures, cities. The truth is never an excuse. Yellow. Yellow. Green. Yellow. Yellow. Yellow. Yellow. Green. Green. Yellow. Will you email me? Skeleton: “No.” Ex-nerds in brand-new and brightly red sport cars. $$$. I love. Shihab. Hooves in the sand. Skinny senior with over-sized sunglasses; old jockey (cap, trophy) smiling in slow motion. And there I am again, flashback, crying with my head in between my hands. Sometimes I’ve got the feeling that cannibals. Eyes: blue. Cancer. Why would I wait until tomorrow? Golden beams protruding from the lifted/lit earth. May 5, 2001 [11:30-12:45] You’ll remember this for the rest of your life. Graphs, diagrams. Bu$ine$$. Blue shirt, white collar, no neck (porn star). A name lights up. I’m hysteric. Will you join us? Letters falling in their words. Fingers set up a tent and start to dance. Young entrepreneurs from poor neighborhoods (read: black) guided by Microsoft. Kinda makes me happy, that sort of kitsch. A sense of exhaustion/impotence to see anything but the present. (…) Wouldn’t you like to? Orange explosion in an industrial zone. YOU’RE DOING THIS FOR AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL. Would you. A familiar face. Clouds and blossom. Sunflowers. Supermodels. Mountainous area in a rectangle: shades of brown, from dark to beige, more green toward the south. Tents and next to them (it’s all a blur) people. Plane. Stadium. Geometrical block of people. No, I ain’t crying. I don’t speak no more. I just want. Quote + photo. (Positive:) screaming crowd. Three-piece suit, seen from the back, before entering the arena. On the back: “Daddy abused me.” Oh, bummer. State of emergency has been declared and everyone has to cooperate. She’s cut her wrists. What we do know (…) is that there’s never been a unique word, an imperative name, nor will there ever be. [Click here for work that suits you.] Barefooted children are watching it (coherent pieces revelation of what’s lying below). Who knows how she’s changed during those two years. “Everything used to be better” + sigh. And here we are. An empty field of parquet. A city lying behind it. Explosion. Blue. A rain drop falling in my coffee. May 5, 2001 [14:30-15:30] A young Arafat on video speaking with raised finger. “I’m calling from my convertible.” Names on walls, victims, numbers… Tourists. Yellow. Yellow. “Your own child! Really, what kind of human are you?” I don’t want to hear it no more. A woman jumping out of the water in a yellow bikini against a background of fireworks and the Cheops pyramid. Thy sorrow shall become good fortune, thy complaints laudation. All planets will float and wander. Wo die Welt zum Bild wird, kommt das System (…) zur Herrschaft. It is something, but is it? May 5, 2001 [18:30-19:00] Iris. Leaves. NASDAQ. Open / and white and. For the one who’s doing nothing, just waiting. (…) NO DEFEAT is made entirely up of defeat -- since / the world it opens is always a place / formerly / unsuspected. October 2002. “Jeroen, I’m leaving for the cemetery, byeeee.” The rise of the middle class. My entire oeuvre is an ode to the. My entire head is a fight against the. God always demands what you cannot sacrifice. You may take that the easy way, but… “The state hasn’t made us, but we make the state” (Hitler). A stork exits the elevator. Skeletons of. Moscow. Helsinki. Palermo. Paris. Chapter 30 Like your paradises: nothing. United Desire, as only remaining superpower. And even though the sea is now calmer and the wind is blowing pleasantly in my face… Heart! Who determines whether a tradition is “alive”? The yellow leaf or the white branch? Mars. This sentence is a typical example. Most Dutch people are happy. No consolation. When I see a girl sitting at a table with a book, a notepad, a pen, a bottle of mineral water, her hand writing in the light—then I consider that one thing. “Presents,” “poetry,” “classics.” We are what we cannot make from ourselves. “Left”: mendicant orders, missionaries. Saint-Just: “A republic is founded on the destruction of its enemies.” She crosses the street with a banana peel between her fingers. (…) We chose our own wardens, torturers, it was us who called all this insanity upon ourselves, we created this nightmare… But “no”? Girl (just like a beach ball) talking rapid Spanish (Portuguese?) in a mobile phone. Do I have a chance now that her boyfriend is getting bold? CLIO, horny bitch. What else do you want? An old woman, between the doors of the C1000, is suddenly unable to go on; her husband stretches out his hand, speaking a few encouraging words. Selection from. Der Führer schenkt den Jüden ein Stadt. How can it reach us if we haven’t been already reached somehow? It doesn’t “speak.” No problem. Each word she uses is a small miracle, as if she doesn’t belong to it, to language, but wanders around with a pocket light looking for the exit; she’s never desperate (maybe a little nervous), lighting up heavy words from the inside. But indeed, we’re free. But the predicate is not an attribute, but an event, and the subject is not a subject, but a shell. That’s why also samurai, knights, and warriors raised the blossom as emblem: they knew how to die. Locked up in a baby carriage with a McDonald’s balloon. Blue helicopter, the blue sky. Whether you want to refer? The point is. How / Motherfucker can I sing a sad song / When I remember Zion? You’ll feel so miserable and worthless that you think: “If only I were dead!,” or: “Just put an end to it!” “So you’re an economist?” Her card—two little birds building a nest, her handwriting shaking—is still on the mantelpiece. Guevara: “No, a communist.” A straw fire, such was our life: rapidly it flared up, rapidly it passed. I’m fleeing, coming from nowhere. (…) Eazy-E drinking coffee with the American president. If I’d scream, would that be an event? Drown it: the cleaner it will rise up from the depths. No! The night, so fast… As if there’s something opened up in that face. Come on, we may not curse life. He shows me his methadone: “If you drink that all at once, you’ll die instantly.” The last one dictates how we should behave to deserve happiness. One shine / above the earth. “I want to go to Bosnia,” I said bluntly. I don’t even know the name of the current mayor. Let’s despise our success! “There is no future; this is the future. Hope is a weakness that we've overcome. We have found happiness!” Sun. Sushi. Volvo. I feel like a bomb about to explode at any moment. Makes a difference for the reconstruction right? The decor moves forward. Daughter of Nereus, you nymphs of the sea, and you Thetis, you should have kept his tired head above the waves! Alas! This sentence has been written wearing a green cap. I receive my orders from the future. A frog jumps into it. Her husband has turned the Intifada, which he follows daily on CCN, into his hobby, “to forget that he doesn’t have his driver’s license yet." Suddenly the sun slides over the crosswalk. Her (his?) foot is playing with the slipper under the table. Is this how I’m writing this book now? I’m not a fellow man. I hate you and I want to hurt you. These are my people. Their screaming doesn’t rise above the constantly wailing sirens which we've learned to ignore. My whole body became warm and suddenly started to tremble. Unfortunate is he who is standing on the threshold of the most beautiful time, but awaits a better one. Arafat’s “removal” is contrary to American interests. Jeep drives into boy. What you can do alone, you should do alone. A food gift from the people of the United States of America. Two seagulls. [...]. (shrink)

Shortly after the Vandals took Carthage in 439, the city's Catholic bishop, Quodvultdeus, and a large number of his clergy were said to have been placed “naked and despoiled on broken ships” and put to sea, banished from Africa. By God's mercy, the exiles made their way safely to Naples, where Quodvultdeus quickly came to be regarded as a saint: a fifth-century mosaic from the catacombs of St. Januarius in Capodimonte seems to depict the African bishop, and by the (...) middle of the ninth century his feast day was celebrated in the local liturgical calendar. A similar story could be told of Gaudiosus of Abitina, another fifth-century African bishop who was said to have fled the Vandals and who also achieved sainthood in Campania. The flight of refugees like Quodvultdeus and Gaudiosus from the political turmoil that wracked North Africa between the fifth and the eighth centuries, however, has long been seen as having a far greater significance than the reinvention of exiled African bishops as southern Italian holy men. In late antiquity and the early Middle Ages, the cults of numerous saints who had been martyred in Africa and whose cults had originally developed there spread beyond the shores of the southern Mediterranean to the rest of the Christian world. In seeking to explain the diffusion of these cults, historians have long focused on the movements of refugees—and, above all, those who fled the Vandals' conquest of Africa and their subsequent persecution of the region's Catholic population—as displaced Africans such as Quodvultdeus are thought to have brought the relics of their local saints with them into foreign exile. (shrink)

Here a distinguished American historian challenges the belief that the eighteenth century was essentially modern in its temper. In crystalline prose Carl Becker demonstrates that the period commonly described as the Age of Reason was, in fact, very far from that; that Voltaire, Hume, Diderot, and Locke were living in a medieval world, and that these philosophers “demolished the Heavenly City of St. Augustine only to rebuild it with more up-to-date materials.” In a new foreword, Johnson Kent Wright looks (...) at the book’s continuing relevance within the context of current discussion about the Enlightenment. “Will remain a classic—a beautifully finished literary product.”—Charles A. Beard, _American Historical Review_ “_The Heavenly City of the Eighteenth-Century Philosophers _remains_ _one of the most distinctive American contributions to the historical literature on the Enlightenment.... [It] is likely to beguile and provoke readers for a long time to come.”—Johnson Kent Wright, from the foreword. (shrink)

Angels play a central role for Augustine in the Bible and, consequently, in the doctrine of salvation. In his works, he seeks to design a structure to explain the ontological position of angels in order to introduce them as important elements of the theology of salvation. Belief in angels as the helpers of Christ, and Christ himself as the agent of salvation, raises a fundamental question in Augustine's thought: how can the functional role of angels in the process of salvation (...) be considered in the context of the Bible in view of Christ as the Savior of mankind. The authors believe that Augustine interprets the Bible in three stages to solve this dilemma: first, he offers a new interpretation of the theology of the Bible in order to give a different color to the incarnation, and to maintain Christ's superiority over the angels; Second, it describes the role of angels in mediating salvation in view of Christ's saving dignity, and third, it outlines a system of spiritual battle. However, studies show that he did not succeed in this goal. In this study, we aim to consider the basics of the theology of salvation according to the role of angels in Augustine's thought and how it is combined with the place of Christ's salvation, relying on works such as Genesis and commentaries on the Holy Trinity, Psalms and the City of God and his other works. Examine with interpretive-analytical method. (shrink)

The ‘1st Congress Churches and LGBTI+ Community: ecumenical dialogues for respect for diversity’ was held between 19th and 22nd of June 2019, in the city of São Paulo. The Congress was organised by the Parish of the Holy Trinity of the Episcopal Anglican Church in Brazil and Koinonia–Ecumenical Presence in Service. As we consider this congress a historic landmark in the debates concerning religions and sexualities that escape from cisheteronormativity in Brazil, in the course of this article, we (...) propose to analyse the social and political conjuncture that motivated the event. In a second step, we will briefly describe the structure of the event, as well as its objectives, in order to understand the assumptions that guided the construction of the Letter of São Paulo, the official and public document of the Congress, approved in plenary by the participants. We believe that the Congress and the Letter of São Paulo have political potential, as they claim the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex+ people as people of faith and denounce forms of oppression, exclusion and marginalisation reinforced by conservative and hegemonic religious discourses. (shrink)

In the late thirteenth century, western Europe suffered the notable disgrace of losing the last of the Christian strongholds in mainland Syria with the fall of Acre in 1291, and yet throughout the early fourteenth century Western powers were unable to launch a crusade to recover the Holy Land despite repeated and costly attempts. Until not long ago, historians of the crusades had interpreted the inaction of the fourteenth century as a sign that the age of true crusading was (...) over and that both disillusionment with the machinery of the papal indulgence and increasing local strife effectively removed the possibility of international cooperative action that a crusade to the Holy Land required. Recent scholarly work on the late Middle Ages has shown that this interpretation ignores both historical reality and late-medieval attitudes toward crusading. Acre's loss in many respects crystallized issues regarding crusade reform, and, though no new crusade to the Holy Land ever materialized, crusading in its various guises experienced renewed vitality throughout the fourteenth century—notably in Iberia, Italy, and the Baltic—in spite of the ravages of the Black Death, the suppression of the Templars, the collapse of prominent Italian banking houses that supported crusade finance, and the Anglo-French conflict. While the Holy Land may have remained in heathen hands, crusading remained a diverse, multifaceted, and vibrant set of practices that continued to be contested and redefined by various social groups despite the papacy's sophisticated descriptions of it in papal bulls and in canon law. In this study I hope to facilitate interdisciplinary discussion of crusade theory and practice by examining literary evidence—specifically, the Middle English romance Sir Isumbras—with a more broadly conceived notion of crusade discourse that includes connections among propaganda, chronicle, religious ritual, and popular romance. As I argue, Sir Isumbras critiques certain knightly behavior following Acre's loss and at the very least imagines, if not outright promotes, crusading reform and action for a mixed audience of lesser knights and non-nobles. The topicality of the poem's critique, however, is fully intelligible only when considered in light of other facets of crusade discourse; hence, I discuss below how features of popular fourteenth-century crusading movements, chronicle histories, and literary history are appropriated and reconfigured by the text. By reading these various sources as part of a connected, evolving discussion, we effectively expand our definition of the genre of the crusading romance in a way that not only incorporates historians' recent insights regarding the range of crusading practices but also reveals that crusading's personal and political aspects, in addition to its mass military campaigns, continued to shape a complex medieval outlook that found literary expression. (shrink)

In 1903 the Cody Road opened, leading travelers from Cody, Wyoming, to Yellowstone National Park. Cheyenne photographer J. E. Stimson traveled the route during its first week in existence, documenting the road for the state of Wyoming's contribution to the 1904 World's Fair. His images of now-famous landmarks like Cedar Mountain, the Shoshone River, the Holy City, Chimney Rock, Sylvan Pass, and Sylvan Lake are some of the earliest existing photographs of the route. In 2008, 105 years later, (...) Michael Amundson traveled the same road, carefully duplicating Stimson's iconic original photographs. In Passage to Wonderland, these images are paired side by side and accompanied by a detailed explanation of the land and history depicted. Amundson examines the physical changes along "the most scenic fifty miles in America" and explores the cultural and natural history behind them. This careful analysis of the paired images make Passage to Wonderland more than a "then and now" photography book--it is a unique exploration of the interconnectedness between the Old West and the New West. It will be a wonderful companion for those touring the Cody Road as well as those armchair tourists who can follow the road on Google Earth using the provided GPS coordinates. The University Press of Colorado gratefully acknowledges the generous support of the Charles Redd Center for Western Studies at Brigham Young University toward the publication of this book. (shrink)

Roman Law is an important legal systematic that contains important codings of world law history. This legal system not only affected Continental Europe, but also the Near East, which was a period under its domination. Especially in the Justinian period, the law collection that emerged as a result of the legal studies starting from the East Roman capital is considered as a monumental work by many historians and jurists. Researchers who praise Corpus Juris Civilis are right. However, this selection, which (...) is one of the most effective law coding, is far from being practical. For this Leo III prepared his law book called Ecloga. Referred to as the first Christian law book, this work was later expanded with some additions. Ecloga was given its final shape during the period of Empress Irene. Irene is one of the strongest female figures in Roman history. Emperor Constantine V married his son Leo (who is from his first wife Çiçek Hatun, the Caspian Princess) to Irene. Irene was the daughter of an ordinary family. She was Athenian as origin. However, Athens was not a city as flashy as it was in ancient times. At the same time, the Athenians were against icon-breaking, which was the official ideology of the empire. It was really interesting that Irene was chosen by Constantine V as wife for his son Leo. After the death of Constantine V, Leo IV acceded to the throne without any problems. The fact that Leo IV had chronic tuberculosis prevented him from state administrations. Actually, it was Irene who filled in this gap. After the early death of Leo IV, due to the aforementioned disease, his 10-year-old son Constantine VI became officially regent. After killing her son by abacina-tion Irene became the sole owner of the throne. In the ongoing process, she abused law and religion to maintain her power. Irene’s first law supplement was on oaths. There were many references to the Holy Book in the annex of this law. It was mentioned that it is not a sin to swear in the Old Testament, but it is now forbidden to swear with the New Testament. In addi-tion, the law stipulates that the oath is the way to deny God precisely after lying. However, it was claimed that the oath tradition to the Roman society passed through the Hebrews. Un-doubtedly, Irene used the text of this law to prove that the oath of devotion of the majority of the eastern Roman army, allegedly to her son Constantine VI, was invalid. Because in the Ro-man army, fulfilling the necessary oath and loyalty to the emperor were in front of everything. It was possible for the empress to take over the throne with this proclaimed law article that the vows of the soldiers who swore in order to remain committed to Constantine VI within the army were void. It is obvious that Irene was trying to prevent a possible coup attempt within the army. The empress’ second annex to the law concerns those who married for the third time. The law was titled “About those who illegally contract to third or later marriages and about those who marry their own slaves”. In Christianity, it was allowed to marry for the sec-ond time after the death of one of the spouses. There were certain phrases that marriages to be held for the third time in the Holy Book were forbidden. It is clear that Irene had a political benefit in reminding this ban. Because her power was based on her marriage with Leo, who was the son of Constantine V from his first wife. Their rivals were the sons of Constantine V from his third marriage. Therefore, with this law, she eliminated her political rivals. (shrink)

In recent multicultural conflicts, such as the Danish Muhammad cartoons affair and the religious controversy about having a gay pride parade in the holy city of Jerusalem, religious minority members have argued that certain acts should be prohibited because they offend their religious and cultural feelings. According to the orthodox view in current liberal thought, however, there should be no legal protection from mere insult to feelings and sensibilities, as related to sacred religious and cultural values as they (...) may be. In this article I challenge this view. I argue that certain offensive acts ought to be legally regulated and propose a normative principle for their regulation, which is consistent with neutral liberalism. I argue that some claims of offence to feelings boil down to a struggle for equality in the public sphere between competing cultural identities. I conceptualize such claims as claims that purport to protect people’s right in the integrity of their cultural identity. I suggest the vulnerable cultural identity principle, according to which the more vulnerable the social and civic status of one’s cultural identity is, the stronger her claim is from integrity of cultural identity. I argue that this principle avoids the problems of legal moralism and the subjectivity in evaluating painful feelings. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Lorenzo Valla’s Oratio on the Pseudo-Donation of Constantine: Dissent and Innovation in Early Renaissance HumanismSalvatore I. CamporealeWhy did I write about the Donation of Constantine?... Bear one thing in mind. I was not moved by hatred of the Pope, but acted for the sake of the truth, of religion, and also of a certain renown—to show that I alone knew what no one else knew.Valla to Cardinal Trevisan, 1443. (...) 1Lorenzo Valla’s well known work, the Oration on the Falsely-Believed and Forged Donation of Constantine, was written by the humanist in the year 1440. It was occasioned by the strife between Pope Eugenius IV and Alfonso of Aragon over the Kingdom of Naples. Valla wrote in favor of the Ara-gonese claim, arguing against pretensions of the Papacy to determine who should rule Naples that were based on the pseudo-Constantinian Donation. 2 [End Page 9]The Donation of Constantine: History and ForgeryAs is now well known, the Constitutum Constantini was a forgery that probably originated in the papal Curia in the eighth century. Subsequently it was often contested by the anti-papal Germanic Imperial tradition. The Constitutum portrayed the popes as assuming the role of the Emperor in the western part of the Empire as a result of the “donation” made by Constantine to the “Roman Pontiff and his successors.” The Donation was said to have taken place at a time subsequent to Constantine’s seizure of the city of Rome with the victory at the Milvian Bridge in a.d. 312, and immediately after his “conversion” to the Christian faith and his “reception of baptism” by the bishop of Rome, Pope (“Saint”) Sylvester.The Constitutum presents itself as an imperial decree, drafted and signed by Constantine himself, dated in Rome with an ambiguous formulation which could indicate the year 315 or 317 or even 330. The most significant and comprehensive passage of the entire document reads as follows:In order that the supreme pontificate may not deteriorate, but may rather be adorned with glory and power even greater than the dignity of earthly rule, behold, we give over and relinquish to the aforesaid our most blessed Pontiff, Sylvester, the universal Pope, our palace, as has been said, and also the city of Rome, and all the provinces, places and cities of Italy and the western regions, and we decree by this our godlike and pragmatic sanction that they are to be controlled by him and by his successors, and we grant that they shall remain under the law of the Holy Roman Church. 3The forgery was based an on older fictional source, the Legenda Sylvestri. It was later (at least as maintained first by Nicholas of Cusa, then by Valla) introduced by the canonist Paucapalea (Gratian’s disciple and collaborator) into the collection of canon law that had been made by Gratian, the Concordantia discordantium canonum, or Decretum (c. 1140). 4 Assertions that the Constitutum derived from the Legenda and that it was a later [End Page 10] insertion into the Concordantia represent discrete stages of Valla’s philological procedure. In fact Valla’s argumentation evolves in a kind of concentric movement. After discussing the hagiographic “fiction” of the Legenda, he treats the canonical “inauthenticity” of the Constitutum as a later insertion into the Concordantia. Then Valla returns to the notion that it was “made up” or “fictional” when he declares the Constitutum a juridical “forgery.” 5Valla’s Methodology and Argumentative ProcedureThe Oratio—this was how Valla titled his work—is a confutative discourse, rhetorically structured in the epideictic mode, although particular passages also assume forensic and deliberative modes. The oration was written in accordance with rhetorical norms for investigation and argumentation that Valla had learned from and elaborated on the Institutio oratoria of Quintilian, the writer Valla considered preeminent in the rhetorical tradition. 6“This speech of mine,” Valla emphasizes, is a speech intended for and offered to the universal assembly of Christendom. Although directly addressing the Papacy and in particular the ruling pope, Eugenius IV, the “oration” is conceived as though delivered in the presence of both the ecclesiastical hierarchy and civil authorities (“quasi... (shrink)

Here a distinguished American historian challenges the belief that the eighteenth century was essentially modern in its temper. In crystalline prose Carl Becker demonstrates that the period commonly described as the Age of Reason was, in fact, very far from that; that Voltaire, Hume, Diderot, and Locke were living in a medieval world, and that these philosophers “demolished the Heavenly City of St. Augustine only to rebuild it with more up-to-date materials.” In a new foreword, Johnson Kent Wright looks (...) at the book’s continuing relevance within the context of current discussion about the Enlightenment. “Will remain a classic—a beautifully finished literary product.”—Charles A. Beard, _American Historical Review_ “_The Heavenly City of the Eighteenth-Century Philosophers _remains_ _one of the most distinctive American contributions to the historical literature on the Enlightenment.... [It] is likely to beguile and provoke readers for a long time to come.”—Johnson Kent Wright, from the foreword. (shrink)

This book presents the major teachings of Mahāyāna Buddhism in a precise, dramatic, and even humorous form. For two millennia this Sūtra, called the “jewel of the _Mahāyāna Sūtras_,” has enjoyed immense popularity among Mahāyāna Buddhists in India, central and southeast Asia, Japan, and especially China, where its incidents were the basis for a style in art and literature prevalent during several centuries. Robert Thurman’s translation makes available in relatively nontechnical English the Tibetan version of this key Buddhist scripture, previously (...) known to the English-speaking world only through translations from Chinese texts. The _Tibetan_ version is generally conceded to be more faithful to the original Sanskrit than are the Chinese texts. The Tibetan version also is clearer, richer, and more precise in its philosophical and psychological expression. The twelve books of the Sūtra are accompanied by an introduction and an epilogue by Dr. Thurman and by three glossaries: Sanskrit terms, numerical categories, and technical terms. (shrink)

Moses Hess is a major figure in the development of both early communist and Zionist thought. The Holy History of Mankind appeared in 1837, and was the first book-length socialist tract to appear in Germany, representing an unusual synthesis of Judaism and Christianity that showed the considerable influence upon Hess of Spinoza, Herder and Hegel. In due course many of Hess's ideas would find their way into the work of Karl Marx, and into subsequent socialist thought. The distinguished political (...) scientist Shlomo Avineri provides the first full English translation of this text, along with new renditions of Socialism and Communism, A Communist Credo; and The Consequences of a Future Revolution of the Proletariat. All of the usual reader-friendly series features are provided, including a chronology, concise introduction and notes for further reading, in a work of special relevance to students of politics, modern European history, and the history of Zionism. (shrink)

Abstractabstract:The present article examines the utopian and theological politics of the Ikhwān al-Ṣafāʾ (Brethren of Purity). I focus on the Ikhwān’s elusive “virtuous city,” a harmonious and righteous community situated on a wondrous island, where residents work in unison toward salvation by deferring to one creed. This city’s imagery is intimately tied to principal theological dimensions of their work. Through the virtuous city, the Ikhwān utilize the imagery of estrangement to elucidate their theological position on the soul’s (...) imprisonment in the body. But there is another, subtler dimension to their utopianism. I argue that the Ikhwānian utopia serves as a juxtaposition to their Muslim society, which they thought was afflicted by credal divisions. Accordingly, their utopia seam-lessly weaves together a synthetic narrative about eschatology (i.e., the afterlife) and an empirical critique of their contemporary society. Additionally, this paper contributes to the development of scholarship on medieval Islamic utopianism. (shrink)

Pritchard calls his epistemological disjunctivism ‘the holy grail of epistemology’. What this metaphor means is that the acceptance of this thesis puts the internalism-externalism debate to an end, thanks to satisfaction of intuitions standing behind both competing views. Simultaneously, Pritchard strongly emphasizes that the endorsement of epistemological disjunctivism does not commit one to metaphysical disjunctivism. In this paper I analyze the formulations and motivations of epistemological disjunctivism presented by Pritchard and McDowell. Then I consider the most common argument for (...) the claim that epistemological disjunctivism can be held without the support of metaphysical disjunctivism. I conclude that the plausibility of epistemological disjunctivism depends on the plausibility of metaphysical disjunctivism. If the latter is false, the former postulates a set of conditions for epistemic justification that are impossible to be fulfilled. (shrink)

_TABLE OF CONTENTS:_ Foreword to the Second Edition. I. THE MAN AND HIS WRITINGS: How Augustine Came to the Episcopacy ; Augustine Chooses Eraclius as His Successor ; Augustine on His Own Writings. II. FAITH AND REASON: Belief is Volitional Consent ; To Believe Is to Think with Assent ; Believing and Understanding ; Authority and Reason ; Two Ways to Knowledge ; Reason and Authority in Manicheism ; The Relation of Authority to Reason ; If I Am Deceived, I (...) Am Alive ; I Know that I Am Alive ; Knowledge and Wisdom ; Error and Ignorance. III. THREE LEVELS OF REALITY: Creator, Human Soul, Body ; Natures on Three Levels ; Soul, Ruled by God, Rules Its Body ; Soul: Above the Sensible, Below God ; God, Mutable Spirits, and Bodies ; Divine, Psychic and Bodily Nature ; Causality: Divine, Psychic and Bodily ; Divine Ideas as Prototypes ; God Set Spiritual Creation Above the Corporeal ; Evil: the Privation of the Good. IV. MAN’S SOUL: Existence, Life, Sense and Reason ; Sensation as an Activity of the Soul ; Memory, Understanding and Will ; The Wonders of Memory ; Three Levels of Vision. V. THE WORLD OF BODIES: All Bodily Natures Are Good ; Invisible Seeds in the Elements ; The Elements Contain Seminal Reasons ; Measure, Number, and Weight ; Concerning Formless Matter ; Place, Time and the Physical World ; The Wonders of Nature ; God Works Throughout Nature ; Man’s Natural Endowments ; The Physical World and the Christian. VI. APPROACHING GOD THROUGH UNDERSTANDING: Creation is a Great Book ; The Journey of the Soul to God ; The Soul’s Ascent to God ; The Whole World Proclaims Its Maker ; Ascending to the Supreme Truth ; Plato’s View of God ; How to Think About God ; The Problem of Speaking About God ; God Is the Selfsame ; A Divine Invocation ; Late Have I Loved Thee. VII. MORAL AND RELIGIOUS LIFE: All Men Desire Happiness ; Man’s Greatest Good ; Good Love and Bad Love ; Moral Evil Stems from Bad Will ; Two Precepts of Love ; On Diversities of Local Customs ; Doing Good to Body and Soul ; The Evil of Telling a Lie ; Lying and Concealing the Truth ; Faith, Hope and Charity ; No Virtues Apart from God ; Our Reward Is Not in This Life. VIII. DIMENSIONS OF GRACE: What the Grace of God Is ; Augustine Was Never a Pelagian ; What True Grace Is ; The Work of Grace ; How Freedom Is Restored by Grace ; God’s Foreknowledge and Human Willing ; Grace Before and After the Fall ; Grace and Good Works ; Prevenient Grace ; Grace and Human Miseries ; The Beatific Vision. IX. THE TWO CITIES: Augustine’s Analysis of the City of God ; How the Two Cities Differ ; Two Loves Make Two Cities ; Two Cities Formed by Two Loves ; The Unimportance of Externals ; Relation of the Heavenly and Earthly Cities ; Jerusalem and Babylon ; Summary of the Two Cities ; All Nations Are in the City of God ; The Church and the City of God ; The Foundation of the Holy City ; Religion and Human Destiny ; The Meaning of a People ; Peace: the Tranquility of Order ; Two Kingdoms After the Resurrection. X. PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY: Belief and Historical Events ; The Universality of Providence ; Meaning in History ; Six Ages in Biblical History ; Symbolic Meaning of Jewish History ; Christ in History ; The Two Cities in History ; What Is Time? ; Critique of Cyclicism. APENDIXES: I. Selected, Annotated Bibliography. II. Alphabetical List of Augustine’s Writings. III. Glossary of Terms. INDEX. (shrink)

Unwarranted, by NYU law professor Barry Friedman, offers a diagnosis of some of the contemporary ills of American policing and a prescribed cure. Between 2014 and 2016, incidents of fatal shootings...

This volume, entitled "Collectanea Augustiniana," commemorates the celebration at Villanova University of the sixteenth centenary of the conversion and baptism of St. Augustine. Subtitled "Augustine: -Second Founder of the Faith-," the volume is divided into six sections. In the first, 'Conversion in the "Confessiones"', five authors discuss aspects of Augustine's conversion. The second section, 'Literary Structure in the "Confessiones"', is devoted to six analyses of the arrangement of Augustine's spiritual autobiography. The third section, "The City of God," contains four (...) essays on Augustine's theology of history. The fourth section, 'Augustinian Biblical Exegesis', presents six studies of Augustine's interpretation of Holy Writ. The fifth section, 'Influences on Augustine', is given over to four examinations of Augustine's philosophical background. Finally, in the sixth section, "Augustinian Themes," three essays deal respectively with the Augustinian concepts of body and soul, evil, and juridicism.". (shrink)

Adams and Aizawa (2010b) define cognitivism as the processing of representations with underived content. In this paper, I respond to their use of this stipulative definition of cognition. I look at the plausibility of Adams and Aizawa’s cognitivism, taking into account that they have no criteria for cognitive representation and no naturalistic theory of content determination. This is a glaring hole in their cognitivism—which requires both a theory of representation and underived content to be successful. I also explain why my (...) own position, cognitive integration, is not susceptible to the supposed causal-coupling fallacy. Finally, I look at the more interesting question of whether the distinction between derived and underived content is important for cognition. Given Adams and Aizawa’s concession that there is no difference in content between derived and underived representations (only a difference in how they get their content) I conclude that the distinction is not important and show that there is empirical research which does not respect the distinction. (shrink)

Bu kitapta, Ebû İshâk es-Saffâr’ın (öl. 534/1139) kelâmî görüşleri, Telḫîṣü’l-edille li-ḳavâʿidi’t-tevḥîd adlı eserinde Allah’ın isimlerinin anlamlarını açıklarken yaptığı yorumlar çerçevesinde ele alınmaktadır. Ebû İshâk es-Saffâr, 6./12. yüzyıl Hanefî-Mâtürîdî âlimlerinden biridir. Kelâma dair Telḫîṣü’l-edille eserinde esmâ-i hüsnâ konusuna ayrıntılı olarak yer vermektedir. İki cilt hâlinde yayımlanan bu eserin yaklaşık üçte birlik bir kısmını esmâ-i hüsnâ konusu oluşturmaktadır. Bu kısım incelendiğinde, Saffâr’ın Allah’ın varlığı, birliği ve sıfatları ile ilgili konular başta olmak üzere pek çok konuyu 175 esmâ-i hüsnâya dayanarak izah ettiği görülmektedir. (...) O, esmâ-i hüsnâ bölümünde yer vermediği bazı isimlere ise müstakil başlıklar altında değinmektedir. Örneğin el-Mütekkelim ismi kelâm sıfatını bağlamında ve halku’l-Kur’ân ile icâz’ul-Kur’ân gibi konularla ilişkili bir şekilde ele almaktadır. Bu isimler de listeye dahil edildiğinde sayı 178’e ulaşmaktadır. Bu durumda eserin yarısını esmâ-i hüsnâ konusu teşkil etmektedir. -/- Saffâr, esmâ-i hüsnâ bölümünde alfabetik bir sıra içerisinde ele aldığı ilâhî isimleri öncelikle lugavî (semantik) yönden izah etmektedir. Sonrasında ise değerlendirdiği ilahî ismi, bir kelâm konusu ile bağlantı kurarak kelâmî perspektifle açıklamaktadır Esmâ-i hüsnâ temelinde ele alınan konuların hilâfet meselesi hariç diğer kelâm bahislerini kapsadığı görülmektedir. Saffâr öncesi Hanefî-Mâtürîdî kelâm literatürü içinde esmâ-i hüsnânın bu kadar kapsamlı ele alındığı başka bir eser bilinmemektedir. -/- Bu kitap; üç ana bölümden oluşmaktadır. “Metodolojik Çerçeve” başlıklı giriş bölümünde çalışmanın konusu, önemi, amacı, yöntemi ve kaynakları hakkında bilgi verilmiştir. Birinci bölümde Saffâr’ın yaşadığı sosyokültürel çevre olan Mâverâünnehir bölgesi ile Buhara ve Merv şehirlerinin siyasî, sosyal ve dinî durumu ortaya konulmaya çalışılmıştır. İkinci bölümde esmâ-i hüsna konusunun anlaşılmasına temel oluşturan isim, tesmiye, müsemmâ, sıfat ve vasf gibi kavramlar ile esmâ-i hüsnânın sayısı ve ihsâsı gibi kelâmî tartışmalara değinilmiştir. Sonrasında Saffâr öncesi dönemde kaleme alınan esmâ-i hüsnâ litaratürü hakkında bilgi verilmiştir. Bölüm sonuna Saffâr’ın rivayet ettiği 178 ilahî isme dair ayrıntılı bir tablo eklenmiştir. Üçüncü bölümde öncelikle, Saffâr’ın esmâ-i hüsnâyı izah ederken dikkate aldığı kelâmî ilkeler tespit edilmeye çalışılmıştır. Sonrasında ise Saffâr’ın Telḫîṣü’l-edille’de ilâhî isimleri açıklarken ortaya koyduğu kelâmî görüş ve değerlendirmeler belirlenerek sistematik bir şekilde kategorize edilmiştir. Bu kapsamda ele alınan her konunun sonuna ilgili ilâhî isimleri ve bağlantılı olduğu tartışmaları içeren tablolar eklenmiştir. Sonuç bölümünde ise Saffâr’ın esmâ-i hüsnâ anlayışına dayanan kelâm yöntemine dair ulaştığımız sonuçlara yer verilmiştir. Bu kitapta onun, esmâ-i hüsnânın %75’inde kelâmî yorumlarda bulunduğu ve bilgi-varlık bahsinden âhiret hayatına kadar bütün kelâm konularını esmâ-i hüsnâ ile bağlantılı yorumladığı tespit edilmiştir. Ulaşılan bu sonuçlar, Saffâr’ın kelâm anlayışının ilâhî isimlerin yorumuna dayandığını ortaya koymaktadır. [his book discusses the theological views of Abū Isḥāq al-Ṣaffār d. 534/1139), within the framework of his comments on the meanings of Allah’s names, provided in his work titled Talkhīṣ al-adilla. Abū Isḥāq al-Ṣaffār is one of the Ḥanafite-Māturīdite scholars in the 6th/12th century. In his work titled Talkhīṣ al-adilla li-qawāʿid al-tawḥīd on kalām, he spared extensive space for al-asmāʾ al-husnā. Approximately one third of this work, published in two volumes, is devoted to al-asmāʾ al-husnā. An examination of the related section reveals that al-Ṣaffār explains many issues, particularly those related to the existence, unity and attributes of Allah, based on 175 al-asmāʾ al-husnā. He mentions some of the names that he does not include in the al-asmāʾ al-husnā section under separate headings. For example, the name al-Mutakallim is addressed within the context of the attribute of kalām and in relation to subjects, such as the khalq al-Qurʾān and i‘jaz al-Qurʾān. Upon the addition of these names to the list, the number names reaches 178. This means that half of the work deals with the subject of al-asmāʾ al-husnā. -/- al-Ṣaffār lists the divine names in alphabetical order and explains them semantically in the chapter of al-asmāʾ al-husnā. Then he goes on to clarify each divine name through a theological lens with a specific reference to the subject of kalām. In the pre-Saffar Ḥanafite-Māturīdite theological literature, there is no other work that addresses al-asmāʾ al-husnā in such an extensive way. -/- This book consists of three main sections. The first section titled “Methodological Framework”, elaborates on the focus, significance, purpose and method of the study, along with the sources used. The first part describes the political, social and religious status of Transoxiana (Mā-warāʾ al-Nahr) region and the cities of Bukhara and Marw, the sociocultural environment in which Saffar lived. The second chapter addresses various concepts, which promote the understanding of al-asmāʾ al-husnā, such as name, tasmiya, musammā, attribute and qualification in addition to the theological debates such as the number and iḥṣāʾ of al-asmāʾ al-husnā. Then, it provides information about the al-asmāʾ al-husnā literature produced in the pre- Ṣaffār period. The end of each chapter comes with a detailed table with the 178 divine names mentioned by al-Ṣaffār. In the third chapter, the author initially discusses the theological principles that al-Ṣaffār considered while explaining the essence of al-asmāʾ al-husnā. This section also determines and systematically categorizes the theological views and evaluations put forward by al-Ṣaffār while explaining the divine names in Talkhīṣ al-adilla. The tables with the divine names and the related discussions can be seen at the end of the discussion for each subject. The last section presents the conclusions reached, regarding the kalām method based on al-Ṣaffār’s understanding of the essence of al-asmāʾ al-husnā. The present study revealed that he made theological interpretations in 75% of the al-asmāʾ al-husnā and interpreted all theological issues ranging from the subjects of knowledge and existence to the Afterlife in connection with the al-asmāʾ al-husnā. These results indicate that al-Ṣaffār's understanding of kalām is based on the interpretation of the divine names.]. (shrink)