Talmy divided the world’s languages according to how they express movement. Spanish, a verb-framed language, purportedly constrains the use of motion verbs expressing the manner of movement (such as roll) to contexts in which no spatial boundary is crossed. Previous research suggests that this constraint sometimes does not apply. We report the first large-scale investigation of the constraint and its modulating factors (movement direction, verb type, entering/exiting, Ground size, the preposition used) across different Spanish-speaking communities. A task (...) with open-ended description of animated videos, a sentence interpretation task, and a rating task found that Spanish and Latin American speakers (n = 180 in total) often use manner verbs to describe boundary-crossing situations (especially entering a place), although this is modulated by the preposition following the verb (more with a than en). Better understanding of this constraint in verb-framed languages has applications in, for instance, L2 acquisition research. (shrink)

According to Scotus, an intelligible species with universal content, inherent in the mind, is a partial cause of an occurrent cognition whose immediate object is the self-same species. I attempt to explain how Scotus defends the possibility of this causal activity. Scotus claims, generally, that forms are causes, and that inherence makes no difference to the capacity of a form to cause an effect. He illustrates this by examining a case in which an accident is an instrument of a substance (...) in the production of a certain sort of effect. All that is required is that the accident is relevantly joined to the substance, whether or not it inheres in the substance. Since intelligible species are bearers of semantic content, it follows that non-inherent objects of thought can also be the bearers of such content. Such objects are included in the mind without inherence, and the boundary between the mind and external reality is to this extent broken down. (shrink)

I present and discuss two logical results. The first shows that a non-trivial counterfactual analysis exists for any contingent proposition that is false in at least two possible worlds. The second result identifies a set of conditions that are individually necessary and jointly sufficient for the success of a counterfactual analysis. I use these results to shed light on the question whether disposition ascribing propositions can be analyzed as Stalnaker-Lewis conditional propositions. The answer is that they can, but, in order (...) for a counterfactual analysis to work, the antecedent and consequent must be related in a particular way, and David Lewis’s Time’s Arrow constraints on comparative world similarity must be relaxed. The upshot is that counterfactual analyses are easy to come by, in principle, even if not in practice. In that sense, it’s easy to be iffy. (shrink)

This essay situates “singularity” at the heart of the power dynamics operative in contemporary pedagogy and the system supporting it. More than merely academic learning, indeed, “school” here denotes not only the range of disciplinary authorities at work within the classroom and the educational system at large but also discursive obedience to knowledge. Supported by close readings of Arendt and Derrida, this paper thus argues that nothing less than the formation of identity is at stake in “school.” What are the (...) boundaries, limits, and conditions of possibility for a student’s invention of his or her own singularity within an institution and curriculum that, at the same time, demands obedience to authority? This paradoxical formation of identity within the constrictive demands of authority constitutes the primary task of thinking the “invention of singularity” at the heart of schooling in conjunction with democracy, language, vocation, and ideology. (shrink)

Olwen Bedford and Kwang-Kuo Hwang, Guilt and Shame in Chinese Culture: A Cross-cultural Framework from the Perspective of Morality and Identity, pp. 127–144.This article formulates a cross-cultural framework for understanding guilt and shame based on a conceptualization of identity and morality in Western and Confucian cultures. First, identity is examined in each culture, and then the relation between identity and morality illuminated. The role of guilt and shame in upholding the boundaries of identity and enforcing the constraints of morality is (...) then discussed from the perspective of each culture. The developed framework is then applied the emotions of guilt and shame in Chinese culture drawing on previous field research. Implications for future research are discussed. (shrink)

In spoken interactions, interlocutors carefully plan and time their utterances, minimising gaps and overlaps between consecutive turns. Cross-linguistic comparison has indicated that spoken languages vary only minimally in terms of turn-timing, and language acquisition research has shown pre-linguistic vocal turn-taking in the first half year of life. These observations suggest that the turn-taking system may provide a fundamental basis for our linguistic capacities. The question remains however to what extent our capacity for rapid turn-taking is determined by modality constraints. The (...) avoidance of overlapping turns could be motivated by the difficulty of hearing and speaking at the same time. If so, turn-taking in sign might show greater toleration for overlap. Alternatively, signed conversations may show a similar distribution of turn-timing as spoken languages, thus avoiding both gaps and overlaps. To address this question we look at turn-timing in question-answer sequences in spontaneous conversations of Sign Language of the Netherlands. The findings indicate that although there is considerable overlap in two or more signers' articulators in conversation, when proper allowance is made for onset preparation, post-utterance retraction and the intentional holding of signs for response, turn-taking latencies in sign look remarkably like those reported for spoken language. This is consistent with the possibility that, at least with regard to responses to questions, speakers and signers follow similar time courses in planning and producing their utterances in on-going conversation. This suggests that turn-taking systems may well be a shared cognitive infrastructure underlying all modern human languages, both spoken and signed. (shrink)

Arthur Danto had just published an essay about Neuhaus in The Nation, where he famously held the art‐critic post formerly occupied by Clement Greenberg. In a characteristic switching of gears from “mere” criticism to something deeper and more profound, he described Neuhaus's sound sculpture as “a portable tabernacle, a bubble of sacral space encapsulated in midtown life, which flows unheedingly around it, save for those attracted as a momentary congregation”. Times Square was precisely the kind of art Arthur relished thinking (...) about. It was about boundaries: between the traditional and the modern, the familiar and the transcendent, the aesthetic and the everyday. Art criticism was for Arthur largely a way of practicing philosophy by other means, but it grew into something more. (shrink)

The training relationship between sport psychology professionals (SPPs) and their students is a critical aspect of graduate training. Maintaining ethical, appropriate boundaries within training relationships is imperative, as boundary crossings can have deleterious effects on students. SPPs (N = 152) and Sport Psychology graduate students (N = 165) completed The Survey of Applied Sport Psychologists to explore their experiences and perceptions of sexual attractions and boundary crossings within training relationships. Nearly 30% of SPPs acknowledged sexual attractions toward their (...) students, yet few students (8.5%) perceived such attractions. Compared to the SPPs, the students reported higher levels of anxiety regarding the SPP’s attraction toward them; both groups reported infrequent use of supervision for this attraction. Nine students and 13 SPPs reported engaging in sexual behaviors (e.g., kissing, dating, intercourse) with the other. Within the larger sample, the three most common nonsexual boundary crossings were becoming social friends, attending social gatherings, and the SPP initiating nonsexual touching. Both groups are advised to engage in ongoing monitor their behaviors, receive training specific to ethics within training relationships, and seek consultation/supervision to ensure appropriate boundaries remain intact. (shrink)

As a domain of philosophical enquiry that examines what it means to be, existentialism is a moral project that is centered on the self. While a few have applied the precepts of existentialism to the philosophical implications of homicide offenders, one question that has been overlooked in previous literature is 'what is the offspring attempting to do by killing his/her parent(s)'? Using historical work on nineteenth century parricides in America, this paper examines parricide as an identity project.

This study looks at the interactions between health workers, physical space, surgical tools, and the “patient-body” in an operating theater. My aim is to explore the approaches of Katz, Rawlings, and Collins and to show that when rituals, restrictive entrance procedures, and clothing requirements are not in place, when rules are not observed for reasons that this article addresses, the boundary between the operating theater and its surroundings blurs. It becomes a trivialized space. Data were collected in the regional (...) hospital of one major town of the Extrême Nord of Cameroon. I describe a context of crisis and a lack of equipment and personnel that narrow the boundaries of the operating room but do not erase them. Restrictive entrance procedures, clothing requirements, rituals, and rules that are supposed to separate the operating theater from its surroundings, as Katz has shown, are not observed. Instead, the theater is connected to its surroundings through an “intriguing combination of practices” consistent with the analyses of Rawling and Collins. Thus, the operating theater is not a closed and limited area inside the hospital that can be completely isolated from its surroundings. There is continuity between the interior and the exterior. (shrink)

Boundary crossings in academia are rarely addressed by university policy despite the risk of problematic or unethical faculty - student interactions. This study contributes to an understanding of undergraduate college student perceptions of appropriateness of faculty - student nonsexual interactions by investigating the influence of gender and ethnicity on student judgments of the appropriateness of numerous hypothetical interactions. Overall, students deemed the majority of interactions as inappropriate. Female students judged a number of interactions as more inappropriate than did male (...) students, and with a few exceptions, Mexican American and Anglo American students were similar in their ratings of the appropriateness of faculty - student interactions. These findings suggest that universities need to be proactive in establishing guidelines concerning faculty-student boundary crossings. (shrink)

The emphasis on models hasn’t completely eliminated laws from scientific discourse and philosophical discussion. Instead, I want to argue that much of physics lies beyond the strict domain of laws. I shall argue that in important cases the physics, or physical understanding, does not lie either in laws or in their properties, such as universality, consistency and symmetry. I shall argue that the domain of application commonly attributed to laws is too narrow. That is, laws can still play an important, (...) though peculiar, role outside their strict domain of validity. I shall argue also that, by way of a trade-off, while the actual domain of application of laws should be seen as much broader. At the same time, what I call ‘anomic’ representational elements reveal themselves as central to the descriptive and explanatory power of theories and model: boundary conditions, state descriptions, structures, constraints, limits and mechanisms. I conclude with a brief consideration of how my discussion has consequences for discussion of understanding, unification, approximation and dispositional properties. I focus on examples from physics, macroscopic and microscopic, phenomenological and fundametal: shock waves, propagation of cracks, symmetry breaking, and others. This law-eccentric kind of knowledge is central to both modeling the world and intervening in it. (shrink)

Western philosophy has been powerfully influenced by a paradigm of personal agency that is linked to an individualistic conception of autonomy. This essay contrasts this conception with an alternative understanding that recognizes a social component built into the very meaning of autonomy. After reviewing feminist critiques of the dominant conception of autonomy, I develop the broad outlines of a relational view and apply this reconceptualization to a concrete situation in order to show how this altered view reconfigures understanding of the (...) participants' relationships and each of their personal perspectives. The situation chosen, physician‐assisted suicide, is intended principally to illustrate one respect in which a relational conception of autonomy reframes a controversial moral issue and reveals perspectives toward it that are likely to be obscured when autonomy is viewed through the lens of the dominant individualistic conception. My principal aim is to show that when autonomy is understood relationally, respecting others' autonomy is likely to be a far more complex issue than is apparent within the standard conception, both for those with professional responsibilities and often for personal intimates as well. (shrink)

The ways in which the Aristotelian sciences are related to each other has been discussed in the literature, with some focus on the subalternate sciences. While it is acknowledged that Aristotle, and Plato as well, was concerned as well with how the arts were related to one another, less attention has been paid to Aristotle's views on relationships among the arts. In this paper, I argue that Aristotle's account of the subalternate sciences helps shed light on how Aristotle saw the (...) art of rhetoric relating to dialectic and politics. Initial motivation for comparing rhetoric with the subalternate sciences is Aristotle's use of the language of boundary transgression, germane to the Posterior Analytics, when discussing rhetoric’s boundaries, as well as the language of "over" and "under" found in APo. First, I discuss three passages in Rhetoric Book I and argue that Garver's (1988) account cannot be correct. Second, I look to the subalternate sciences, especially focusing on optics and the distinction between "unqualified" optics and mathematical optics. Third, I discuss rhetoric's dependence on both dialectic and politics. (shrink)

The research focused on the cross-boundary impacts of ecological changes on the livelihood of communities in three villages in Stung Treng province, Cambodia. The research objectives were to analyze river ecological changes and their drivers, and to explore the impacts of these changes on the livelihood of the communities. The research was conducted in Kraom, Kaoh Snaeng, and Tonsang villages. The study found that there have been significant changes in the environment of these villages. The fishery resources have declined (...) between 2019 and 2022 due to factors such as population growth, illegal fishing, loss of flooded forests, and the presence of hydropower dams. The extent of flooded forests has also significantly decreased, negatively impacting fish populations and the overall ecosystem. Water level fluctuations have become irregular since 2018, with lower water levels during the rainy season compared to previous years. Riverbank landslides have been a concern, posing threats to safety and livelihoods. Excessive algae growth in the rivers has also been observed. The research findings indicate a decline in income from fish catch in all three villages, with varying levels of stability. Expenses for food have also varied. Migration patterns have been observed, with individuals seeking better opportunities elsewhere due to the decline in fish stocks. Crop damages have been attributed to irregular flooding and fluctuating water levels, leading to a decrease in crop cultivation. Changes in water quality, including the presence of lime and algae, have impacted the well-being of the residents. Overall, the research highlights the need for interventions and support to address the economic challenges faced by the communities, mitigate the loss of equipment and housing, and improve water quality. (shrink)

This book is the most comprehensive and rigourous critique of the ways disciplinary boundaries still inhibit knowledge-production and integration.

Over the last half century, a multijurisdictional, multiscale system of governance has emerged to address concerns associated with toxic chemicals that have the capacity to bioaccumulate in organisms and biomagnify in food chains, leading to fish consumption advisories. Components of this system of governance include international conventions, laws enacted by nation states and their subjurisdictions, and efforts to adaptively manage regional ecosystems. Given that many of these compounds – including mercury, industrial chemicals such as polychlorinated biphenyls, and pesticides such as (...) toxaphene – circulate throughout the globe through cycles of deposition and reemission, regional efforts to eliminate the need for fish consumption advisories cannot be successful without efforts to reduce emissions everywhere in the world. This paper argues that the scientific community, by monitoring the concentrations of these compounds in the atmosphere and by modeling their fate and transport, play an important role in connecting the various jurisdictional scales of governance. In addition, the monitoring networks that this community of scientists has established can be visualized as a technology of governance essential in an era in which societies have the capacity to produce and release such chemicals on an industrial scale. (shrink)

This paper critically examines the biology of species identity and the morality of crossing species boundaries in the context of emerging research that involves combining human and nonhuman animals at the genetic or cellular level. We begin with the notion of species identity, particularly focusing on the ostensible fixity of species boundaries, and we explore the general biological and philosophical problem of defining species. Against this backdrop, we survey and criticize earlier attempts to forbid crossing species boundaries in (...) the creation of novel beings. We do not attempt to establish the immorality of crossing species boundaries, but we conclude with some thoughts about such crossings, alluding to the notion of moral confusion regarding social and ethical obligations to novel interspecies beings. (shrink)

An English double-embedded relative clause from which the middle verb is omitted can often be processed more easily than its grammatical counterpart, a phenomenon known as the grammaticality illusion. This effect has been found to be reversed in German, suggesting that the illusion is language specific rather than a consequence of universal working memory constraints. We present results from three self-paced reading experiments which show that Dutch native speakers also do not show the grammaticality illusion in Dutch, whereas both German (...) and Dutch native speakers do show the illusion when reading English sentences. These findings provide evidence against working memory constraints as an explanation for the observed effect in English. We propose an alternative account based on the statistical patterns of the languages involved. In support of this alternative, a single recurrent neural network model that is trained on both Dutch and English sentences is shown to predict the cross-linguistic difference in the grammaticality effect. (shrink)

In recent times developments in the natural sciences and in the sphere of environmental politics have compelled social scientists, and also some natural scientists, to rethink the relations that hitherto have been held, in Western thought generally and within particular disciplines, to characterize ‘nature’ on the one side and ‘culture’ on the other. This article considers the history of this conceptual boundary and looks at new conceptualizations of nature/culture, stimulated by developments both in biotechnology and in the ongoing controversies (...) about environmental degradation. It argues that while some of the contributions to reconfiguring, or abolishing, the nature/ culture division have been productive and stimulating of new ways of conceiving the world, there has nonetheless been an unfortunate tendency for social scientists to bring to bear inherited analytic dispositions on biotechnological and environmental matters. Instead of using these issues as means of challenging social scientific disciplinary dogmas and of engaging in constructive rapprochement with natural scientists, social scientists have in their analyses of such matters often merely asserted the hegemony of ‘culture’ over ‘nature’, and thus in effect the superiority of social scientific over natural scientific conceptualizations of the world. Far from overcoming the nature/culture boundary, social scientists have too often merely asserted the primacy of the sorts of subject matters and analytic techniques they feel comfortable with, rather than subjecting their practices to fully reflexive self-scrutiny. (shrink)

The tenth volume of the Frontiers of Japanese Philosophy focuses on the theme of “transition,” dealing with transitory and intermediary phenomena and practices such as translation, transmission, and transformation. Written in English, German and Japanese, the contributions explore a wide range of topics, crossing disciplinary borders between phenomenology, linguistics, feminism, epistemology, aesthetics, political history, martial arts, spiritual practice and anthropology, and bringing Japanese philosophy into cross-cultural dialogue with other philosophical traditions. As exercises in “thinking in transition,” the essays reveal (...) novel modes of doing philosophy as a way of boundary crossing that takes transition not only as an object of inquiry, but also as a method of philosophical practice itself. (shrink)

. Trans-National Corporations (TNCs) pay relatively high salaries to local people in host countries. TNCs assume that such employees will accept an employeeÇôemployer relationship similar to that which exists in North America, but the obligations and personal interests that such a relationship create often directly conflict with systems of obligation already established in the host country. When TNCs do business across the boundaries of systems of obligation, corporate salaries can be seen as a form of unethical bribery. In this paper, (...) the core case of business bribery is described consistent with the usual philosophical analysis of bribery, and the grounds for thinking bribery is unethical are made clear. The amount of a bribe is irrelevant to the ethical analysis. Bribery is distinguished from tips and grease on structural grounds. The concept of a system of obligation is defined, and examples given that show the variability of systems of obligation in host countries. Arguments are given to show that salaries paid by TNCs create obligations and personal interests which sometimes conflict with existing systems of obligation, and that such payments have the same structure as more traditional forms of bribery. The ethical issues of corporations crossing the boundaries of systems of obligations are discussed. (shrink)

This article discusses the relationship between a deconstructivist method in science and technology studies and the more recent moves towards a reconstructivist engagement with science and science policy making. Drawing on examples from the author's own research, the article identifies three forms of engagement and their relative utility and limitations. The article argues that these are typical of STS work that seeks direct engagement with science policy making and which could form the basis for a more "serviceable STS" that retains (...) its critical and independent perspective on science. The paper concludes by arguing that the analysis has important implications for the ways in which STS expertise can articulate with science policy making. (shrink)

The Ninth International Conference on Computer Ethics: Philosophical Enquiry was held in Milwaukee, WI. Four papers originally presented at that conference are included in this issue of Computers and Society. The selected papers examine a wide range of information/computer-ethics-related issues, and taken together, they show great diversity in the field of information/computer ethics. We are continually negotiating with ethics, law, and policy in our technology-driven activities in the interconnected global arena. As we consider the themes within and among the papers (...) here, we encourage readers to think deeply about fundamental principles such as trust, accountability, anonymity, and human rights. Each of these papers takes us back, philosophically, to seminal and long-standing principles of ethics, broadly speaking, and then, brings us forward, to significant and contemporary challenges in ethics. The authors each weave narratives about our place and space as individuals, as members of cultural collectives, and evolving socio-political-technical norms around us, governing us, defining us. (shrink)

The text consists of essays that revolve around the question of the nature and meaning of philosophy, even as it demonstrates philosophy's significance and relevance to some fundamental human problems and issues. The essays present diverse views of what philosophy might be and might aspire to be, with contributors being influenced by a wide range of philosophical approaches and traditions. The conversations also cut across disciplinary boundaries to interrogate and utilize ideas taken from ethics, epistemology, metaphysics, literary studies, cultural studies, (...) and the sociology of science. Traversing regional boundaries, the essays show philosophical analysis at work in exploring some issues pertinent to African, Caribbean, European, and American experiences, even while not ignoring Asian traditions. The collection presents interesting and intriguing views on how philosophical inquiry can illuminate various pressing problems: development, conflict, the discriminating preservation of worthwhile traditions, and the prevalence of apathy. It also reflects the vitality and multifaceted nature of philosophical discourse in grappling with live issues. The edited text is a comprehensive, balanced, and unique anthology of readings capturing the diversity of philosophical investigation. (shrink)

In this paper I review some changes in philosophy and logic, and the way that these relate to my work over the years.

In the literature on scientific practices, one finds sustained analyses of the contextualist elements of inquiry. However, the ways in which local and disciplinary contexts of practice function as common goods remain largely unexplored. In this paper I argue that a contextualist analysis of scientific practices as common goods can shed light on the challenges of scientific communication and interdisciplinary collaboration, albeit without invoking Kuhn's problematic notion of incommensurability.

I met Dan Callahan in 1986—when I came to pitch him. Coming from a sleek office setting near Boston, I was intrigued by The Hastings Center's higgledy‐piggledy environment where so many smart people got to work in a relaxed, inviting atmosphere. I had noticed that the Center was producing a great deal of policy work on a wide range of topics but didn't seem to go further than publishing the highly valuable guidance developed under Dan Callahan's leadership. I ended my (...) pitch, “Look, Dan, where Hastings gets bored and wants to go on to the next topic, my group in Boston gets interested.” To my great pleasure, and despite his skepticism, Dan accepted the pitch. Beyond his generous responsiveness to unproven young people, Dan had many other virtues. For one, he was a boundary crosser. (shrink)

This work contrasts Giovanni Sartor’s view of inferential semantics of legal concepts with a probabilistic model of theory formation. The work further explores possibilities of implementing Kemp’s probabilistic model of theory formation in the context of mapping legal concepts between two individual legal systems. For implementing the legal concept mapping, we propose a cross-categorization approach that combines three mathematical models: the Bayesian Model of Generalization, the probabilistic model of theory formation, i.e., the Infinite Relational Model first introduced by Kemp et (...) al. and its extended model, i.e., the normal-IRM proposed by Herlau et al.. We apply our cross-categorization approach to datasets where legal concepts related to educational systems are respectively defined by the Japanese- and the Danish authorities according to the International Standard Classification of Education. The main contribution of this work is the proposal of a conceptual framework of the cross-categorization approach that, inspired by Sartor, attempts to explain reasoner’s inferential mechanisms. (shrink)

Despite pervasive variation in the content of laws, legal theorists and anthropologists have argued that laws share certain abstract features and even speculated that law may be a human universal. In the present report, we evaluate this thesis through an experiment administered in 11 different countries. Are there cross‐cultural principles of law? In a between‐subjects design, participants (N = 3,054) were asked whether there could be laws that violate certain procedural principles (e.g., laws applied retrospectively or unintelligible laws), and also (...) whether there are any such laws. Confirming our preregistered prediction, people reported that such laws cannot exist, but also (paradoxically) that there are such laws. These results document cross‐culturally and –linguistically robust beliefs about the concept of law which defy people's grasp of how legal systems function in practice. (shrink)

Recently, psychological phenomena have been expanded to new domains, crisscrossing boundaries of organizational levels, with the emergence of areas such as social personality and ecosystem learning. In this contribution, we analyze the ascription of an individual-based concept (personality) to the social level. Although justified boundary crossings can boost new approaches and applications, the indiscriminate misuse of concepts refrains the growth of scientific areas. The concept of social personality is based mainly on the detection of repeated group differences across a (...) population, in a direct transposition of personality concepts from the individual to the social level. We show that this direct transposition is problematic for avowing the nonsensical ascription of personality even to simple electronic devices. To go beyond a metaphoric use of social personality, we apply the organizational approach to a review of social insect communication networks. Our conceptual analysis shows that socially self-organized systems, such as isolated ant trails and bee’s recruitment groups, are too simple to have social personality. The situation is more nuanced when measuring the collective choice between nest sites or foraging patches: some species show positive and negative feedbacks between two or more self-organized social structures so that these co-dependent structures are inter-related by second-order, social information systems, complying with a formal requirement for having social personality: the social closure of constraints. Other requirements include the decoupling between individual and social dynamics, and the self-regulation of collective decision processes. Social personality results to be sometimes a metaphorical transposition of a psychological concept to a social phenomenon. The application of this organizational approach to cases of learning ecosystems, or evolutionary learning, could help to ground theoretically the ascription of psychological properties to levels of analysis beyond the individual, up to meta-populations or ecological communities. (shrink)

The problem of the subject in global communication is that of persisting as a subject and maintaining identity. A biosemiotic perspective as developed by T. A. Sebeok can contribute to correctly thematizing the subject in a globalized world. Globalizationtoday evidences the status of the subject as an embodied subject, a body structured in the intercorporeal relation with other bodies, interconnected with other bodies. We believe that ‘global semiotics’ developed in the direction of what we have called ‘semioethics’ isthe discipline that (...) can best provide us with the instruments necessary for an adequate understanding of global communication today and of the subject that inhabits it. Semioethics points to the need of recovering the relation between signs and values and ultimately the human dimension of semiosis if life, human and nonhuman, is to flourish over the entire planet. (shrink)

There is much talk in the ‘art world’ about boundaries and the blurring of boundaries between art and non-art, art and craft, and various forms within art. What is meant by a boundary is not always clear and this paper tries to make some sense of what may be at stake when deciding on which side of a line something falls. It is suggested that the important thing is how we deal with and react to particular examples rather than (...) worrying about whether it is a this or a that. (shrink)

The process of transmission and translation of texts has similarities with crossing borders into foreign territory, as immigrant or refugee. Not everything can be taken along, and finding acceptance in the new environment is sometimes difficult. Martin Luther’s hymn A mighty fortress has found a place in most denominational hymnals, but there are many disagreements about how it should be sung and what its meaning is. Has it really found a ‘home’ in the new settings, or is it still (...) a foreigner? Does it have a ‘home’ even in its original language in the 21st century? Can this hymn be a unifying factor in the Reformation celebrations in 2017? This article analyses various translations and discusses issues of interpretation of this well-known Reformation hymn. (shrink)