bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Music and the Plastic Arts in Conquest of Time and Space
Authors: Kowzan Tadeusx
Published: March 2007

In upholding the sensory principle of the classification of art, La Fontaine, consciously or not, took account of a tradition beginning in antiquity. The “philosophical century” was to have introduced a conceptual criterion, that of time and space. James Harris and Lessing are among the most ardent proponents of the division of art into the spatial and temporal. This criterion has played an important role in aesthetics. Among the countless systems of art classification developed in the course of the last two centuries, it has held a place of prominence to this day. Even those theorists who seek to soften the opposition between music and literature on the one hand, and the plastic arts on the other (Oskar Walzel), and who stress the union of space and time in the perception of the aesthetic object (Mikel Dufrenne), do not abandon the fundamental distinction between temporal and spatial art.
Considerations on the Present State of Literary Criticism
Authors: Starobinski Jean
Published: March 2007

Let us begin by taking a look at the semantic background: the word criticism designated an action implying judgment and discrimination based on standardized poetics or on preferred taste. By virtue of implicit or explicit criteria, the principal task of criticism—of things either beautiful or otherwise—was to make a distinction, to disapprove or to praise. If one refers to French dictionaries (from the 17th century onwards), one can see that the first and stable meaning of the noun criticism is:

“The art of judging a work of the mind” (Academy, 1694). To this first acceptation of the meaning of the word was added, in 1740, the idea of enlightenment and explanation. It has now come to designate “literary science,” independently of any judgment of value. This new acceptation, although confirmed by use, did not appear sufficiently clear to the compilers of the 8th Dictionary of the Academy (1932). The definition proposed at this date hardly differs from that of 1694:

Criticism (noun): The art of judging works of the mind, literary production, a work of art. etc.

Critical (adjective): Pertaining to the distinction in a work of the mind, a literary production, a work of art, etc., that which does not correspond to the accepted ideas of beauty, or what one considers to be the truth.
The Comic & Its Uses
Authors: Villiers André
Published: March 2007

I hope we shall not invite reproach for singling out the comic actor from among the various types of actor, and for giving him our special attention. There is a philosophy of the tragic and there is a philosophy of laughter; there are thorough theories about the serious genre and the comic genre: for the purposes of this study, therefore, it would seem perfectly admissible to isolate the actor who makes one laugh. But we have not artificially detached the actor for the sake of analytical dissection: if we say that a comedian plays comic parts, we recognise his use of the comic.
Allegory and Symbolism in Italian Renaissance Painting
Authors: Alpatov Mikhail Vladimirovitch
Published: March 2007

Art-historians of our time have concerned themselves mainly with research into the literary and philosophic sources of Renaissance works; this leads to a detailed philological commentary on its broader themes. However, it may be noted that neither iconology nor semiotics have yet observed the existence of various types of figuration in the plastic arts of that period.
Man, Culture, Civilisation
Authors: Kogan Lev
Published: March 2007

The problem of culture may rightly be regarded as one of the cardinal problems of the 20th century. Why is it that in this century sociologists, philosophers, historians, anthropologists, art critics and many others have been dealing, ever more intensively, with general questions of philosophy and culture? Why has “culturology” arisen as a science and is being ever more widely established?
Coherence and Incoherence of Mythic Structure: Its Symbolic Function
Authors: Rudhardt Jean
Published: March 2007

Those who study myth today consider with some predilection societies with no written language, such as are studied by ethnologists, wherein they hope to find myth of a more pure and more living nature than is to be found in civilizations where it has been treated in a “literary” form. To me, it does not appear at all obvious that the least elaborate should necessarily be the most pure and the most revealing. While, as they develop, societies may be invested with structures of an increasing complexity and which are superimposed to such an extent that their organizational plan sometimes seems confused, at the same time the social functions are diversified and each of them becomes more simple. Is it in a society where the same character is at one and the same time king, priest and chief warrior that the distinctive characteristics of political authority, sacerdotal office and military activity are the most clearly illustrated, or is this clearer in a society where the different responsibilities are dissociated—even if, in their effective execution, it appears that complex relationships connect this authority, this office and this activity one with the other? In the same way, are not societies where there is coexistence and confrontation between clearly distinct conceptual thought and mythic thought, each aware of its own specificity, those that allow us best to understand the essence of the myth in its greatest purity?
Peter Kropotkin and His Vision of Anarchist Aesthetics
Authors: Reszler André
Published: March 2007

Anarchist aesthetics are virtually unheard-of today. As a reflection of the birth of a new anti-authoritarian sensibility, as well as of the somewhat mechanical application of the general theses of the philosophy of anarchism to the problems of literary and artistic creation, these aesthetics did, however, know an hour of glory in the 19th century. But at the turn of the century anarchism lost its sense of immediacy when it no longer held its position as the ideology of the international worker's movement. Its fortune, like the fortune of any “political” aesthetic, depends very closely on the successes and failures of the ideology of which it is a point of reference.
Myths and the Convulsions of History
Authors: de Heuscb Luc
Published: March 2007

Some original forms of state emerge from the clan structures in central Africa in the 16th and 17th centuries, beyond the reach of any European influence. The oral epic traditions which echo these events draw from the founts of Bantu mythic thought. The Luba national epic recounts the dramatic origin of its sacred royalty and describes the passage from a primitive culture to a refined civilization, from an uneventful history to one full of movement; but above all it abandons itself to a singular meditation on the ritual usage of fire, on family and death, on time and space, on the rainbow and lightning. If we take the fantastic seriously, symbolic patterns appear which filter the historical tradition and transform it into metaphysics. The reeling King Woot seems to play in reverse the Luba role, on the royal scene of Kuba mythology, where almost Biblical figures could be recognized: the tower of Babel throws its shadow on the adventures of an African Noah who first abandons himself to drunkenness, then to incest, delivering society to the diversity of languages and plunging the universe into primordial chaos. A transition between the myth and the tale, the founding epic of the Lunda state is bathed three times in blood: the blood of the warriors, of the women, and of the beasts who fall prey to a marvelously seductive hunter. Looking closely, we see that this Prince-stranger, initiator of a line of anointed royalty, carries on his shoulders, as does his Luba counterpart, a part of the universe. The cosmogony is veiled in the myth but transparent in the ritual, in the actions and mysterious words of the initiates into mungonge religious society: men with eyes of light are the counterpart of animals with eyes of darkness, as the star of day is opposed to the sinister hyena-moon. The founding epic of the Bemba state tells, like the Kuba myth, of the fascination of the principle of pleasure among a migrating aristocracy, somewhat decadent in comparison with the rude warrior or hunter heroes in the Luba and Lunda epics. But all these narratives, in the final analysis, form one sole myth, which develops its autonomous structures under the turbulence of an historical adventure each time different. More than unfolding the particular story of each kingdom, these legendary chronicles of Zaïre, Zambia and Angola reveal that the powerful political organisations set up by the Bantu to the south of the great forest are not isolated from eacb other: they administrate in common an intellectual patrimony which breaks loose from the ideological role that the kings, whether drunk on palm wine or on military ambition, try to make them play for their own glory: myths and rites obey their own codes, recognize no master but one, which they give themselves in their own kingdom: the Imaginary.

The text which follows here is concerned in particular with the epic of the Bemba people, whose dominating aristocracy imposed an anointed royalty on some 100,000 people formerly grouped in matrilinear clans.
The Twilight of History: the Standpoint of Cournot
Authors: Arénilla Louis
Published: March 2007

In 1790 Melchior Grimm wrote to Catherine II: “Two empires will share all the benefits of civilization, power, genius, letters, the arts, weaponry and industry: Russia in the East and America, which has recently become independent, in the West.” Eighty years later Bachofen made public the same strongly held conviction: “I am beginning to believe that the twentieth-century historian will have only to speak of America and Russia.” In the intervening period Tocqueville concluded the first volume of his work Democracy in America thus: “There are at the present time two great nations in the world, which started from different points, but seem to tend towards the same end. I allude to the Russians and the Americans. …The principal instrument of the former is freedom; of the latter, servitude. Their starting-point is different and their courses are not the same; yet each of them seems marked out by the will of heaven to sway the destinies of half the globe.”
Beti Tales From Southern Cameroon: The Kaiser Cycle
Authors: Noah Jourdain-Innocent
Published: March 2007

The Beti with whom this study is concerned belong to the “so-called Pahouin group,” which includes, besides the Beti, the Bulu and the Fang. This group occupies large parts of Gabon, Equatorial Guinea and southern Cameroon. The region where the Beti live has a quite varied relief; the vegetation is extremely luxuriant, worthy of the great tropical forest, and there are many hills and streams. The Beti population, organized along what are known as “anarchic” lines, is made up essentially of farmers and hunters, as are most of the forest populations. The flora and fauna are also quite varied; they are the same that appear in typical Beti tales and fables.
Recent Transformations in the Roles of Writers
Authors: Siciński Andrzej
Published: March 2007

The social role, and consequently the social status, of writers has been recently undergoing interesting transformations. They are not yet always taken into account in the sociology of literature, even though that role (or, strictly speaking, roles) in the second half of the 20th century in many respects differs markedly from that in the first half of this century, or, to adopt a conventional demarcation line, before World War II. These transformations have not yet fully crystallized, but it is legitimate to think that we are witnessing processes whose consequences will be better seen in the next century. On the other hand, prior to World War

II the role of writers did not in fact differ so much from that which they performed in the 19th century, if we disregard certain specifically Polish aspects of the problem, which are not to be discussed here in greater detail. Let it be mentioned only that those specific aspects were fairly numerous: the traditions of the old-style intelligentsia as a social stratum; the role of writers as “the conscience of the nation” in the period when Poland was partitioned by the three great powers; the economic and technological backwardness of Poland in the 19th and in the first half of the 20th century; still now restricted development of mass media and mass culture.
The Actuality of Classical Studies: Aristotle's Topics and the Research of K. Lorenz
Authors: von Fritz Kurt
Published: March 2007

The position of classical studies in our time is paradoxical in several respects. When at the end of the so-called Middle Ages a great new interest in ancient Greek literature was aroused by Greek fugitives from the East, spreading from Italy to other countries of Western Europe, the study of the great Greek authors was beset with considerable difficulties. All the manuscripts which the Greek fugitives brought with them or which had been transferred to the West at an earlier time and were now rediscovered, were to some extent corrupted by copyists’ mistakes and/or mechanical corruptions, and even where they were not corrupted their content was in many places not easy to understand because the historical background for the understanding was lacking. In some cases doubts arose concerning the authenticity of works ‘attributed to certain authors. To meet these needs, the methods of textual criticism were developed by the humanists of the Renaissance and later perfected and supplemented by various kinds of historical criticism after a second revival of interest in classical antiquity, which was promoted by Winckelmann in the 18th century.
The Idea of the Promised Land
Authors: Roshwald Mordecai
Published: March 2007

It is common knowledge that the Jews have shown an unusually persistent emotional attachment to their fatherland, notably when they were exiled and dispersed. The sentiment has found many expressions throughout Jewish history and is too well known to require repeated documentation, but a few examples may remind us of its ardent nature.

“By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yes, we wept, when we remembered Zion,” opens a well-known Psalm (137). And the weeping does not meander into a passive nostalgia, but leads to an active determination expressed in the oath: “If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning.” When the moment of return from Babylon arrives, the experience transcends the confines of reality: “When the Lord turned again the captivity of Zion, we were like them that dream.” (Psalm 126).
The Nature of Myths
Authors: Smith Pierre
Published: March 2007

Among the many subjects that come within the range of social anthropology, the one dealt with in this article may at first glance seem the remotest from the border area between biology and social anthropology, the least apt “to reveal a basic problem of bio-anthropology.” Is not the realm of myth that of those incorporeal beings called gods? A realm where the laws of matter and of life are abolished? The one in which thought takes seemingly unrestricted flight and shows itself capable of begetting worlds, monsters, stories without visible root in reality?

But the same might be said about dreams; and the detour via dreams may bring us a glimpse of an unexpected shortcut. It is now known that sleep devoid of dreams is not restorative; if one is waked at the outset of the phase in which dreaming occurs, intolerance in both animals and humans is very rapid, and experiments upon animals have shown that this deprivation, if prolonged, can be a cause of death. Hence from the standpoint of survival, dreaming is quite as necessary as sleeping. Now, certain characteristics of myths, characteristics through which they are related to dreams, lead us to wonder whether they are not indispensable to the smooth functioning of waking thought as are dreams with respect to sleep.
Aspects of Language Research
Authors: Cohen Marcel
Published: March 2007

Since it received the name linguistics, the science of language has undergone changes which are rather difficult to summarize. As a foreword, I would like to recall, without going too far back, that scholars and philosophers in the 18th century were investigating the origins of language without applying any systematic method, but more or less relying on those ideas which occurred to them. An essay by J. J. Rousseau should be mentioned in particular with regard to this method. An era closed with the resolution of 1868 by the newly created Linguistic Society of Paris, to restrict all study on the origins of language.
Science Fiction
Authors: Caillois Roger
Published: March 2007

In an earlier study, De la féerie à la science-fiction, I tried to show the internal consistency and the chronological succession of fairy tales, fantastic stories and works of scientific anticipation or extrapolation. They represent three styles of the imaginary, and illustrate, each in its own way (“like hollow molds,” I said), the chief epochs of man's changing situation on his planet, as he himself saw it, more or less naively, in each case. First he depicted himself as powerless and wonderstruck; then confident in science and technology, he considered himself the fortunate conqueror of the planet; and finally he saw himself as isolated and marginal in the immensity of space—just at the very time when he was learning to move about in it.
Anthropology: Preliminary Definition: Anthropology, Ethnology, Ethnography
Authors: Lévi-Strauss Claude
Published: March 2007

Anthropology cannot be distinguished from other social and human sciences by its own particular object of study. Apparently concerned with the so-called “primitive” peoples, or peoples “without writing,” it developed into a science at the same time that these peoples were declining, or at least losing their distinctive characteristics. For the last ten years or so, some anthropologists have turned to studying the so-called civilized societies. Clearly, then, anthropology issues less from the existence of a specific object of study than from an original way of formulating problems which are shared by all the sciences of man. Anthropology acquired its importance by studying social phenomena which, because of their strangeness and difference from those of the observer's own society—and not because they were any simpler—afforded an insight into certain properties which are at once general and basic to all social life. We could compare the anthropologist's position in the social sciences to that of the astronomer in the natural sciences: man is apprehended through his remotest manifestations, over a distance which acquires temporal, spatial, and moral value. The distance which separates the anthropologist from his object of study reduces the complexity of what he can see, but, making a virtue out of this constraint, it forces him to perceive only those phenomena which may be considered essential.
Satanic Math
Authors: Bell Charles G.
Published: March 2007

What strikes me at the outset, and prompts the title, is that nothing exhibits more clearly than mathematics the complicity between man, God and Satan. That man should have knowledge so luminous, so absolute, would seem impossible did he not share, under whatever doubt or qualification, in the divine. On the other hand, the arrogation of that knowledge, its over-reaching distortion and delimitation of mind and world, hints how far it reenacts the revolt of Lucifer.
The Human Significance of Philosophy
Authors: LaLumia Joseph
Published: March 2007

Although he was not the first Western philosopher, Plato was the first to define clearly the aim that has characterized Western philosophy since its beginnings. The principal capacities in which the human being acts are scientific, moral, mathematical, artistic, political, and religious, and the aim of philosophical activity was to achieve a standpoint providing complete explanation and justification by finding and eliminating the elements of dogmatism, unrealized ignorance, and mere hypothesis by which, in the capacities mentioned, the human being is influenced. The ideal envisaged was the self-inclusive understanding, achieved by the understanding's successive advancement and containment of all conceivable criticism of itself. The criticisms by Parmenides and Zeno of Ionian and Pythagorean physics and Socrates’ criticism of various aspects of Athenian life were excellent examples.
Gypsies and the Problem of Acculturation
Authors: Cozannet Françoise
Published: March 2007

Our age is trying in many ways to deal with the problem of the survival of ethnic minorities. Being confronted with a centralized political power which destroys cultural differences, many of these minorities have become conscious of their originality (which is often hidden away in folklore) and are in search of a new balance with the dominant culture. They try to achieve this new balance by bringing their basic characteristics up to date or even deliberately entering a phase of counter acculturation and adopting an attitude of political liberation much like that of the formerly colonized peoples.
Art “En Abyme„
Authors: Kowzan Tadeusz
Published: March 2007

“What I like in a work of art, is when one finds the very subject of the work transposed, with specific reference to the characters in it. […] Thus, in certain paintings by Memling or by Quentin Metzys a small convex dark mirror reflects on its own the interior of the room where the painted scene occurs. […,] Then, indeed, in literature, in Hamlet, the scene of the play; and in a lot of other theatre plays as well. […] In The Tall of the House of Usher, the story that is read to Roderick, etc. Not one of these examples is totally accurate. What would be far more so, [….] is to compare it to a coat of arms where one image places a second one in a subjugated position (en abyme).”
The Unity of Man in Islamic Thought
Authors: Arkoun Mohammed
Published: March 2007

In a sense it is easier to talk about human unity in the biological sciences than from the perspective of the human and social sciences, especially as these have developed over the last thirty years. If paleontology, biology and neurology make it possible to emphasize physical constants evident for the entire human race, to the contrary it seems impossible to find similar unity in the social systems and the cultural values that define the radical identity of a group, a community or a nation. Apartheid, racism, intolerance and prejudices everywhere express differences that most frequently derive from social imagination but that function no less strongly as determining forces for human cultural production and historical conduct.
Universal Literature and Otherness
Authors: Boubia Fawzi
Published: March 2007

Rapid developments in science, technology and means of communication offer man possibilities for dialogue that up until now have been undreamed-of. It must be undeniably admitted, however, that we live in a world dominated by fear of the other, fanaticism, racism and every kind of conflict. This is why we have thought it useful to reactualize the Goethian conceptions of universal literature and otherness, conceptions that, coming from the generosity of a humanist and appreciator of the other, could help us contribute to the discussion on the problems of interculturality that give rise to more and more animated controversies.
Monads and Chaos: The Vitality of Leibniz's Philosophy
Authors: Bouquiaux Laurence
Published: March 2007

Leibniz's work resembles its author. A. Robinet has called it “an intellectual storm.” In its two hundred thousand pages of manuscript (most of it still unpublished) there are philosophical works that have nourished the thoughts of thinkers from generation to generation; mathematical texts of fundamental import (we all know of Leibniz as the founder - or rather co-founder - of infinitesimal calculus, but this triumph ought not to obscure his other contributions; for example, his being a precursor in the field of formal logic and the inventor of analysis situs); treatises on physics that have been relegated to obscurity by Newtonian mechanics but which may be in the process of being given new life because of the problems that the classic paradigm has encountered in the twentieth century; an impressive correspondence (approximately fifteen thousand letters, addressed to more than a thousand corespondents); significant contributions to fields as varied as theology, jurisprudence, history, politics and even technology (Leibniz did not scorn practical problems, and we find, alongside the most abstract of metaphysical systems, notes concerning the problem of Venice's sinking or the production of cognac).
The Trials of the Gas Mask An Object of Fumbling
Authors: Schlanger Nathan
Published: March 2007

It was during the Gulf War that I discovered the gas mask to be an object. As it became increasingly credible and imminent, the unfathomable menace was crucially rescaled to the toxic potency and dispersal pattern of law-abiding molecules. So it went with the gas mask: the Gulf War transformed it from a vaguely morbid mental image into a facial object of survival. But to be drafted on the nation-wide defensive maelstrom as a life-saving object (and not, as it happened, a life-taking one) the real effectiveness of the gas mask was by no means sufficient - it had also to be effectively realized, and this in turn necessitated that confidence in its claimed capacities had to be gained, and competence in its appropriate performance mastered.
Establishing the Being of Images: Master Eckhart and the Concept of Disimagination
Authors: Wackernagel Wolfgang
Published: March 2007

What is an image? An image, it might be said, is a kind of amity between the medium and the model it assumes. The purpose of this relationship is to reproduce the model and to become similar to it. Such a definition invites – perhaps in a purely playful way – some preliminary considerations.
On the Relationship between the Spiritual and the Material: The Lessons of Underdevelopment
Authors: Kebede Messay
Published: March 2007

The purpose of this essay is to show that the issue of “underdevelopment” not only raises one of the most basic and oldest problems of philosophy, namely the relationship between the spiritual and the material, but also helps positively to reformulate it. For, on closer examination, it will appear that the striking aspect of underdevelopment is that it constitutes a glaring symptom of a characteristic disturbance or maladjustment. By its strangeness and distortion, it displays a unique and unexpected tension between the spiritual and the material. Indeed, we cannot discard the possibility that the link between the spiritual and the material is likely to be better exposed in a situation of maladjustment than in one of fusion. Besides, this method of studying tension in order to observe the connection between the mental and the physical is not something new in philosophy. Bergson, Freud, and James, to mention but a few, had recourse to it.
Opacity and Light The Anecdote in Accounts of the Concentration Camps
Authors: Huglo Marie-Pascale
Published: March 2007

Writing about testimonies from the concentration camps poses a fundamental problem to those who undertake this task, for one cannot lightly broach the still-living history of the Nazi camps. Auschwitz “is not a subject for a colloquium” or, at least, not a subject like others. For the deportees themselves, speaking up is not easy. In whose name can they speak, in the name of what can they remember, how can they say it and to whom? Such are the first questions which arise like so many obstacles to communication. How to express the inexpressible? Such is the problem lying at the heart of all the testimonies, inasmuch as their credibility but also their possibility of existing depend on it. As Yves Reuter points out, the question of form appears in its most crucial aspect here:

Neither history nor textual theory can overlook the concentration camp testimonies, extreme discourses of an extreme experience. To be concerned with form is not at all secondary. The obsessive “how to say it” of the accounts in this case seems of capital importance to me.
The Transformation of Biblical Myths in Japan
Authors: Kawai Hayao
Published: March 2007

Many systems of thoughts have migrated to Japan from abroad - Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism, natural science, Marxism; all were transmitted to Japan and stopped there. It is said that Japan has been the terminus for imported thoughts. However, during the process of taking root in Japan almost every idea has been transformed within the Japanese mind. I would like to discuss a typical example of how Christianity has been changed within the Japanese mind.
The Intersecting Fields of Ethno-Architecture. From the Indo-Himalayan World to Occidental Europe
Authors: Toffin Gérard
Published: March 2007

For some thirty years, a handful of architects has been trying to call into question the primacy that the history of architecture has given to monumental buildings. The representatives of this trend want to get away from the short chronology, common since the Italian Renaissance, and react against the dominant international functionalism that has too little respect for the local cultural contexts. It is under the influence of this “vernacular” approach that the small traditional structure became as legitimate an object of research as the well-known buildings. This approach, innovative and audacious as it was, broke with a Utopian vision of a large part of modern architecture. It led the architects concerned to turn toward non-European countries and to focus their attention on the connections between indigenous housing patterns and cultures. From this decentralization ethno-architecture was born by which we understand the study of preindustrial, “traditional” habitats and housing. Inspired by Panofsky, Eliade, and Lévi-Strauss and familiar with the social sciences, these researchers appropriated the conceptual tools of anthropology. They opened up important fields of research in Asia, Oceania, the Middle East, and Africa and reaped a rich harvest of ethnographic materials. It quickly became clear to them that the so-called “traditional” house developed, in imitation of palaces and temples, from the culture of a given population and that it was informed by the religious images of the inhabitants as much as by its most sacred buildings.
The Eternal Return of the Everybody-for-himself Shaman A Fable
Authors: Hamayon Roberte N.
Published: March 2007

Comment défendre le griffon, disaient les uns, si cette animal n'existe pas? — Il faut bien qu'il existe, disaient les autres, puisque Zoroastre ne veut pas qu'on en mange.” Zadig voulut les accorder, en leur disant: “S'il y a des griffons, n'en mangeont point; s'il n'y en a point, nous en mangerons encore moins, et par là nous obéirons tous à Zoroastre.

Voltaire

At the end of the millenium in our Occident with its ambiguous triumphs, the most crippled stranger, suddenly lost, is not necessarily the Siberian hunter.
Celestial Horses and Dragon Spittle
Authors: Boulnois Lucette
Published: March 2007

To mention what is called the “Silk Routes” today is to evoke more than two thousand years of history on two continents, Europe and Asia. Naturally, over such a long period and such vast territories, hundreds of products were transported, exchanged, stolen, conquered, transferred, in short, from one country to another. For some of these products, the very source of the raw materials and the techniques of production themselves were transferred.

Everyone knows that the Chinese invented paper, printing, gunpowder and the compass—great technological advances; as for the last three, their transmission throughout the world goes back only to the Crusades, which is quite recent. Here we are interested in transfers that are less known and more ancient, the most ancient for which precise records exist, starting from the time of the “opening” of the silk routes, which, according to Chinese classical history, was during the second century B.C. We shall stop around the eleventh century A.D., at the time of the Sung dynasty. This period includes the two most interesting epochs, in our opinion, in the history of the exchanges on these routes: the Han dynasty (from 206 B.C. to 220 A.D.) and the Tang dynasty (618-907), epochs whose time frames encompass the Western Roman empire, the Eastern Roman empire, the kou-chau empire, Sassanid Persia, and the first centuries of Islam.
The Social Function of History
Authors: Florescano Enrique
Published: March 2007

“There is not, then, more than one science of man in time (history), and that science has the task of uniting the study of the dead with the study of the living.”

— Marc Bloch

Unlike the scientist, who in the nineteenth century was anointed with the aura of the solitary genius, the historian has, since ancient times, been thought of as a creator conditioned by his social group. The historian knows his profession thanks to routine apprenticeship under his professors. He trains in the discipline by reading the models inherited from his predecessors. He discovers the secrets of the art by analyzing the work of his colleagues. His richest sources of inspiration are the masterpieces of all times from the most diverse cultures.
The Veil of Unknowledge
Authors: Schlanger Judith
Published: March 2007

I borrow this title from an English mystical text written at the end of the fourteenth century, The Veil of Unknowledge, which has long been part of my life. The explicit aim of the book is to tear away this veil of unknowledge, or to give us the means to do it ourselves. The image of the veil invites a reciprocal gesture of raising, tearing, piercing. The desire that motivates this act goes beyond the veil, toward Isis and the truth, the naked figure we're endeavoring to know. Once we have cleared away the obstacles and gained a clear view of her, we—and she—are transformed.
The Philosopher's Rest
Authors: Pachet Pierre
Published: March 2007

In the invisible darkness which shrouds each one of us as an individual, and at the same time shrouds all forms of knowledge, there are things which we do not know, things which thrive in the interstitial spaces between established forms of knowledge. The attitude towards such things of those who reflect on the state of knowledge seems to convey a self-evident fact: we wish to know those things that we do not know. To put it more aptly, we are bound to want to know those things. How could it be otherwise? If humankind is regarded as a vast collective brain which stores up its knowledge, preserving that acquired in the past, gathering and centralizing new information from all sources and making sure that it is passed on, how could we wish to do otherwise than continue to broaden this domain of enlightenment and intelligence?
The Turmoil of the Unknown
Authors: Pierssens Michel
Published: March 2007

The adverse report of the Academy of Sciences, published in 1784, failed to put an end to the proselytism of Mesmer's early followers, nor did it scale down their ambitions to gain scientific recognition. The allure of mystery, the taste for wonders and the call of the unknown prevailed, and throughout that century numerous clashes occurred between the scientific establishment and those demanding its recognition. Their demand was founded not so much on a theoretical construct as on people's personal experiences as actors or witnesses, which were perceived to be true simply because they were nearly always profoundly disturbing. The fact is that, despite the observations of scientists such as Faraday, anyone could put questions to an ecstatic in a state of trance, have a medium summon the dead, or communicate with the “other world” by table-turning. Insofar as it rejected the validity of the most commonly accepted “research programmes”, the challenge to the institutions that were the guarantors of received knowledge was a major one.
The Impotence of the Word: The God Who Has Said It All
Authors: Brague Rémi
Published: March 2007

The power of the word should be at its height when the spoken word is deemed authoritative, when speech is the master of discourse. This authority can be no greater than when the word derives from what the Greeks called “the more powerful (than us),” (hoi kreittones) or even, in monotheistic religions, from He who can be called – to use a term that avoids confusion – “the Almighty.” The mighty word is the divine word. The power of this word is a result of its divine origin.
Portuguese Myths and Time
Authors: Godinho Helder
Published: March 2007

By Portuguese myths we mean several kinds of narratives, all of which actualize fundamental aspects of the Portuguese national imagination. Some are foundation narratives (Sâo Mamede, Ourique); others are historical facts that were sung so often over the years by Portuguese and foreign poets that they came to signify basic schemes of the human imagination (Inês de Castro's pure love, whose realization was frustrated by a fight between two men, father and son); other so-called Portuguese myths, on the contrary, are built around concepts that give metaphysical shape to supposed characteristics that define the national soul (saudosismo, the doctrine of nostalgia, which attempts to define the Portuguese national soul as the search for a mythical initial unity that would create a wholeness in which contraries would be abolished; the Fifth Empire as its realization on Earth); other Portuguese myths express the supposed divine predestination of the people and of the Portuguese Man, based upon divine intervention in the founding of the nation in Ourique (the Fifth Empire that would be the Age of Spirit announced by Joachim de Fiore); still others are based on historically negative facts (King Sebastian and the defeat at Alcazarquibir) but transformed through archetypal elements to show the capacity for renewal out of the defeat, a renewal that goes beyond real historical renewal to include spiritual renewal of the Portuguese Man and his fatherland, which should produce the Fifth Empire conceived either in earthly or spiritual terms. To these myths I will add a legend preceding the formation of the nation, King Roderick's Legend, because it attempts to justify the loss of Visigothic Spain to the Arabs.
The Geographic and Linguistic Status of the Silk Roads
Authors: Tryjarski Edward
Published: March 2007

Even though the languages that are spoken and written in the territories crossed by commercial and cultural routes between Asia and Europe - the “Silk Roads” - have been the object of research for many decades, the popular notion of “languages along the Silk Road” is of fairly recent origin. It is worth giving some thought to the problem of whether, or to what extent, it is actually possible and practical to continue with linguistic research in the context of the “Silk Roads.”
Plant Biotechnology in the Service of Human Health
Authors: Beachy Roger , Schell-Frederick Elizabeth , Schell Joseph
Published: March 2007

It is a cliché to say that the poor countries are becoming poorer and poorer while the rich ones become richer and richer. Previous experience shows that it is an illusion to count on mankind's sense of solidarity to resolve this dilemma. And yet we are dealing with a problem that is real, vast, and urgent. The developed world uses its knowledge and technological opportunities to sustain and increase its wealth, and in the race for scientific and technical advances the “Third World” faces the serious risk of never being able to catch up. Seen in this light, it is understandable that some people have allowed themselves to be seduced by the notion that in order to achieve a better equilibrium in the world all that is required is to return to a “more natural” life in which science and technology no longer play a dominant role. It seems to us, however, that this vision is unrealistic because it does not take account of the fact that human nature pushes us toward competition and that the kind of solidarity that would compensate for, and mitigate, this competitiveness works successfully only on a small scale (e.g., within the family or clan) or in very special circumstances (e.g., wars, natural catastrophes).
Commerce and Identity in the Greek Communities
Authors: Vlami Despina
Published: March 2007

In the eighteenth century a large scale emigration of the most enterprising strata of mainly mercantile Greeks from their homelands in Asia Minor, Greece and the Balkans’ area, then under Ottoman rule, resulted in the creation of Greek merchant communities in the most important commercial and financial centers of the Mediterranean and Western Europe.
Indian Epics of the Terai Conquest
Authors: Servan-Schreiber Catherine
Published: March 2007

The very name of Bihar, a district in the eastern part of India, evokes images of anarchy, banditry, and disarray. Already traversed by distinct cultural zones - Bhojpuri, Mithila, Magadha, and the tribal zone of Jharkhand - Bihari society is characterized by bloody clan conflict over territorial rights. The doggedness with which the region's protagonists form militias is a perpetual source of front-page news. Pitted against the Brahmans and Bhumihar Rajputs, the large landowners, are the herding and soldier castes such as the livestock-herding Yadavas, the farming Kurmis, and the former saltpeter miners, the Noniyas, whose economic, social, and political growth has given them real power. And although Magadha's rich Buddhist past attracts pilgrims and tourists, and Mithila's beautiful painted murals and villages draw art connoisseurs, Bihar ranks as one of the least safe regions of India. The rate of banditry and other crime reaches surprising levels.
The Might of Words
Authors: Villela-Petit Maria
Published: March 2007

These are the words Achilles speaks to Hektor, whom he has just struck with a fatal blow. He reminds the son of Priam how, after stripping Patroklos’ fallen body, Hektor made off with the fallen man's armour, which is Achilles’ own.
On the Political Incompetence of Philosophy
Authors: Gadamer Hans-Georg
Published: March 2007

The conflict which has tended recently to crystallize in particular around the name of Martin Heidegger goes back a long way. Where do philosophers stand in relation to political and social reality? What assistance can their problems and insights offer the process of coming to terms with this reality? In the context of the discussions surrounding Farias's book I set out my own position in Paris in November 1987; the full text was later published in German under the heading “Return to Syracuse?” This title referred to the disappointment Plato felt in his own time when, at the invitation of the tyrant of Syracuse, that city's absolute ruler, he had twice gone to initiate the young prince in the basic principles of his thought concerning the just idea of the state and the just ordering of society. Things turned out badly and Plato had considerable difficulty getting back home again. Later still he was to suffer bitter disappointment when his intimate associate Dion, a member of the innermost circle of his academic community, was suddenly murdered by his own friends after heading a victorious operation to liberate Syracuse (one would like to know more about what lay behind that particular assassination).
Governance, Security and Conflict Resolution in Africa
Authors: Anyang' Nyong'o Peter
Published: March 2007

In our book, Arms and Daggers in the Heart of Africa, Michael Olisa noted that external intervention in an internal conflict could be problematic even if carried out on humanitarian grounds. All sides of the conflict must see the intervening force as indeed neutral for it to succeed in its mission. The conflicting forces must also accept, separately and individually, that intervention is in their interest. In turn, the act of intervention must be precise and clear in objective, with the capability to be implemented in accordance with a program endorsed by all parties.
From the Quest for the Archetype to the History of Texts. A Short Note on the French Critical Style
Authors: Canfora Luciano
Published: March 2007

‘It is not possible to settle on a method of classifying manuscripts in the abstract; the lost works whose content is being reconstructed can be dated more or less precisely and the classification only acquires significance if it is accompanied by the history of the text. Then many apparent anomalies of tradition automatically disappear […]. In several of his articles Paul Maas has helped to clarify the notion of Byzantine conjecture; it would have been nice if he had placed greater emphasis in his summary on the importance of a critical history.’
A Dynamic Continuity between Traditions
Authors: Diène Doudou
Published: March 2007

Like most Africans, particularly those from Western Africa, I come from an oral tradition where the Word has a central place. Whether it is spiritual or educational, transmission takes place primarily through spoken exchange. Our traditions are passed on to children in the evening, after dinner and around bedtime, by their parents, grandparents, uncles and elders. Then the talk touches on basic matters, which are put across in a teaching style that uses images: this is the time for stories through which children discover their ancestors, their family history and the traditional religions. During these evening hours a number of ceremonies and artistic and religious activities also occur. Circumcised boys join together with the whole community for musical festivities that have a religious dimension, for in the traditional world circumcision is the important rite of passage through which a boy learns to master pain: it should never be visible. This is not a purely medical or surgical act. It is ritualized to the highest degree. It is the first marker of a concept that the West does not have, that of generation.
Images of the Sky (A Chronicle)
Authors: Villela-Petit Maria
Published: March 2007

Does living on Earth not also for human beings mean being open to the sky? Watching day alternate with night, relying on the seasonal cycle, finding their way according to the position of the stars, humans have always been aware of their dependence on the sky and tried to understand the origin of life in relation to it. And it is up to the sky again that their imagination and thoughts fly whenever they feel cramped in their earthly habitat. Following the axis of their own vertical position, the earth that is the floor for humans is seen as a ‘down here’ by opposition to an ‘up there’, the sky, towards which they turn their heads and raise their eyes. Up there is the origin of the metaphorical figure and /or dream image of the flight up into the high heavens, or the journey to other stars, or to a spiritual land beyond.
The Political Economy of Rape and Prostitution
Authors: Barnett Harold C. , Barnett Harold C.
Published: March 2007

The status of women as property is shown to be reflected in and reinforced by the social and legal perceptions of rape and prostitution in the United States. Rape laws and their enforcement are shown to protect a man's property interests in a woman. Prostitution laws and their enforcement are shown to allow the treatment of the prostitute as common property. The significance of race and income class are noted. The experience of women in capitalist and socialist societies is considered to determine the relationship between the elimination of rape and prostitution and the existence of private property and sexism.