The Advent of Sexual Ethics in Rabbi Abraham ben David of Posquières's Baʿalei Ha-Nefesh

The response article to the book by S.A. Nikolsky “Soviet Philosophical and Literary Analysis” is a dialogue between Oleg Leibovich and Alexander Kazankov. The conversation covers a wide range of topics related to reading the specified treatise. Firstly, the possibility of classifying S.A. Nikolsky’s philosophical analysis as a real anthropological type is discussed. According to modern Russian sociologists, the Soviet man emerged in the 1960s and his presence in society can be confirmed by mass surveys. However, this scientific approach is not interesting for S.A. Nikolsky, as both interlocutors point out. For a philosopher, it is not a question of whether or not the Soviet person existed, but rather who he was and what his role in literature was. Even if you assign it the status of a noumenal thing-in-itself or a hypothetical Bigfoot, it is a legitimate subject for literary and philosophical analysis. S.A. Nikolsky’s methodology allowed him to identify two fundamental features in the image of the Soviet man: clandestine and submissive. According to the author, these human qualities were discovered by Russian literary classics (I.S. Turgenev, F.M. Dostoevsky, N.S. Leskov, etc.). During the discussion, it turns out that the existence of substantial human qualities is problematic, and clandestinity and submission are socially conditioned features of the ethos of the Russian writing intelligentsia itself. The interlocutors conclude their discussion of S.A. Nikolsky’s treatise on Soviet man with a discussion on the actual “Sovietness” of Soviet man.

The article deals with the problem of increasing the productivity of literature study via various approaches to literary text analysis. The author argues that event-based and compositional approaches can be used from 5th-6ths grade: during this period, students are better at dealing with concrete facts rather than the abstract. Chronotope analysis facilitates the development of students’ ideas about time and space and should be offered in the 9th-11th grades. Image-based analysis (7th-11th grades) helps broaden the understanding of individuals’ internal world. Verbal image analysis best reveals the nature of literature as a verbal art in the 5th-11th grades. Problem- and topic-basedanalysis helps intensify intellectual activity and is most useful in the 9th-11th grades when students develop an interest in important philosophical issues. The highest level of the problem- and topic-based analysis is the conceptual and philosophical analysis (9th-11th grades). The productivity of the learning process increases due to the use of philosophical categories by the students. Structural and stylistic analysis helps realise one of the key principles – the study of literature from a historical and genealogical perspective. Genre analysis is universal and is first offered in the 5th-6th grades. Event-based analysis is useful for short prose texts with one plot line. Compositional analysis – for texts divided into acts and chapters. Chronotope analysis should be used in the case of texts where time and space have an important conceptual meaning. Verbal image analysis is best suited for poetry, fragments of prose texts and drama. Problem- and topic-based analysis as well as the conceptual and philosophical analysis are useful tools for understanding author’s philosophical system. Structural and stylistic analysis helps establish connections between literary material and stylistic processes,whereas genre analysis enables the most comprehensive evaluation of the literary text.

Representing middle-class, moral African Americans in Contending Forces: A Romance Illustrative of Negro Life North and South (1900), Pauline E. Hopkins challenged mainstream race discourses that maintained Jim Crow's social and political inequalities. With one eye on that social work, critics have singled out Hopkins's narrative and thematic achievements in novel--her first, and only one published as a novel rather than serially. But scholars have also criticized Contending Forces both before and since it was republished in 1988 Schomburg Library of Nineteenth-Century Black Women Writers, arguing that novel insufficiently challenged a white patriarchal hegemony. Her female characters are too submissive, they charge, as conventional marriage plot subsumes almost all of Hopkins's women. Critics also read novel as implicitly arguing an assimilationist politics because her Black characters--many of whom are mulatto--are too physically and socially white. [1] Still, given turn-of-the-century race, gender, and sexual politics, we can recognize that Hopkins's attempts to destabilize primary social categories of race and gender, and to challenge sexual mores, pushed socio-cultural limits that white patriarchal hegemony needed desperately to maintain. As Elizabeth Ammons has insightfully noted in Afterword of first scholarly book dedicated solely to Hopkins, principles operating in Hopkins's work are her venturesomeness, defiance of categories, resistance to received tradition, and determination to articulate new forms not to contain stories but to release new and paradigms (212). Such resistance is not surprising given that Hopkins wrote in a turbulent era, when lynchings grew horrifyingly numerous as a (white) attempt to control both race and sexuality, and when a burgeoning rhetoric of biological difference imagined through a dichotomy of white superiority and Black inferiority found new fire in discourses of eugenics, i mmigrant exclusion, doctrine of separate but equal, Egyptology, and psychology. [2] Writing in this milieu and through a national discourse that had long understood metaphoric and actual importance of the family in (re)producing white patriarchal hegemony and in maintaining control of property through lines of descent, Hopkins attempted to reconstitute a national identity by providing new possibilities and paradigms that erased race- and gender-based inequalities and complicated tangled threads of familial relationships and inheritance. [3] As she wrote in her Preface to Contending Forces, novel is a simple, homely tale, unassumingly told, which cements bonds of brotherhood among all classes and complexions. Fiction is of great value to any people as a preserver of manners and customs--religious, political, and social. It is a record of growth and development from to generation (13-14). Hopkins recognized that divided American house must be reunited to stand because U.S. was historically and undeniably a homestead of mixed heritage. The novel itself also recognizes U.S. as an estate whose prosperity required equally both its male and female caretakers. Thus, while Contending Forces is laudable for its challenge to national hegemonic definitions of race and sexuality, as critics have noted, novel is all more fascinating because of how Hopkins represents issues of race and sexual morality as inherently connected to each other and to issues of property and inheritance. Race and sexual morality, like forms of tangible property such as money and estate, have value as forms of intangible property that can be conferred, retained, stolen, and reclaimed. Given then ongoing debate between political camps of Booker T. Washington and W. E. B. Du Bois, turning partially on extent to which material gain and accumulation of property were necessary for racial uplift, Hopkins's emphasis on issues of property was quite pertinent, though largely ignored. …

<p>В статье рассматривается кризис религиозности в современной западной цивилизации. Показывается, что в большинстве католических и протестантских стран Европы и США уровень религиозности стремительно снижается, а в православных — существенно не меняется или даже увеличивается (наибольший прирост за последнее десятилетие наблюдался в России). Либеральная идеология активно вытесняет из жизни общества и отдельного человека религию, традиции и обычаи, непосредственно с нею связанные.</p><p>Новый виток секуляризации, широко развертывающийся в западном мире, проявляется как в катастрофическом уменьшении числа прихожан в церквях и их закрытии, так и в размывании основополагающих христианских нравственных принципов, касающихся вопросов семьи, брака и половой морали.</p><p>Либерализация половой морали, охватившая страны Запада, проникает и в различные христианские церкви, что проявляется в одобрении ими нетрадиционных сексуальных отношений, подрывая авторитет Церкви и девальвируя христианскую религию. Либерализация половой морали носит агрессивный характер. Католическая церковь, которая отказывается одобрять однополые браки, подвергается серьезному давлению со стороны либеральных кругов, развернувших масштабную кампания по дискредитации Церкви с целью заставить ее изменить позицию по вопросам половой морали.</p><p>Либерализм, не добившись окончательной победы над одной религиозной системой, столкнулся с новой угрозой в лице другой — ислама, который стремительно распространяется в Европе вместе с мигрантами из стран Африки и Ближнего Востока. В данной статье особое внимание уделяется проблеме исламизации Европы и нарастающего в связи с этим противостояния культур в дилемме «Запад — Восток», в котором половая мораль играет одну из основных ролей.</p>

Computer-Based Processing of Literary Works and Study of Literature

Essays in Narrative and Fictionality: Reassessing Nine Central Concepts

Everett W. Hall. What is value? An essay in philosophical analysis. The Humanities Press, New York1952, and Routledge & Kegan Paul, London 1952, xi + 255 pp. - Herbert Hochberg. ‘Fitting’ as a semantical predicate. Mind, n.s. vol. 65 ( 1956), pp. 530–533. - Everett W. Hall. Hochberg on what is ‘fitting’ for Ewing and Hall. Mind, n.s. vol. 67 (1958), pp. 104–106. - E. M. Adams. The nature of ought. Philosophical studies (Minneapolis), vol. 7 (1956), pp. 36–42. - Everett W. Hall. Further words on ‘ought.’Philosophical studies (Minneapolis), vol. 7 (1956), pp. 74–78. - E. M. Adams. ‘Ought’ again. Philosophical studies (Minneapolis), vol. 8 (1957), pp. 86–89. - Volume 24 Issue 1

Criticism after Critique: Aesthetics, Literature, and the Political

This chapter examines the fin de siècle emergence of the English sex-problem play, directly addressing issues of sexual morality and in particular the sexual double standard. The impact of changes in marriage law, debates on the regulation of prostitution, and the campaign for women's rights can be seen in a number of late nineteenth-century melodramas, and in early problem plays. It was, however, the catalytic effect of Ibsen's drama which rendered traditional sentimental dramas old fashioned, and helped to secure licences and audiences for society plays by A. W. Pinero, Sidney Grundy, and Henry Arthur Jones, which centred on issues of female sexual morality and judgement. The majority of these plays were explicitly anti-feminist, offering conventional warnings about female vulnerability and sexual frailty. But self-consciously theatrical plays by Wilde and generically mixed plays by H. A. Jones offered more unstable and multiple meanings to puzzled audiences

Este artigo estuda a influência da filiação religiosa na opinião de eleitores e de seus representantes no Congresso Nacional, compara a opinião dos eleitores classificados segundo a religião declarada e analisa a opinião do conjunto dos congressistas e daqueles pertencentes à chamada bancada evangélica, formada por congressistas evangélicos não pentecostais e pentecostais. Também mostra que a religião influencia pouco a opinião de eleitores e congressistas nos temas de natureza econômica e estrutural e marca mais a opinião em temas do comportamento e moralidade, além de constatar que a bancada evangélica se move ora na direção de seus eleitores, ora na do conjunto dos congressistas, distinguindo-se como grupo sobretudo por sua preocupação com a moral sexual.

Reviewed by: Plato's Apology of Socrates: A Literary and Philosophical Study with a Running Commentary Thomas C. Brickhouse Emile De Stryker and S. R. Slings. Plato's Apology of Socrates: A Literary and Philosophical Study with a Running Commentary. Leiden, New York, and Koln: E. J. Brill, 1994. xvii + 405 pp. Cloth, $103 (US). (Mnemosyne Supplement 137) Most of this book was written by Father E. de Stryker over a period of some thirty years and had not been completed when he died in 1978. After de Stryker's death, one of his students, Ferdinand Bossier, worked on the manuscript for several years only to abandon it when a publisher could not be found. Apparently, the manuscript sat untouched for some time until, in 1988, Professor S. R. Slings of the Free University at Amsterdam agreed to finish the project. Slings' contribution was to revise, edit, and, in places, correct de Stryker's research. Slings also added some forty pages of text and a number of footnotes. This brief account of how this book came into being helps to explain one of its [End Page 487] primary defects: much of the book, particularly the discussions of the philosophical views expressed in the Platonic Apology, is not informed by the many enormously helpful studies in Socratic studies published in the last quarter century. In fairness, Slings did revise certain sections in the light of recent work. But, in general, he saw little need to improve upon de Stryker's analyses. Of the one hundred and ten works Slings lists as "cited more than once," only fifteen were published since 1978. Of those fifteen, nine bear on Apology, and most of those only tangentially. According to his "Preface," de Stryker set out to produce a "supplement" to Burnet's edition of Plato's Apology (Plato's Euthyphro, Apology of Socrates, and Crito, with Notes, Oxford University Press, 1924), which de Stryker regarded as the single greatest work on Socrates' famous speech. Nevertheless, de Stryker thought Burnet's otherwise excellent notes needed updating and expanding. Moreover, existing commentaries failed in three key respects. They did not adequately explore the rich philosophical implications of the text; they did not appreciate the Platonic Apology as a magnificently crafted piece of fourth–century literature; and they did not understand that the importance of Apology as a philosophical work is inseparable from the literary qualities of the speech. To remedy these defects, de Stryker sought to provide a careful analysis of the "composition" of Apology, the composition being ". . . the way in which the structure is worked out in detail: each idea gets its proper place and emphasis, and the relations of the parts to one another give the whole its articulation on the one hand, and its unity on the other" (6). For de Stryker, one must first understand the speech's composition if we are to understand why it is so compelling. Slings remained faithful to de Stryker's general approach and his central assumption about the importance of the speech's composition to its persuasiveness. As de Stryker had intended, the book is divided into two parts. The first part consists of an introductory chapter followed by ten chapters of analysis and interpretation. These essays carry the burden of proving our authors' thesis that Apology is a philosophical and a literary masterpiece. The second part consists of ten sections of notes in which some aspect of virtually every line of the speech is discussed. Many of the notes draw comparisons between constructions in Apology and in other Platonic writings as well as in other fifth– and fourth–century works. The most significant inference de Stryker and Slings draw from their analysis of the composition of the Platonic Apology is that the work is largely, though not entirely, the product of Plato's imagination. Although they never make clear just how much of the work is fiction, it is enough in their judgment to falsify what is often called the "historicity thesis," according to which Plato's version is, in some sense, a report of what the historical Socrates actually said to the jury at his trial. Against the historicity thesis, de Stryker and Slings...

The Oxford Handbook of Thucydides contains essays on Thucydides as an historian, literary artist, and political philosopher. It also features papers on Thucydides' intellectual context and ancient reception. The creative juxtaposition of historical, literary, philosophical, and reception studies allows for a better grasp of Thucydides’ complex project and its impact on later periods. The Handbook is organized into four sections of papers: Thucydides as an Historian, Thucydidean Historiography, Thucydides and Political Theory, and Context and Ancient Reception of Thucydidean Historiography. It therefore bridges traditionally divided approaches to the author. Articles avoid technical jargon and long footnotes, and are written in an accessible style. Finally, the Handbook includes a thorough introduction as well as four maps. Up-to-date bibliographies and two volume indices enable further study and easier cross referencing of topics within the volume. In sum, the volume offers a comprehensive introduction to a writer whose simultaneous depth and innovativeness have been the focus of intense historical, literary, and philosophical study since ancient times.

A Cultural Ambassador East and West: J. Hillis Miller’s <i>Lectures in China</i>

In recent years, methods of analyzing variables have become increasingly popular in social work research. Techniques such as structural equation modeling (SEM) and confirmatory factor (CFA) have been introduced into the curriculum of social work doctoral programs (Gillespie, Alsup, & Rubio, 1995). Many social worker researchers are now familiar with these techniques. Another useful but less well known approach to analyzing variables is class (LC) modeling. LC models are person-centered methods. These approaches can be quite useful when investigating problems that affect diverse groups of people. LC models estimate a variable that explains an aspect of heterogeneity (or diversity) in a population. This is particularly important when the aspect of heterogeneity is elusive and difficult to capture with a single measure (for example, religiosity, attitudes about moral issues) (McCutcheon, 1987a). LC modeling is not a particularly new concept-techniques have been described for more than 50 years (Green, 1951, 1952). Early examples of LC modeling include the use of General Social Survey data from the 1970s to identify classes of racial prejudice and lack of racial prejudice among white respondents (Tuch, 1981) and to identify classes of respondents regarding sexual morality and values (McCutcheon, 1987b). The recent development of more efficient and useable statistical methods, described later in this article, has made the application of LC models to social science problems a more realistic possibility (Goodman, 2002). LC models are becoming increasingly popular as a method of analysis. A search for latent class analysis in PsycINFO reveals that LC modeling techniques have been used for examining subtypes of borderline personality disorder (Clifton & Pilkonis, 2007), bipolar disorder (Fagiolini et al., 2007), and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (de Nijs, Ferdinand, & Verhulst, 2007). LC models have been used to examine patterns of juvenile offending (Odgers et al., 2007), couple violence (Simpson, Doss, Wheeler, & Christensen, 2007), and substance abuse (Agrawal, Lynskey, Madden, Bucholz, & Heath, 2007; Dierker, Vesel, Sledjeski, Costello, & Perrine, 2007). It is clear that LC models have important applications that are relevant to social work research, yet they are infrequently used by social work researchers. A keyword search of Social Work Abstracts (in April 2009, using the terms latent AND [class OR cluster OR profile OR structure]) and a hand search of five social work journals (Journal of Social Service Research, Journal of Sociology and Social Welfare, Social Service Review, Social Work Research, and Research on Social Work Practice) revealed only six social work articles using LC models (Bowen, Lee, & Weller, 2007; Keller, Cusick, & Courtney, 2007; Neely-Barnes, Marcenko, & Weber, 2008; Pears, Kim, & Fisher, 2008; Travis & Combs-Orme, 2007; Vaughn, Shook, & McMillen, 2008). This research note is intended to extend the knowledge of social work researchers about LC models by explaining the basic concepts of and assumptions underlying LC models, the distinction between class (LCA) and profile (LPA), exploratory and confirmatory analysis, methods for model estimation, tests of model fit, and statistical software packages that are available for conducting LC modeling. Examples are used throughout to illustrate these concepts. BASIC CONCEPTS AND ASSUMPTIONS A variable is one that cannot be directly observed. Because it cannot be directly observed, the relationship between a set of measured variables is used to characterize the unobserved (latent) one (McCutcheon, 1987a). Social work researchers have frequently used the concept of variables to estimate measurement models (Gillespie et al., 1995). In CFA, the relationships between measured indicators are used to estimate the true value of one or more construct(s) (McCutcheon, 1987a) and the measurement error (Kline, 2005). …

This chapter offers an interpretation as to why issues of secularism and gender did not play a significant role in transitions from authoritarian to democratic regimes in Catholic contexts. By the time highly divisive and politically contested issues of “gender,” such as the legalization of divorce, abortion, or same-sex marriage, emerged on the legislative agenda in most Catholic countries, democratic regimes had already been consolidated. In reaction to the Catholic Church’s official defense of a “traditionalist” position on gender issues and a singularly obsessive focus on “sexual” moral issues, one can observe, throughout the Catholic world, a dual process of female secularization and erosion of the Catholic Church’s authority on sexual morality.