Central Text Research Articles

Venice at 60: Article 5 and the acceptable limits of use

The Venice Charter is central to modern conservation, and foundational for ICOMOS specifically; yet its contemporary relevance is debatable. These and other issues were discussed by ICOMOS in Budapest 20 years ago, in a conference marking the Charter’s 40th anniversary. However, questions remain as to its ongoing significance. As Bogusław Szmygin asked in 2004, does the Charter remain the ‘Decalogue' of the conservation discipline, or has it itself become a ‘Historical Monument’?The Venice Charter as a product of high modernity, with its belief in a definitive break with the past and an overcoming of tradition. The paper assesses the Charter’s ongoing relevance in relation to one pressing issue in contemporary conservation, the limits to the acceptable use of – and change to – historic buildings (Art. 5), and using an example of recent change to an English parish church. The paper argues that the acknowledged need for the interpretation of the Charter requires a hermeneutically literate approach which acknowledges the limits of a scientific/technical reading of any historic monument – the Charter included – and the importance of a dynamic understanding of the living tradition that is conservation. It concludes that the Charter remains a central text for the conservation discipline, which itself is a tradition in good health, and for that very reason its status will continue to be fiercely debated.

‘Plastic truth’ after Catherine Malabou. Truth, life, and education

What form might truth take in a theoretical frame which precludes notions of origin and telos? Catherine Malabou’s theory of ‘plasticity’ is such a frame, as it takes the accumulation of life and not the search for eternal truths to be a central premise of philosophy. I conduct a close reading of central texts of Malabou’s to conceptualise truth as a plastic phenomenon over three stages: conception, gestation, and nativity. The conception of truth involves its coming-into-shape; gestation its consolidation of shape; nativity the precariousness of being alive. ‘Plastic truth’ represents a meeting of negotiations, accidents, history, and morality, in constant motion; an epistemic modality with moral and political consequences for education.

Jung, the Rebirth Motif and Psychedelics I: Documenting Jung's Contact with the British Pioneers.

C. G. Jung wrote very little about psychedelic drugs and he took a sceptical view of them. However, he was sufficiently impressed by Aldous Huxley's 1954 account of taking mescaline, The Doors of Perception, to invite Huxley to visit him in Switzerland. Huxley declined Jung's invitation but Huxley's collaborator Humphry Osmond met Jung instead. This paper documents Jung's contact with the British pioneers of psychedelics research and presents the scant material illuminating his views about these drugs. It also determines the efforts of British psychiatrist Ronald Sandison, who was the first to develop an "explicitly Jungian approach" to psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy (Hill, 2013), and it highlights a connection between Sandison's initiative and the Society of Analytical Psychology (SAP) through the involvement of two SAP members: Margot Cutner, Sandison's colleague, and Michael Fordham, who supervised a trainee working with one of Sandison's former patients. Despite Jung's objections to the use of psychedelics, Sandison and Cutner developed ground-breaking protocols during the 1950s and they were among the first to document the phenomenon of "spiritual rebirth symbolized in the birth experience known to many LSD therapists" (Sandison, 2001). In two companion papers, I consider Jung's treatment of the rebirth motif in his commentary on The Tibetan Book of the Dead, which later became a central text in the psychedelic movement, and I chart the evolution in psychedelics research from an association with schizophrenia during the 1950s to the mystical paradigms of the 1960s and beyond.

Yoga and the “Pure Muhammadi Path” of Muhammad Nasir ‘Andalib

This article addresses the question of how early modern Sufis dealt with yoga. Some scholars have argued that a movement of Sufi reform occurred in South Asia during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, representing a shift towards legal Islam, which would call for the rejection of non-Islamic practices. This explanation overlooks the rhetorical construction of Sufi claims of spiritual status and shari‘a legitimacy, and it fails to distinguish eighteenth-century examples from the very different reform movements created in the nineteenth century in response to European colonialism. This article considers as a case study Nala-yi ‘Andalib (“The Nightingale’s Lament”), the central text produced by the pre-colonial founder of the “pure Muhammadi path”, Muhammad Nasir ‘Andalib (d. 1758), with the help of intertextual references to the masterpiece of his son, Khwaja Mir Dard (d. 1785), ‘Ilm al-Kitab (“Knowledge of the Book”). The consequence of their evaluation of yoga was not the systematic rejection of non-Islamic practices, but a guarded acknowledgement of their efficacy within a framework that used Indic references as a straw man for intra-Islamic debates.

Scholarly worlds and popular texts: The Bhagavad Gðtå’s vernacular communities in early modern India

The Bhagavad Gītā is often thought of as the popular religious text par excellence in modern Hinduism. A substantial amount of scholarship has argued that its modern status as the central text of Hinduism is grounded in its 19th-century colonial and nationalist receptions. However, recent work on late premodern Indian philosophy has raised the possibility of constructing alternative genealogies for modern religious textual practices, though the methodologies that may allow the characterisation of premodern texts as ‘popular’ canonical works remain uncertain. This article asks how we may further interrogate the idea of the Gītā’s status as a classic or canonical text by looking at the ways in which this status was historically constructed, maintained and mediated in 18th-century North India. In order to reflect on the conditions that historicise the idea of the Gītā as scholarly, public or popular text in premodern and modern India, this article engages with two different approaches to the question of the Gītā’s social worlds during that period. One, it analyses histories of production and circulation, and two, it examines the genres of some Gītā adaptations. It does so by drawing from manuscripts containing translations and adaptations of the Bhagavad Gītā from Sanskrit into Hindi that were copied and composed between the 16th and 18th centuries.

Ce mai putem spera de la arta modernă? O perspectivă heideggeriană asupra artei moderne

The central text around which I have written this work is: Art in the Epoch of Completion of Modernity, a text authored by Martin Heidegger between 1937 and 1938 but published posthumously. What draws attention in this work, distinguishing it from other Heideggerian texts, is the apparent shift from the usual manner of writing, primarily preoccupied with the meticulous choosing of the words that shape his thoughts. Instead, we encounter a Heidegger who is notably more decisive and impatient.

Uso del enfoque histórico para el análisis literario en el contexto de enseñanza del inglés como lengua extranjera

This article presents an English as a Foreign Language lesson aimed at Venezuelan university students of International Studies. The purpose of the lesson is to guide students towards interpreting a literary text from a Historical Approach perspective. Theoretical principles are analyzed, and the central text is the poem Not My Business by Nigerian writer Niyi Osundare. The poem’s theme is considered relevant for the target population as it addresses abandonment and indifference in the face of social and political injustice. A lesson was implemented based on the poem, which not only facilitated language development and communicative competence but also promoted reflection on the consequences of apathy towards social issues. Thanks to an eclectic, student-centered approach, the selected text served as an example of how to narratively recount past events in a meaningful way, addressing a topic of notable relevance.

Do Respectable Ladies Buzz, Grumble or Hum

Et dukkehjem (A Dolls’ House) by Henrik Ibsen is one of the most central texts of world theatre and literature, but at the same time, it is also a text written by an author coming from a relatively peripheral source language and culture. Nevertheless, soon after her entrance to the European stages Ibsen’s Nora found her way to the Slovenian theatres, albeit via German translations more often than not. This paper will show how the fact that the translations were done between two peripheral languages has affected all existing Slovenian translations, direct or indirect.

The Matter of Personae in Medieval Italy

Abstract This article hunts for the medieval understanding of juridical persona in the courtrooms of communal Italy (c.1250–1450). While corporate personae have been the long-favored subject of inquiry for both medieval and modern scholars, the ontological predecessor of the corporate persona, the juridical persona, remains undertheorized. The gap is surprising given that (i) the concept is central to other formative legal notions of standing, status, and identity and (ii) medieval legal practice’s erstwhile penchant was to gloss and re-gloss every word of its central texts. By considering cases of gestural blasphemy brought before both civic and ecclesiastical courts, this article discovers the multiple and context-specific meanings for persona at law. These shifting definitions hover around a theological impossibility: a material quality to divine persons that could render them subject to injury and defendable in court. I contend that the legal utility of the term persona rested in its ability to bridge conceptual gaps like that created in the prosecution of blasphemy. Persona was left definitionally both one and many for good legal reason.

The Female Man ve The Left Hand of Darkness Romanlarında İkinci Dalga Feminizmin Yansıması

Women science fiction writers of the 60s and 70s reflected second wave feminist ideologies in their fictional works. The distinctive narrative techniques of science fiction genre brought out various aspects of feminist ideas in different ways. Issues related to gender and sex were embedded in the elements of science fiction such as parallel universes, androgynies, intersex, mindreading, planets, aliens, and inventions. Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness (1969) and Joanna Russ’s The Female Man (1975), through these elements, raise questions about gender equality, body politics, ethics, and social constructions. These science fiction novels have themes that are closely related to the central texts debated among second wave feminists such as Simon de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex (1949) and Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique (1963). Le Guin and Russ apply feminist theories to unconventional lives and societies, whose uniqueness or oddity helps readers think outside of the box. By presenting alternative societies, they unfold how male domination can cause sexual objectification and gender inequality, and anatomic differences in science fiction worlds creates an awareness concerning constructed gender roles. Moreover, the second wave feminists’ emphasis on sexual freedom, birth control, and marriage are illustrated through the multi-faceted outcomes of these multi-directional utopic and dystopic societies. This paper aims to bring together second wave feminist ideas and science fiction through an examination of two works, The Left Hand of Darkness and The Female Man, both of which present resisting interpretations of traditional gender issues. Unorthodox approaches to gender, the peculiar structure of the societies, and body politics will be analyzed through the narratives and elements of science fiction. Further-more, this paper will illustrate how these novels challenge conventional definitions of gender and sex in the light of second wave feminism.

Better to Receive Than to Give

Three generations ago, intellectual historians wrote books in which central texts and intellectual figures were held to be the sources of entire bodies of thought. The metaphors of “influence” and “origins” were common; particular arguments associated with those texts and thinkers were imagined as shaping and creating traditions of thought. Adjectives like “Lockean,” “Jeffersonian,” “Nietzschean,” and “Kantian” attached themselves to whole strains and schools of philosophical, political, and social thought. Two generations ago, a wholesale shift in intellectual historiography, best represented by the Cambridge school historians Quentin Skinner and J. G. A. Pocock, but evident well beyond them, pushed historians away from the centrality of major figures and texts understood as shaping long traditions, and toward “languages” and “discourses” that were historically localized and bounded. Individual texts were to be understood not as the source of a stream of ideas, but as creatures of very specific discursive and ideological environments; understanding their history meant understanding authorial “intention” contextually, rather than “influence” and long-term consequence. Along with this turn was a commitment to historical discontinuity and an understanding of the alterity and “otherness” of past ways of thinking. Whatever our vision of Kant might be today, said this school of thought, it is not the Kant of the eighteenth-century world in which he thought, and we should be wary of projecting our contemporary understandings into that foreign world.

A unit of our own: one attempt to let students guide the curriculum

PurposeThis paper aims to explore how teachers’ choice of text, centering of student voices and collaboration with the community around a language arts curriculum impacted the engagement and learning experiences of 85 11th and 12th-grade refugee background students designated as English language learners.Design/methodology/approachA qualitative self-study framework that inquired into the assumptions about teaching and learning and the roles as social justice educators framed this narrative paper. Student journaling and teachers’ reflection logs and observations of class dramatization during a lesson unit on the play Les Blancs by Lorraine Hansberry formed the research text and informed the thematic analysis and findings of this study. The lenses of culturally sustaining pedagogy and a third space helped unpack the vantages of student voice and community engagement in the curriculum.FindingsIn a unit whose central text was chosen based on students’ racial and ethnic identities and their interests, they actively engaged in class and role-played as teachers, generating content that fostered their linguistic repertoires and critical discussions in class. Collaboration with community partners boosted the teacher’s agency with the curriculum and created a model of collaboration and learning for the class.Originality/valueStudent voices and community engagement in learning are powerful tools for designing culturally sustaining pedagogies.

Wholeness, Hypocrisy, and Leadership

Theorists on Christian leadership on a broad scale embrace servant leadership theory (Åkerlund, 2015; Bredfeldt, 2006, pp. 88–89). There is, however, also an awareness of the deficiencies of the theory in light of Christian realism. This article looks at what may be called the dark side of leadership posed by the challenge of the problem of evil in theological anthropology. There are of course several dark sides of leadership and the one which is addressed here is the problem of hypocrisy in Christian leadership. Against this backdrop, Jesus’ criticism of the hypocrisy of some Jewish religious leaders may be helpful with Matthew 23 as the central text. In this chapter which Benedict Viviano has called the least loved chapter in the gospel of Matthew (Viviano, 1990, p. 3), Jesus provides a scathing attack on the contemporary Jewish religious leaders. The criticism of the leadership gives several negative principles for Christian leadership and the overall problem may be identified as hypocrisy. This article analyzes the problem of hypocrisy in leadership in Matthew’s gospel situated within the gospel itself and the overarching theological concern. Whereas hypocrisy is identified as Matthew’s moral nightmare, the moral dream may be called wholeness, providing the consistency between the inward nature of a person which the hypocrite lacks. A distinct Matthean response to the problem of hypocrisy in Christian leadership is formulated both by way of identifying hypocrisy and by describing the path towards wholeness through repentance and God-centered living which is laid out in Matthew’s gospel.

Pre-Modern Nordic Memories in their Literary Contexts

The study of memory has become a central field in saga scholarship in recent years. The present article deals with a number of remarkable mnemonic phenomena in Old Norse-Icelandic narratives. It contextualizes them in biblical, classical, and more modern examples of memory culture. These serve as texts of reference for the Norse narratives that are in the focus of this article. Some of the analyses are inspired by the German philosopher Hans Blumenberg’s work on how myth has always already transgressed to memory (reception) and the art historian Aby Warburg’s concept of pathos formulae that produce emotional impacts and mnemonic tropes.Aspects that are treated are for instance acts of commemoration as social and cultural activities, eddic mytho-narratives as stories to remember, the importance of the body and the senses in terms of memory studies, the interrelationship of remembrance and oblivion, and finally pre-modern mediologies. Central texts discussed in the article are eddic poems such as Völuspá (The Seeress’s Prophecy), skaldic poetry and its mnemonic pictorality, Icelandic sagas and historical writings (Icelandic Book of Settlement), examples of folklore. Some outstanding features are stellar memories, the question whether the place of memory is in the human breast or brain, or the importance of avian imagery in narratives about birds as preeminent media of remembering and forgetting.The article has a comparative approach. It attempts to show how Old Norse-Icelandic literature is closely contextualized within a web of Scandinavian and non-Scandinavian narratives and thoroughly shaped by features of cultural memory, shifting constructions of and dealings with ever changing imaginations of pasts.

Kierkegaards Begriff Angst als „gottesfürchtige Satire“

Abstract Kierkegaard՚s The Concept of Anxiety deserves to be treated as a central text on sin, but not because it introduces an ingenious intermediate psychological determination that helps to approach an explanation of the „Fall.“ Its real relevance lies in the way the text enacts the noetic effects of sin through a theoretical reflection on the possibility of sin. This essay unfolds this thesis and assigns a central hermeneutical role to Caput 4.

Sámi Literature in Norwegian Language Arts Textbooks

Sámi Literature in Norwegian Language Arts Textbooks

J. G. Fichte's Foundations of the Entire Wissenschaftslehre and Related Writings, 1794–95 by J. G. Fichte

Reviewed by: J. G. Fichte's Foundations of the Entire Wissenschaftslehre and Related Writings, 1794–95 by J. G. Fichte Isabelle Thomas-Fogiel J. G. Fichte. J. G. Fichte's Foundations of the Entire Wissenschaftslehre and Related Writings, 1794–95. Edited and translated by Daniel Breazeale. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021. Pp. 608. Hardback, $145.00. This edition of texts written or taught by Fichte between February 1794 and the winter of 1794–95 is a major editorial event and is destined to become the indispensable working tool for all English-speaking students and researchers interested in Fichte. Daniel Breazeale, one of the greatest Fichte specialists, offers here four essential texts. First, the heart of this edition and of Fichte's philosophy, is Foundation of the Entire Wissenschaftslehre (literally "Doctrine of Science") of 1794–95. This central text has already been translated into English by Peter Heath and John Lachs under the title Science of Knowledge (New York: Appleton Century Crofts, 1970), but as Breazeale explains in his preface, he corrected the errors in translation and above all wished to propose a version that was "as broadly accessible as possible" (xi). This is a great challenge, given that this version of the Wissenschaftslehre (henceforth WL) is considered one of the most abstract and difficult texts in philosophy. Let us recall that the term 'WL' qualifies Fichte's entire undertaking and not just one of his works; Fichte thus professed more than fifteen versions of the WL. With this fundamental text, we are also offered a revised translation of two essays (which Breazeale had already edited in 1988): Concerning the Concept of the WL, or of So-Called 'Philosophy' (April–May 1794) and Outline of What is Distinctive of the WL with Regard to the Theoretical Power (winter 1794–95). Finally, Breazeale translates for the first time into English The Zurich WL, the lectures Fichte gave before a small committee from February 24 to April 26 of 1794. With this book, English-speaking readers thus have at their disposal, [End Page 334] in a single volume, some of the most fundamental writings of Fichte's first philosophy. The precision and clarity of this translation will, if not "force the reader to understand," to use a well-known title of Fichte, at least help the reader to appreciate one of the culminating points of idealism. But there is much more to this edition than a precise, fluent, and illuminating translation. It includes, first, an introduction of about one hundred pages that details Fichte's bibliographical, historical, and philosophical journey; then, endnotes that clarify certain moments of the text by placing them in their context, identifying the opponents targeted by Fichte, and restoring the debates of the time; lastly, a German-English and English-German glossary and an index. It is a considerable work, the fruit of a lifetime of research, which will introduce many beginners to Fichte's philosophy and at the same time renew many specialist debates. And it is undoubtedly a strength of this edition that it can be read at several levels, by the beginner as well as by the most experienced researcher. As this review cannot deal with all the rich analyses in Breazeale's introduction, I will give just a few examples. Breazeale first endeavors to reconstruct the genesis of Fichte's questioning. Indeed, the work of the historian of philosophy—as R. G. Collingwood conceived of it—consists first of all in restoring as closely as possible the question to which the text is intended to provide an answer. So, what question or problem was the source of his philosophy that he felt the need to rename WL? Fichte's initial problem was that of the foundation of transcendental idealism. The criticisms of skeptics like Gottlob E. Schulze (also known as "Aenesidemus") or Salomon Maimon had revealed the inadequacy of the foundations laid down by both Kant and Reinhold. As Fichte says and Breazeale reminds us, "The system has to be rebuilt" (4). This rebuilding is the common object of these four translated texts. In this respect, the Zurich lectures (of which only a small part remains) are the witness of this foundation work. Reading these...

Menyelami Kedalaman Tasawuf

The presence of Sufism in the midst of this global society is not only to provide responses and answers, not only question religious problems, but also about social, political and economic conditions of mankind. Sufism is an Islamic oasis that has a mandate in delivering necessary of human spirituality to the perfect stage. Sufism study is an Islamic study born from the womb of Sufism treasures in depth. Sufis have always rested on the dualism of truth between innate and inward, between historical and trans-historical sociology. Spiritual experimentation is not merely an individualistic idealistic experimentation, but also a social-idealistic experiment driven by a real sociological situation according civilization of the times. Then, to maximize the results of good and correct Sufism studies, it should use all existing methodologies inseparably. This is typical as a multidisciplinary approach. Use one of methodology without the other will reduce the formulation of Sufism which actually built on the spiritual experience of each individual original Sufi figure, the struggle of faith and their passion when struggling with the social reality faced and the recognition of the central text of Islam, namely Qur'an and hadith as normative foundation. Thus a brief review of discussion Sufism which provides an image complexity of approaches and instruments in reading it, with various aspects and scopes.

Reading Anzac Religion and the Sacred: The Bible as a Central Text and Artefact of Australian Soldiers' Experience of the First World War*

This article demonstrates the resilience of religious traditions and practices among Australian soldiers, and the need for caution about presuming connections between the experience of modern war and secularisation. A core argument is that the Bible should be understood as a central text and cultural artefact of Australian soldiers' experience of the First World War. The pocket New Testament was the most widely possessed book among Australian soldiers, and probably the most read and valued. For many it offered profound religious, moral, and emotional consolation. For others it possessed talismanic qualities, conjured home associations, or became an “object of memory.” Communal reading practices made Testaments prominent in the aural experience of war, but such practices could also elicit antipathy towards religion. Taken together, these findings inform scholarship on the mentalités and material culture of Australian war experience, challenging the longstanding scholarly and popular myth of the secular Australian soldier. Additionally, the article breaks new ground in situating Australian experience within a substantial international scholarship on the crucial role of religion (both official and popular) among soldiers of all combatant nations. Partly due to its majority Protestant population, Australian soldiers' Bible possession and usage resembled that of Anglo‐Saxon and German Protestants.

Scots Afrikaners

Scots Afrikaners