Mystical Elements Research Articles

The Unnatural Nature of Science

Science provides the best way of understanding the world. Public understanding of science is limited: science goes against common sense, the earth moves round the sun. Paranormal beliefs are all too common and they go completely against science, there is a mystical element in our brains. Unlike religion, science is universal and is almost entirely independent of the particular culture in which it is performed. It had is origin in ancient Greece. Whenever a new technology is introduced it is not for the scientists to take an ethical decision about how it should be used, but they must make public the implications.

The Varieties of Vernacular Mysticism (1350–1550)

The Varieties of Vernacular Mysticism (1350–1550)

Sufismo: a importância da mística islâmica no desenvolvimento histórico do islã

Elementos ascéticos e místicos presentes de forma implícita no Islã, desdeseu surgimento, tornaram-se explícitos no decorrer dos dois primeiros séculosde sua história (VII e VIII d. C.). Neste período observou-se o surgimento dosprimeiros muçulmanos devotos, que formaram comunidades nos atuais Iraque,Síria e Irã. No séc. XII, essas comunidades estavam espalhadas por diversas localidades,e formavam novas instituições sociais (Ordens). Até o início do séc. XX,o Sufismo (em árabe Tasawwuf), nome pelo qual o misticismo islâmico passoua ser conhecido no Ocidente, mantinha grande influência na vida espiritual eintelectual dos muçulmanos, sendo importante elemento na construção da teiasocial do Islã. Neste artigo, os principais aspectos sócio-históricos do Sufismo:origem, natureza e objetivos serão discutidos.

Everett Interpretation and Quantum Concept of Consciousness

Subjective aspects of quantum mechanics (QM) are most radically expressed in the (EI) of QM which suggests coexisting macroscopically distinct configurations of the world in the form of a superposition of the (quasi-)classical state vectors. The components of such a superposition are often verbally denoted as Everett's worlds, hence the name Many-Worlds Interpretation (MWI) for EI. Explicit accounting the correlation of each classical configuration of the world with the corresponding state of an observer's mind yields the so-called Many-Minds interpretation (MMI). This is maximum that may be done in the context of EI if the restriction by pure physics is implied. In the author's Extended Everett Concept (EEC) the observer's consciousness is defined in the spirit of psycho-physical parallelism, i.e. as going beyond pure physics. As a consequence, according to EEC, an observer, if he/she weakens or turns off his/her consciousness (perception), obtains the ability of super-intuition (obtaining seemingly unavailable information) and even of controlling the subjective reality (a picture of classical reality as it will be subjectively perceived). This may be interpreted as a realization of the Jung's collective unconscious as well as an explanation of the mystical elements in Oriental philosophies, world religions and deep psychological practices. NeuroQuantology | March 2013 | Vol 11 | Issue 1 | Suppl 1 | Page 85-96

Re-Sounding Folk Voice, Remaking the Ballad: Alan Lomax, Margaret Walker, and the New Criticism

From the British Romantic period through the first decades of the twentieth century the literary ballad was a commonly practiced form, some working within the broadside tradition in recounting or imagining narratives with a thinly veiled socio-political aim, others imitating the ancient ballads with their mystical elements. This poetic practice was inspired by and coincided with the development of ballad studies, initiated in the eighteenth-century antiquarian work of Bishop Percy and Robert Burns, among others, formalized in the mid-nineteenth century by the unsurpassed scholarship of Harvard professor Francis Child, and reoriented, in the 1930s with recording technology and anthropological approaches to field work. It's fair to say that scholarship and poetics have often converged in the ballad, and that folk revivals are scenes of instruction as well as creativity and preservation. This is the general context for the specific moment in modern balladry that is the occasion for this essay--a moment in which the ballad captured the attention of archivist, poet, and teacher alike in their attempts to sound folk voice and put it to use. Three poetic projects of the US 1930s and early '40s brought literary and folk balladry into close proximity: the mid-1930s field recordings of Southern folk ballads gathered by John and Alan Lomax for the Smithsonian, subsequently issued in 1942; the 1939 publication of Cleanth Brooks and Robert 'Penn Warren's influential textbook Understanding Poetry, in which literary balladry serves a critical role for close-reading instruction; and the literary ballads of Margaret Walker, composed in dialect, collected in the middle section of her 1942 book For My People, and later recorded for Smithsonian Folkways. The proximity of these projects is serendipitous, insofar as it calls our attention to the ways that technology and racial politics reshaped folk voice and its representations at mid-century, whether incidentally or by design. From the many, sometimes surprising points of contact among the recordings, the textbook, and the dialect poetry, the ballad emerges as a dynamic modern form in which ideals of American folk voice were being contested. In this essay, I will begin by showing that Alan Lomax's project challenged the limitations of print as a medium for representing folk voice generally, and the ballad in particular; his appeal to the US public to attend to its folk heritage depended on his faith in sound recording as an authentic inscription of folk voice. Like Lomax, whose recordings were positioned as educational, Brooks and Warren presented the ballad as a point of entry into a scene of instruction, in which the ballad was a rudimentary poetic genre on a continuum that progressed toward complexity and ambiguity. Variations on the ballad James Harris in the Lomax recordings, however, complicate Brooks and Warren's important textbook version, highlighting how the medium of presentation influences meaning, form, and reception. This crucial difference notwithstanding, the projects converged in their assumptions about high and low art and, more troublingly, about race and voice. Margaret Walker's print and recorded work offers a provocative solution to the dilemmas presented by Lomax and Understanding Poetry. For Walker recognized that folk voice is a performance, and by giving voice to a marginalized people in her dialect balladry--written and spoken--she staged a critique of racist assumptions about black character and artistry. As I hope this essay will demonstrate, our evolving critical understanding of the ballad and folk voice benefits from an analysis of the performed as well as the written text, an. analysis that brings both under the careful scrutiny of close reading and listening.' Developments in poetry at mid-century cannot be adequately assessed without research into the variety of institutions and materials in which it manifested. Recording and reviving: the Lomax projects In 1942, the Library of Congress issued the first of a series of 78RPM albums featuring music collected under the leadership of John and Alan Lomax for the Archive of American Folk Song. …

The Incertitude of Language and Life in the Poetry of Olvido García Valdés

Two of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s formulations serve as guideposts for the analysis of the poetry of Garcia Valdes: the concept of language-game and the Creation Mystic Experience, or seeing the world as a miracle. The paper first considers the language-game in terms of “unbound” or exempt language. The poet, recognizing the metamorphic nature of language, frees it from predetermined cultural content and, most notably, from grammatical rigidity, toying with ambiguity and fluidity through such techniques as juxtaposition, pronoun vagueness and ellipsis. The second part of the study considers the poet’s exploration of the ineffable, which embraces both the astonishment of being alive in the world—a mystic experience—and the mystery of death. The discovery of the wondrousness of the real comes through unhurried observation—principally visual, but also auditory and tactile—and is expressed with poignancy in language exempt from conventional constraints. When the focus is on mortality, additional textual strategies are present, for example, locating death in the body and placing a single sound within vast silence. What predominates is neither the astonishment of the real nor the menacing nearness of death but tension between the two; the ineffable balances on an axis of chiaroscuro. This article is available in Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature: http://newprairiepress.org/sttcl/vol36/iss2/7 The Incertitude of Language and Life in the Poetry of Olvido Garcia Valdes Sharon Keefe Ugalde Texas State University Olvido Garcia Valdes (Santianes de Pravia, Asturias, Spain, 1950) has published six books of poetry, El tercer jardin (1986) ‘The Third Garden’; Exposicion (1990) ‘Exposition’; ella, los pajaros (1994) ‘she, birds’; caza nocturna (1997) ‘night hunt’; Del ojo al hueso (2001) ‘From Eye to Bone’; Y todos estabamos vivos (2006) ‘And We Were All Still Alive.’ In 2005 an anthology, La poesia, ese cuerpo extrano ‘Poetry, that Strange Body,’ appeared, and in 2008, a volume of her collected poetry, Esa polilla que delante de mi revolotea ‘That Moth that in Front of Me Flutters.’ The adjective “abstract” is frequently used to describe the poetry of Garcia Valdes (Blesa, Garcia Fernandez); thought-provoking is perhaps a better choice. The reception of the poet’s oeuvre mirrors what Ludwig Wittgenstein hoped for from readers of his Philosophical Investigations: “I should not like my writing to spare other people the trouble of thinking. But, if possible, to stimulate someone to thoughts of his own” (viii). This desire is not the only link between the Spanish poet and the philosopher. Wittgenstein’s formulations serve as useful guideposts in the analysis of Garcia Valdes’s poetry; two in particular stand out: the concept of language-game, principally formulated in Philosophical Investigations (1953), and the mysticism alluded to in his Tratatus (1922). The preface to Philosophical Investigations, in which the philosopher confesses his inability to successfully wield his thoughts into a whole, confirms a view of language as unstable and fragmented (vii). Language bounces around, evolves and eschews unity. Meanings of words, symbols, and sentences are metamorphic, always provisional: “New types of language, new language-games, as we may say, come into existence and others become obsolete and get forgotten” (Philosophical 1. 23). Wittgenstein became a model for 1 Ugalde: The Incertitude of Language and Life in the Poetry of Olvido Garc Published by New Prairie Press 274 STT you approach the same place from another side and no longer know your way about” (Philosophical 1.203). Garcia Valdes’s poetry mirrors not only the language-game concept of the later Wittgenstein but equally the mysticism alluded to Tractatus. In this early treatise he emphasized that the expressive capability of language is limited for the most to descriptive statements, such as those found in the natural sciences, but also recognized that “there were certain ineffable truths about what is real that had to be passed over in silence yet were not for this reason unimportant or insignificant for human life” (Nieli). Michel de Certeau explains that Wittgenstein reduces “truths” to “linguistic facts and to that which, in these facts, refers to an ineffable or ‘mystical’ exteriority of language” (11). Important passages of Tractatus broach this mystical exteriority, which relates to experiences that give insights into the meaning of life (Nieli), for example: “The solution of the riddle of life in space and time lies outside space and time (It is certainly not the solution of any problems of natural science that is required)” (6.4312). Our analysis of the poetry of Garcia Valdes first considers the concept of the language-game in terms of unbound or exempt language and second, the presence of mystical elements.

The Girl Who Could Silence the Wind (review)

Reviewed by: The Girl Who Could Silence the Wind Hope Morrison Medina, Meg . The Girl Who Could Silence the Wind. Candlewick, 2012. 244p. ISBN 978-0-7636-4602-8 $17.99 Ad Gr. 8-10 Ever since Sonia Ocampo's birth, which instantly silenced a raging storm, the villagers of her mountain town have believed Sonia holds special powers, and they bring her their wishes for granting. When her prayers fail her in the face of tragedy, Sonia, now sixteen, begins to question her abilities. To avoid facing the townspeople with her doubts, she takes a position as a housemaid for a wealthy family in the distant capital city. At same time, her brother, Rafael, disappears; through a complex series of events, both literal and mystical, Sonia figures out where he is and, with the help of a young man named Pancho, finds him. This multilayered debut novel is particularly successful in presenting the complexities of Sonia's thoughts as she tries to understand her identity and her social role. As the town mystic, she never allowed herself to consider the possibility of a future of her choosing, and her experience in the city finally allows her to dream. The romance between Pancho and Sonia is thoughtfully crafted, with each of them considering the possibility of love for the first time, and Rafael's story, which proves to be the critical conflict of the novel, is both a devastating experience for the family and Sonia's opportunity to make peace with who she is. Unfortunately, the mystical elements don't always combine smoothly with the realistic events, and the pacing is slowed by long stretches of inactivity as Sonia goes through the mundane events of her days in the city. Those who stick it out, though, will be readily swept up in the exhilarating conclusion to Sonia's tale. Copyright © 2012 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

Evelyn Underhill’s Mysticism : An Appreciation

Evelyn Underhill’s Mysticism: An Appreciation Lawrence Cunningham (bio) Evelyn Underhill (1875–1941) published her best-known work Mysticism in 1911. It has never gone out of print.1 In fact, Bernard McGinn has judged that it is one of the best-known books on Christian mysticism ever to be published in the English language.2 The year 2011 marked the one hundredth anniversary of its publication; so it seems like an opportune moment for making a critical reassessment of her work. Such a reassessment will also serve, I believe, to help us judge the actual state of scholarship on the tangled topic of Christian mysticism. That the title of this essay uses the word “appreciation” should not be taken to mean that the book is without deficiencies. Still, I think Underhill’s book deserves appreciation both because it accomplished as much as it did, given the limitations of scholarship at the time, and because it has found an appreciative audience for a century. The very word “mysticism” only entered the English lexicon in the mid-eighteenth century. Nor has it been used uniformly in a positive sense. Indeed, Underhill herself, as if she were summarizing the popular use of the term, tells her readers in her preface that she does not intend the word to mean: “an excuse for every kind of occultism, for dilute transcendentalism, vapid symbolism, religious or aesthetic sentimentality, and bad metaphysics. On the other hand, it has been freely employed as a term of contempt by those who have criticized those things.”3 What Underhill describes in this passage is how the term was vulgarly used in her day. Underhill’s work was not a single flower blooming in an indifferent desert. There was already an increasing interest in Christian mysticism during the Edwardian period. Dean William Ralph Inge delivered the Bampton Lectures on Christian mysticism in 1899. Three years before Underhill’s work was published, Baron Von Hugel published, in two-volumes, The Mystical Element in Religion, which, despite its somewhat idiosyncratic nature, was a highly influential work. Von Hugel, in fact, would later become Underhill’s spiritual director, a few years after the publication of Mysticism, orienting her more firmly into relationship with the person of Christ and encouraging her active participation into the life of the church.4 Underhill admired Rufus Jones, the American Quaker, whose book, Studies in Mystical Religion, was published a [End Page 106] few years before her own, and she was also familiar with the classic work of William James (Varieties of Religious Experience), though she found his analysis of mysticism wanting.5 Click for larger view View full resolution Evelyn Underhill, Courtesy of Retreat House, Pleshey Mysticism is divided into two large sections. The first, entitled, “The Mystic Fact” argues that there is a form of consciousness that we can rightly call “mystical.” Underhill roughly categorizes mystics as falling under three broad categories: those who are seekers or pilgrims; those who cultivate an interiority of the heart; and, finally, those who follow the ascetic path.6 The second half of the book develops under the rubric “The Mystic Way.” The former section takes as its point of departure an exposition of vitalism. Influenced by her reading of Henri Bergson, she traces this mystical consciousness in psychology and investigates its relationship to theology and symbolics while, at the same time, carefully distinguishing it from “magic” (the term that was then used in anthropology). The latter part of the book is a kind of synthesis of her capacious reading in the literature of the mystics themselves. This literature was mostly Christian, but some was also from non-Christian traditions (e.g. The Upanishads, Sufi poetry). [End Page 107] When one consults letters from the period she was doing research for Mysticism, it is astounding to find how much she read when such literature was not easily obtainable in critical translations.7 She read the work of Saint Teresa of Avila in French and engaged a friend to translate some of the German texts on mysticism, including the work of Meister Eckhart. She relied on anthologies for some sources and used Paul Sabatier for analysis of Franciscan sources. She knew...

Gereformeerde mistiek en die neerslag daarvan in piëtistiese ego-tekste van manlike gelowiges in die Suid-Afrikaanse pionierslewe

Reformed mysticism and the culmination thereof in pietistic ego-texts of male believers in the South African pioneer life on the frontier. The manifestation of Reformed mysticism in the pioneering communities of the South African interior was not limited to women-believers only. Although less frequent, Reformed mysticism contained in the pietistic ego-texts of male-believers also surfaced in early pioneering communities of South Africa. This essay considers the mystical ego-text of Francois Retief (1773–1838), the brother of Piet Retief who was massacred with other Voortrekkers by the Zulu king Dingaan in February 1838. Francois Retief’s ego-text reflects typical elements of Jesus-centred bridal mysticism. Although it does not contain the radical features of bridal mysticism prevalent among women-believers on the frontier, it reflects intense levels of spiritual consciousness associated with the energetic levels of faith among Reformed believers under dire circumstances on the frontier.

The Concept of Zhen 真 in the Zhuangzi

The term zhen in the Zhuangzi is commonly associated with the zhen ren or the "true person," who is described, for example, as capable of going through fire and water unharmed. Some scholars take this as typifying a mystical element in the Zhuangzi . This essay investigates the various meanings and uses of zhen in the Zhuangzi and reaches a broader understanding of the zhen ren in various contexts.

MORALĖS MISTIKA

Straipsnio tikslas – išplėtoti Ludwigo Wittgensteino mintį apie mistinius moralės elementus. Tai daroma remiantis Blaise’o Pascalio ir Immanuelio Kanto idėjomis. Pascalis kalbėjo apie meilės fenomeno mistiškumą. Kantas samprotavo apie praktinio proto mistiką. Šių dviejų autorių moralės samprata leidžia kalbėti apie mistinius moralės elementus. Remiantis Pascalio ir Kanto idėjomis, bandoma įrodyti, kad mistika nėra vien religinio mąstymo dalis, bet gali būti traktuojama kaip svarbus moralinio patyrimo elementas.Pagrindiniai žodžiai: moralė, mokslas, mistika, meilė, transcendentalizmas.Mysticism of MoralityAlvydas Jokubaitis SummaryThe aim of this article is to develop Wittgenstein’s idea of mystical elements of morality. This is done by invoking the thoughts of Blaise Pascal and Immanuel Kant. Pascal talked about mysticism of love. Kant philosophized about the mysticism of practical reason. The conception of morality developed by these two thinkers allows us to speak about mystical elements of morality. Building on from the ideas of Pascal and Kant one can try to prove that mysticism is not exclusively part of religious mode of thinking but should be treated as important part of moral experience.Science demands the usage of empirical facts. Religious people are mystics, they acknowledge entities that are not describable in scientific terms. Discussions about mysticism do not necessarily have to be based on religion. Scientists cannot accept the proposition “God exists” or “the soul is immortal”, there is no sense in talking about mysticism with them. Another way of defending mysticism looks much more promising – to prove that moral judgement has mystical elements. Ludwig Wittgenstein thought that ethics cannot be expressed in ordinary scientific language but directs towards something that is absolute and mystical.Wittgenstein thought that science is capable of exhausting the entirety of valid propositions. In his opinion, sentences about morality center on things that are absolute, transcending the world of empirical facts. This viewpoint is in agreement with the basic intentions we find in philosophy of morality of Pascal and Kant. Ethical judgement can be interpreted as one of many forms of mystical thinking. Mystical approach to ethics is dislodged to the margins of Western philosophical discourse. This has very much to do with philosophers’ distrust in religion. This article presents arguments, which prove that we can reasonably talk about mysticism of morality.Keywords: mortality, science, mysticism, love, transcendentalism.

Elif Şafak's "Love" in the postmodern novel as a Mystical Elements

Elif Şafak's "Love" in the postmodern novel as a Mystical Elements

Santos Populares no Brasil: Catolicismo e Misticismo

The Brazilian Catholicism exhibits several mystical elements which show the influence of miscigenation on religion, language and culture. During the Portuguese colonization, the Catholic cult was impenetrable to the most of people. To surpass linguistic obstacles set by the Latin, white, black and indian associated ancient beliefs and external displays of faith (as processions) in order to take part in the religion. This blend of different elements resulted in religious syncretism. The legends about saints' supernatural abilities, besides the comparison between African divinities created a good environment to a great cult of Saints and the powers attributed to them. Among the most popular saints in Brazil are Saint Anthony, the twins Cosmas and Damian and Saint George. Despite the fact that nowadays Catholic Mass and rites are spoken in Portuguese, this belief in personal contact with the supernatural sphere of religion is common in Brazilian everyday life, being the prayers and the procession the climax of religious feeling. The best-known Portuguese saint, Anthony (born Fernando de Bulhoes) carries a series of legends around his life and abilities. Born in Lisbon in 1195, Anthony died in Italy in 1231. His worshippers believe he helps people to find lost things, to find a love, to help someone to marry, to protect animals and so on. George was a soldier to the Roman Empire during the reign of Diocletian, Emperor who persecuted Cristians. He was converted to Chritianity and was tortured and beheaded. The martyrdom of George occured in April, the 23 th in 303 A.D. This date is his feast day. In Brazil, Saint George is largely associated to the African orishacalled Ogun. The Warrior Saint is invoked as protector from all kinds of evil. The twins Cosmas and Damian were born in Arabia in the 3rd century AD and were executed around 287 AD. In Brazil , Cosmas and Damian were associated by the African entities called ibeijis, being regarded as protectors of children. Their feast day is celebrated in the Roman Catholic Church in September 26 since 1969, but their believers continue to celebrate the former date, September 27. The afro-religious temples use to receive children in order to bless them and offer candies for them. In the big cities take place many Festas de Cosme e Damiao . Besides this, many common people use to informally, outside any cult, offer childrenlittle toys and candies in the streets or even organize feasts by their own. According to the tradition, to please a child makes Cosmas and Damian (or the African entities) bring good luck to the host. The oldest church in Brazil (built in Igarassu, Pernambuco, in 1535) was honored to the twins.

Little Side Holes: Moravian Devotional Cards of the Mid-Eighteenth Century

Abstract One of the more intriguing types of eighteenth-century Moravian art were small devotional cards. These side-hole cards (Seitenhöhlchenkarten) offer a distinctly Moravian reworking of a medieval iconographic tradition. Most of these cards have verses about the side wound of Jesus written in beautiful calligraphy, sometimes in red and green ink. The most intriguing cards have images of the side wound, sometimes with scenes painted into the wound. Aaron Fogleman offered these pictures as evidence for his thesis that the Moravians viewed Jesus as female and considers them as part of their eroticized devotion to Christ. The author of this essay argues that this is a misinterpretation. These cards were probably used by both children and adults in private devotions and are hardly erotic. Rather, they are visual representations of key elements of Moravian wounds mysticism, especially the concept that all aspects of daily life, even eating and sleeping, should be done in the awareness that one is in the body of Christ.

The Lord of the Heart: Abhinavagupta's Aesthetics and Kashmir Śaivism

AbstractIndian aesthetics owes much to the genius of Abhinavagupta (fl. c. 950–1025), whose aesthetic theory combined elements of Tantric exegesis, philosophy, poetics, musicology, and mysticism. His aesthetics is also based on the cosmology of the Śaivagamas, as shown in the benedictory verses to his commentary on the Nātyaśāstra, Abhinava Bhāratī, where he invokes Śiva in the form of the cosmic and human elements (tattva). Abhinavagupta also uses the similes of the world drama and world picture to show the interconnectedness of theology and the arts, since Śiva is the Divine artist. Moreover, the doctrine that "everything is connected with everything else" provides a basis for an understanding of art in which even a fragment can reflect the beauty of the whole. Aesthetics also assumes the freedom of the artist to create, as well as the joy that emanates from a work of art—a joy directly connected with spiritual bliss.

Out-of-body experience and arousal

In a study of more than 13,000 Europeans, 5.8% reported the out-of-body experience (OBE) form of autoscopy.1 Occurring in diverse clinical settings, OBE is also typical of near death experience (NDE). NDE are responses to life-threatening crisis characterized by a combination of dissociation from the physical body, euphoria, and transcendental or mystical elements. Persons with NDE may have an arousal system predisposed to allowing intrusion of REM sleep elements during the transition between wakefulness and sleep.2 The arousal system is comprised of brainstem structures controlling or influencing sleep-wake states, alertness, and attention. REM intrusion manifests as the atonia of sleep paralysis (or cataplexy), as well as visual or auditory hallucinations. Although not considered REM intrusion, OBE and the REM state have an established relationship that is incompletely understood. In the state boundary disorder of narcolepsy, individuals often give accounts of OBE,3,4 which diminish after the narcolepsy is treated.4 In this study, we investigated if OBE in subjects with NDE could be regarded an arousal phenomenon by occurring during sleep transition or corresponding to REM intrusion. Structured interviews were conducted and REM intrusion measured in 55 subjects with NDE, and compared to age- and gender-matched controls as previously described.2 All gave informed consent as approved by the institutional review board. OBE during NDE was determined by the Greyson questionnaire asking if the respondent “Clearly left the body and existed outside it.” For OBE of sleep transition, subjects …

Kierkegaard, mysticism, and jest: The story of little Ludvig

Throughout his authorship, Kierkegaard appears remarkably uninterested in the tradition of Christian mysticism. Indeed, in the only two places in the authorship where he broaches the topic directly, the discussion is disclaimed in such a way as to suggest that Kierkegaard really has nothing to say about it at all. However, attending to the successive incarnations of the character(s) named “Ludvig” throughout the authorship – an appellation that harbors an especially self-referential dimension for Kierkegaard – the present paper attempts to elucidate what may, with due reservation, be referred to as the mystical element in Kierkegaard’s thought. The ultimate yield of this endeavor is a vision of “mysticism” that is more act than thought oriented, and a vision of the author “Kierkegaard” that is more delightful than melancholy.

Voices from beyond: Verdi's Don Carlos and the modern stage

It has often been suggested that a renewed fascination with Verdi’s Don Carlos coincided with the advent of Regieoper (or radically revisionist staging) in Germany over the past few decades. However, Don Carlos already counted among the most frequently revived operas in German-language theatres during the first half of the twentieth century. This article argues that neglect of this rich performance tradition is linked both to a German-centred narrative of the history of operatic production, which constructs the 1930s and 1940s as a gap in the development of ‘avant-garde’ direction, and to an over-emphasis on the visual side in recent academic discourse on operatic staging. These attitudes are challenged by a close look at selected German productions of Don Carlos from the 1920s to 1940s. Treatment of the opera's most difficult scenes – the mystical elements of the auto-da-fé finale and the dénouement – reveals striking continuities between the Weimar and Nazi eras, as well as conceptual affinities to some of the most acclaimed recent stagings. These findings call for a more historically grounded approach to operatic production.

Staking claims in the biotechnology Klondike

My first brush with intellectual property came through defending free data release from the human genome project. I was amazed at the tacit acceptance by some that this information could and should be privatized. The product was not an invention: a genome sequence is a clear-cut case of public domain material. People need a robust system for handling intellectual property, but patents have ambivalent effects. Patent protection stimulates some forms of creativity, and there are many winners. However, by stifling other forms of creativity, and by eroding the public domain, property rights create losers too. Patents are only one form of incentive, and most great scientific discoveries were made not for future claims to intellectual property rights, but for the fun and joy of exploration. The pressures to enclose the public domain are rife, reaching even into WHO--as we have seen in its policy over bird flu sequences, recently contested by Ilaria Capua. (W1) The value of patents is often argued through parallels between the growth of patenting and increasing prosperity. But proof of causality is missing. One can equally point to parallelisms between obesity and prosperity or between global warming and prosperity. However, nobody suggests that obesity or global warming are causes of prosperity, they are unwanted by-products. Undoubtedly, robust patents have an important part to play, but we should be cautious in giving them too much credit for industrial success. I was at one time persuaded that strong patents would stimulate a wide variety of pharmaceutical innovation across the genome, but the field is now awash with look-alike drugs focused on a small number of targets. Evidently markets, not patents, drive drug development. The success of the biotechnology industry in the United States should be seen in the context of this country having a very effective public domain system. It also has strong patent law, but drug discoveries are often rooted in the public domain. In general, the developing countries that have shown the fastest economic growth are those that retained relatively protected markets until they reached a position of strength. The same was the case for Europe and the USA a century ago. We must ensure that harmonization of international patent law does not become a way for developed countries to pull up the ladder. An obviously contentious subject is the patenting of life forms. The answer is straightforward if current criteria are used properly. A life form as it occurs in nature is not patentable because there is no inventive step. A captured life form is also not patentable, because the concept of caging is not novel, although a new and ingenious design of cage might be. A modified life form is patentable, but only as far as the actual modification is concerned. There is currently a big gap between those who want to patent entire micro-organisms, and people who fed that life should not be patented under any circumstances. Current patent practice has allowed excessively broad claims on the strength of a limited modification; cotton, for example. Neither of these extremes makes sense. To think about this wide gap of opinion, it helps to project forward to the time, probably during this century, when new life forms will be synthesized from scratch, Such life forms will be inventions, and therefore patentable. We shall understand them fully, so the mystical element will be gone, but even before that point it will be commonplace to modify life forms so extensively that their origins are unclear. Patenting of genes has been defended on the grounds that genes are novel chemical entities, subject to composition of matter patents. Unquestionably, a novel gene that had been synthesized from scratch, and served a useful purpose, could legitimately be considered in this way. In the future, such molecules will be commonplace, but at the moment patented genes do not meet this criterion. …

Ghazali and the poetics of imagination

Abu Hamid al-Ghazali, a Muslim jurist-theologian and polymath who lived from the mid-eleventh to the early twelfth century in present-day Iran, is a figure equivalent in stature to Malmonides in Judaism and Thomas Aquinas in Christianity. He is best known for his work in philosophy, ethics, law, and mysticism. In an engaged re-reading of the ideas of this preeminent Muslim thinker, Ebrahim Moosa argues that Ghazali's work has lasting relevance today as a model for a critical encounter with the Muslim intellectual tradition in a modern and postmodern context. Moosa employs the theme of the threshold, or dihliz, the space from which Ghazali himself engaged the different currents of thought in his day, and proposes that contemporary Muslims who wish to place their own traditions in conversation with modern traditions consider the same vantage point. Moosa argues that by incorporating elements of Islamic theology, neoplatonic mysticism, and Aristotelian philosophy, Ghazali's work epitomizes the idea that the answers to life's complex realities do not reside in a single culture or intellectual tradition. Ghazali's emphasis on poiesis - creativity, imagination, and freedom of thought - provides a sorely needed model for a cosmopolitan intellectual renewal among Muslims, Moosa argues. Such a creative and critical inheritance, he concludes, ought to be heeded by those who seek to cultivate Muslim intellectual traditions in today's tumultuous world.