Genuine Continuity Research Articles

Joseph Brodsky’s Poem «San Pietro»: an Example of Analysis

The article considers the poem «San Pietro» (1977) by Joseph Brodsky. The paper analyzes the poem written by a free accentual verse and its metric features in their correlation with semantics: fuzziness of objects, indistinguishability of things in Venetian fog and the «fuzziness» in the metric syllabic-accentual basis of the text.
 The author traces features of the poem composition, which combines freedom and
 certain organizing principles. It is shown that the poem contains the key motifs for
 the alienation of I from its own past and the surrounding world (a description of the
 lyrical self as an anonymous guest, a hidden likeness of I to a can kicked by foot).
 Fog is one of the alienation signs.
 The poetics of the time in the poem «San Pietro» is characterized by the
 identification of the triad «the past – the present – the future», the elements of which
 correspond to the three-part structure of the text. For the lyrical hero, it is impossible
 to return to his own Petersburg / Leningrad past or to join the historical past.
 There is no genuine continuity between the past, the present and the future. Time (its
 symbols are sea and water) in the poem is characterized by contradictory properties:
 it seems to freeze, although it also moves forward (from two o'clock in the afternoon
 to evening twilight) and (in the lyrical I imagination) rushes back to the
 moment of the world creation. Water and images of sea inhabitants become signs of
 this prehistoric state. One of the implications of «San Pietro» is the legend in the Book of Genesis about the creation of the world by God. The poem depicts the almost colorless, invisible and soundless world that is similar to the still formless land like in the Bible.

Is Scripture the Only Legitimate Norm for Christian Theology?

According to Karl Barth, Jesus Christ is God’s Word, and this Word is the Church’s foundation. However, the ultimate norm for Christian theology is the Holy Spirit, whom Jesus Christ promised would reveal truth through the Church’s teaching authorities. The Church’s teaching authorities have discerned the Holy Spirit outside of Scripture.The Holy Spirit is the pope’s aid in discerning and proclaiming the truth faithfully, “promised to the successors of Peter… that, by [the Holy Spirit’s] assistance, they might religiously guard and faithfully expound the revelation… transmitted by the apostles.”Once the promise of divine aid in the Holy Spirit for the Church is recognized, the question of what norms legitimately guide Christian theology becomes a historical one: what are the norms that the Church’s teaching authorities have used in prayerfully discerning the Holy Spirit? There is apostolicity, or genuine continuity with the beliefs and practices of those who first heard, proclaimed, and otherwise responded to the Gospel. As the Second Vatican Council put it, “the Church… perpetuates and hands on to all generations all that she herself is, all that she believes”—not merely the Scriptures.

From desire to subjective value: what neuroeconomics reveals about naturalism

Philosophers now regularly appeal to data from neuroscience and psychology to settle longstanding disputes between competing philosophical theories, such as theories of moral decision-making and motivation. Such naturalistic projects typically aim to promote continuity between philosophy and the sciences by attending to the empirical constraints that the sciences impose on conceptual disputes in philosophy. This practice of checking philosophical theories of moral agency against the available empirical data is generally encouraging, yet it can leave unexamined crucial empirical assumptions that lie at the foundations of the traditional philosophical disputes. To illustrate this, I compare recent work in the neuroscience of decision to traditional philosophical theories of motivation and argue that the traditional theories are largely incompatible with empirical developments. This shows that genuine continuity between philosophy and science means that in some instances the conceptual foundations required to explain the phenomenon of interest be developed by the sciences themselves.

1960 – The evolution of old patients with chronic severe mental illness living in housing institutions for the eldery dependent

Following cuts in the number of beds in psychiatric hospitals and general deinstitutionalisation, and thanks to the catchment area policy, people with major psychiatric disorders are not confined inside hospitals anymore. They can live in the community. These severely handicapped patients, mostly psychotic, often have long-term support, which allows them to live with a degree of autonomy. As they grow old, they become more dependent and need appropriate housing that is no longer psychiatric. The staff in nursing homes are often reluctant to deal with these patients who are weighed down by their disease. Besides, there is rarely genuine continuity in terms of support and treatment from local carers. Through a partnership established several years ago between public institutions dedicated to dependent persons and their local psychiatric teams, guidelines have been devised for a fruitful collaboration and to allow patients often viewed as complicated, to be looked after by gerontology teams who are more familiar with treating dementia. Over the course of time, therapeutic strategies - such as planned sequential psychiatric hospitalization - have been set up in order to prevent the patient from relapsing, and nursing staff from becoming exhausted. A reflection will be given on the part played by psychiatric teams similar to liaison psychiatry, with long-term assistance and training for gerontology staff.

Leviticus 1 and 6: from contextual to extra-textual exegesis

The relationship between exegesis in the Second Temple Period and that by early rabbsc exegesis of the Hebrew Bible perplexes scholars, leading some to focus on continuity while others emphasize innovation. In this paper I argue that the rabbinic sources contain both: that the continuity lies in the interpretative assumptions, while the innovation is a result of different interpretative motivations. A test case for this argument is the interpretation of Leviticus 1:7. In the first part of the paper I argue that despite differences in content, a genuine continuity exists in the implicit hermeneutical assumptions between the Sages’ interpretation and those of earlier sources. In the second part, I explore how the interpretative motive of the Sages shaped a different final interpretation of the biblical verse in spite of this shared hermeneutical assumption. Such a stance leads to viewing interpretative motive as one key to gaining a more nuanced understanding of continuity and innovation in early Jewish interpretations of the Hebrew Bible.

Connection and Continuity in Inference

Inference connects conceptual entities to each other; in fact, it is definitionaily true to say inference is connective. Inference does not create conceptual connections, either formal or semantic (meaning); it makes implicit connections explicit. If I know that all A is B and that all B is C, then by inference I can know that all A is C. The conclusion is deductively connected to the premises whether or not anyone ever actually infers it. The deductive connection becomes known to me by virtue of inference. Confusion has been rife in philosophic discussions on the subject of connection,1 and some clarity is needed on a fundamental level. Much, though not all, of the confusion is due largely to crudely mixing aspects of connection with aspects of juxtaposition (called conjunction by Hume).2 The lack of properly understanding connection goes hand-in-hand with a lack of sophistication about the contrast between genuine continuity and discreteness.3 The connectivity of inference is analyzable in terms of continuity and not discreteness, while, in contrast, juxtaposition is understood in terms of discreteness.

When, what, and why? psychopharmacotherapy and other treatments in schizophrenia

Quantified assessments using the Design-Relevance Scale (described in a previous paper) are summarized to examine the implications of the findings from the controlled studies of various treatments for pharmacotherapy and psychotherapy in schizophrenia. (These should not be generalized to the treatment of other disorders.) There is considerable evidence to emphasize the importance of combining drug therapy with outpatient psychotherapy, psychotherapeutic management, and psychosocial programs. The evidence also strongly suggests that psychotherapeutic intervention in schizophrenia should be goal-directed and aimed particularly at developing and promoting social and occupational skills and at elliciting cooperation with appropriate drug treatment and monitoring its progress. In the past, unfortunately, much treatment effort has been in the wrong place at the wrong time, concentrated precisely where controlled research shows the least evidence of effectiveness. It would be more likely to be cost-effective if the available manpower could be channelled into providing genuine continuity of care by the same treatment team and into integrating psychotherapeutic and psychosocial interventions into an adequate system to provide and monitor appropriate drug therapy. Relevant factors in the interfaces between pharmacotherapy, psychotherapy, and psychosocial strategies are discussed. It is concluded that the effectiveness of treatment programs for the schizophrenic patient would be improved greatly by simply applying the knowledge that we now have.

The Design of the Roman Mosaic at Hinton St. Mary

SummaryTwo problems in the design of the Hinton St. Mary mosaic are (1) that the elements of the design are placed the wrong way round if the mosaic was planned to be seen like a carpet; and (2) whether the bust of Christ is an original design or whether it is based on a formal set of rules. There is evidence to suggest (1) that the design of the mosaic as a whole may have been conceived as the decoration of a ceiling, and (2) that rules to which the bust of Christ conforms were still in use in the eighteenth century in Byzantine church-painting, and that there is a genuine continuity between the two points in time.