Impersonal Forces Research Articles

HISTORICAL ACTION AND NARRATIVE IN THE CONTEXT OF HISTORIOGRAPHY IN RICOEUR AND RANCIERE

The argument of this study is that a critical encounter between the ‘historiographical’ texts of Ricoeur and Rancière on the theme of historical action and narrative provides us with a fruitful approach to the political stakes of the act of writing history. More specifically, I claim that attention to how these two authors frame narrative agency in the construction of our identities in history reveals two points of salience that give orientation to our attitude toward history, namely, disruption and harmony. Framing history as a problem in this way makes visible the centrality of how to conceive agency within the two poles of modern existence: on the one hand, statistical regularities that govern behavior in the form of impersonal forces and, on the other, individual projects, the trajectories of which form a coherent life (and define autonomy for the subject). The merit of narrative history is to bridge these poles; but it thereby occludes the antagonisms characteristic of modernity. It is in order to make these visible that we need a disruptive attention to the way narratives are constructed retrospectively.

Anaximander and his «Apeiron»

The reconstruction of the teachings of Аnaximander about the origin of the world is based on the analysis of his practical attempts to simulate some natural phenomena and invent devices or scientific instruments that explain and predict some meteorological events. The Earth rests in equilibrium not only because of its location in the center of the Universe, but also because it is «supported» by the «shell» of «ἀήρ». In the formation of the world, due to the eternal circular motion, from a mixture of hot and cold stood out «ἀήρ» and «αἰθήρ», constituting the contradictory essence of «apeiron». Pairs of opposites: hot and cold; wet and dry – the energy component of the material principle. Due to the eternal irreversible fatal cyclic process of interaction of these pairs of opposites there is a constant renewal in nature. «Apeiron» in accordance with the immanently inherent property of purposive authority of the law of global processes taking place in it, a fatal impersonal force and unavoidable response for its violation, provides a just balance of forces in the Universe as a whole.

Navigating Waves of Capital and History: On Speculation and Submersion in Delany

ABSTRACT: This essay reads two texts by Samuel R. Delany— Times Square Red, Times Square Blue and “Atlantis: Model 1924”—that prominently thematize spontaneous queer encounter and the financialized production of urban space. It explores the writerly practices that open up the subjective space of sexual cultures threatened and eroded by the impersonal forces of capital, highlighting in particular the use of speculative play in “Atlantis,” to suggest it serves as a model for an sf relation to history. In making sense of the contingent conditions lending urgency to Delany’s generic intervention, the essay situates Delany’s writings within the US systemic cycle of capital accumulation, noting the distinct mechanisms of financialized real estate speculation and attendant gentrification that serve to enforce property relations and sexual norms in New York.

The Harlem Uprising: Segregation and Inequality in Postwar New York City

Christopher Hayes shows in his aptly titled The Harlem Uprising that the unrest that swept through central Harlem and Brooklyn's Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood during July 1964 emerged from a longer history of racial segregation, economic transformation, and political marginalization. The first five chapters detail the “vast system of structural discrimination” that became worse, not better, during the heyday of civil rights activism (p. 2). Duly attentive to the seemingly impersonal forces that bounded the promise of postwar prosperity, Hayes repeatedly and rightly emphasizes the role of policy choices and political calculation in stymying Black New Yorkers' efforts to secure access to housing, jobs, unions, schools, and policing. That confluence of “rising expectations” and “declining fortunes” was central to the six days of demonstrations that followed the July 16, 1964, shooting of fifteen-year-old James Powell (p. 5). In the book's most original contribution, the middle six chapters examine the response of a Black community that had already become rapidly disillusioned with nonviolence and racial integration. Reconstructing the week's developments in remarkable detail, Hayes recounts days filled with meetings between civil rights leaders who had little local credibility and city officials who had little desire to address the deeper roots of the crisis. While movement veterans such as James Farmer and Bayard Rustin pleaded for peace each evening, a growing number of Black Harlemites and Brooklynites turned to bottle throwing, window breaking, and store looting to protest both systematic abuses by the New York Police Department and a much broader range of grievances. After six days, the protests petered out and a superficial calm returned, but never again would Black New York invest the same faith in liberal politics.

Vast Personal Forces: Thucydides, Populism, and the Liberty of the Ancients

AbstractModern discussions of freedom focus on negative liberty or nondomination. In his portrait of the Athenian democracy, Thucydides thematizes the psychology of ancient freedom. By focusing on the psychology of the demos, Thucydides shows how democratic imperialism unfolds from the experience of freedom as a kind of felt power. His analysis offers us a way to think about contemporary populism. In representative democracy, the connection between power and freedom has been severed by representation and the modern state, but an experience of power nonetheless remains part of what we mean by freedom today. Modern citizens frequently feel powerless and so unfree, ensnared by impersonal forces. One lure of populism is that it satisfies the longing for freedom as a form of felt power, for a measure of control over one's life.

Evolution of the Individual Criminal Accountability Principle in International Law

The creation of Special Tribunals with authority to prosecute those accused of "grave breaches" and infringements of the law towards humanity was among the most significant breakthroughs in international law. Unquestionably, this is a recent worldwide development that has raised questions about sovereignty and impunity. Since the horrors committed by the Nazis and the Nuremberg trials, war crimes legislation has expanded its definition to include several offenses that are now referred to as "international crimes" and "crimes of genocide." Although it was created to combat the politics of punishment for those who commit these crimes, some member states are unwilling to prosecute people who commit these recognized international crimes. In fact, the Rome Statute for the International Criminal Court (ICC) was drafted due to the jurisprudence established by these Special Tribunals. More precisely, it has been maintained that Act of war crimes and Act of crimes against humanity are perpetrated by individuals and not by impersonal forces, and that international law can only be upheld and implemented by punishing those responsible for such horrible crimes. Nevertheless, a convincing argument could be made that the establishment of these tribunals heralds a revolutionary change in international law. The qualitative research methodology has been applied to the following article.

Statesmanship in Modern Times

The thread uniting the preceding four essays concerns the place of statesmanship within a modern world characterized by mass politics, impersonal forces, and the simultaneous emancipation and denigration of the democratic soul. In this brief response, I consider the capacity of statesmanship to encourage political prudence and moderation today. Noting the importance of the disagreement between Spinoza and Tocqueville for helping us understand this problem, I describe Tocqueville’s acuity in articulating its peculiar dimensions, but I also highlight the importance for today’s liberalism of Spinoza’s defense of reason.

E. Durkheim’s concept of sacredness

E. Durkheim’s concept of sacredness as formulated in The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life aims at explaining why and how an aggregate of people becomes ‘a single whole’ and reproduces itself. This concept is the logical foundation of Durkheim’s ‘sociological holism’ for it focuses, according to T. Parsons, on ‘the core of the social system’. The principles of this concept are opposite to the principles of ‘methodological nominalism and individualism’ of the British social anthropology as expressed in the theory of animism. Durkheim defines the sacred as an ‘impersonal force’, impersonal ‘collective being’, ‘collective soul’ created and reproduced on the religious cults. The individual principle is reduced by Durkheim to the animal and wild which can be understood only as a part of the ‘collective being’ in primitive societies. In defining the nature of religious rituals, Durkheim relied on the concept of ritual by W. Robertson-Smith, which defines the main meaning of cults as the ‘union’ of adepts with the deity and each other. By removing the deity as a transcendental principle, Durkheim reduced the meaning of religious rituals to the reproduction of social unity, solidarity. Durkheim’s theory of sacredness, like its opposite - the theory of animism, is based on the concepts of the philosophy of the Modern Time, which determined the anthropomorphization of consciousness and confusion of terms ‘person’ and ‘individuality’. The significance of Durkheim’s concept should not be identified in the positivist perspective - as an explanation of facts unexplained by alternative theories. In such an interpretation, this concept was criticized and rejected by most scholars. However, it is important as a part of ‘social engineering’ which changed the intellectual environment, including the scientific community, in a specific, ideologically leftist direction.

Other Writings/Traditions

Other Writings/Traditions Christopher T. Begg, Thomas Hieke, William J. Urbrock, and J. Edward Owens Christopher T. Begg Catholic University of America Thomas Hieke Johannes Gutenberg Universität Mainz William J. Urbrock University of Wisconsin Oshkosh J. Edward Owens OSST, University of the Incarnate Word, San Antonio TX 1618. [1 Samuel 4 according to Josephus, Ant. 5.355–362] Michael Avioz, "1 Samuel 4 in Josephus' Antiquities 5.355–362," JNSL 47 (1, 2021) 1-17. My paper explores Josephus's exegetical skills in elucidating the biblical text, taking his retelling of 1 Samuel 4 in Ant. 5.355–362 as a test case. The historian's retelling of the Samuel text which recounts the fall of the Elides and the destruction of the Shiloh sanctuary is twice as long as the former passage. While acknowledging Josephus's apologetical tendencies in his Antiquities, my article seeks to demonstrate that his hermeneutical concerns in his retelling of the above biblical account is equally significant. I begin by analyzing the biblical passage and its textual difficulties and gaps, and then proceed to examine Josephus's additions, omissions, and changes, as well as the question of his textual Vorlage for the 1 Samuel 4 passage. [Adapted from published abstract—C.T.B.] Google Scholar 1619. [Levitical Temple Singers in Rabbinic Sources] Hallel Baitner, "Levitical Singers in Rabbinic Sources: Echoes of an Ancient Dispute," JSJ 52 (2, 2021) 228-56. The Hebrew Bible reflects ambiguity concerning the historical existence of the Levites as a group distinguished from the priesthood. Postexilic and late Second Temple sources also present a variety of voices concerning the extent to which Levites participated [End Page 580] in the temple's worship. My article argues that, while rabbinic sources appear to present a straightforward, retrospective description of the Levites as a group of temple-singers who were clearly subordinate to the priests and responsible for temple singing, a closer reading reveals differences of opinion about the group and its activity. Disagreements concerning the exact place in the temple in which the Levites used to sing reflect significantly different views concerning the status of the Levites in the temple and the importance of their singing. This rabbinic dispute echoes similar late Second Temple period controversies, and sources from the two periods may shed reciprocal light on each other. [Adapted from published abstract—C.T.B.] Google Scholar 1620. [Reimaging of Angels, Watchers, and Giants in Early Judaism, Christianity, and Islam] Kelley Coblentz Bautch and Jonathan Kaplan (eds.), "Introduction," Hen 41 (2, 2019) 181-87. As guest editors of a thematic issue of Henoch devoted to early Jewish, Christian, and Islamic reconceptualizations of earlier traditions about "angels, watchers, and giants," B. and K. provide an introduction to the topic that surveys previous scholarly work on the subject as well as the essays featured in this issue. Their essay concludes with a bibliography of relevant studies. For abstracts of those articles of particular interest to OTA readers, see ##1621, 1663.—C.T.B. Google Scholar 1621. [Demons in Josephus] Carson M. Bay, "Demons in Flavius Josephus," Hen 41 (2, 2019) 204-25 [see #1620]. Demons, as they appear in Josephus's corpus, help situate Josephus, qua firstcentury Roman-Jewish author, between a Hellenistic culture informed by classical antiquity and a Jewish culture informed by Jewish Scripture and tradition. Whether as individual beings or as some impersonal force, the daemonic in Josephus's writings aligns far more with the daemons of the Classical and Hellenistic Greek milieu than it does with Jewish literature from the Hebrew Bible to the NT. However, Josephus's daemons do reflect the influence of Jewish tradition as well. Thus, daemons allow Josephus's writings to be seen as the product of intercultural influence and exchange. My essay seeks to demonstrate this claim by providing a sequential and comprehensive assessment of Josephus's treatment of daemons and the daemonic throughout his corpus and then by offering a comparative survey of related literature earlier than or contemporary with Josephus. This survey shows where Josephus's daemons are both different from and similar to ancient Hellenistic and Jewish traditions in their...

The Structures of Virtue and Vice by Daniel J. Daly

Reviewed by: The Structures of Virtue and Vice by Daniel J. Daly J. Brian Benestad The Structures of Virtue and Vice. By DanielJ. Daly. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 2021. Pp. 258. $134.95 (hardcover). ISBN 978-1-6471-2038-2. Daniel Daly aims to make a significant contribution to Catholic theological ethics by teaching his readers to recognize and deal with structures of virtue and vice. He hopes to reach his fellow theologians, Church authorities, and as many Catholic lay people as possible. In the introduction to his book, Daly says that he had one ultimate, and two proximate, goals in writing. The proximate goals are achieving "an understanding of the relation of social structure and moral agency and an [End Page 505] updated Catholic virtue theory" (3). Both of these proximate goals serve Daly's ultimate goal, which is to develop "concepts capable of ethically categorizing and scrutinizing social structures" (ibid.). Moral agency refers to the role played by the free choices of individuals in setting up structures, especially those that do harm. For example, the U.S. Constitution initially protected the institution of chattel slavery in the southern states. Both the law and the culture justified the existence of slavery as a positive good for the slave and slave owners. The practice of slavery defended by the law and public opinion set up an opinionforming structure that was hard for Southerners to resist. Daly aims to teach his readers to recognize and deal with structures of virtue and vice, which come into existence both by the free choices of individuals over time and by causes of an "impersonal" nature (12). Societal structures sometimes take on a life "independent of human agency," he emphasizes. "Structures" is the term used to identify various aspects of the political and economic order, institutions, organizations, and practices that incline people to live well or badly. Daly puts a lot of emphasis on the structure created by the manufacturing of clothing in the so-called sweatshops in the Third World that employ poorly paid workers. On April 24, 2013, a building owned by Sohel Rana, located in the vicinity of Dhaka, Bangladesh, collapsed, killing 127 people. Although engineers had told Rana that the building was unsafe, he nonetheless ordered workers to take their places. Daly asks who is responsible for the deaths of the workers—the owner, Sohel Rana; the manufacturer, the Children's Place; the retail clothing company; or consumers seeking a bargain (12-13). It is unclear from Daly's treatment whether he considers the last group as an example of "impersonal forces." What is clear is that Catholic ethicists need to forge an instrument capable of structural ethical analysis. This kind of instrument will enable Catholics to put ethics into practice in every aspect of their lives. This is another way that Daly defines the book's ultimate purpose—developing concepts by which to categorize and scrutinize social structures. "In turning to the social sciences, Catholic ethicists may come to more fully understand how to live the Gospel of Jesus Christ in this new age" (30). They have to explain, for example, how individuals may protect themselves from neglecting their duties toward the exploited of the world. Daly believes that the study of the social sciences is indispensable for grasping the nature of reality, especially the nature of good and bad social structures, including their good and bad effects on "the moral character of the person" (35). As an example, he notes that Pope John Paul II's "account of structural sin remained substantially … underdeveloped from a sociological point of view; the pope lacked an incisive account of what a structure is, how it shaped action and outcomes" (41). Daly has more regard for Pope Benedict because he says "the Church's wisdom has always pointed to the presence of original sin in social conditions and the structure of society" (43). Daly, however, is unhappy that Benedict was mostly silent on unjust structures, focusing instead on vicious persons, whose individual actions alone generate structures of vice. While the studies of sociology and [End Page 506] psychology are helpful to Catholic ethicists, I would add that familiarity...

Beliefs and Experiences Involving God, the Devil, Spirits, and Fate: Social, Motivational, and Cognitive Predictors

ABSTRACT Many people believe in supernatural entities, which might be personal (deities, devils, ghosts) or impersonal (fate/destiny, karma, luck). Some people see such entities as causing events in the world, including experiences in their own lives. Our study draws on social, motivational, and cognitive frameworks to predict beliefs and experiences involving supernatural entities. We hypothesized that positive predictors of beliefs in specific entities (God, the devil, ghosts/spirits, impersonal forces of fate/destiny, luck and karma) would include being taught about the entities early in life, anticipating positive reactions from peers about one’s beliefs, and wanting to believe in such entities. We also proposed that beliefs in specific entities, along with beliefs that such entities can affect the natural world, would predict more perceived experiences with these entities. We preregistered and tested these hypotheses in two samples (Ns = 475 and 290) of undergraduates. Path analytic results were largely consistent across entities. Being taught to believe in a specific entity early in life predicted current desire to believe in the entity but anticipated reactions from peers did not. Current desire to believe, in turn, strongly predicted belief in the entity, belief that the entity can affect the natural world, and perceived experiences with the entity. Belief in supernatural entities strongly predicted perceived experiences with them. These results map the structure of relations between relatively stable predictors of supernatural attributions, with an emphasis on social, cognitive, and motivational factors, and they suggest some plausible pathways by which such beliefs and experiences might develop.

The impersonal forces of disease and death in J.M. Coetzee's Age of Iron

ABSTRACT This paper draws on the work of Gilles Deleuze to explore the generative and nonorganic power of disease and death as forces that enable an individual to encounter an impersonality in J. M. Coetzee's epistolary novel, Age of Iron. In Deleuze's theorisations, the experience of disease leads to self-dissolution, whereby the self becomes cracked and fragmented, and is opened to the suffering of others. In Coetzee's novel, societal illness is produced and forged by a racially segregated politics, an unequal economic system, and strident messages in the context of apartheid South Africa, which intersect with the protagonist Mrs. Curren's personal disease. By stressing the associative lines between personal and societal illness, I examine how Curren's ailing body becomes cracked, yet transforms into an impersonal dimension, as it folds and unfolds into the deaths of black people. In the process of (un)folding their deaths along with her dying, Curren further enacts and multiplies the impersonal time of the past-future conjunction. I thus demonstrate, through Deleuze's theorisations, how the power of Curren's physical frailty eventually generates an impersonality beyond personal suffering, in which black and white people move toward an impersonal space beyond the bifurcated world.

A bourdieusian CV from the Fringe of the Field

The author covers his long-lasting work on the social change of forms of capital in Scandinavia, expounding on methodological considerations (in particular, the combination of marxist thought and quantitative investigation of social phenomena) and the relationship between theory and research, standing by his decision to spend a whole career at a minor Norwegian university. The multidimensional analysis of compositions of capitals and the geometric modeling of data are explored as the most significant promise of Bourdieu's sociological approach. Written in the third person, the paper stresses the primacy of fields and impersonal forces over the individual agent.

Divine Providence in Early Modern Economic Thought

Divine Providence in Early Modern Economic Thought

Tocqueville, Napoleon, and History-Writing in a Democratic Age

In Democracy in America, Tocqueville posited a contrast between the way history is written in “aristocratic” and “democratic” ages. In the former, historians tend to assign great weight to the actions of individuals; in the latter, they privilege great impersonal forces that act upon the mass. The essay examines Tocqueville’s views of Napoleon Bonaparte in light of these reflections. It concludes that despite his occasional vulnerability to the lure of Napoleonic grandeur, and despite his own desire, as an aristocrat writing in a democratic age, to effect a synthesis of the two modes of historical writing, in the end he fundamentally viewed Napoleon’s actions as determined by the forces of democratic equality and revolution.

Assemblages and Realism in Tannaitic Law: Legal Intensities, Affects, and Circuits

Abstract The question of rabbinic apprehensions of the nonhuman is not frequently listed as paramount in the study of rabbinic legal texts. Yet, nonhumans such as animals, tools, and trees, as well as impersonal forces, such as impurity, fill much of the space within Tannaitic legal traditions. What effect, if any, do these nonhumans have on the Tannaitic subject, and in what ways do they shape the legal traditions of which they are a part? To answer these questions and to understand the relationship between rabbinic law and rabbinic science in relation to the nonhuman, this study takes up assemblage theory. This study sheds light on the relationship of humans and nonhumans in Tannaitic legal traditions and shows that these traditions are predicated on a science of the nonhuman, which itself is predicated on broader underlying ontological commitments. This study also brings clarity to the realism/nominalism debate in rabbinic literature.

A Study of the Reflection of Naturalism in the Heroine in Sister Carrie

Sister Carrie is one of the greatest works composed by Theodore Dreiser, one of the representatives of naturalists in American literature at the beginning of the 20th century. Among numerous works of Theodore Dreiser, Sister Carrie enjoys a quite high literary status, and also meets with different comments after its publication. The novel mainly tells the personal experiences of a rural beautiful girl Carrie in the big city Chicago. Driven by natural desires and urban environment, she changes her social status and original values in the end. Naturalism is a scientific and literary approach employed here to depict the characters in the novel where a person's fate is decided or predetermined by impersonal forces of nature and environment beyond human control. The novel is an experiment where the author could discover and analyze the natural forces and survival laws that influence personal behaviors, emotion and fate. This paper introduces the origin, development and characteristics of naturalism in American literature, studies the effect of human weakness on their life, and makes clear the influences of environment on people’s way of thinking and way of life.

Chinese Eight Signs Prediction

How do ontological assumptions in divination shape the structure of the techniques and the way practitioners understand their capacity to know about human fate? In eight signs divination—a birthdate-based method used to predict the fate of an individual—human lives are said to be determined by Heaven, an infallible and impersonal force that regulates everything in the cosmos through the expansionary flow of correlative cosmology and qi transformations. Such ontological assumptions correspond to epistemological operations as can be seen in the concrete working of eight signs divination in Taiwan. Eight signs prediction relies on classificatory and reductive mathematical procedures—involving congruence and combinatorial calculations—to logically unfold a deterministic and cyclical cosmos.

Hierarchy in America

Religious commitment, support for the military and free‐market capitalism, and aversion to the welfare system, homosexuality and ‘big government’ are all attitudes widely shared among conservative Americans. Apparently unrelated, these views reflect an unrecognized but real ideological embrace of hierarchical understandings: to wit, power comes from above, exchange relations with powerful entities are the means for bettering one's circumstances and such relations are predicated on differences among parties. God, military and political leaders and the captains of industry all constitute personalized nodes of power to whom subordinating oneself offers chances for advancement. Government, by way of contrast, constitutes an impersonal force liable only to take someone's liberty and money and give no return. Adherence to hierarchical assumptions explains support for illiberal leaders in the US and beyond.

Ментальный поворот в преддверии Средних веков и концепт интуиции

The article is devoted to follow to the essential characteristics of intuition think­ing. Intuition thinking is the way of understanding and extract of meanings. In this issue are analyzed such notions as sense, understanding and symbol. In this issue a symbol is a key figure in the way of thinking of the Middle age. Ancient Greek’s way of thinking and Middle age’s way of thinking are com­pered. The border of epochs is a main location of the turn from sensation to feel­ing and from revealed to hidden. In this article the evolution of notion of intu­ition, its semantic metamorphosis and its changing cognitive status are shown. According Socrates intuition has a form of daimonion, impersonal force helping him become a person and make decisions according to ethical standards. The fig­ure of Augustine impersonates the metanoia on two levels, subjective and level of epoch. The notion of “Self” ceases to be an entity autonomous from the nature of God, because only in the process of cognition, merge with God a person emerges. This is the fundamental difference in the way of being acient Greek and medieval cultures. Therefore, two epistemological paradigms, determining the cognitive status of intuition, are faced. On the base of mystics’ experience in the Middle age and Neoplatonism intuition is defined. For medieval mystics, con­templation, the direct vision of the truth in God, played an important role. From this phenomenon then comes the Cartesian clarity and distinctness of truth. Well known the intuition is the highest cognitive ability for rationalists