Intellectual Pedigree Research Articles

Deciphering the Local Origins of Neoliberalism in Central and Eastern Europe: The Example of Lithuania

This article studies the local lineage of neoliberalism in Lithuania, examining its intellectual pedigree, early proponents and the structural shifts that facilitated its rise. The latter are attributed to the openings created by perestroika and the development of the communication network linking economists within the Reform Movement of Lithuania, émigré intellectuals and Hillsdale College in Michigan. Information exchanges produced within this network generated embryonic neoliberal ideas before 1991. The network also contributed to the establishment of an influential think tank, the Lithuanian Free Market Institute (LFMI), whose policy influence is illustrated by surveying monetary and pension privatisation reforms.

The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self: Cultural Amnesia, Expressive Individualism, and the Road to Sexual Revolution by Carl Trueman

Reviewed by: The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self: Cultural Amnesia, Expressive Individualism, and the Road to Sexual Revolution by Carl Trueman Robert Benne The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self: Cultural Amnesia, Expressive Individualism, and the Road to Sexual Revolution. By Carl Trueman. Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway Books, 2020. 425 pp. Carl Trueman is one of America’s most important rising Christian public intellectuals. Scottish born and educated, Trueman is currently professor of biblical and religious studies at Grove City College. Earlier he taught at the Ministerial Training Institute of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. His columns are published regularly in Public Discourse and First Things. Most importantly, he has written several significant books, including The Creedal Imperative (2012) and Luther on the Christian Life (2015). I taught the latter in an adult class at church and found it very well-written and informative. Though an orthodox Presbyterian, he is almost persuaded by Luther on the liturgy and sacraments. Trueman starts with the assessment of the modern self by two major theorists, Philip Rieff and Charles Taylor, both of whom see “expressive individualism” as the essence of the modern self. The modern self is no longer guided by the sacred order of great religions, the obligations to others in the given stations of life, or the virtues that solid traditions have formed in their adherents. Rather, the modern self aims at “authenticity,” the untrammeled expression of whatever inner definition or inclination the self wants to express. Modern societies are not only to tolerate such expressive [End Page 474] individuals; they are to affirm and embrace them. Criticizing them or their actions amounts to “hate speech.” Trueman devotes the main part of his book to tracing the intellectual pedigree behind the phenomenon of the modern self. Ideas have consequences and the author wants to examine the chain of ideas that have brought us to the current state. In “Foundations of the Revolution” he traces the impact of Rousseau, the Romantic poets, and the really big theorists: Nietzsche, Marx, and Darwin. He then moves to the “Sexualization of the Revolution,” in which he surveys the thought and impact of Freud. He concludes that section by conjuring up thinkers of the recent past, whom many of us remember from the 1960s—Marcuse and Reich—who “politicized sex.” Throwing off the sexual restraints of the old Christian bourgeois order would be the first step to revolution. The last major section deals with the triumphs of the erotic, the therapeutic, and the “T,” which stands for transgenderism. In the latter section he deals with the incongruities and contradictions of the powerful LGBTQ movement. All sorts of “expressive individualism” do not fit together so easily. In a concluding “Unscientific Prologue,” he reflects on the possible futures of a society so destabilized by rampant individualism, and what it means for the church. This book is a bracing survey of intellectual history and makes a compelling case for understanding the current situation in the light of major thinkers of the past. But there are problems. A major one has to do with the role of ideas in historical change. Are they as important as he makes them out to be? He admits that he is not doing a comprehensive account, but it would have been helpful to have touched on the major economic, social, and political changes that are perhaps just as important as ideas in the unfolding of history. Further, he implies that the emerging notion of the human self is drastically different than Christian views of the self but does not explain how it is different. The lay folks I taught kept asking about the Christian anthropology that is being jettisoned by the triumph of the modern self. The teacher had to supply the answers! Another oddity is that he does not mention Robert Bellah, whose Habits of the Heart (1985, re-issued 2007) made “expressive and utilitarian individualism” part of the intellectual landscape. Indeed, more attention [End Page 475] to the utilitarian version of individualism, as well as to the identity politics, to which extreme individualism inadvertently leads, would have been very helpful. Nevertheless, this formidable work lends great understanding to our current chaos...

English

These are times that trouble the soul. American sociologist, pragmatist, and race historian, W.E.B. Du Bois can be helpful in examining and resolving some of the racial and political tensions in the United States. After the lynching of sixty-two African Americans in Atlanta in 1906, Du Bois wrote a year later that the problem of the nineteenth century is the problem of color line. An examination of his’ race theory is helpful in the same way as history is instructive. Black history is intertwined and forms with the mosaic of American history.  Du Bois as a sociologist cannot be separated from Du Bois as a social activist. His life was one of incessant struggle to challenge the status quo and to expose the contradictory nature of nation’s ideals. His intellectual pedigree underscores his political and social activism. Du Bois is relevant today to the secular as well and the religious world in the struggle for social justice. This paper argues that a re-reading of Du Bois should be examined in view of the totality of his own professed religious and spiritual temperament and sensibilities.  Du Bois challenges the discipline of sociology to probe into the unexplored dimension of his life and works. This is also a clarion call for young people of all races and ethnicities to interrogate the relevance of his work in addressing social justice. His theory informs his praxis more so today as the nation faces new challenges in post-Obama presidency and the ravaging effects of COVID-19.   Key words: Africanism, double consciousness, Africa, justice inequality, Jim Crow, racism, sociology, prophets, secular.

Diverse Muslim Narratives: Rethinking Islam 101

The practice of teaching Islam in the American context has a particular intellectual pedigree. At this point, the critique of the Study of Religion as emerging out of a normative Christian framework is well-established in the field. Edward Said’s argument for the ways in which Islam is constructed to meet American political interests, rather than an engagement with Muslims and their religion, is nearly forty years old. These power dynamics mean that students, through popular discourse, understand Wahhabi Islam as Sunni Islam, which they consider the “true Islam” against which other Islams are judged. I propose a model of looking at how Muslims define their religion through contestation and relation which allows students to understand the dynamic nature of their traditions. What I outline as an approach gives a greater sense of covering the breadth of material represented by a global religious community, with over a millennium of history.

Edmond Halley's Contributions to Hydrogeology.

Edmond Halley's Contributions to Hydrogeology.

Hileli Eylemlerin Nedenlerine İlişkin Paradigma Değişimleri: Üçgen, Elmas ve Diğerleri -Paradigm Shifts in Causes of Fraudulent Actions: Triangle, Diamond and The Others

Identifying the factors cause fraudulent actions is an intensely debated issue and it has an extensive intellectual pedigree. It is fair to say that fraud triangle theory is the primary paradigm on causes of fraudulent actions in the accounting literature. Due to the changing business world and lifestyle, in the following years, from 1950 to the present, many different views emerged. Although some of these have caused paradigm shifts, we cannot talk about conversion. In this study fraud triangle theory and following models are comparatively examined and it is concluded that the focus on the causes of fraudulent actions has shifted from employees to executives and researchers are more concentrated on behavioural characteristics. In addition, fraud diamond model is considered to be the approach that created the paradigm shift for the causes of fraudulent actions.

In Pursuit of a Community of Shared Future: China’s Global Activism in Perspective

There has been an increasingly heated debate over the origins and prospects of China’s global activism since the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC) held in late 2012. Some in the West view China’s proactive diplomatic posture as evidence of a rising power’s geostrategic ambition to become the next world hegemon. This article traces the intellectual pedigree and policy relevance of the concept of a “community of shared future for mankind” highlighted in President Xi Jinping’s work report to the 19th CPC National Congress in October 2017. Based on a sober assessment of global trends, and drawing inspiration from traditional Chinese wisdom and the Western civilization, this concept represents China’s vision of a more just, secure, and prosperous world in which China sees itself as an earnest builder of world peace, an important contributor to global development, and a staunch defender of international order. Concurrently, it also marks a transition of Chinese strategic posture from a “hide-and-bide” one to a global activist one. Under this vision, China’s diplomacy has taken on a new look over the past few years. Looking into the future, China is expected to play a more active role in leading international efforts to enhance global governance and exploring new models of cooperation for world development, while attempting to shoulder greater responsibilities as a major emerging power.

Nuclear deterrence and cyber warfare: coexistence or competition?

ABSTRACTNuclear deterrence and cyber war seem almost antithetical in their respective intellectual pedigrees. Nuclear weapons are unique in their ability to create mass destruction in a short time. Information or “cyber” weapons, at least for the most part, aim at sowing confusion or mass disruption instead of widespread physical destruction. Nevertheless, there are some intersections between cyber and nuclear matters, and these have the potential to become troublesome for the future of nuclear deterrence. For example, cyber attacks might complicate the management of a nuclear crisis. As well, information attacks on command-control and communications systems might lead to a mistaken nuclear launch based on false warnings, to erroneous interpretations of data or to panic on account of feared information blackout. It is not inconceivable that future nuclear strike planning will include a preliminary wave of cyber strikes or at least a more protracted “preparation of the battlefield” by roaming through enemy networks to plant malware or map vulnerabilities.

Saussure and his intellectual environment

SUMMARYThe present study paints the intellectual environment in which Ferdinand de Saussure developed his ideas about language and linguistics during the fin de siècle. It sketches his dissatisfaction with that environment to the extent that it touched on linguistics, and shows the new course he was trying to steer on the basis of ideas that seemed to open new and exciting perspectives, even though they were still vaguely defined. As Saussure himself was extremely reticent about his sources and intellectual pedigree, his stance in the lively European cultural context in which he lived can only be established through textual critique and conjecture. On this basis, it is concluded that Saussure, though relatively uninformed about its historical roots, essentially aimed at integrating the rationalist tradition current in the sciences in his day into a new, ‘scientific’ general theory of language. In this, he was heavily indebted to a few predecessors, such as the French philosopher-psychologist Victor Egger, and particularly to the French psychologist, historian and philosopher Hippolyte Taine, who was a major cultural influence in nineteenth-century France, though now largely forgotten. The present study thus supports Hans Aarsleff's analysis, where, for the first time, Taine's influence is emphasised, and rejects John Joseph's contention that Taine had no influence and that, instead, Saussure was influenced mainly by the romanticist Adolphe Pictet. Saussure abhorred Pictet's method of etymologising, which predated the Young Grammarian school, central to Saussure's linguistic education. The issue has implications for the positioning of Saussure in the history of linguistics. Is he part of the non-analytical, romanticist and experience-based European strand of thought that is found in art and postmodernist philosophy and is sometimes called structuralism, or is he a representative of the short-lived European branch of specifically linguistic structuralism, which was rationalist in outlook, more science-oriented and more formalist, but lost out to American structuralism? The latter seems to be the case, though phenomenology, postmodernism and art have lately claimed Saussure as an icon.

The Intellectual Pedigree of the Virtue of Magnanimity in the Jesuit Constitutions

The article traces the development of the virtue of magnanimity in Aristotle, Cicero, and Thomas Aquinas in order to assess John O’Malley’s claim that Section 728 of the Constitutions of the Society of Jesus represents a paraphrase of section i.66 of Cicero’s On Duties. For Aristotle, the virtue represents individual’s striving for greater virtue and honor. In Cicero, the virtue takes on Stoic characteristics and is tempered with justice and concern for the common good. Thomas Aquinas links the virtue to hope in initiating great enterprises and accomplishing great virtue in accord with God’s will. Ignatius uses magnanimity to indicate a virtue that synthesizes Cicero’s attention to the common good and Aquinas’s notion of hope in God’s providence. Ignatius combines this synthesis with his own inclination to take that which is excellent in others and generously incorporate it into the Society’s work in magnifying God’s glory.

Vanessa Martin. Iran between Islamic Nationalism and Secularism: The Constitutional Revolution of 1906.

In the past 35 years, official historiography in Iran has presented “Islam” as the primary motivator of all popular movements since the mid-nineteenth century. A corollary of this has been to denigrate or downplay motives that cannot be subsumed by “Islam.” The purpose has been to furnish a historically rooted intellectual pedigree for the Islamism currently dominant in the country. In the book under review, however, Vanessa Martin contends that the literature in English on the Iranian Constitutional Revolution of 1906 has emphasized the secular components of the revolution and it is now “timely” to explore the role of Islam. Indeed, she maintains, a “wide reading of the sources of the time demonstrates how far the population as a whole thought” of that revolution “implicitly as a Shiʿi revolution, whilst also being conscious that it would introduce a new system of government that promised greater accountability, regularity and justice to replace the arbitrary rule of absolutism.” Given that Iran was a “devoutly Shiʿi country, it was natural that the Revolution would be perceived in religious terms.” Unlike a small intellectual and mercantile elite who espoused secularism, the clerics were “very influential, not only because of their role in Islam, but also because the people were accustomed to deploying their influence to bargain with and protest against the state” (p. 1).

‘Inter ruinas publicas scriptum’: Ernest Nys, a legal historian in defence of Belgian tax payers during the Great War

The Belgian scholar Ernest Nys (1851–1920), a big name in public international law and legal history, is primarily known for his extensive publications in the Revue de droit international et de législation comparée, which often focus on medieval and early-modern doctrine. Yet, Nys was also active as a judge and an ad hoc legal adviser, combining his abilities as a traditional continental jurist and a legal historian. During World War One, he drafted an impressive manifesto against wartime contributions on movable property designed by the German occupant. The text combines an intellectual pedigree of political thought with strict legal reasoning on the basis of classics, such as the 1874 Brussels Conference or the 1899 and 1907 Hague Conventions. Finally, Nys’ motivations for an assault on this capital tax, which included a compulsory declaration of personal wealth, can be situated in traditional liberal resistance against state intrusion into the private sphere.

Daemonic Trickery, Platonic Mimicry: Traces of Christian Daemonological Discourse in Porphyry’s De Abstinentia

Porphyry of Tyre’s discussion of daemons and animal sacrifice in De Abstinentia strays from traditional Platonic formulations of daemonic involvement in the Graeco-Roman cult. As a result, scholars have struggled to identify the intellectual pedigree for Porphyry’s daemonology. By contrast, I propose that Porphyry draws upon Christian Platonic daemonologies, best represented in the writings of Origen of Alexandria. To substantiate this hypothesis, I first outline the dissonance between Porphyry’s daemonology and his Hellenic predecessors, before outlining the several daemonological tenets he shares with Christian writers. Second, I note the extensive conceptual commonalities between Origen and Porphyry’s respective daemonologies, Finally, I reexamine Porphyry’s attribution of his daemonology to “certain Platonists,” a claim which, when read in light of Porphyry’s Vita Plotini, places Origen squarely within the intellectual circles from which Porphyry was drawing his daemonological discourse.

A Threat to Public Piety: Christians, Platonists, and the Great Persecution by Elizabeth DePalma Digeser (review)

Reviewed by: A Threat to Public Piety: Christians, Platonists, and the Great Persecution by Elizabeth DePalma Digeser Raymond Van Dam A Threat to Public Piety: Christians, Platonists, and the Great Persecution. Elizabeth DePalma Digeser. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2012. Pp. xv + 218. ISBN 978–0-8014–4181–3. By the end of the third century, Christians were becoming more prominent in Roman society. During the 250s the emperors Decius and Valerian had sanctioned the persecution of Christians; but by the 290s Christians were serving at the court of the emperor Diocletian. Then Diocletian reversed course. In February 303 he issued an edict that deprived Christians of any offices and ranks; subsequent edicts ordered the arrest of clerics and commanded everyone to perform religious sacrifices. In the retrospective opinion of bishop Eusebius of Caesarea, the Roman state had suddenly declared a “war against us.” This last, great persecution became an integral component of Eusebius’ master narrative of the development of Christianity: the persecuting emperors would die in horrible pain, the last emperor standing would be a Christian, and the church triumphant would rise from the church of the martyrs. Elizabeth Digeser now proposes a totally different explanation for the outbreak of persecution under Diocletian and his fellow emperors. In her interpretation the important catalysts were not the emperors themselves, as dutiful pagans who supported traditional cults, nor stubbornly devout Christians, whose obstinacy goaded emperors and their magistrates to extreme reactions. Instead, the motivating forces were the abstract ideas of philosophers and theologians. Sectarian religious violence was a consequence of “ideas about correct ritual and metaphysical doctrine” (ix). Digeser’s argument follows two tracks, one concerning intellectual history, the other political events. Her analysis of intellectual history details the extensive connections among the philosophers and theologians of the later third century. Their common intellectual pedigree derived from the philosopher Ammonius, who was credited as the teacher of both the Christian theologian Origen and the pagan philosopher Plotinus (chapter 1). Digeser hence concludes that in these scholarly communities Christians and “Hellenes” (non-Christian intellectuals) shared and discussed the same teachings, based usually on the dialogues of Plato (chapter 2). They also sharply disagreed with each other about the application of those ideas. Porphyry was especially contentious. He attempted to claim the legacy of Plotinus by writing a Life of his master and by accepting his notion that divine worship shaped the identity of states (chapter 3). This mixture of religious observance and political philosophy was a recipe for intolerance. Porphyry opposed the theology of Iamblichus, a fellow Hellene and one of his own students. Iamblichus seemed to [End Page 378] extend a path to divine union even to ordinary people by proposing that “all forms of divination, properly done, are the gifts of the gods leading all souls heavenward” (122). In contrast, Porphyry insisted that only philosophers could achieve unity with the divine One (chapter 4). He likewise opposed the theology of Origen and his followers for their misuse of exegetical tools when interpreting the Bible. As a result, even as Origen’s supporters criticized Porphyry, some of them, such as Methodius of Olympus, began to distance themselves from Origen’s teachings (chapter 5). “Origen’s brand of Christianity and Iamblichus’s form of Platonism together felt the heat of Porphyry’s attack” (97). Highlighting the centrality of Porphyry’s critiques in these intellectual debates is an important outcome of Digeser’s argument, even if many of the details remain contentious. Her attempt to link these erudite controversies back to political decisions is less effective (chapter 6). It is especially difficult to conjecture how abstract ideas could become policy among emperors who were trained as soldiers, not learned scholars. Even though Diocletian invited rhetoricians and sophists to his court, other emperors were more noted for their hostility to learned culture. The teacher Lactantius shuddered at the anti-intellectualism of the emperor Galerius, who enjoyed the ferocious antics of his pet bears but considered the study of literature to be evil. As a result, Digeser instead stresses the influence of “a loose network of Hellenes, intellectuals, and religious professionals working behind the scenes” (188). This network included imperial magistrates, local priests, augurs...

Making Faces: Information Does Not Exist

This paper uses the ‘strange’ case of human emotive facial expression as a means to help unpack and relate three inter–related concepts, each with a different intellectual pedigree: intentionality from philosophy, intensionality from linguistics and in-formation from the information disciplines. Both intentionality and intensionality are concepts which, although frequently used within the Information Systems literature, are rarely critically examined. Our examination of both theory and case not only identifies a number of limitations with our contemporary understanding of information itself: it also highlights the important, but much neglected role, that the communication of emotion or affect plays within information systems. As such, the work described offers a step towards the development of an alternative genre for thinking about the key locus of the ‘Information’ disciplines.

Consumer Reality: How Brands are Constructed

It is an implicit tenet of qualitative market research that it is possible to find out what the consumer ‘really thinks’. Our research language reflects this - we talk about ‘depth’, ‘probing’ and ‘getting under the surface’ of otherwise superficial consumer responses. This underlying assumption has a questionable intellectual pedigree, however. As qualitative researchers, we should, in contrast, be more concerned with understanding the processes and structures that determine how consumers think. If we understand these processes and structures we will be more able to identify how brands are constructed by consumers and how the meanings of brands are created.

HISTORY AS FORM: ARCHITECTURE AND LIBERAL ANGLICAN THOUGHT IN THE WRITINGS OF E. A. FREEMAN

Traditionally viewed as one of the leading lights of Whig history in the High Victorian period, Edward Augustus Freeman (1823–1892) is best known for his History of the Norman Conquest (1865–1876). For all his reputation for scholarly pedantry, Freeman had wide-ranging interests, including architecture. His first book, A History of Architecture (1849), was both unique and controversial: unique in being the first history of world architecture in English, and controversial because its “philosophical” method differed so markedly from the two most common understandings of architecture in his own time (antiquarianism and ecclesiology). A closer look at Freeman's intellectual pedigree reveals links through Thomas Arnold to German idealist models of universal history. These links lead Freeman to open up a wider perspective on history by developing an understanding of the past based on an analysis of material culture. Architecture offered a window onto the “hidden law” by which human culture evolved. To study Freeman's historical writing on architecture is to gain a new insight into the development of the Liberal Anglican mind and its concern for a divinely ordained pattern in world history.

Contesting Thucydides' Legacy: Comparing Hannah Arendt and Hans Morgenthau on Imperialism, History and Theory

Post-war realists of every stripe have long sought to bolster the intellectual pedigree of their visions of international politics by claiming to be heirs of Thucydides. Hans Morgenthau invokes Thucydides to identify his own brand of realism with the timeless wisdom of a long tradition in Western political thought against the shallow modern conceits of contemporary liberal idealists. Using Arendt's and Morgenthau's treatments of imperialism as a point of comparison, the paper argues that she not only thought much more carefully about Thucydides' example than Morgenthau ever did, but also that her approach to politics, theory and history is much closer to Thucydides' own approach than Morgenthau's. This essay employs both Thucydides and Arendt to critique Morgenthau's approach, and argues that Arendt's approach to realism is superior to Morgenthau's. In drawing this comparison the paper focuses on three issues. First, Morgenthau's conception of ‘rational theory’ is compared with Arendt's understanding of event-centered history and the importance of narrative. Second, Morgenthau's attempt to ground the study of politics on human nature is compared with Arendt's focus on the character of human action. In contrast to Thucydides, Morgenthau postulates human nature as an abstract construct divorced from any specific circumstances. However, Arendt develops her conception of action from pre-Platonic Greek sources. Third, the theme of corruption in Arendt's analysis of imperialism is examined. The idea of corruption is a fundamental category of both classical and early-modern republican thought, and is predicated on the belief that politics is a virtuous activity but one always prone to decay, decadence and degeneration. Thucydides' account of the civil war in Corcyra offers one of the most incisive analyses of corruption. However, this theme is not only absent in Morgenthau's analysis of imperialism, but is fundamentally incompatible with his conception of politics as intrinsically corrupt in itself.

Arne Naess and Empirical Semantics

ABSTRACT This article focuses on Arne Naess's work in the philosophy of language, which he began in the mid-1930s and continued into the 1960s. This aspect of his work is nowadays relatively neglected, but it deserves to be revisited. Firstly, it is intrinsically interesting to the history of analytic philosophy in the twentieth century, because Naess questioned some of the established philosophical methodologies and assumptions of his day. Secondly, it suggests a compelling but unacknowledged intellectual pedigree for some recent developments in linguistics. Naess's philosophy of language developed from his reaction against logical positivism, in particular against what he saw as its unempirical assumptions about language. He went on to establish “empirical semantics”, in which the study of language was based on real-life linguistic data, drawn primarily from questionnaires issued to philosophically naïve subjects. He also experimented with methods for “occurrence analysis”, but concluded that the collection and analysis of sufficiently large bodies of naturally-occurring data was impractical. Empirical semantics was not well received by Naess's philosophical contemporaries. It was also seen as being at odds with contemporary trends in linguistics. However, some present-day branches of linguistics have striking resonances with Naess's work from as much as seventy years ago. In sociolinguistics, questionnaires have become an established means of collecting linguistic data. In corpus linguistics, advances in technology have made Naess's unobtainable ideal of “occurrence analysis” a viable methodology. Some of the principal conclusions reached as a result of this methodology are strikingly similar to Naess's own findings.

Simon Goldhill and Edith Hall, eds., Sophocles and the Greek Tragic Tradition

109 BOOKREVIEWS Simon GOLDHILL and Edith HALL, eds., Sophocles and the Greek Tragic Tradition, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009. Pp. xvi + 336. Cloth,$99.00. ISBN978-0-521-88785-4. This Festschrift is a tribute to Pat Easterling’s contributions to the study of Greek tragedy and the history of its performance. It assembles essays written by leading scholars, many of whom testify to the profound influence of Pat Easterling both as a scholar and as a Mensch. Many Festschriften are characterized by sloppy editing and essays that are hastily thrown together. Not this one. Typographical errors are few and minor, and the essays are generally well conceived and cogently written—nothing less would passmuster as homage to Pat Easterling. The essays are divided into three parts. The first explores the relationship of actor and audience, and the ways in which this relationship reflects the political preoccupations(broadly conceived) of the Athenianpolis. The second offers four essays centered on the figure of Oedipus, while the last examines the development of the tragic genre in both ancient and modern contexts. The editors optimistically suggest a coherence to the offerings, especially in the dust jacket blurb, but any such attempt to tie these essays together is bound to be a stretch. Indeed, the variety of topics should be seen as a strength of this volume, not least because it is a fitting tribute to the range of Pat Easterling’s interests. Aeschylus and Euripides , Astydamas and Plutarch, Shakespeare and Yeats all enjoy their moment in the sun, and “the Greek Tragic Tradition” in the title is meant as a catch-all phrase to encompass the many pages that have little or nothing to do with Sophocles . In the first chapter (“Sophocles: the state of play,” pp. 1–24), SimonGoldhill and Edith Hall introduce the volume as a whole by assessing how scholarly interests have developed over the last century or so. They choose Jebb and his 1900 edition of Antigone as a watershed for contrasting what went before (Victorian idealism and obsession with the beauty of tragedy) with what followed (already in 1903 we have Hofmannsthal’s dark and violent interpretation of Electra). What makes this overview particularly valuable is the attempt to place individual oeuvres into their wider cultural and intellectual context—by tracing for exam- 110 BOOK REVIEWS ple, the influences of anthropology, psychology, and new theories about dance and ritual on Hofmannsthal, and noting the challenge these new interpretations presented to the privileged position of Greek culture as the intellectual ancestor of Western civilization. The chapter offers a provocative discussion of the intellectual pedigree and contributions of scholars such as Reinhardt, Kitto, Bowra, Knox, Winnington-Ingram, Vernant, Vidal-Naquet, Segal, Zeitlin, Foley, and Loraux, and acknowledges the recent explosion in performance of Greek tragedy (more expansive treatment of this important area would have been welcome). It also makes broader observations about how continuity and change occur in scholarly trends—the degree, for example, to which lag plays a part, with critics writing against the backdrop of the previous generation’s work (a lag, of course, that is also evident inthe approaches taken in this volume). The chapterthenlays out four areas in which Sophoclean scholarship is currently engaged: (i) the political sphere (how political/how Athenian is tragedy?); (ii) performance studies, which have now moved from purely practical/dramaturgical considerations to cultural dimensions of performance, including other sites of “performance” in the city; (iii) the language of tragedy (especially its ambiguity); and (iv) the performance history of plays, both in ancient and modern times. These four areas, not coincidentally,are the primary focus of the present volume. Part One: Between Audience and Actor Simon Goldhill (Chapter 2, “The audience on stage: rhetoric, emotion, and judgement in Sophoclean theatre,” pp. 27–47) makes an ambitious attempt to develop a theory of the audience that can account for democracy’s belief in the collective deliberative ability of citizens. He examines how Sophocles dramatizes the process of being (in) an audience through the dramatic device of creating an on-stage audience (beyond the chorus, which serves continuously in this capacity , offering a helpful alternative model to the “chorus as sounding...