Major Treatises Research Articles

Dissection revisited: Deciphering bodies and ancient medical texts

Unlike traditional approaches to Greco-Roman medicine, which are strongly based on textual evidence, we addressed some problems, currently debated by historians, through a technique borrowed from the biological sciences: We reenacted an ancient anatomical dissection of the abdominal wall, the peritoneal cavity, and its organs (as described by Galen during the 2nd century CE, in his major treatise Anatomical Proceedings). Our aim was to clarify incongruencies about the text itself-considering the errors generated during its 14-century-long hand-copied manuscript tradition-and infer answers to contextual questions, such as the aim of the author, his audience, and the setting where the dissections took place. This hands-on practical method provided extratextual evidence to ongoing scholarly debates, which until now were mainly approached through textual scrutiny.

Revisiting the Received Image of Machiavelli in Business Ethics Through a Close Reading of The Prince and Discourses

In business ethics literature, the figure of Machiavelli is often taken as a representation of that which is dark, sinister and negative—a source of inspiration for undesirable and unethical actions. In this research, we examine the evaluation of Niccolò Machiavelli’s thought in extant studies, and posit that Machiavelli’s works consist of ideas that may appear contradictory, which, coupled with historically contextualized close reading of his texts have more to offer. In this theoretical investigation, we construct new conceptual categories of a leader’s decision-making rubric and attempt to provide a structured framework that will allow us to specify the boundary conditions under which the apparent contrary views may be accommodated, by undertaking a close reading of Machiavelli’s texts. Our work contributes to business ethics literature in at least three ways. First, we present a holistic assessment of the research area that applies the tenets of Machiavelli’s writings to business ethics, management, and organizational studies, and delineate the dominant themes. We outline and substantiate the informal research networks, thought structures, and “invisible colleges” that form the intellectual framework of this research area through a bibliometric analysis and literature review. Second, we present a contextualized close reading of Machiavelli’s major treatises. Third, we reimagine the critical landscape of business ethics literature, specifically pertaining to Machiavelli’s oeuvre by shifting the single-minded focus from The Prince, by including The Discourses, which, as we show, has new and unprecedented implications for business ethics. In light of this, the parameters for ethical action by business leaders can be redrawn according to a Machiavellian schema. This marks a radical departure from the long-standing association between Machiavelli’s tenets and the absence of ethics, instead proposing a more positive and affirmative relationship between Machiavelli and business ethics. Specifically, while pointing out that the existing ethical frameworks foisted on Machiavelli’s texts do not do justice to the political philosopher’s worldview, which are complex insights into ideas of leadership, we urge researchers to incorporate the thoughts offered in this research in future investigations.

Original visual imaging in Marsili’s (1658–1730) geology and mapping

Bologna was the birth place of the word Geology by Aldrovandi (1522–1605) in 1603, and of visual imaging of geologic outcrops and landscape by Marsili’s (1658–1730) works, having forerunner in Leonardo (1452–1519). Wide use of visual graphics and imaging characterizes Marsili’s geologic production, under the influence of a tradition beginning with Aldrovandi and peaking with Malpighi’s (1628–1694) teaching and anatomical works, ending in detailed drawings, as done also by Malpighi’s friend Steno (1638–1686), a (re)founder of geology. Marsili’s early visual geologic representations, such as the gypsum structures in the quarries and caves of the Bologna hills (1698), the profiles across the Swiss Alps (1705), the subterranean bedding and an early geological map in the Romagna sulphur mines (1717–1718) show his intent to. dissect geological bodies observed through Europe, as he was thought by Malpighi to do with human bodies. Such original aesthetic scientific design in geology grew in Marsili’s maturity far beyond Steno’s teaching, as shown in Marsili’s major treatises on Danube and oceanography and in his monumental archive, at the Bologna Institute.Marsili’s cartographic skill is highlighted by his manuscript Oreographic Map of Europe, which is the first example of structural map at continental level, as shown by physical connections across seas and alluvial plains of major European mountain belts: Donets through Volga Heights to Karelid chains and Cola Peninsula, Harz Mountains to Norvegian chain, Pyrenees to Provencal chain, Balkan chain to Crimea and Caucasus chain, Bethic to Rif chain (Gibraltar arc), Sicily Apennine to Maghrebian chain, Apulia to Hellenic belt. Relevance of the selected case histories demonstrate that this is not a geographic but a geological map by which Marsili aimed at unravel subsurface structures and trends.

Anatole-Felix Le Double (1848–1913): 110 years of his death

Anatole-Félix Le Double was a prominent figure associated with the concept of anatomical variations also including the comprehension of their anthropological and zoological aspects. As an anatomist, Le Double contributed significantly with his major treatise regarding muscles and bony variants. Furthermore, Le Double influenced and popularized paleoanthropology and its relation to anatomy not only in France but in several parts of the world-promoting the idea that anatomical variations are not only surgically and clinically relevant but also have an evolutionary significance. To celebrate 110 years of his passing, this paper aims to explain his trajectory as a young physician to one of the most important figures in how anatomical variants are perceived today.

From the Alien to the Alone: A Study of Soul in Plotinus by Gary Gurtler, S.J

Reviewed by: From the Alien to the Alone: A Study of Soul in Plotinus by Gary Gurtler, S.J Lloyd P. Gerson From the Alien to the Alone: A Study of Soul in Plotinus. By Gary Gurtler, S.J. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2022. Pp. ix + 269. $75.00 (cloth). ISBN 978-0-8132-3451-9. Plotinus admitted, ruefully I would imagine, that Plato sometimes spoke “enigmatically” about the soul. Thoughtful readers of the dialogues will find it difficult to argue with this claim. Although Plotinus never thought of himself as anything other than a Platonist and an accurate expositor of Platonism, his reflections on many issues regarding “soul” (psychē) led him frequently to go beyond the explicit words of the text and both to speculate on their implications and to defend a Platonic account of the soul against opponents. Herein lay Plotinus’s originality: drawing out the implications of Platonic claims and addressing arguments against, in particular, the immateriality and immortality of the human soul. Students of Plotinus know that the fourth Ennead is entirely devoted to the soul and psychological matters, broadly speaking. But there is hardly a treatise among the other five Enneads that does not provide us with additional insight into how Plotinus struggled with the problems regarding the soul and how he “located” it within the Platonic system. Students also know that the fourth Ennead contains nine treatises that were written over many years; they do not represent a chronologically coherent or ordered set of papers on a single topic or group of topics. Thus, we have treatises chronologically numbered 21, 4, 27-29, 41, 2, 6, 8 (out of a total of 54). Most of the secondary literature on the soul in Plotinus focuses on the fourth Ennead with ancillary material drawn from elsewhere. This is not wrong or hermeneutically unsound, but it does suppose a topic-oriented approach on Plotinus’s part that probably does not correspond with reality. One of the distinctive features of Gary Gurtler’s [End Page 167] monograph is that he intentionally ignores the fourth Ennead and instead focuses on a chronological commentary on passages in several major treatises wherein the soul is discussed. This unusual approach certainly comes across as an intriguing novelty for those already familiar with all the treatises. I wonder, however, if such an approach would not be found disorienting by someone not steeped in Plotinus. So, this is not a book for beginners or even for those who come to Plotinus from a study of Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics, wondering how he internalized and reacted to some six hundred years of intense philosophizing about the soul. The treatises commented on (in part) are chronologically 1, 9, 10, 12, 19, 20, 22-23, 26, all roughly from Plotinus’s “middle period.” They are: I.2 [19] (On Virtue), I.3 [20] (On Dialectic), I.6 [1] (On Beauty), II.4 [12] (On Matter), III.6 [26] (On the Impassibility of Things without Bodies), V.1 [10] (On the Three Primary Hypostases), VI.4-5 [22-23] (That Being, One and Identical, Is Simultaneously Everywhere Whole), and VI.9 [9] (On the Good or the One). The variety of topics discussed in these treatises is considerable. Gurtler’s strategy is to approach the account of the soul from a number of different perspectives, especially in its relations to intellect, the Good, the body, and matter. All of this is done with the assumption that, as Plotinus thought about the topics in these treatises, he continually added new perspectives on the soul. Gurtler agrees with most scholars that there is no profound “development” in Plotinus’s thinking over the relatively short period in which he wrote these treatises. Nevertheless, this certainly does not preclude the likelihood that his views on the soul were more and more profoundly integrated within his larger metaphysical framework. After an introductory overview of the material to be covered and the methodology to be employed, Gurtler begins in chapter 1 to consider our embodied experience of beauty as this is described in Plotinus’s first treatise, On Beauty. Gurtler’s central insight here arises from his focus...

Hemorrhagic manifestation in different etiologies of pancytopenia: A prospective, cross-sectional study.

Background:Pancytopenia is a triage of anemia, leukopenia, and thrombocytopenia. The etiology causing pancytopenia varies depending upon factors such as age, sex, occupation, and geographical distribution. Unfortunately, the major treatises of hematology have not given emphasis on the hemorrhagic manifestation of different etiologies causing pancytopenia.Objective:This observational study was carried out with the aim to identify hemorrhagic manifestation in patients with pancytopenia in eastern India.Design:This study was conducted over a period of two years at the Department of Medicine of a tertiary care teaching institute in eastern India. All the patients with features of anemia, thrombocytopenia, or leukopenia were screened for pancytopenia and a total of 214 cases were selected. Patients were divided into two groups as patients with age more than 14 years constitute group one and the patients less than 14 years constitute the second group. A detailed physical examination, hematological, and biochemical investigation was done to ascertain the hemorrhagic manifestations in pancytopenia patients.Results:In the groups, the most common cause of hemorrhagic manifestation in patients with pancytopenia was aplastic anemic, leukemia, myelodysplastic syndrome, and myelofibrosis. No bleeding manifestation was seen in patients with megaloblastic anemia, kala-azar, hypersplenism, and other causes of pancytopenia.Conclusions:Patients with pancytopenia caused by aplastic anemia, acute leukemia, and myelodysplastic syndrome have more chances of bleeding manifestation as compared with pancytopenia caused by megaloblastic anemia, kala-azar, or hypersplenism.

Significance of Sanskara in Sneha Kalpana: A Review

Ayurveda is the most ancient science of life and health, its antiquity goes back to the Vedas. Ayurveda is not merely a folklore belief system. Brihattrayee, i. e. three major treatises of Ayurveda emphasize mainly on Tri-Sutras – Hetu (etiological factors), Linga (symptoms and signs) and Aushadha (treatment). To gain clear knowledge of Ayurveda and to apply it in practice, it was necessary to search for scientific devices or methods of approach. This necessity has prompted the Samhitakaras to adopt scientific methods. Indian culture, Vedas as well as Ayurveda have given lot of importance to ‘Sanskara’ as it is one of the most effective technique to enhance the qualities of substances that may be animate or inanimate, movable or stable, subtle or gross. Thus, Ayurveda is an amalgamation of ancient traditions and scientific methods Sanskara concept is extensively used in the Ayurvedic pharmaceutics in order to make the medicine more efficient, long lasting, palatable, easy to administer etc. Sneha Kalpana is widely described in Ayurvedic pharmaceutics under which medicated oil and Ghrita are prepared. The present study is an attempt to review the various aspects of Sanskaras implied in Sneha Kalpana.

“Annam Vruttikaranam Shreshtham: Importance of diet in Brihattrayi.”

The diet is one of the most important entity for Vrutti (Sustenance of life). The major treatises of Ayurveda (Brihattrayi), namely Charak Samhita, Sushruta Samhita and Ashtanga Hridaya (sometimes, Ashtanga Sangraha also) give logical and didactic explanation for it. The present review was aimed at compiling available information about importance of Ahara (diet) from these four treatises. The review can be helpful for understanding various concepts related to food in Ayurveda and can be implied in future studies. The Charaka Samhita with Ayurveda Dipika commentary by Chakrapani, The Sushruta Samhita with Nibandha Sangraha commentary by Dalhana, The Ashtanga Hridaya with Sarvanga Sundara commentary by Arunadattta and Ashtanga Sangraha with Shashilekha commentary by Indu, were mainly reviewed for the present study. Supporting materials from ancient and contemporary sources were also reviewed. The classification of Ahara (diet) as well as Ahara Vidhi Vidhana (dietetic rules) have been reviewed from all four major treatises of Ayurveda. The aim of Ahara (diet) has been described in an all-inclusive approach converging to most important i.e. Vrutti (sustenance of life). This ultimate approach can be utilized in development of various diet plans for healthy as well as diseased people. As Ahara (diet) is the root cause and treatment of almost all diseases, this knowledge can prove to be useful for successful management of various conditions.

That Gut Feeling: The Role of Inflammatory Cytokines in Depression Among Patients with Inflammatory Bowel Disease

There is mounting evidence of an associative link between inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) and clinical depression. In the first major treatise on the eponymous disease, Burrill Crohn himself noted that: “The number of cases of ileitis that have been rescued from institutions for the treatment of mental diseases emphasises not the personality but the end results of the drain of the disease upon the psychic constitution of the sufferer.” In the 70 years since that prescient statement, a high incidence of neuropsychiatric symptoms (depression, anxiety, cognitive fatigue, and sleep disorders) in patients with IBD has been frequently observed. Since patients with depression have significantly increased rates of relapse, surgery, hospitalisation, and suicide, recognising and treating depression is of paramount importance. In this narrative review, the authors will trace some of the biochemical connections between intestinal inflammation and neuropsychiatric symptoms and focus on strategies to manage both. Additionally, the authors offer a cautionary reflection on the extant need for widespread screening for depression among patients with IBD.

A Critical Appraisal of the Children of Light and the Children of Darkness in the Debate of the Necessity of Democracy in Twenty-First-Century Mainland China

The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness is Reinhold Niebuhr’s major treatise on democratic theory. A reassessment of the book with particular attention to Niebuhr’s theological analyses of human sinfulness, individual ownership, and toleration may help us to understand the political and economic situation in China. The Communist Party of mainland China (CPC) consistently upholds the exclusiveness of the Party’s leadership and a one-party political system. This article will explore whether it is plausible to construct a free, just, and affluent society without democracy, as the CPC proclaims.

The Kāvyaprakāśa in the Benares-Centered Network of Sanskrit Learning

This article tells an intellectual history of Mammaṭa Bhaṭṭa’s Kāvyaprakāśa in the Benares-Centered Network of Sanskrit Learning from c. 1600–1750 CE. The core narrative proposed herein is that the discourse on Sanskrit Poetics reaches a bifurcated state by the 1400s and 1500s: the Kāvyaprakāśa commentarial tradition constitutes a distinct domain, wherein commentators debate exclusively among themselves on lower-order issues (e.g. the bases for Mammaṭa’s categories). This period of normalcy is ruptured by Appayya Dīkṣita, who effectively destabilizes the discourse, overhauling the conventional wisdom via his empiricist polemics and via the importation of a new doxographical methodology from Vedānta in his magnum opus on Sanskrit Poetics, the Citramīmāṃsā. Shortly thereafter, Jayarāma Nyāyapancānana, the Benares-based Naiyāyika from the East, substantially defends Mammaṭa’s system of poetic ornaments against Appayya’s polemics within his Kāvyaprakāśa commentary, marking the beginning of the bifurcation’s erosion. The tension of how to resolve Appayya’s system(s) with Mammaṭa’s dominates the literature for the ensuing century, and commentators such as Kamalākara Bhaṭṭa, Bhīmasena Dīkṣita, and Nāgeśa Bhaṭṭa all champion defenses of the Kāvyaprakāśa’s authoritative and conservative system against Appayya. This tension culminates in the discourse’s last major treatise, the Alaṅkārakaustubha of Viśveśvara Paṇḍita, wherein Viśveśvara situates himself on a continuum with Jayarāma and defends the core contours of Mammaṭa’s system against Appayya and Jagannātha Paṇḍitarāja. Viśveśvara systematically utilizes the most up-to-date frameworks and positions of Nyāya, entailing radical transformations for the core terminology, standards of debate, and philosophical underpinnings in Sanskrit Poetics. The article concludes by way of contextualizing Jagannātha Paṇḍitarāja within this new narrative.

Heidegger, Catholicism and the History of Being

ABSTRACT This paper aims to rebuild the relationship between the Seinsfrage and Catholicism in Heidegger’s meditation and to shed light on his critique to Christianity (in terms of Christentum) as a philosophical necessity rooted in his broader critique of modernity in the context of the Black Notebooks. In order to reach these purposes, this contribution will be articulated in two parts: in the first one, I will rebuild Heidegger’s relationship to Catholicism and in the second one, I will focus on Black Notebooks as important tools in understanding Heidegger’s critique to Catholicism, a critique that is built on three levels: historical, speculative and political. The essay will show how the Schwarze Hefte illuminate Heidegger’s attempts to answer the question of Being in an incessant tension with the coeval seven major treatises on the Seinsgeschichte, in which Christianity, metaphysics and nihilism are inextricably tied together.

The Principia’s second law (as Newton understood it) from Galileo to Laplace

Newton certainly regarded his second law of motion in the Principia as a fundamental axiom of mechanics. Yet the works that came after the Principia, the major treatises on the foundations of mechanics in the eighteenth century—by Varignon, Hermann, Euler, Maclaurin, d’Alembert, Euler (again), Lagrange, and Laplace—do not record, cite, discuss, or even mention the Principia’s statement of the second law. Nevertheless, the present study shows that all of these scientists do in fact assume the principle that the Principia’s second law asserts as a fundamental axiom in their mechanics. (For what that second law asserts, we rely on Newton’s own testimony.) Some, like Varignon and Hermann, assume the axiom implicitly, apparently unaware that any assumption is being made, while others, like Maclaurin and Euler, assume the axiom explicitly, apparently unaware that the assertion assumed is the second law as Newton himself understood it. But in every case these scientists employ the principle asserted by the Principia’s second law fundamentally, unaware that they should be citing Neutonus, Prin., Phil. Nat. Math., Lex II.

Review Essay: Situating Al-Shaybani’s Siyar in the History and Language of International Law

The history of international law is a much-contested topic, the lineage of which is often traced to certain individuals, who are often either Western male lawyers or politicians and their texts, or treaties that founded the field and its subfields. This contestation occurs because of certain uncritical Western-centric views that tend to romanticize Western scholars while ignoring non-Westerners’ contributions to international law. At the heart of this history, however, is the universality of the general principles of international law, and claiming that these principles and practices and the individuals who advanced them are all Western demonstrates an ignorance of non-Western contributions to the law and, more importantly, of its colonial origins. Therefore, recent scholarship that is critical of the history of international law should be always welcomed, as it adds substance, robustness, and richness to the field. Also to be welcomed are studies that explore the contributions of non-Western jurists to international law, such as Khaled Bashir’s Islamic International Law, on Muhammad Al-Shaybani (750–805), an Iraqi Muslim theologian and jurist who authored Al-Siyar, a major treatise on international law.

Geoffrey of Vinsauf’s Master Trope: The Development of the Doctrine of Transsumptio

In this article, I trace the evolution of Geoffrey of Vinsauf’s doctrine of transsumptio as it developed from his Documentum de modo et arte dictandi et versificandi (late 12th century) to the Poetria nova (1202–1213). Although scholars have conflated transsumptio with translatio (or metaphor), this article argues that transsumptio is Geoffrey’s attempt to schematize how occupying a position of difference (or the transference of the self into an alternate mode of being) reveals metaphorical possibility in language. I close by imputing the development of Geoffrey’s doctrine of transsumptio to a reinvestigation of the Rhetorica ad Herennium between composing his two major treatises.

PETER DRUCKER'S PROTESTANT ETHIC: BETWEEN EUROPEAN HUMANISM AND AMERICAN MANAGEMENT

Peter Drucker (1909–2005) is celebrated as perhaps the greatest management guru, and one of the greatest futurists, of the twentieth century, but he has rarely been taken seriously as an intellectual. Raised in Vienna among a cohort of émigré academics that included Schumpeter, Hayek, and von Mises, among others, Drucker was both deeply learned and incredibly prolific. This essay seeks to rehabilitate Drucker as a humanistic social thinker, reinterpreting his earliest writings in German, his two major treatises on totalitarianism and the crisis of capitalism published after he emigrated to the US, his debate with Polanyi and engagement with Kierkegaard, and his early postwar writings on management theory and the knowledge society. It identifies in Drucker's Protestant faith a deep and abiding set of intellectual, ethical, and spiritual commitments helping him to navigate a path out of Nazi Germany and assume a position of enormous influence in American business life.

An Introduction to the Smaller Bodies of Water in Hugo Grotius’s Legal Theory

Around the same time as his writing of De iure belli ac pacis, Hugo Grotius wrote a short tract: Introduction to the jurisprudence of Holland. He was the first to offer a systematic account of the substantive law of Holland, with a specific focus on rights over laws. I propose that by drawing a comparison between the Introduction and his other major law treatises, the key elements and differences of his argument in Mare liberum become clearer. Secondly, it shows a different side of Grotius as a legal theorist, one concerned with smaller legal issues surrounding property relations in Holland, where potential conflicts stemming from water damage are particularly common and likely. By focusing on how Grotius handles categories of smaller bodies of water, in Introduction but also in ibp and De iure praedae, his understanding of what makes some water susceptible to ownership is drawn out.

Shankman, Steven Turned Inside Out: Reading the Russian Novel in Prison (review)

REVIEWS 547 Shankman, Steven. Turned Inside Out: Reading the Russian Novel in Prison. Northwestern University Press, Evanston, IL, 2017. xiii + 169 pp. Notes. Bibliography. Index. $34.95 (paperback). In 2004, Alain Toumayan wrote that Dostoevskii’s fiction ‘frames and heralds some of Levinas’s most creative, striking, and provocative formulas’ (Yale French Studies 104, p. 66). Yet given the obvious parallels between their lives and thought, comparisons with the French philosopher Emmanuel Levinas came relatively late to Dostoevskii studies. Levinas, who died in 1995, published his major treatises between 1960 and the mid-1980s. From 1941 to 1945, as a French POW, he was imprisoned in German labour camps; his experience echoes Dostoevskii’s five-year incarceration in a prison camp near Omsk in the 1850s. Despite renouncing theodicy in the aftermath of the Shoah, Levinas remained a practising Jew; Dostoevskii was a practising Orthodox Christian with a weakness for antisemitic propaganda. (In the book under review, Steven Shankman studies the troubling issue of Dostoevskii’s antisemitism with tact and insight.) Crucially, both thinkers maintained their faith in living ethically in a damaged world. Levinas often admitted his debt to Dostoevskii, attributing his interest in philosophy to his early love for Russian literature. He virtually fetishized (according to his French biographer) the famous line uttered by Father Zosima’s brother Markel in Brothers Karamazov: ‘Each of us is guilty before everyone for everyone, and I more than all the others.’ The notion that every individual is responsible (and therefore guilty) not just for their own acts, but also those of everyone else (all the Others), would become a central tenet of Levinas’s thought. While Steven Shankman is not the first scholar to read Dostoevskii through the lens of Levinas (he acknowledges the influence of Toumayan and Val Vinokur), his Turned Inside Out: Reading the Russian Novel in Prison is the first monograph to perform this exercise in the context of literature classes taught to Oregon State Penitentiary inmates and University of Oregon college students between 2007 and 2013. Instructing prisoners and college students together is a flagship project of the Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program, in which Shankman participated. Happily, the slogan ‘Inside-Out’ matches Levinas’s expression of an important spiritual experience, the undermining of individual identity through being ‘turned inside-out’ (à l’envers) by exposure to someone else’s reality. In the first two chapters of this book, Shankman reconstructs Levinas’s complex and subtle ideas about moral responsibility, transcendence and illeity (approaching God through Others) from selected essays, interviews and key texts, as well as Shankman’s own readings of Jewish doctrine and rabbinical philosophy. As in his Inside-Out classes, Shankman then reads Dostoevskii’s letters and fiction and (in chapter five) Vasilii Grossman’s Life and Fate, for epiphanies and moral paradoxes that appear to anticipate Levinas’s teachings. He finds characters ‘turned inside-out’ in all Dostoevskii’s major SEER, 96, 3, JULY 2018 548 novels: Raskolnikov, by his love for Sonia; Prince Myshkin, by all human vulnerability; even Petr Stepanovich Verkhovenskii, by Stavrogin. Shankman argues that both Dostoevskii’s and Grossman’s characters act out the task proposed by Levinas of ‘thinking God on the basic of ethics’, that is, attempting to relate to the divine outside of conventional ontology. God, certainly for Levinas, and arguably for Dostoevskii, does not have being; rather, God is a way of doing. In the words of the camp inmate Ikonnikov, a character in Grossman’s Life and Fate, ‘There is neither God nor the Good, but there is goodness’. Levinas cited this line in conversation as essential to his own ‘thesis’; it is thoroughly and lucidly analysed in Turned Inside Out, with other ethical questions raised by Grossman’s novel (like Ikonnikov’s refusal to continue digging foundations for a building he knows will become a gas chamber for Jews, even at the cost of his own life; like Levinas, Ikonnikov accepts personal responsibility for the Other). Hence, by showing kindness to others, and attempting to act ethically, we can approach divine goodness even in a post-Karamazov, post-Shoah world where everything is, apparently, permitted. IfShankman’sstyleissomewhatteacherlyandponderous,thisiscompensated by the clarity and patience with...

Dialogue and debate as represented in Charaka samhita –A major treatise of Ayurveda

Ayurveda, the traditional Indian medicinal system remains the most ancient yet living traditions with sound philosophical and experimental basis. Charaka Samhita, one of the major treatises of Ayurveda, talks about the various aspects of ayurvedic contexts in treating diseases and in preventing them. In Vimanasthana, Charakacharya has mentioned three different means of gaining knowledge (Trividha gyanopaya) of science as – Adhyayana (learning), Adhyapana (teaching) and Tadvidya-Sambhasha (discussions and debates). This third means of gaining knowledge, Tadvidya- Sambhasha, is a method of discussion and debate between two knowledgeable physicians in the presence of viewers. Tadvidya- Sambhasha, i. e. assembly of physicians is important for eradicating doubts with regard to the line of treatment. Tadvidya- Sambhasha is of two types, viz. Sandhaya- Sambhasha (friendly discussions) and Sandhaya- Sambhasha (hostile discussions). This paper tries to study dialogue and debate as represented in one of the major treatises of Ayurveda i. e., Charaka Samhita. It’s an attempt to show scientific nature of those dialogues and debates and their applications in the field of medical science for advancement of knowledge.

La versión árabe del <em>De divinatione per somnum</em> de Aristóteles y su impacto en Avicena y su teoría de la profecía

La Epístola sobre los sueños (Risala al-Manamiyya) es un breve tratado donde Avicena se ocupa de algunas consideraciones relevantes acerca del modo en que se suscitan la profecía y la adivinación a través de los sueños. La teoría que aparece en dicho tratado ilustra con precisión cuán intrincada es la teoría de la profecía de Avicena y, al mismo tiempo, aporta varias pistas para reconocer el origen de dicha teoría tal como aparece en tratados mayores como fī al-Nafs e Ilahiyat de la Šifa’. La Risala al-Manamiyya también nos permite reconocer el impacto de varias influencias provenientes de la tradición griega, principalmente de Aristóteles, Galeno, Plotino, y otros Neoplatónicos. Este artículo explica las teorías de la adivinación a través de los sueños y de la profecía tal como aparecen en la versión árabe del De divinatione per somnun, un tratado donde pueden encontrarse los orígenes de la teoría de la profecía de Avicena. Además, muestra el impacto que la teoría contenida en este trabajo tuvo en la Risala al-Manamiyya. Finalmente, expone algunas consideraciones concernientes a la transmisión y adaptación de los planteamientos metafísicos que aparecen tanto en el De divinatione como en la Risāla al-Manāmiyya, aludiendo al impacto que ambas obras tuvieron en las teorías de la profecía que encontramos en los tratados mayores de Avicena.