Romantic Philosophy Research Articles

Transgressions Are Equal, and Right Actions Are Equal: some Philosophical Reflections on Paradox III in Cicero\u2019s Paradoxa Stoicorum

In Paradoxa Stoicorum, the Roman philosopher Cicero defends six important Stoic theses. Since these theses seem counterintuitive, and it is not likely that the average person would agree with them, they were generally called “paradoxes”. According to the third paradox, (P3), (all) transgressions (wrong actions) are equal and (all) right actions are equal. According to one interpretation of this principle, which I will call (P3′), it means that if it is forbidden that A and it is forbidden that B, then not-A is as good as not-B; and if it is permitted that A and it is permitted that B, then A is as good as B. In this paper, I show how it is possible to prove this thesis in dyadic deontic logic. I also try to defend (P3′) against some philosophical counterarguments. Furthermore, I address the claim that (P3′) is not a correct interpretation of Cicero’s third paradox and the assertion that it does not matter whether (P3′) is true or not. I argue that it does matter whether (P3′) is true or not, but acknowledge that (P3′) is perhaps a slightly different principle than Cicero’s thesis. The upshot is that (P3′) seems to be a plausible principle, and that at least one part of paradox III in Cicero’s Paradoxa Stoicorum appears to be defensible.

Indigenous Rights and the Undoomed Indian

ABSTRACT This essay examines the rise of human rights discourses in the Romantic period as they are deployed in relation to colonial violence against North American Indigenous people in the same era. While Indigenous people become associated with freedom, human rights and liberal politics in much Romantic literature and philosophy, they are also at the same time portrayed as inevitably doomed to become extinct in the face of a putatively superior Western culture. I argue that this stereotype of the “doomed Indian” is not merely a discursive formation, but a reflection of the genocidal intent and actions of colonization. Through detailed examination of the genocide perpetrated against the Beothuk people of Newfoundland from the 1780s until 1827, this essay reveals how colonial culture utilizes the rhetoric of human rights as a way of performing what Daniel Coleman calls “White Civility,” thereby attempting to retain the moral authority to exert power throughout the colonies. Key in this rhetoric is the use of the Romantic-era museum as a venue to capture and preserve the culture of a disappearing people. Drawing on the work of Glen Coulthard, I argue that the discourse of human rights is thus of questionable value in struggles for Indigenous sovereignty.

Escepticismo, falibilismo y verosimilitud

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The Cambridge Companion to Seneca ed. by Shadi Bartsch, Alessandro Schiesaro (review)

Reviewed by: The Cambridge Companion to Seneca ed. by Shadi Bartsch, Alessandro Schiesaro Janja Soldo Shadi Bartsch and Alessandro Schiesaro (eds.). The Cambridge Companion to Seneca. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015. Pp. x, 361. $32.99 (pb.). ISBN 978–1-107–69421–7. This Cambridge Companion, carefully edited by Shadi Bartsch and Alessandro Schiesaro, bears witness to the growing interest in Seneca and to the thriving state of Senecan scholarship. After the publication in 2014 of Gregor Damschen and Andreas Heil (eds.), Brill’s Companion to Seneca, it is the second companion entirely devoted to the Roman philosopher and dramatist. Even though Bartsch and Schiesaro’s Companion has roughly 500 pages less than its rather encyclopedic Brill counterpart (and is far more affordable), it nevertheless succeeds in giving an almost complete picture of Seneca’s works, thought, and life. The year 2014 also saw the publication of Jula Wildberger and Marcia L. Colish (eds.), Seneca Philosophus (Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter), a volume that may serve as a useful supplement to the Cambridge Companion, allowing the reader [End Page 272] to proceed from fundamental knowledge to more specific aspects of Seneca’s writing and philosophy. Students and scholars alike will benefit greatly from the Bartsch and Schiesaro book, either using it as an introduction, quickly finding out about the history and status quo of the scholarship, or engaging more deeply with specific topics and aspects of Senecan writing. The articles are divided into four parts. In the first part, “The Senecan Corpus,” the reader familiarizes himself with Seneca’s life (Braund) and writings, which include dramatic works (Trinacty), philosophical prose (Edwards; Roller; Schofield), scientific works (Berno), and the satiric Apocolocyntosis (Freudenburg). Part 2, “Texts and Contexts,” addresses more general topics, such as Seneca’s relationship with and influence on Nero (Ker; Rimell; Little-wood), his dedication to and the function of form and metaphor (Williams; Armisen-Marchetti), and his depiction of emotions (Konstan). Part 3, “Senecan Tensions,” focuses on seemingly incompatible features and contradictions in Seneca’s work: the confrontation between Seneca’s idealized and normal self (Bartsch), the differences between Stoic orthodoxy and Seneca’s originality (Wray on shame; Asmis on volition), practice and theory (Seal), and the integration of Epicurean thought into Stoicism (Schiesaro). The final part, “The Senecan Tradition,” deals with matters of reception, thus spanning Seneca’s Nachleben from antiquity (Setaioli) through the Middle Ages and Renaissance (Mayer) and down to modernity (Citti). Seneca’s afterlife in Christian writers (Torre) and the influence of Seneca’s political thought on early modern writers (Stacey) are discussed separately. Three contributions best represent the strength and great accomplishment of the Companion, that is, the combination of readability/accessibility and innovative research. Edwards’ essay, entitled “Absent Presence in Seneca’s Epistles: Philosophy and Friendship,” makes a convincing case that the seeming disadvantage of indirect teaching through writing is actually an advantage. Edwards demonstrates how Seneca turns absence, a prerequisite of any epistolary exchange, into something positive. Seneca teaches his student and friend Lucilius to overcome any kind of spatial and temporal distance with the right use of cogitatio: the would-be philosopher can make his absent friend present in his thoughts and converse through books with philosophers long dead. Thus, the right mental technique enables any reader of the Epistles to bridge the distance between present and past, and even to engage with Seneca himself. Roller analyses “The Dialogue in Seneca’s Dialogues (and Other Moral Essays)” and argues that we should regard the so-called dialogi and other, not generically defined prose works such as De Clementia, De Beneficiis and the Naturales Quaestiones as one group. He shows that it makes sense to subsume them under the genre dialogus because they all share important structural features (addressee, interest in the moral development of the addressee, protreptic intention, universal theme) and because the appearance of different voices (author, addressee, and general interlocutor) marks the works as distinctly dialogical. These elements can be found in the Epistles as well, and Roller brings the dialogues and letters closer together, claiming that they can be differentiated “only with care” (66). Seneca’s preoccupation with time both influenced and was influenced by his relationship...

«Вселенная внутри нас»: «Гамлет» Б. Пастернака через призму философии немецкого романтизма

«Вселенная внутри нас»: «Гамлет» Б. Пастернака через призму философии немецкого романтизма

The Romantic Absolute: Being and Knowing in Early German Romantic Philosophy, 1795–1804 by Dalia Nassar (review)

Reviewed by: The Romantic Absolute: Being and Knowing in Early German Romantic Philosophy, 1795–1804 by Dalia Nassar Leif Weatherby Dalia Nassar, The Romantic Absolute: Being and Knowing in Early German Romantic Philosophy, 1795–1804 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013). Pp. 360. $50.00. Dalia Nassar’s The Romantic Absolute proposes a major shift in the way we view the movement known as Early German Romanticism, a shift contained in the book’s title: the conception of the “absolute” is at the center of the widely varying strands of metaphysical, epistemological, and literary work of the central figures in Jena. Nassar is seeking to overcome a division between those who emphasize epistemology (especially Manfred Frank) and those who emphasize ontology (especially Frederick Beiser). The claim, reinforced with compelling evidence throughout this finely argued book, is that the “absolute” is conceived as both, and that this combination of being and thinking instantiates itself in such a way that the cognizer participates in, and can even change, the nature she cognizes. The “absolute” is therefore a singular contribution of what Nassar classes as “Romantic”—it differs from the theories of Kant and Fichte, but also, pace Beiser, significantly from that of Hegel. In a sense, this Romanticism is Spinozan, but that is only one of the surprising and fascinating results of this study. The three parts of the book address Friedrich von Hardenberg (Novalis), Friedrich Schlegel, and Friedrich Schelling. The latter is often counted as an “Idealist,” but Nassar makes a strong case for his inclusion in the project of Romantic philosophy. All three fashion the absolute as beyond the distinction between thought and being, and yet immanent to the world. And all three share an interest in the figure of “intellectual intuition,” as well as a strong relationship to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Intellectual intuition [intellektuelle Anschauung] was formulated by Kant as an impossible kind of infinite knowing that displays a necessary relation between the sensible contents of perception and the intellectual forms of cognition. As Nassar details, Fichte used this figure to describe the basis of self-identification. But the Romantics took it in a different direction, starting with Hölderlin (whose work is not explored here) and Novalis. Nassar explores their varied takes on this figure, which threatens to reawaken metaphysics after Kant’s proscriptions, in what is probably the most detailed and illuminating investigation of this topic to date. The book consistently sets this Idealist figure into dialogue with Goethe’s natural-scientific methods, as well as with recent work (especially that of Eckart Förster) on this topic. What emerges is a deep historical account of the emergence of Romantic metaphysics, juxtaposing Goethe and Idealism and finding between them a Romantic philosophical voice all its own. The “absolute” is both intellectual intuition and metamorphosis, a combination of being and knowing in expressive development. The chapters on Novalis reconstruct the development of his philosophical thought beyond the early Fichte Studies, which have received much attention. Nassar points to the centrality of Novalis’s 1798 turn to Hemsterhuis and Kant, during which he conceives of the crux of his later thought, an absolute that transcends antinomies and is immanent to the world. Novalis’s concern for building a “moral organ” and his attempt to write a Romantic encyclopedia find their complement in the section on Friedrich Schlegel, a truly interdisciplinary study in which we find Nassar deftly moving between Schlegel’s understudied and extraordinarily hermetic philosophical writings (her account of the Lectures on Transcendental Idealism of 1800 is a major contribution to English-language scholarship on Schlegel) and his [End Page 316] genre-projects (not only an encyclopedia, but also the “new Bible”). The suggestion that the famous “Wechselerweis” is not only an epistemological tool but also an ontological structure (122) will surely provoke debate. The section ends in one of the highlights of the book, a reading of Schlegel’s Lucinde that explores the complexity of his notion of the novel as a “plant” that remains true to the conception of the absolute. This reading will surely be of great interest to literary scholars. In the masterful Schelling chapters, Nassar succeeds in showing that Schelling’s systems...

The liberal linguistic turn: kymlicka’s freedom account revisited

This article revisits the principal argument Will Kymlicka has developed for a marriage between liberalism and multiculturalism: that the liberal value of freedom requires a cultural context of choice. I show that this freedom argument rests on a romantic philosophy of language. Critics of this freedom argument have pointed out that it is not necessarily an individual’s own culture that provides freedom: any culture could do so. I articulate a romantic-Kymlickean response to this critique by showing how individuals’ life choices come to be entwined with the particular culture that provides their context of choice. But while that safeguards existing individuals from assimilation, it does not block future generations from being introduced into the life-world of an additional cultural context. Such slow intergenerational assimilation projects are not necessarily worrisome, however. They can sometimes have the virtue of realizing non-identity values in addition to freedom.

Synesius of Cyrene (Philosopher and Bishop)

Synesius (c.365-370-412-413 A.D.),wrote more than 150 letters in total, some of which record the addresses he gave across urban and rural Cyrenaica. From these lettershis role as Bishop of Ptolemais in the treatment of events in Cyrenaica during Roman imperial rule was evident. He also describes the attacks made by Berber tribes and his part in combatting them.[1] In addition, Synesius authored a number of poems and philosophical works, including De Providentia (On Providence), De Regno (On Kingship), Dion (on Dio Cocceianus, a Roman philosopher) and De insomniis (On Dreams). This paper analysesSynesius’Letters, more generally, offer a broader understanding of theLibyan community in Cyrenaica during the fourth century,includingmoral corruption,political and militarydeterioration, the administrative chaos, and its impact on the personal life of Synesius. [1]Synesius of Cyrene (1926) The Letters of Synesius of Cyrene, trans. Fitzgerald, A, Oxford University Press, London, pp. 5-7.

EL BÁRBARO COMO HERRAMIENTA DISCURSIVA EN EL PENSAMIENTO DE AGUSTÍN DE HIPONA DURANTE EL PROCESO DE LA CAÍDA DE ROMA DEL AÑO 410 EN EL CONTEXTO DEL CONFLICTO ENTRE INTELECTUALES CRISTIANOS Y PAGANOS

RESUMEN Los intelectuales romanos realizaron durante la tardo-República y el Alto Imperio una construcción histórica conocida como el mito de la eternidad de Roma. En esa construcción tuvieron un rol fundamental los bárbaros que habían tomado la ciudad eterna y habían ocupado la ecúmene romana en sólo dos siglos: el IV y V. Esta circunstancia produjo en la Tardo antigüedad un importante número de escritos acerca de la caída de Roma producida por la acción militar y política del Rex Gothorum Alarico. Este trabajo indagará en los escritos de Agustín de Hipona para reconocer la intencionalidad, el modo y la estructura discursiva de este obispo del norte de África con el fin de interpretar su visión sobre la barbarie en el contexto de la caída de Roma del año 410. Fecha importante en la lucha intelectual entre paganos y cristianos.

Varro Varius: The Polymath of the Roman World ed. by D. J. Butterfield

Reviewed by: Varro Varius: The Polymath of the Roman Worlded. by D. J. Butterfield Joseph Mcalhany D. J. Butterfield (ed.). Varro Varius: The Polymath of the Roman World. Cambridge Classical Journal SupplementaryVolume 39. Cambridge: The Cambridge Philological Society, 2015. Pp. ix, 216. £30.00. ISBN 978–0-9568381–4-8. A figure long relegated by scholarly success as much as failure to the footnotes of late-Republican intellectual history, Varro is now occasionally elevated into the titles and headings of major publications, once a rare occurrence, especially in Anglophone scholarship. The increased critical attention means, naturally, a greater variety of scholarly voices addressing him, and this collection of eight papers, needlessly grouped into three categories (a nod to Varronian tendencies?), represents both trends. Not a product of the “Companion” cottage industry, these contributions, as variias their object, display the breadth of scholarly approaches to Varro, and serve in part as advertisement of even more work to come. In his judicious and pleasant introduction, Butterfield summarizes Varro’s biography as well as can be done without getting mired in minor controversies, such as the status of the Trikaranos, and prepares the ground for reevaluation of Varro. (As a bonus, he summons the spirit of Pietro Crinito or Giacomo Leopardi—both Varronian offspring—for a learned divagation on “Armenian” tigers.) In the first grouping of papers, “Varro on language,” two of the three contributors hark back to earlier work. Daniel Taylor, with some distant echoes of his 1975 study of Varro’s linguistic theories, asserts that the De Lingua Latina, despite much evidence to the contrary (including Varro’s), has a bipartite structure in accordance with the Stoic treatment of language ( verba simpliciaand verba conjuncta), and thus its lost books can be reconstructed, at least in broad terms. Giorgio Piras continues his thoughtful examinations of poetic etymologies in the De Lingua Latina, situating Varro’s treatment within a larger tradition; he includes a handy chart of poetic citations in the De Lingua Latina(70). Between these two rests Adam Gitner’s contribution, an exemplar of careful rereading of scholarly history, in which he demonstrates the invention of Aeolism, and clears away many cobwebs obscuring our view of Varro and Roman scholarly activity. Diana Spencer opens the second triad, “Varro on Rome,” though her reading—if that is the right word—of the De Lingua Latinaequates it to “Varro on language” as well. Her (dis)associative, Hendersonesque tracing of narrative arc-flashes through the text, in a vertiginous style that does not always convey the thrill the adjective implies, will disturb lumbering approaches to the De Lingua Latina, though to what end will be seen in a forthcoming monograph. T. P. Wiseman’s densely knit essay attempts to resolve a puzzle lingering among the various citations of Varro’s foundation story: whatever did he mean by Roma quadrata? Wiseman displays all the acumen which characterizes his work more [End Page 569]generally, and if by necessity speculative at times, his paper draws on the kind of well-founded speculation that improves scholarship as a practice as much as a product. Even if his ultimate solution leaves some space for doubt, the path there offers numerous improving vistas. On the other end of the spectrum, Yves Lehmann concludes this section with his version of Varro as Roman philosopher, much of which is shaky biographical reconstruction. It is unfortunate that Lehmann’s is the one contribution where the Menippean Satiresreceive anything like sustained treatment, since in the end his Varro is a revivified nineteenth-century Übermittler. The third and final section, “Varro’s Afterlife,” presents only a pair of essays, and also less of Varro’s Nachlebenthan one might expect: the second of the two is R. H. Rodgers’ preview of a new text of the De Re Rustica, arguably as much Varro’s life as afterlife. Regardless, Rodgers sets out the texts of two passages from the edition of Flach and notes by Giusta, followed by the paradosiswith his own text-critical commentary: he displays sensitivity to the text and expert judgment, free of editorial dogmatism, and his edition will clearly be a very welcome improvement...

Schubert’s Lieder and the Philosophy of Early German Romanticism by Lisa Feuerzeig

Reviewed by: Schubert’s Lieder and the Philosophy of Early German Romanticism by Lisa Feuerzeig Suzannah Clark Schubert’s Lieder and the Philosophy of Early German Romanticism. By Lisa Feuerzeig. Farnham, Surrey, UK and Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2014. [xvi, 198 pp. ISBN 978-1-4094-4788-7. $149.95 (cloth)] Schubert’s contemporaries cultivated the idea that Schubert was an intuitive composer with little intellectual acumen for handling large-scale instrumental forms and even less discrimination or care for the poetic quality of the texts he set to song—a legacy that has persisted to the present day, especially amongst Schubert lovers. Feurzeig’s study belongs to a growing body of critiques of this received view of Schubert, including studies by such scholars as Christopher Gibbs, Scott Messing, Susan Youens, and myself. Feurzeig thus presents a very different image of Schubert, arguing that he exhibited sustained engagement with the highly intellectual philosophical movement of the Frühromantik. Capable therefore of abstract thinking, Schubert returned frequently to the poems of two of the movement’s central proponents: Friedrich [End Page 319] Schlegel and Novalis, the latter being the pen name of Friedrich von Hardenberg. Feurzeig’s book deals with all of the Novalis settings taken from the poet’s Geistliche Lieder and Hymnen an die Nacht, all of the settings from Schlegel’s Abendröte, and two of five other Schlegel settings, “Im Walde” and “Blanka” (p. xiii). Far from setting poems haphazardly, Feurzeig demonstrates that Schubert made judicious choices in selecting eleven of the twenty-two poems that made up Schlegel’s poetic cycle Abendröte. While apparently eschewing some poems such as “Die Lüfte” (“The Breezes”), “Zwei Nachtigallen” (“Two Nightingales”), “Der Wasserfall” (“The Waterfall”), and “Der Sänger” (“The Singer”) that would have lent themselves to latent musical effects, Schubert’s choices reveal a willingness to tackle the art of setting poems about inanimate objects and silent phenomena. The book comprises six chapters. The first and third introduce readers to the important philosophical debates that consumed the young thinkers who ushered in German Romanticism in the 1790s. The first chapter, “The Berlin/Jena Romantics”, provides an overview of the ideas and chief figures involved in the Frühromantik, who were largely located in Berlin and Jena. The third chapter, “Early Romantic Hermeneutics”, explicates the early Romantic revival of Greek art and literature and interest in the Bible, focusing in particular on the profound influence of Schleiermacher, a theologian and translator into German of Plato’s dialogues. As Feurzeig herself readily admits, these chapters do not contain new discoveries or ideas but are historical and philosophical overviews (p. 1). They are, however, immensely valuable chapters. Novices to early Romantic philosophy and nineteenth-century hermeneutics will do well under Feurzeig’s tutelage: her summaries are highly readable and the concepts are lucidly explained. The seasoned philosopher and/or practitioner of hermeneutics will marvel at her ability to distil the essence of the complex and at times abtruse ideas of the early Romantics and to explicate how the foundational ideas of modern hermeneutics in the nineteenth century continue to shape our interpretative impulses. In between these two chapters, Feurzeig sets out her case for Schubert as abstract thinker using the song “Die Berge” (D. 634), which is drawn from Schlegel’s Abendröte (Chapter 2: “Case Study: ‘Die Berge’ and Schubert as Abstract Thinker”). Abendröte is a cycle in which each poem is told from the perspective of a different persona, always named in the title. While she could have chosen any of the songs by Schlegel to build her case, “Die Berge” (“The Mountains”) is a particularly pertinent example for overturning common wisdom about Schubert. As John Reed opined in The Schubert Song Companion (Mandolin: Manchester University Press, 1985; reprint 1997, 159) “Schubert is content to look at the external imagery rather than the contemplative centre. . . . The commentators are silent about Die Berge, and indeed it is a strangely unconvincing song.” The emphasis on the external imagery is precisely the philosophical point: Schlegel’s poem is a manifestation of the Kantian schema, which requires “a text that is governed by an abstract idea and that implies that idea without...

Romantic Religion, Life Writing, and Conversion Narratives

Previous articleNext article No AccessRomantic Religion, Life Writing, and Conversion NarrativesJeffrey W. BarbeauJeffrey W. BarbeauWheaton College Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The Wordsworth Circle Volume 47, Number 1Winter 2016Romantic Religion Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/TWC47010032 Views: 40Total views on this site © 2016 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved.PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

A MAN AND HIS RIGHTS IN THE CONCEPTS OF ANCIENT REPRESENTATIVES OF PHILOSOPHICAL AND LEGAL THOUGHT

Emergence of the idea of human rights in V— VI centuries BC in ancient policies and emergence of the principle of citizenship became a major step on the way of humanity towards freedom and progress. The idea and practice of freedom and human rights was given to the world by the most famous of all ancient civilizations — Athens in the views of Heraclitus, Democritus, Protagoras, Antiphont, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Epicurus, etc. Ancient Greek ideas about human rights formed as a part of mythological views that the polis or the citystate and its laws are of divine origin and are based on divine justice. Further development of sociophilosophical and political-legal concepts of human rights in Ancient Greece occurred in search and substantiation, along with the divine origin, of objective natural-legal basis for the existence of the polis, its laws and social existence of people. Natural-legal ideas of ancient Greek thinkers about freedom and equality of all human beings further developed in Ancient Rome, and especially in the philosophical and legal views of the Stoics Seneca, Marcus Aurelius, and Cicero, the ancient Roman thinker, philosopher and orator. In their teaching on human rights, the natural-legal idea of freedom and equality was extended beyond the narrow polis and ethnic framework and was expanded to all members of the humankind as fellow citizens of a single cosmopolitan state. According to the results of the conducted research, the author notes that the ancient thinkers, prominent representatives of philosophical, legal, and political thought of that time laid the foundations of the doctrine of human rights, which was further developed in the medieval beliefs of medieval representatives, especially in the views of the authors of the liberal world outlook of the New times. The English and American Age of Enlightenment, French bourgeoisdemocratic revolution have become a new important milestone and a new stage in theoretical development and practical realization of the centuries-old aspirations of people about their rights, freedom and equality of all people on the Earth.

Mulla Sadra and Evolution Theory

Have the component parts of the world of nature - the inanimate, plants, animals, and human being - been the same from the beginning of the universe or one is a changed form out of another, i.e. a change from the inanimate into plants, from plants into animals and from animals into human beings? There is a general point of view which can be traced back to the time prior to Socrates, the myths of China and ancient India that the universe, as it is now, was suddenly created with its biodiversity and each of the four parts of nature - the inanimate, plants, animals and human beings - are created and vanished repeatedly. No evolution is seen in their type and essence, and the only changes have been seen is superficial. In this universe, human soul alone has had an opportunity to exist before, or being created at the same time together with the body and when the body attached to it, decays, it always survives by itself (Mulla Sadra 1383Ha). Most of the Moslem philosophers believed the same idea called 'Fixism'. As the history of science has frequently proved, scientists belong to a more immense culture, the ideas of which affect the inquiries they believe important. It also affects the categories with which they interpret or explain their knowledge and the certainties governing their attitud es. So, the interpretation of religious books by theologians is based on theses cultural teachings.Evolution is a new theory upon which the whole world of nature changes so that the whole universe, or some parts of it, is always under constant and increasing change, and in the process of the development, number, variety and complexity of the parts of the world are increasing. Buffon (1707-1788) and Lamarck (1744-1829) in the eighteenth century were the pioneers of evolution theory in biology, but Darwin (1809-1882), in the nineteenth century, by offering various documents made this theory testable. The first theories were simple, obscure and less scientific but, little by little, it became more stable and today, very few people don't believe in the theory of evolution (Encyclopedia of the Islamic World 1383H), and even it is irrationally generalized to other areas (Bowler 2000). Although the theory of evolution, either from philosophy or science point of view, has had a recording ancient Greece and among the Muslims such as Ikhwan al-Safa (Ikhwan al-Safa 1995) and the philosophers like Ibn Miskawayh (1338H; 1365H), its discussions have become controversial, in the new era, and as a scientific theory, from the beginning of its proposal, have encountered agreement and opposition especially by some religious people (Bowler 2000). Unfortunately, the theory of evolution has not been discussed seriously from Islamic philosophy point of view. The ancient philosophies such as Platonism, Aristotelianism, peripateticism and the school of illumination cannot answer the questions regarding the relation between natural creatures and the theory of evolution, but this theory not only can be in the same category with Mulla Sadra's geometry knowledge but they are congruous and one who believes in Mulla Sadra's geometry knowledge cannot oppose the evolution of creatures, including human being. This article is going to prove that Mulla Sadra's philosophical thought not only is in agreement with the theory of biological evolution but it is its requirement. Mulla Sadra (1572/ 1640), in the seventeenth century, had stated some aspects of this theory prior to the biologists like Bowfin, Lamarck and Darwin. After offering a brief sketch of biological theory of evolution, this article is trying to investigate the congruency of Mulla Sadra's thoughts with it and will explain his philosophy in defining the evolution of the species.Theory of Evolution, a SketchMany ancient philosophers believed that God created the universe at once, and in the same way as present time, and all species have always been the same. The theory of the evolution of the natural creatures, of course, was discussed as a theory, more or less, among the Roman, Greek and Muslim philosophers. …

The Philosophical Reading of Master Vincentius

Educated most probably in Paris, Wincenty, or Master Vincentius, called Kadlubek (d. 1223), was a lawyer, advisor to Duke Casimir II the Just (Kazimierz Sprawiedliwy) and, subsequently, bishop of Cracow. His chronicle, compiled on Casimir’s commission before 1207–8, is a decent representative of the twelfth-century renaissance. Firstly, we established the algorithm for the numerical comparison of the Chronicle and his supposed source; secondly, we took into account some of the writings of the Greek and Roman philosophers taught in the schools of 12th century and known by writers of the same period. The essay seeks to identify crypto-quotes in Wincenty’s chronicle, where a considerable number of unlabeled opinions by other authors – philosophers, poets, and so on – are potentially traceable. We furthermore aimed at reconstructing the list of books used by the chronicler as a source or reference material. We have assumed, as a principle, that a single citation from one work would not legitimize the statement that the chronicler knew directly that source. With two or three quotations from one work, we seek to establish the reasons why these quotations are in the Chronicle . The results obtained have significantly enlarged the number of (hitherto-known) quotes from Plato’s Timaeus (in Calcidius’s translation), Rhetorica ad Herennium , Seneca’s Moral Letters , and Boethius’s De consolatione philosophiae . In this context, we have taken into account, for the first time, the logical texts by Aristotle and Boethius, discovering in Vincentius’s chronicle traces of the reading of the Topics and On Sophistical Refutations (by the former author) and of De topicis differentiis (by the latter). After a thorough comparison with all the works of Cicero and a critical analysis of the quotations accepted by our predecessors, we retained only one source: the De senectute . We have also excluded the possible evidence of Kadlubek’s knowledge of Macrobius. Our contribution is of philological nature as it seeks to determine the relation and dependencies between Historia Polonica and its philosophical sources. We discuss the nature of these relationships and their philosophical character in other studies. The present essay forms, we believe, a convenient point of departure for further research on philosophical aspects of Wincenty’s output and on the reception of philosophy in Poland in the late twelfth and early thirteenth century.

Soil carbon sequestration and aggregation by cover cropping

Agriculture is the foundation of human civilization. Transition from hunter-gatherer to settled agriculture, as evidenced by the use of crude implements for tilling and harvesting, may have occurred in modern day Iraq and elsewhere around 11,000 years ago (Troeh et al. 2004). The beneficial role of growing cover crops in improving soil productivity had been recognized for at least three millennia and probably longer. Use of cover crops as green manure had been advocated in most ancient cultures (e.g., Indus Valley and Middle East) to improve soil fertility. In China, for example, use of cover cropping dates back to the Zhou dynasty 3,000 years ago (Lipman 1912; Pieters 1927; Meisinger et al. 1991). Cato, a Roman philosopher during the 3rd century BC, advocated the use of green manure and compost to improve soil productivity (Winiwater 2006; Brevik and Hartemink 2010). By the 4th century AD, grain yields of wheat (Triticum aestivum) in Rome declined drastically due to the lack of cover cropping and were hardly 270 to 400 kg ha−1 (4 to 6 bu ac−1), and that of barley (Hordeum vulgare) were only 220 to 320 kg ha−1 (195.8 to 285.1 lb ac−1; Paine and Harrison 1993). Therefore, during 395…

The Romantic Philosophy In The Poetry Of William Wordsworth And Samuel Taylor Coleridge

This research work focuses on “The Romantic Philosophy in the poetry of William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge’’. The Romantics focus on landscape because of its natural essence and its spiritual composition. The Romantics aim at fighting for the masses and educating the public on how nature can be better treated and appreciated. They present the beauty and enjoyment of life in which they find themselves as imaginary and visionary. This work examined the theory of romanticism in romantic poetry using William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poems as our reference texts. Wordsworth and Coleridge own most of their poetic resources and characters to nature as they both strongly believe in the power of nature that brings all that is good to life.

Novalis’ Poetic Uncertainty: A Bildung with the Absolute

Novalis, the Early German Romantic poet and philosopher, had at the core of his work a mysterious depiction of the ‘absolute’. The absolute is Novalis’ name for a substance that defies precise knowledge yet calls for a tentative and sensitive speculation. How one asserts a truth, represents an object, and sets about encountering things in the world, is in the first instance the domain of the absolute, which diffuses through all things in the world. In this article, I begin by describing the absolute in general and I outline its importance in Novalis’ works. I then speculate on its natural tendency to render an object mysterious and fundamentally unknowable. Although the absolute also allows us an insight into an object, my attention in this article is drawn to its concealment in mystery because, as Novalis was at pains to indicate, the Enlightenment has been more than generous to the clear perception of an object. I turn to consider the poet—a most important political character in Novalis’ works—and their Bildung (educative formation) of themselves and their communities. They bring their communities to continual maturation through their role in romanticising the ordinary world and through their need to consistently reflect on, and be aware of, the absolute. They also develop themselves in their ongoing state of mystery as they carry out their political and poetic responsibility.

Political theology, orthodoxy and parliamentary sermons in Sweden, 1789–1866

SUMMARYThis article investigates the concept of political theology by analysing parliamentary sermons in Sweden in the period 1789–1866. The bishops who delivered the sermons and their political contribution have received little scholarly attention, which this study is intended to remedy. Parliamentary sermons were printed and disseminated throughout the country as epitomes of the state's official ideology, which makes them important documentary evidence of past concerns. The study examines two key areas of thought evident in the sermons: the importance to the state of religious unity; and the monarch as a religious symbol. It was believed that the faith of the people and an organic relationship between church and state would provide society with a certain stability, and this view was reinforced – first by Romantic philosophy and later by confessional theology – in response to marked social challenges. Generally speaking, the state was not thought able to survive without help from the church, even as religious and political reform was underway. At start of the period in question, meanwhile, Sweden's monarchs were seen as imparting the faith to their subjects in finest Old Testament fashion; however, in the first decades of the nineteenth century this view weakened, as the foundation for a stable society was instead sought in the cooperation of king, people and God. After the 1840s, direct references to the monarchy were rare in the parliamentary sermons – from that point the king had a largely symbolic religious role in instilling the faith in his subjects and promoting the unity of the Church of Sweden.

Soledad y filosofía. Las críticas de Diderot a Rousseau en el "Essai sur les règnes de Claude et de Néron, et sur les mœurs et les écrits de Sénèque"

The aim of this paper is to demonstrate, contrary to what experts generally consider, that the criticism that Diderot has directed at Rousseau in the Essai sur les regnes de Claude et de Neron goes beyond the biographical level, and it is deeply rooted in central structures of Diderot’s philosophy. This, on the other hand, sheds light on the place Seneca occupies in the book and on the criticism that Diderot had made to the Roman philosopher in 1745.