Western Man Research Articles

THE MEASURE OF ALL GODS: RELIGIOUS PARADIGMS OF THE ANTIQUITY AS ANTHROPOLOGICAL INVARIANTS

Purpose of the article is the reconstruction of ancient Greek and ancient Roman models of religiosity as anthropological invariants that determine the patterns of thinking and being of subsequent eras. Theoretical basis. The author applied the statement of Protagoras that "Man is the measure of all things" to the reconstruction of the religious sphere of culture. I proceed from the fact that each historical community has a set of inherent ideas about the principles of reality, which found unique "universes of meanings". The historical space acquires anthropological properties that determine the specific mythology of the respective societies, as well as their spiritual successors. In particular, the religious models of ancient Greece and ancient Rome had a huge influence on formation of the worldview of the Christian civilization of the West. Originality. Multiplicity of the Olympic mythology contributed to the diversity of the expression forms of the Greek genius, which manifested itself in different fields of cultural activity, not reducible to political, philosophical or religious unity. The poverty of Roman mythology was compensated by a clear awareness of the unity of the community, which for all historical vicissitudes had always remained an unchanging ideal, and which was conceived as a reflection of the unity of the heavens. These two approaches to the divine predetermined the formation of two interacting, but conceptually different anthropological paradigms of Antiquity. Conclusions. Western concepts of divinity are invariants of two basic theological concepts – "Greek" (naturalism and paganism) and "Roman" (transcendentalism and henotheism). These are ideal types, so these two tendencies can co-exist in one society. The Roman trend continued to be realized by the anti-Roman religion, which took Roman forms and Roman name. Iconoclasm was a Byzantine version of the Reformation, promoted by the Isaurian emperors and failed due to the strong Hellenistic naturalistic lobby. Modern "Romans" are trying to get rid of the last elements of religious naturalism, and modern "Greeks" are trying to preserve the Hellenic elements in Christianity. Patterns can be transformed, but the observational view will still be able to identify their lineage. The developed model allows a deeper understanding of the culture of both ancient societies, as well as the outlook of Western man.

The incidence, mortality, and risk factors of prostate cancer in Asian men.

The objective of this review was to describe the epidemiology and risk factors of prostate cancer (PCa) in Asian populations. English language publications published over the last 10 years covering studies on the incidence, mortality, and risk factors of PCa in Asia were reviewed. The incidence of PCa in Asia is rising but is still significantly lower than that in Western countries. Studies in Asia indicated that the consumption of red meat, fat, dairy, and eggs was associated with a higher risk for PCa. Age and family history were also found to be risk factors. The emergence of genetic data indicates that different genetic backgrounds between Asian and Western populations play a role in the observed differences in PCa incidence. The lower incidence of PCa in Asian men than in Western men may in part be due to a lack of systematic prostate-specific antigen screening, but environmental and genetic factors also play a role.

Iron in the Promotion and Initiation of Cancer How Free Iron Accelerates Predisposing Insulin Resistance

Iron is physiologically essential to life, but biochemically it is harmful because of its evident -but unappreciated- oxidative and inflammatory tissue power when it accumulates, is dosed in excess, or is free; and that because, after entering the body, unlike any other metal, its elimination is almost non-existent in man; thus, metal is a powerful promoter of chronic degenerative diseases, from diabetes, neurodegeneration to cancer, through extensive coronary and cardio-cerebrovascular disease; modifying its clinical expressivity and accelerating its severity. Iron is a powerful oxidizing and inflammatory agent, and its accumulation causes and promotes the proliferation of cancer cells in particular, both in animals and in humans. Free and accumulated iron triggers a powerful uncontrolled Cell Proliferation, permanently feeding the survival of the neoplastic cell. After more than 50 years of experimental and preclinical studies, it is clearly demonstrating the carcinogenicity of iron; and this is also proven in humans, from breast cancer and endometrium, in women, to cancer of the colon-rectum, prostate, and pancreas in men. In Western men and women, the reductions in iron deposits have an important anti-tumor and preventive effect for the development of cancer or diabetes, two entities biologically interrelated by the states of Resistance to Insulin, an inflammatory state that favors the development of malignant neoplasms, and can accelerate its aggressiveness. It is the chronic excess of insulin or its Tissue Resistance, the biological event and the clinical syndrome that increases the cancerous power of excess iron, both silent epidemics in modern man. Moderate increases in body iron levels increase the risk of acquiring cancer, and raise the level of their mortality. And its deficiency or chelation in vivo decreases the Tumor growth (Wang F, Elliott RL, Head JF: Inhibitory effect of deferoxamine mesylate and low iron diet on the 13762NF rat mammary adenocarcinoma Anticancer Res. 1999 Jan-Feb; 19 (1A): 445-50). If excess iron mediates and increases the risk of cancer associated with Insulin resistance, any subject with this syndrome can minimize any associated health risks (and their increased risk of cancer), avoiding iron-rich diets and donating blood with regularity; Iron is the metal that causes “exponential” and punctual mutations and fusion of genes through chromosomal translocations, constituting the greatest risk factor for human carcinogenesis. Iron is physiologically essential for life but biochemically dangerous. Chronic accumulation of iron causes pantropic organ damage and excess body iron play an important role in carcinogenesis, coronary artery disease, neurodegenerative disease, stroke and inflammatory disorders. Iron is very slowly excreted from humans once it is absorbed into the body. The significance of iron excess has been markedly underestimated, despite the fact that iron overloading disorders are as common place in the US white population. Iron-overload and catalytic iron promotes activation of oxidative responsive transcription factors and pro-inflammatory cytokines that increase cancer extension and aggravate them. There is accumulative evidence for iron as a carcinogenic metal in epidemiological, clinical, animal, and cell culture studies. The role of iron in various cancers, such as colorectal and liver cancer was demonstrated. Recent advancements on the molecular mechanisms of iron carcinogenesis evolved the Insulin-resistance generation and promotion, fisiopatologic condition that is not only permissive, but may be generated cancer and promoting it. Unlike other nutritional metals, iron is highly conserved: toxicity due to excess iron can occur either acutely after a single dose or chronically due to excessive accumulation in the body from diet. In vivo studies have demonstrated that an iron deficiency induced by either feeding a low iron diet injecting the iron chelator deferoxamine mesylate decreases tumor growth (Wang F, Elliott RL, Head JF: Inhibitory effect of deferoxamine mesylate and low iron diet on the 13762NF rat mammary adenocarcinoma Anticancer Res. 1999 Jan-Feb;19(1A):445-50). Iron supplementation has at times proven ineffective and even detrimental to health. Thus, iron excess may mediate the increased cancer risk associated with insulin resistance and heme-rich diets, and subjects who are insulin resistant can minimize any health risk associated with iron overload by avoiding heme-rich flesh foods and donating blood regularly. The energy that sustains cancer cells derived preferentially from glycolysis depends on the gene p53 deficiency-iron induced. This nutrient is postulated to contribute to the initiation of cancer in vivo, but iron overload initiates and sustain cancer development if chronic infection or insulin resistance conditions are present. Cancer cells require considerably more iron than normal cells. Since iron catalytic can induce driver point mutation and create fusion genes through chromosomal translocations, iron overload is one of the most important risk factors in human carcinogenesis. Because free iron may play a catalytic role in “spontaneous” mutagenesis, moderately elevated iron stores increased overall risk for cáncer.

Black “Matter” Lives

Since its inception, the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement has opened space for three interrelated discourses on the polysemic nature of matter, but so far two have dominated Black and communication studies. First, the BLM organization promotes the thought that Black lives, as human lives, should matter enough to convict White people of the murder of unarmed Black people. Second, some argue that while BLM is an important organization, historically, the lives of Black people in the West have not mattered. The third discourse, one suggested in the growing work of Black feminist new materialism, is more complicated, as it inherently calls into question the human: Why do Black lives equal matter? This article interrogates the relationship between blackness, matter, and communication to argue that racial violence situates Black bodies as matter/“elemental media” necessary for the materialization of Western (White) man as the dominant raced, gendered genre of humanity.

The Homoerotics of Orientalism

The Homoerotics of Orientalism

Convective-Dispersion Modeling in 3D Contrast-Ultrasound Imaging for the Localization of Prostate Cancer.

Despite being the solid tumor with the highest incidence in western men, prostate cancer (PCa) still lacks reliable imaging solutions that can overcome the need for systematic biopsies. Dynamic contrast-enhanced ultrasound imaging (DCE-US) allows us to quantitatively characterize the vascular bed in the prostate, due to its ability to visualize an intravenously administered bolus of contrast agents. Previous research has demonstrated that DCE-US parameters related to the vascular architecture are useful markers for the localization of PCa lesions. In this paper, we propose a novel method to assess the convective dispersion (D) and velocity (v) of the contrast bolus spreading through the prostate from three-dimensional (3D) DCE-US recordings. By assuming that D and v are locally constant, we solve the convective-dispersion equation by minimizing the corresponding regularized least-squares problem. 3D multiparametric maps of D and v were compared with 3D histopathology retrieved from the radical prostatectomy specimens of six patients. With a pixel-wise area under the receiver operating characteristic curve of 0.72 and 0.80, respectively, the method shows diagnostic value for the localization of PCa.

Fragmentation of the fe/male characters in Final Flight from Sanaa: A corpus-based feminist stylistic analysis

This paper examines the fragmentation of the fe/male characters in a one-novel corpus (henceforth, FFFS Corpus). The text is Final Flight From Sanaa, a Yemeni novel written by Qais Ghanem and published in 2011. The paper unfolds how the fe/male characters are introduced and talked about as anatomical parts in order to describe differences or similarities in gender representation, and to explore power relations and cultural differences between the eastern and western men and women. The analysis is done qualitatively using the feminist stylistic approach set out in Mills (1995) and quantitatively with the help of the corpus linguistic tool Wmatrix. Results have demonstrated that although the female and male bodies are almost equally fragmented, they are depicted differently. For example, female characters are introduced in terms of their physical attractiveness and sexuality while their male counterparts are focalized via their colors, physical deficiencies, skills, personality traits and the level of power they possess (whether physical or social).

LANGUAGE, WESTERN MEN AND THAI WOMEN ON THE DATING SITE

This research studied the language of men on the Thai women dating site. The purpose of the study were 1) to investigate the kind of language being used by men on the dating site and 2) to study western men on the dating site’s social status. Data were collected from online dating sites randomly. There were 73 case studies for this research. The result of the study revealed that western men used a lot of positive adjectives to describe the desire characteristics of Thai women. They also used the pronoun ‘I’ and the possessive pronoun ‘My’ frequently. This illustrated the self-centric and the superiority feeling of men on the dating site. On the aspect of social status, the majority of these western men were divorced and middle aged. They did not mention their occupation as if they found it not important for the relationship.

Academic English and elite masculinities

This paper addresses the ways in which the teaching of English for academic purposes by ‘Western’ teachers in Japanese higher education institutions is shaped by gender and sexuality. The paper draws on findings from a 5 year ethnographic study of white Western teachers of English in Japan. Drawing on interview data with 18 male participants, the paper points to the way elite status is attached to the teaching of English for academic purposes (TEAP) in contrast with teaching general English; the way TEAP is reproduced as a male-dominated activity among English-native-speaker teachers; and the way white Western men teaching in these contexts display an enhanced professional masculinity. Discourses articulated by the men also serve to position gendered Others as illegitimate or unworthy participants in TEAP. Although the men's accounts tend to frame TEAP as a rational, disembodied, asexual occupation, the paper argues that gender and sexuality are deployed as identity gatekeeping tools that serve to police the borders of academic English as an elite, male-dominated professional category. In closing, I make proposals for transformation of gendered hierarchies in this context, but these would require shifts in deep-seated cultural, institutional, and interpersonal gender ideologies.

MODEL KONSTRUKSI MAKNA PERAN DAN POSISI PEREMPUAN INDONESIA PELAKU KAWIN CAMPUR

This study aims to explore marriage between Indonesian women and the western men (laki-laki bule) from western culture and to describe the meaning of role and position of Indonesian women married with western men. Individual perspective on the role and gender position in marriage life is mostly influenced by neighbours, community, and family. The process of interpreting the role and gender position for Indonesian women is a part of community construction. This research deploys phenomenological perspective, particularly symbolic interactionism and the theory of the social construction of reality. Data have been collected by in-depth interviews and observation to seven Indonesian women married to western men in Jakarta selected through snowball sampling. This research found a construction meaning model related to the role and position of Indonesian women doing mix marriage. Through interaction with their husband, the informants define their role and position in marriage life which is inline with equality principle done by their husband including four different equality meaning, such as partial equality, natural equality, absolute equality, and pragmatic equality. The contribution of this study is to provide a model of construction of meaning on the role and position of Indonesian women doing mixed marriage in family and community.

Making space for a new role – gender differences in identity changes in couples transitioning to parenthood

Changes in life roles reflect the process of reorganization of identity, which is an important component of adaptation during transition to parenthood. During this family transition gender differences are significant. Despite the fact that in Western societies women and men are encouraged to share family and work responsibilities, female self-concept is more strongly associated with motherhood, whereas men still highly value the role of a breadwinner. Therefore, relative perceived and desired salience, and directly assessed importance of main life roles (a spouse, a worker and a parent) before and after the birth of the child were examined. One hundred and eighty-seven couples participated in the study. The perceived (relative and directly assessed), and relative desired salience of a parental role increased after the child’s birth in both genders. Women valued the parent role higher than men who deemed the worker role more salient to their identity after the child’s birth. Spouse identity seemed to be created in the couple itself as both partners assessed it similarly. Inclusion of couples and repeated measurement of all variables allowed for the analysis of complex changes in self-perceptions in transitions to motherhood and fatherhood.

Real Men Get the Best Bar Girls: Performing Masculinities in China’s Global Sex Industry

ABSTRACTThe shifting power relations in China after the global financial crisis are redefining masculinity for both Western and Asian men. Connell (1995) argues that in most societies a hegemonic masculinity usually exists that privileges heterosexual middle-class and economically successful men who exhibit characteristics associated with being masculine. The global financial crisis has led to a new global financial order that has created paths for people to reimagine hierarchies of class, gender, nation, race, and sexuality. “Entangled masculinities” recognizes that the intersections of class, gender, nation, race, and sexuality shape identities of male clients who buy commercial sex. The article looks specifically at clients from three niche commercial sex markets (low, mid, and high tier) in Dongguan, China. Specifically, five patterns of behavior exhibited by male clients to rationalize and assert their masculinity will be analyzed in depth: vigorous and macho; austere and essentialist; suppressive and anxious; extravagant and competitive; and refined and collaborative. This article argues clients with vigorous and macho, austere and essentialist, and suppressive and anxious behavior types are frequently found in low-end and mid-tier bars. Patrons of higher-tier bars tended to engage in extravagant and competitive and refined and collaborative behavior through expressions of wealth and power.

Does the Functional Form of the Association Between Education and Mortality Differ by U.S. Region?

ABSTRACTTo understand the education–mortality association among U.S. adults, recent studies have documented its national functional form. However, the functional form of education–mortality relationship may vary across geographic contexts. The four U.S. Census regions differ considerably in their social and economic policies, employment opportunities, income levels, and other factors that may affect how education lowers the risk of mortality. Thus, we documented regional differences in the functional form of the education–mortality association and examined the role of employment and income in accounting for regional differences. We used data on non-Hispanic white adults (2,981,672, person years) aged 45–84 in the 2000–2009 National Health Interview Survey, with Linked Mortality File through 2011 (37,598 deaths) and estimated discrete-time hazard models. The functional form of education and adult mortality was best characterized by credentialism in the Midwest, Northeast, and for Western men. For Western women, the association was linear, consistent with the human capital model. In the South, we observed a combination of mechanisms, with mortality risk declining with each year of schooling and a step change with high school graduation, followed by steeper decline thereafter. Our work adds to the increasing body of research that stresses the importance of contexts in shaping the education–mortality relationship.

Returning (to) the Question of the Human: An Introduction

Returning (to) the Question of the HumanAn Introduction Birgit M. Kaiser and Kathrin Thiele So for us to deal with global warming, this will call for a farreaching transformation of knowledge—this pari passu with a new mutation of the answer (its "descriptive statement") that we give to the question as to who as humans we are. —Sylvia Wynter, "Unparalleled Catastrophe for Our Species?" With each intra-action, the manifold of entangled relations is reconfigured. And so consequentiality, responsibility, and accountability take on entirely new valences. [. . .] Responsibility is not ours alone. And yet, our responsibility is greater than it would be if it were ours alone. —Karen Barad, Meeting the Universe Halfway The trivialization of human suffering in our time and the consequent indifference [. . .] has many causes. Relevant factors are, no doubt, the impact of the society of information and communication–the repetition of visibility without the visibility of repetition [. . .]. However, at a deeper level, the trivialization of suffering resides in the categories we use to classify and organize it [. . .]. —Boaventura de Sousa Santos, If God were a Human Rights Activist [End Page 1] When I speak of the human, it is perhaps also my way of being always traversed by the mystery of sexual difference. By the sort of double listening that I have, I am always trying to perceive, to receive, excitations, vibrations, signs coming from sexed, marked, different places; and then, in a certain place—barely a point, a full stop or a semicolon—the difference gives way to (but it is rather that the two great currents mix, flow into each other, so as only to be) what awaits us all: the human. —Hélène Cixous, in Cixous and Mireille Calle-Gruber, Rootprints To bridge means loosening our borders, not closing off to others. Bridging is the work of opening the gate to the stranger, within and without. To step across the threshold is to be stripped of the illusion of safety because it moves us into unfamiliar territory and does not grant safe passage. To bridge is to attempt community, and for that we must risk being open to personal, political, and spiritual intimacy, to risk being wounded. —Gloria Anzaldúa, "(Un)natural Bridges, (Un)safe Spaces" Guiding quotes provide the means by which we, as guest editors of this special issue entitled "The Ends of Being Human? Returning (to) the Question," would like to open this discussion. The thematic horizons toward which this title gestures are both overwhelming and discomforting. There is the rather ambiguous gesture of a "return (to)," which could easily be misinterpreted as implying nostalgia. There is the thematic anchor of "the human," for whose hegemonic humanist and exceptionalist incarnations we feel anything but nostalgia and whose reduction to white, Western Man and obfuscation of other traditions of humanism must be so urgently disrupted that one might wonder—in light of the decolonial, feminist, and posthuman(ist) critiques of Man—how a return to the human can avoid resuscitating these hegemonic humanist ghosts. There is also the modality of the question addressed by the title, which could easily be read as being in pursuit of something seemingly (to be) known, as if the answer was "out there"—or even the goal to reach. The title harbors all of these pitfalls, and more. And asking about (the ends of) being human is perhaps especially challenging in the context of an academic journal devoted to continental feminism, as it might unduly pull any return to the figure of the human into the tradition of continental philosophy and thus only its responses to the question of the human.1 Therefore, to pretend that this [End Page 2] collection of essays simply addresses any other question would be, to say the least, misleading. So, we opt to start this introduction very humbly under the guidance of the above citations and their different voices, taking inspiration here from Sylvia Wynter, whose texts also often begin with an assemblage of guiding quotes, and whose work has inspired so much more of this project. Yet, having selected these guiding texts for our introduction, we also acknowledge that they in no way exhaust what—or who...

"РЕЛИГИЯ", "РЕЛИГИОЗНОСТЬ", "ТРАНСЦЕНДЕНЦИЯ", "ДУХОВНОСТЬ": КЛЮЧЕВЫЕ ПОНЯТИЯ В НЕМЕЦКОЯЗЫЧНЫХ ДИСКУССИЯХ

The paper addresses major terms and theories within contemporary German studies of spirituality, that are related and largely based on the ideas of Ernst Troeltsch, Thomas Luckmann and Detlef Pollack. The authors discuss basic definitions and spirituality research results based on German sample. They aim at showing particular features of German research as well as putting it in the context of various sociological approaches to spirituality.The authors conclude that within spirituality there is a tendency to use one’s own transcendence experience as the source and moral criteria for one’s personal religion. That is why in the sociological perspective spirituality is often differed from churchliness and emancipated from the influence of historical churches.This, according to the authors, leads to the attractiveness of the concept of “spirituality” for the modern Western man: on the one hand, it refers to a transcendent reality, on the other, it does not appeal to ecclesiastic religiosity.

The Man-Not: Race, Class, Genre, and the Dilemmas of Black Manhood by Tommy J. Curry

Reviewed by: The Man-Not: Race, Class, Genre, and the Dilemmas of Black Manhood by Tommy J. Curry Ronald B. Neal Tommy J. Curry. The Man-Not: Race, Class, Genre, and the Dilemmas of Black Manhood. Philadelphia: Temple UP, 2017. 298 pp. $34.95. Tommy J. Curry's The Man-Not: Race, Class, Genre, and the Dilemmas of Black Manhood is a groundbreaking work that argues for a new field of intellectual labor: black male studies. In this work, Curry argues from the standpoint of history, sociology, and philosophy that a comprehensive research program focusing on black men and boys is needed. Such a program is called for in light of a persistent condition of death, social and mortal, that plagues black men and boys in the United States. The Man-Not represents a departure from standard race, class, and gender theory where black men and boys are rendered criminal, predatory, savage, and evil. In The Man-Not, such theory is insufficient in conceptualizing and addressing the precarious existence of black males in the U. S. In articulating this deviation from standard race, class, and gender theory and forwarding the theoretical lens and logic behind such an endeavor, Curry states the following: Man-Not (ness) is a term used to express the specific genre category of the Black male. Genre differs from gender by this distance Black males share with Western man a priori, and, by consequence, patriarchy. . . . The Man-Not is a theoretical formulation that attempts to capture the reality of Black maleness in an anti-Black world. . . . The Man-Not is the denial not only of Black manhood but also of the possibility to be anything but animal, the savage beast, outside of the civilizational accounts of gender. (6-7) The Man-Not engages black males as objects of child abuse, neglect, rape, incarceration, unemployment, and death. Concerned primarily with trauma and vulnerability with respect to the black male existence in the U. S., The Man-Not seeks to overcome the historical, methodological, institutional, and ideological obstacles with which a [End Page 246] study of this sort must contend. The Man-Not addresses an entrenched prohibitive morality in academia, particularly among humanities scholars, that limits inquiry into black men and boys to a certain criminal and predatory terrain. With staggering research and effective argumentation, The Man-Not implicates academia as an ally in black male trauma and death and charges that contemporary academics participate in a long intellectual history—over more than a century—that offers fodder and justification for the policing, containment, and punishment of black males. Overall, how black men and boys are imagined in academia is an extension of how they are perceived, policed, and contained as bogeymen in American society. In each chapter, Curry effectively delineates how black men and boys have been rendered as mythological creatures and pathogens in the American imaginary. As such, accounts of black males from nineteenth-century ethnology, to early twentieth-century social science, to proponents of eugenics to government-funded public health initiatives, to the writings of gender theorists, have obscured black males' lived realities. In light of such misrepresentation, popular accounts of black manhood, from the antebellum period to Jim Crow and the civil rights/Black Power eras to the present, are questioned and reassessed. In this rethinking of black men and boys, Curry breaks new ground on subject matter not covered in previous scholarship. Their sodomization in American history, the connections between poverty and intimate partner violence, and the condition of black male death as a bioethical problem are among the underexamined areas taken up in The Man-Not. The book's overarching achievement is that it goes beyond standard accounts and offers a mode of inquiry that is empirical and theoretical, and insists upon new methods for engaging the condition of black maleness. Curry's work extends upon his already substantial documentation of a peculiar racial chauvinism regarding the study and interpretation of black men and boys in the United States from previously published articles and book chapters. Starting from the earliest accounts of black men studied by social scientists like Lawrence Gary, Robert Staples, and Clyde Franklin, Curry expands upon the idea that black...

ИНСТИТУТ ТУЛКУ: ТРАДИЦИИ И СОВРЕМЕННОСТЬ

At the present stage of development of Tibetan Buddhism in the West, the tulku institution, which presence in this tradition is its main characteristic, began to take roots. In the past twenty years, Tibetan monks have begun to recognize the reincarnation of representatives of the lineage of succession, not only among Tibetans, but also Westerners. Analyzing this process, the author comes to the conclusion that the difficulty of introducing this model into the practice of Buddhism in the West is that Western adepts should agree that his teacher, the authoritative Tibetan lama, in his next birth can be identified in the person of a Western man and in this regard, there will be problems of relationship of students with the reincarnation of their spiritual teacher. The building of such relations is an increasingly important element in creating and maintaining the integrity required for the survival and further successful development of Tibetan Buddhism in the West. The author claims that, as a rule, children-reincarnates do not visit Western countries for various reasons. Many of them live in Tibetan monasteries in India and Nepal, where they are subject to strict regime and instructions. However, in the near future these children will grow into leaders of their societies located in Western countries.

붓차티 텍스트에 표상하는 일본 인식 : 저널과 문학 사이에서

With the recent rise in Italy of cultural interest towards East Asia, the Western world’s prejudices, misconceptions, and discriminations against East Asia, which originated from fantasies, romantic idealism, or ignorance, are being questioned. This study investigates the perceptions of Japan as depicted in the works of Buzzati, a writer who greatly influenced 20SUPth/SUP century Italian journalism and literature. Buzzati, who was the senior journalist of a major Italian daily newspaper called ‘Corriere della Sera’, visited Tokyo in 1963 to cover the preparations for the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, as well as touring Japan in general, and wrote 15 articles. Based on his experience of Japan outside the boundaries of ‘reality’ as perceived by the Western world, Buzzati bridged the gap between objective observation and personal experience with literary techniques, thereby allowing his readers a closer experience of Japan.BR The combination of objective information, fantasy, elements of fairy tales, as well as literary techniques in Buzzati’s writings lies between journalism and literature and hence, was a refreshing and novel attempt. Buzzati’s ‘literary articles’ were significant because they were diverse and new, which allowed the readers to touch, feel, taste, smell, and judge, which was the way Buzzati experienced Japan, rather than passively receive objective information. However, although this form of writing was more advanced than other articles that evaluated Japan based on Western political and philosophical values, it failed to overcome the frame of Orientalism, since the articles were based on a Western man’s experience.

Buber, the Bible, and Hebrew Humanism: Finding a Usable Past

In his recent book on American Judaism, Shaul Magid touches briefly on the phenomenon of ba’alei teshuva in the 1960s and 1970s as an example of the appeal of Hasidic teachings as a counter-cultural force. Baal teshuva, literally someone who returns or repents, is a term used to describe non-observant Jews who choose to take on a more traditional lifestyle. Central to the appeal of Hasidism in this era were not ultra-Orthodox Hasidim themselves but rather the worldview of Hasidism as it appeared in the writings of Martin Buber and Abraham Joshua Heschel. As Magid comments, Buber and Heschel “served as bridge figures between…. young, Jewishly illiterate but highly intelligent men and women and the ‘spirituality’ of ‘authentic’ Judaism.”1 The Judaism offered to Western Jews by Buber and Heschel was both foreign and familiar: in their most popular works, they combined the Hasidic texts and teachings of Eastern European Jewry with attention to the spiritual problems of the modern world. Buber, in particular, claimed that Hasidism represented one expression of an eternal essence of Judaism that was all too often absent from mainstream expressions of Jewish religion. In the Hasidic tales he published in German in the early twentieth century, and in his presentations of Hasidism in various essays and books over the rest of his life, he sought to distill that essence and then to re-present it in terms that would engage his modern audience. In 1957, he described the spiritual insights he found in Hasidism: “the kernel of this life is capable of working on men even today, when most of the powers of the Hasidic community itself have been given over to decay or destruction, and it is just on the present-day West that it is capable of working in an especial manner.… From here comes an answer to the crisis of Western man that has become fully manifest in our age.”2

Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the Promethean Chains

ABSTRACTModernity and Enlightenment are on a perpetual axis of mutual tension. The paths of modernity are tortuous, and its roots are not to be found in a desire for enlightenment or in the idea of progress but in the Promethean passion of Western man to be his own master, to use his insight to make a world different from the one that he found. The passion that enabled modern man to break free from his ancient chains was the same passion that created the political ideologies of the nineteenth century and made its imprint on the totalitarian regimes which arose in their wake in the twentieth. The metaphor of chains runs like a thread through the writings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and reflects the snare of modern freedom. Through the metaphor of chains, Rousseau criticized the identical nature ascribed to modernity and Enlightenment. He perceived the ambivalence of progress, the contradictions inherent in modernity and the paradox of freedom in the modern age. In the following article, I shall trace Rousseau’s attitude regards the ‘Promethean paradox’, from his early essays up until his Emile, or On Education (1762).