Worldly Affairs Research Articles

المنهاج الصوفي ودوره في إصلاح آليات التعامل مع كتاب الله تعالى

The article tries to highlight the nature of al-Islah based on Islamic point of view to the assertion that it must be the starting point of the Qur’an, realized by the Prophet Muhammad p.b.u.h. in the reality of life through his great character. Then it was followed by his companions by utilizing it as the methodology of science in determining fiqh al-Kitab and Sunnah. It is also used as a basis to guide the people to obey the truth. Thus they struggled to raise this noble religion and they are confident that the glory belongs only to Allah and the believers who keep their promise to God that they successfully lead the worldly affairs as well as the hereafter. All of it was the results of the divinity tutelage prominently in the reform of society to transform human beings that follow-up would result in changes to the entire human life. Any damage occurring in the Muslim community throughout the ages until today is due to heart damage that prevents them to understand the divine secrets as a bridge for all human growth in this world and hereafter. Hence the Muslims scholars who give efforts to enhance community have taken the right step to take advantage of athar al-Salaf al-Salih in establishing a comprehensive methodology of knowledge in purify and boost the heart. Sufi scholar methodology inferred from the texts of legislation contained in it all the methods and principles of divinity is the only methodology that is able to respond to the demands of the human soul. Neglect of this methodology can bring the whole future of mankind toward destruction.

Deranging the Mental Lexicon

This paper offers a defense of Davidson’s conclusion in ‘A Nice Derangement of Epitaphs’, focusing on the psychology and epistemology of language. Drawing on empirical studies in language acquisition and sociolinguistics, I problematize the traditional idealizing assumption that a person’s mental lexicon consists of two distinct parts—a dictionary, comprising her knowledge of word meanings proper, and an encyclopedia, comprising her wider knowledge of worldly affairs. I argue that the breakdown of the dictionary–encyclopedia distinction can be given a cognitive and functional explanation: facts regarding language learning and the challenges of coping with linguistically diverse environments require that dictionary and encyclopedia remain deeply integrated rather than categorically distinct dimensions of the mental lexicon. This argument provides support for a psychologized version of Davidson’s conclusion in ‘Derangement’: there is no such thing as a language, in the sense that there is no diachronically stable and uniquely specifiable object that could constitute the language which a person knows. I then apply this conclusion to the question of whether the concept of a public language—understood as a more or less stable body of conventions shared by a group of speakers—could nonetheless retain an important explanatory role in philosophy of language and linguistics.

A Woman's Word: Sholem Aleichem's “Genz”

Sholem Aleichem's Genz (Geese; 1902) is the monologue of Basia, a trader of geese, who unfolds before her silent listener—a man, apparently a writer—the hardships of her vocation. It is not the gem that she promises to tell, but rather a twisted account with countless detours and digressions. Neither is it, however, a stream of associations generated by a loquacious woman's unruly tongue. The monologue, exuberant until it becomes ferocious, is a farce of fictional storytelling, of literature as a refined and edifying endeavor: a grotesque performance poking fun at the writer-listener, whose bookish language and concepts of the proper have never brushed against the realities of everyday life. Postponing her promised story in order to deliver what appears as a heap of petty anecdotes and guff, Basia produces in her monologue something of her reality—of the suspensions that govern Jewish women's lives and of the compromised language of those who are enmeshed in the web of worldly affairs. Genz, the raging and vengeful soliloquy, is an attempt to subvert gender hierarchies as they manifest themselves in language by a woman who recognizes her irrevocable exclusion from the sources of symbolic capital.

Playing God: Alberto Caeiro’s “Num meio-dia de fim de primavera” and Pier Paolo Pasolini’s <em>La Ricotta</em>

This paper examines the relationship between “creators” (gods and poets) and their creations in the poem “Once at mid-day in late spring” (“Num meio-dia de fim de primavera”) by the Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa (1888–1935)—but ostensibly authored by Alberto Caeiro, one of the numerous fictional heteronyms through which Pessoa published entire works in verse and prose—and Pier Paolo Pasolini’s short film, La ricotta (1963). I focus in particular on Pessoa and Pasolini’s displacement of a divine subject onto a human object and of creative authority onto secondary authors. Secondly, I consider the playfulness inherent in the irreverent rejection of the institutionalization of artistic and religious creation in the poem and the film, as well as the use of bucolic settings that revive a kind of pre-historical, pre-Christian religiosity in a landscape that is nonetheless distinct from traditional “pastoral” modes due to the constant interruption of modern systems of production and representation. Finally, I explore the reversal of the hierarchical relationship between ignorance and intellect, pathos and logos, which is employed in both works in order to access a more authentic representation of natural existence. “Once at mid-day in late spring” (“Num meio-dia de fim de primavera”) is the eighth of the forty-nine poems that comprise the collection entitled The Keeper of Sheep (“O Guardador de Rebanhos”). In the seventeen stanzas of the poem, the poet adopts a playful tone to describe a dream in which God descends from the cross, taking residence in the poet’s house in the form of an “Eternal Child” who finally finds the freedom to criticize God and create mischief in the poet’s village. The emphasis on the child’s ignorance of worldly affairs, the pleasure he finds in observing nature and his inability to compre hend the poet’s “stories about the doings of mankind” (“historias das cousas so dos homens”) 1 provide an example of why Edwin Honig and Susan Brown, authors of the English translation, define The Keeper of Sheep as a “poetic manifesto, proclaiming the unknowable and manifold nature of reality as something

A Selective Bibliography on Shishuo xinyu

This bibliography includes Chinese, English, Japanese, French, and German scholarship on the Shishuo xinyu (A New Account of Worldly Affairs). Because a substantial amount of Chinese scholarship ha...

John D. Lyons The Phantom of Chance: From Fortune to Randomness in Seventeenth-Century French LiteratureThe Phantom of Chance: From Fortune to Randomness in Seventeenth-Century French Literature. John D. Lyons. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2012. Pp. vi+211.

<i>John D. Lyons</i> The Phantom of Chance: From Fortune to Randomness in Seventeenth-Century French Literature<i>The Phantom of Chance: From Fortune to Randomness in Seventeenth-Century French Literature</i>. John D. Lyons. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2012. Pp. vi+211.

God, duty and community in English economic life, 1660-1720

The English economy underwent profound changes in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, yet the worldly affairs of ordinary people continued to be shaped as much by traditional ideals and moral codes as by material conditions. This book explores the economic implications of many of the era's key concepts, including Christian stewardship, divine providence, patriarchal power, paternal duty, local community, and collective identity. Brodie Waddell draws on a wide range of contemporary sources - from ballads and pamphlets to pauper petitions and guild regulations - to show that such ideas pervaded every aspect of social and economic relations during this crucial period. Previous discussions of English economic life have tended to ignore or dismiss the influence of cultural factors. By contrast, Waddell argues that popular beliefs about divine will, social duty and communal bonds remained the frame through which most people viewed vital 'earthly' concerns such as food marketing, labour relations, trade policy, poor relief, and many others. This innovative study, demonstrating both the vibrancy and the diversity of the 'moral economies' of the later Stuart period, represents a significant contribution to our understanding of early modern society. It will be essential reading for all early modern British economic and cultural historians. Brodie Waddell is Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at the University of Cambridge. He has published on preaching, local government, the landscape and other aspects of early modern society.

Makna Suluk Pada Lansia Anggota Jamaah Tarekat Naqsyabandiyah

This study aims to know the meaningful of dynamics life through the spiritual process in the eldery of the member of Congregation Jemaah Naqsyabandiyah that has followed suluk. Suluk is ritual series in mysticism to get the next stages or to improve “maqam” for the retire ways from the world and some rituals that are directed by murshid with the sole purpose of approach to Allah SWT. The kind of the research is fenomenologik and the characteristic of the research is Qualitative descriptive. The data are collected using observation and interview. Tematik analysis was used in data analysis. This research took 3 people as informants. The result showed that the semeleh concept emerged from the meaning of mysticism. Semeleh illustrated with submission of life, sobriety, confidence, sincerity to receive God's destiny, readiness to face death and no longer prioritize the worldly affairs. Impacts that arise in the behavior of the discipline, commitment and consistency in worship. Keywords: Meaning, Suluk

Hispanic Casuistry Studies: Room to Grow

Hispanic Casuistry Studies:Room to Grow William Childers Keywords William Childers, Hilaire Kallendorf, Elena del Río Parra, casuistry, Martín de Azpilcueta, Baltasar Gracián, moral reasoning in the comedia Kallendorf, Hilaire . Conscience on Stage: The Comedia as Casuistry in Early Modern Spain. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 2007. 299 pp. del Río Parra, Elena . Cartografías de la conciencia española en la Edad de Oro. México, DF: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2008. 310 pp. The term "casuistry" (<L casus, case) refers to the practical application of moral principles to specific cases. In the Catholic tradition, casuistry is linked to auricular confession, since the confessor must take the circumstances surrounding an action into account in deciding the gravity of particular sins and assigning penance. The first great stimulus to writing casuistical treatises was thus the Fourth Lateran Council (1215), which made annual confession obligatory for all Catholics. The second was the Council of Trent (1545-1563), which, encouraging more frequent communion, strengthened the institutions of confession and penance against Protestant [End Page 317] rejection.1 The typical casuist text was a summa of problematic cases of conscience, to which the author/compiler, citing numerous authorities as antecedents, offered solutions. Through the accumulation of cases and opinions, these collections tended to become ever more voluminous. During the Counter-Reformation, a typical summa was usually organized into the following sections: a survey of the sacraments and the conditions for their efficacy (with emphasis on confession itself); a catalogue of venial and mortal sins, with a chapter for each of the Ten Commandments; and a discussion of penance and excommunication. Meant primarily as a ready reference for confessors, they came equipped with handy indexes to aid in quick consultation. The ascendency of casuistry began in earnest with Martín de Azpilcueta Navarro's influential Manual para confesores y penitentes (Salamanca, 1556), and lasted one hundred years, until Blaise Pascal ridiculed casuists' excesses in his initially anonymous Lettres provinciales (1656). Largely as a result of this brilliant satire, the term retains to this day a connotation of moral chicanery and laxity. But Pascal's mockery failed to acknowledge casuistry's function as an instrument for extending the Church's active guidance of individual consciences. Early modern Catholicism urgently needed to adjust medieval morality for a broader set of situations arising in a changing world. Greater flexibility was introduced through the doctrine of Probabilism, according to which, given doubts about the best among a range of moral choices, it was permitted to adopt a "less probable" course of action, provided there was at least some basis for thinking it justified. Not all casuists were probabilists, a point to which I will return below; but a probabilistic casuistry was the most adaptable to different professions, social classes, and political circumstances. Spanish Neo-Scholasticism played a dominant role in the development of casuistry in general and Probabilism in particular. Among the leading casuists after Trent were Dominicans who taught at Salamanca, like Azpilcueta, Domingo Soto, and Bartolomé Medina, who was the first to openly espouse Probabilism. But crucial justifications of that doctrine came from the pens of two Jesuit theologians, Gabriel Vásquez and the great jurist Francisco Suárez. Suárez argued for Probabilism on the grounds that in doubtful cases a confessor must respect penitents' unalienable possession of free will (liberum arbitrium). In this regard, he clearly drew on Molinism, the defense of free will developed by another Neo-Scholastic Jesuit theologian, Luis de Molina. [End Page 318] Indeed, casuistry was a Jesuit specialty. From its inception, this order sought to extend the influence of the Church in worldly affairs, including matters of state. Of particular importance for that mission was the Papal license to hear confession anywhere and to absolve sins normally reserved to bishops. Expertise in hearing confession thus became a fundamental part of the Jesuit curriculum, and several leading casuistical treatises of the Baroque period are essentially Jesuit textbooks.2 As confessors to the wealthy and powerful, they employed probabilistic arguments to render Machiavellian "reason of state" compatible with Catholic morality. This led to a tendency toward laxism that provoked the outrage of Jansenists like Pascal, and...

The good company

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to present the argument that in principle any company can become a good company by adopting certain characteristics which define the good in enterprise affairs and affirm and reinforce everyone with a stake in the company – managers, workers, suppliers, customers, and communities where it operates – in addition to its owners.Design/methodology/approachTo identify the characteristics of the good company the paper turns to Catholic social teaching, with its traditional emphasis on the importance of practising virtue in worldly affairs. In this regard, the paper relies heavily on the writings and public statements of Pope John Paul II, who addressed these matters with great clarity and insight.FindingsIn its research the paper finds eight characteristics by which the good company can be identified and which, if embraced by the leadership of a willing and committed enterprise, can help to transform it into a good company. Each of the eight is addressed in some detail.Originality/valueThe paper examines a vast body of writings that, according to Catholic social teaching, identify the good in enterprise affairs. One of the eight characteristics, personalist capital, advances the proposal that the good company routinely maximizes virtue among its stakeholders and thereby enhances its own profitability because the virtuous person is the more effective economic agent.

The rhetorical strategy of William Paley’s Natural theology (1802): Part 2, William Paley’s Natural theology and the challenge of atheism

The first part of this two-part article suggested that William Paley’s Natural theology (1802) should be viewed as the culmination of a complex psychological strategy for inculcating religious and moral sentiments. Having focused in Part 1 on Paley’s rhetoric, we now turn our attention to the philosophical part of the programme. This article attempts to settle the vexed question of how far Paley responded to the devastating critique of the teleological argument contained in Hume’s posthumously published Dialogues concerning natural religion (1779). It also identifies tensions that arose in Natural theology between the rhetorical and intellectual sides of the stratagem. In response to Erasmus Darwin’s evolutionary theories, Paley asserted that the divinely designed architecture of nature had remained unchanged since the creation. But the more he emphasized the preordained nature of providence, its effectuation through mechanical dispositions, the less room there appeared to be for particular interventions. Section 2 concentrates on Paley’s efforts to reconcile this model of a law-governed, mechanical universe, with the belief in a personal God who was active in worldly affairs. It therefore challenges the view, long unquestioned in the historical literature, that Paley’s Deity was merely a watchmaker, who had remained idle since the Creation.

“I Got the Blues” Epistemology: Jayne Cortez’s Poetry for Eco-Crisis

Thin grass and sparse growths of pine cover the low, rolling hills. The roads are cut into the red, sandy clay, and they stream with water in the spring rains ... [I]n the fields the older people still sing the songs of the slaves who toiled in the sun a hundred years ago; and across the fields at night, the yellow light from an oil lamp brightening a rain-streaked window, there is sometimes the lonely sound of the blues. --Samuel B. Charters (30-31) [Blues] is an affectively important way of apprehending a musical process and the human world; a way of steering through musical composition and through worldly affairs.... While being or having the is easily if inadequately equated with being sad or down, doing blues must involve far more. Steven G. Smith (41) Mr. & Mrs. Crab are not into destroying the world they are crawling to the mud flats to take in some rotten insects The person who OK's biological weapons should not about the stench of new diseases The one who cuts off the trees so the orangutans can't hang should not wonder about ecological devastation --Jayne Cortez, Endangered Species List (Jazz Fan 68) The written word is a crucial tool for African American creativity; however, the place of musicality, aurality, and orality in this tradition cannot be denied. Music has been with African Americans through a host of environments, and its sonic and cultural DNA contains its African and World parentage. One of African American musical tradition's most famous offspring is the blues. In the first epigraph, Samuel B. Charters places blues at the meeting grounds of people, and in this case, rural place. Clyde Woods expands our understanding of places where the blues joined people with their environment: accompanied those who worked on the levees and roads, and in the forest, fields, and prisons. They surrounded them at home, in their neighborhoods and juke joints, and at picnics, churches and other uncensored spaces where African Americans explored the parameters of their daily life, spirituality, and vision (108). Woods puts the blues at the nexus of changing environments, philosophical need, and everyday living. Indeed, the blues contain people's responses to the world around them and social circumstances. Houston A. Baker, Jr., suggests that the blues constitute an that seems always to have been in motion in America--always becoming, shaping, transforming, displacing the peculiar experiences of Africans in the New World (5). 1 contend this amalgam contains wisdom assembled from the accumulated ecological agency of African Americans. Elements of the blues sound and ethos are directly related to the changing relationships between African Americans and their ecological experience. Blues origin stories usually begin in the lush setting of the Mississippi Delta. Once filled with swamp and forest, the Delta was transformed by ambitious planters who took advantage of the Mississippi River's nurturing impact on soil health* This rich, alluvial soil was stewarded by enslaved Africans accustomed to singing while they worked. Their specific agricultural tasks informed the sound and content of their songs; tools were used percussively, and rhythms and content shifted to accommodate various circumstances. Ted Gioia writes, [S]ugar cane demanded an aggressive, slashing attack to clear the fields ... tobacco ... needed to be handled with greater delicacy. Cotton was somewhere in the middle, but though collecting it demanded considerable handwork, it was still picked in rows and required an organized, paced flow of work (44-45). These various relationships with nonhuman nature birthed key elements in the sound that would become known as the blues: call and response, improvisation, backbeat emphasis, and the blue notes from an African-inspired tonal system. Alter slavery, the responses to the more solitary of sharecropping are credited with the formation of the field cry or field holler, which expressed the freer-formed moans, shouts, and arwhoolies' of African American workers. …

TEOLOGI, KEKUASAAN, DAN KEADILAN DALAM PERSPEKTIF SEJARAH ISLAM

AbstractIt is very often for some people to define theology as the core of Islamic teachings in the regard of its content as the science of God. It has Arabic similar terms such as Aqidah and Kalam for explaining the principles of God. It is not surprisingly that Moslem should deal with the issues of theology since the early history of Islam, but why do appear some conflicts in the matters of theology.Theological controversies are something inherent regarding theology is the result of man’s thinking which are bound by the limits of space and of time as the contexts. In other words, theology is the application of the principle of universalism of Islamic teachings in the certain contexts of space and time. Consequently theology is improperly to be claimed as having a universal application. That is why theology is different from iman (belief). It is believed by the Sufis who evaluate correctly that theology does not have an in-depth feeling of spirituality due to its main focus on the use of ratio for the elaboration. Meanwhile iman exists in all religions theology exists in the religions which deal with the matters of worldly affairs, especially in monotheist religions such as Yew, Christian, and Islam.Theology is in great need at the time of crisis such as at the time of the death of Muhammad PBUH the prophet. Indeed at that time theology has not developed well and be arranged systematically as today. We have some theological groups such as Shiite, Sunni, Khawarij. And in Indonesia we have Muhammadiyah, Nahdlatul Ulama, and PKS which all of them come from the Sunni sect. It is possible to notice them from their different socio-cultural background. In other words, socio-cultural background influence the form of theology.Keywords: theology, belief, Sunni, Shiite, Muhammadiyah, NU, and PKS.

Heinrich Heine Writes about His Life

Heinrich Heine Writes About His Life Liliane Weissberg (bio) I. Phantom Wounds None of Heinrich Heine's (1797–1856) manuscripts suffered as much speculation or provoked as much anticipation during his lifetime as his projected memoirs, which he pursued over many decades. Indeed, already in 1823 the young Berlin law student who attended Hegel's lectures was eager to apply these lessons to a vision of his own life. In those years, Heine describes his life as "tumultuous" on the outside and "dark" and dreamlike on the inside. He writes to his Jewish friend Immanuel Wohlwill, Yes, amice, I had great luck; just as I left the philosophical lecture hall, and entered the circus of worldly affairs, I could construct my life philosophically, and I can look at it objectively now—even though I lack that higher calm and contemplation that would be necessary for a clear rendering of a large theater of life.1 Heine calls this project his Bekenntnisse2 in an allusion to Rousseau's Confessions, but quickly abandons the title for the sake of other alternatives. Years later Heine takes up the concept of confessions again and this time translates it into the more legal term Geständnisse.3 The [End Page 563] Geständnisse, authored in the 1850s, were to preface his observations on Germany and were intended to counter Mme. de Stael's De l'Allemagne, as well as celebrate his own arrival in Paris two decades earlier.4 But these Geständnisse would also speak of the distance Heine had traveled from his early discipleship of Hegel to embrace a less "abstract" philosophy and affirm a newly regained sense of religion. In 1823, however, Heine's Bekenntnisse had not yet taken that turn. Instead, he was eager to remove from them any personal considerations and to turn them into a picture of his times; he intended to include portraits of relatives and friends. Thus, Heine soon uses the term Memoiren5 and claims to have begun a work that would not only counter Rousseau's famous confessions but also Goethe's autobiography. Heine wanted not only to write about his times, but to invent a new genre of life-writing that would be appropriate for a new age. Memories, not confessions, were called for, that is, a picture of the times, not just the inner life of an individual. This genre would also imply the introduction of a French tradition into the world of German letters. Heine's work seems to have progressed well, even though he wrote in fits and spurts. In 1837, over a decade after he began his autobiography and a few years after his move to Paris, Heine reports to his Hamburg publisher Julius Campe about his work. The story of his life had already turned into an "extensive work" that would be ready for perusal soon and would constitute not just a simple descriptive narrative or Lebensbeschreibung,6 but an extensive novel or Roman. "Day and night I labor over my great project," Heine writes, "and work on the novel of my life."7 He refers to his book with similar exuberance in letters to his friend Giacomo Meyerbeer. By 1838, Heine was once again preoccupied with his financial situation, which had remained precarious since his father's bankruptcy years earlier. Meyerbeer was to help him negotiate a yearly pension from his uncle, the wealthy Hamburg banker Salomon [End Page 564] Heine, who had assumed responsibility for his brother's family.8 In the following years, Heine mentions his work off and on again in letters to his sister Charlotte and to friends and business acquaintances,9 but his uncle, too, was well aware of his project, and anxious that Heine would protect the family name. After Salomon Heine's death in 1844, Heine's memoirs became instrumental in negotiations concerning his future pension payments. Salomon Heine did not leave a note regarding future pension payments in his will, and his son, Heine's cousin Carl, refused to honor the full amount of the pre-established payments. Indeed, he was only willing to issue a pension if Heine's memoirs were first sent to him for review, should...

The withering of tolerance and communication in interdisciplinary accounting studies

PurposeA reply to Tony Tinker's paper, “The withering of criticism”.Design/methodology/approachThe paper employs argument and discourse to critique Tinker's paper and defend the author's position.FindingsThe paper shows how oddly our work has been represented, and that Tinker's claims are unsupported. It rejects Tinker's reading of classical texts as the only valid one, and argues that his reductionist critique could hinder the advancement of interdisciplinary accounting research. We conclude our reply by urging scholars to intervene in worldly affairs by ensuring that intellectual activity is diverse, not stereotypical or predictable.Originality/valueArgues the importance of scholars' engagement in worldly affairs, including matters of policy and practice, from diverse perspectives.

Intellectuals in a World Made of Knowledge

The idea of a public recently has attracted a great deal of attention. The term first appears during nineteenth-century Russia. On the surface, it does not seem to have any antecedent in the Hindu, Buddhist, Judaic, Greek, Christian, or Islamic traditions. The Hindu quest for union of the real self with the cosmic reality, the Buddhist salvation as delivery from worldly attachments, the Jewish covenant with as the source of all values, the Greek search for truth through the contemplative life of the mind, the Christian faith in the Lord in Heaven, as well as the Muslim devotion to Allah all presuppose the existence of a spiritual sanctuary essentially different from, if not diametrically opposed to, the here and now. The engagement in and management of worldly affairs is either by choice or by default relegated to the background. Not surprisingly, the intellectual, as we understand it today, is not the functional equivalent of the guru, monk, rabbi, philosopher, priest, or mullah. The minimum requirement for an intellectual--politically concerned, socially engaged, and culturally sensitive--is fundamentally at odds with a person passionately devoted to the service of a higher reality beyond the mundane concerns of the secular world. Surely, all spiritual traditions are inevitably intertwined with the ordinary lives of their devotees. But in all of the aforementioned religions the rupture of the chain of being by privileging the Pure Land or the Kingdom of God outside of the daily routine of human existence is undeniable. By making the existential decision to be an integral part of the in order to transform it from within, Confucius opted for a form of life unique among the axial-age civilizations. Confucian followers were primarily action intellectuals, deeply immersed in managing the world (jingshi) of economics, politics, and society. Their strategy was to transform the world, defined in terms of both wealth and power, through culture, specifically through moral education. Historically, the Confucian project was instrumental in developing a distinctive East Asian personality who did not necessarily accrue a great deal of power and wealth, but was extraordinarily influential in society, politics, and the economy as opinion leader, critic, adviser, bureaucrat, or official. Confucian influence extended beyond governmental affairs. It certainly had major effects on national policies. But it was also manifested in cultural values, social ethics, and artistic expressions. Confucian scholar-officials were perceived of as the conscience of the people, for they served the long-term well-being of the entire country. This is precisely how a modern intellectual is expected to behave. Normally, we assume that intellectuals are intimately affiliated with institutes of higher learning, particularly those intellectuals in the humanities and social sciences. This is understandable because professors and students dedicated to the study of the world's cultural heritage, the structure and function of society, the ritual and process of exercising power, or the nature of the economy ought to be particularly sensitive to the state of the world. In reality, the situation is quite different; the overwhelming majority of scholars in the humanities and social sciences are specialists. Dictated by the stringent demands of their professions, they become so much involved in their research that they rarely have time or energy to rise above the confines of their well-defined expertise to do things that do not have a direct bearing on the advancement of their careers. Analytic philosophers and mathematical economists are outstanding examples, but literary scholars, archaeologists, historians, linguists, theoreticians in sociology and political science, and physical anthropologists are no exception. On the other hand, natural scientists and engineers can be intellectuals if they choose to bring their expertise to bear on important social issues, although in general they are preoccupied with their own research. …

&amp;quot;In Hir Tellyng Difference&amp;quot;: Gender, Authority, and Interpretation in the Tale of Melibee

"In Hir Tellyng Difference":Gender, Authority, and Interpretation in the Tale of Melibee Amanda Walling The Tale of Melibee has long occupied a place both marginal and highly contested within the Canterbury Tales. Although its inclusion in the Chaucer canon has brought it readers and critical attention, the tale itself resists canonization by proclaiming its own debts to other authors. The second tale offered by Chaucer's pilgrim persona is a translation of Renaud de Louens's Livre de Mellibee et Prudence, itself an abridged translation of Albertanus of Brescia's Liber de consolationis et consilii, and is mostly comprised of a dense catalogue of citations from scriptural, classical, and patristic authorities, loosely bound by an allegorical narrative. Even as it insists on its own secondariness, however, the tale explores the rhetorical and gendered contexts that shape the transmission of authoritative texts. As Melibee debates the relative merits of peace and war with his sententious wife, Prudence, their use of these texts raises many of the same gender issues that trouble the rest of the Canterbury Tales. Melibee initially rejects Prudence's counsel on antifeminist grounds, and, in her attempts to justify herself, gender emerges as a key interpretive principle in the handling of authoritative texts. Charting the ramifications of textual and gender difference, the tale invites us to reconsider both the forms of difference that define its own place in the canon and the place of such "tellyng difference" (VII 948)1 in Chaucer's constructions of authority and authorship. Although the question of gender emerges in Melibee in the familiar terms of antifeminist attack, its implications reach far beyond Melibee's broad generalizations about the character of women. In Melibee, as elsewhere in the Canterbury Tales, debates about gender, typically rooted in authoritative texts, are also debates about the function and meaning of those texts. Although Prudence's interpretations of her authorities are identified as feminine in various ways throughout the tale, her readings are not gendered simply because she herself is. Melibee is concerned with the ways in which gender is refracted in language, and with how texts [End Page 163] and their reiterations make visible both the gendered conditions of their production and the gendered social structures that shape how those texts are used. For an author like Chaucer, approaching a tradition that identifies itself as masculine (and does so partly through the mechanism of antifeminist discourse), the feminine has the potential to signify the differences of context and purpose that set his own work apart from its models. The inflections of gender in Prudence's handling of her texts remind us that citation and translation never passively adopt borrowed authority. In thematizing the difference that emerges in citation, the Tale of Melibee illustrates how Chaucer uses tropes of gender to construct and interrogate his own authorship. We can therefore read Chaucer's authorship of Melibee not only in his alterations to his source material, but in the tale's own insistence on the permeability of authority and meaning. Rather than asserting his own direct authority over the text, Chaucer presents a tale that challenges the ability of texts to sustain authority and that bypasses the familiar tropes of self-aggrandizement and false humility in favor of the many forms of difference that constitute authorship. Compilation and the Agency of Prudence As Prudence uses her texts to dissuade Melibee from his warmongering, the tale examines how past authority can be brought to bear on the concrete problems of individual lives through the agency of prudence. Indeed, the agency of Prudence herself is very much at stake in the tale, since prudence is the virtue capable of arranging worldly affairs and turning principle into action.2 Readers often overlook this agency when they conflate Prudence with her citations, taking her only as a compilation and not as a compiler. In fact, she is both: although her character is in many ways the sum of her texts, the tale also suggests a distinct agency for her that is rhetorical, interpretive, and closely attuned to gender. Although, as A. J. Minnis has noted, compilatio offers medieval writers a means of deflecting attention from or even disavowing responsibility for the...

Observations on the Marital Metaphor of YHWH and Israel in its Ancient Israelite Context: General Considerations and Particular Images in Hosea 1.2

The marital metaphor became for the (mostly, if not exclusively, male) literati of ancient Israel—and for those who accepted their discourses—a way to shape, imagine, express, and communicate their understandings of the nature and story of their relationship with YHWH. This article addresses systemic aspects of this metaphor within this social and ideological setting and deals with the interplay of these aspects with the worldview and world of knowledge of these literati. A brief consideration of a particular instance of this metaphor, Hos. 1.2, serves to illustrate ways in which the actual use of the metaphor brought about matters that were related but clearly go beyond the ‘generic’ issues that the metaphor evoked in the readership of books in which it was used. Among them, one may mention the nature of Israel, its election by YHWH, explanations that served to solve or attenuate the cognitive dissonance between the status of the literati (and of Israel as a whole) in worldly affairs and their perceived place in the divine economy, and the importance of education.

Horace: Image, Identity, and Audience

Contents: Introduction: The Horaces of Horace 1 Poet and Patron The Warmth of Friendship Deflation and Anxiety Amicitia and Patronage Dealing with Pressure Conclusion: The Horatian Invention 2 In the Public Eye The Rings of Audience The Core Readership The Social Elite Criticism and Envy The Outer Ring Conclusion: Audiences and Images 3 Craft and Concern Poetry as Practical Tool Poetry as Professional Activity Poetry as Public Model Conclusion: The Individual behind the Universal 4 Worldly Affairs Writing for Rome Preliminary Observations The Personal Perspective Savior of the State The Poet's Burden Free and Independent Support Conclusion: Multiple Indirections Conclusion: Creating Reality

Is Profane Work an Obstacle to Salvation? The Case of Ultra Orthodox (Haredi) Jews in Contemporary Israel

In this article I demonstrate how devotees interpret and shape traditional components in a complex process of 'bricolage.' I discuss this process through the examination of explanations and interpretations given by members of the Jewish Ultra-Orthodox community in Israel for their choice of studious life devotion over paid work and livelihood. An examination of the conceptions, attitudes and values regarding work and learning bears upon the way the community relates to worldly affairs and individual existence in the world. My analysis and findings indicate a shift from mainstream Judaism, which stresses work and the importance of wage-earing. In contrast, Haredi male members have revived religious interpretations derived mainly from well-known Biblical narratives and combined them with quotations from specific texts derived from the rabbinical tradition. Accordingly, interpretations that have been considered marginal in the Jewish hermeneutic tradition, and often suppressed by key rabbinical figures, have been drawn out of the concealed textual shelves and reintroduced into the center of religious discourse, thought and practice. In this process, the traditional rabbinical view that stressed hard work and activism in the world is transformed. This is accomplished through the redefinition of work by condemning the productive and activist image of human action bringing about new modes of thought, religious symbols and economic behavior.