‘O Plato! Plato!’: Don Juan versus the Philosophers

2021 ◽  
Vol 49 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-13
Author(s):  
William Davis
Keyword(s):  
Don Juan ◽  
Absolute Idealism ◽  
History Of ◽  
Personal Philosophy ◽  
Revaluation Of Values

Critics who take Byron seriously as a thinker tend to locate his personal philosophy within the history of scepticism. In Cantos I and II of Don Juan, Byronic doubting takes the form of a critique of idealism, with a particular focus on Plato. This essay argues that Byron’s scepticism has philosophical implications beyond the critique of Platonism, that it works also to undermine the major idealist movement of his day - German absolute idealism. Byron’s embodied ethic is evident both in the narrator’s comments and within the narrative of Juan’s affair with Haidée. The form this critique of idealism takes anticipates Nietzsche’s ‘revaluation of values’ as well as Derrida’s deconstruction in that it isolates a traditionally hierarchised pair of oppositions and revalues the hierarchy.

Some Evaluations

1970 ◽  
pp. 129-146
Author(s):  
Francis E. Reilly
Keyword(s):  
Historical Development ◽  
History Of Philosophy ◽  
Theoretical Knowledge ◽  
Personal Attitude ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Personal Philosophy

This chapter evaluates two aspects of Peirce's thought: his Greek insistence on the primacy of theoretical knowledge, and his almost Teilhardian synthesis of evolutionary themes. It reflects the author's own personal attitude toward both of these topics in Peirce, which is one of endorsement, though some criticisms are also offered. Concerning the first aspect, Peirce was not only an outstanding philosopher but also a man well acquainted with the history of philosophy. His knowledge of history, going back to Plato, Aristotle, and other Greeks, contributed to the formation of his own personal philosophy. One obvious Greek attitude that he made his own was the dedication to theoretical knowledge. On the second topic, the chapter argues that Peirce understood evolution as one of the chief characteristics of the world. It is not restricted to the biological sphere, but extends to the whole cosmos and to the historical development of science. In proposing this synthetic, post-Darwinian view of evolution, Peirce was decades ahead of his time.

Notes on Don Juan of Persia's Account of Georgia

1930 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 179-186
Author(s):  
W. E. D. Allen
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
The State ◽  
Don Juan ◽  
French Edition ◽  
History Of ◽  
Persian War ◽  
Interesting Account

In one of the recently published volumes of the Broadway Travellers Series (Don Juan of Persia; a Shi'ah Catholic, 1560—1604, translated and edited with an introduction by G. Le Strange) is an interesting account of Georgia and of some of the events of the Turko- Persian War which endured between the years 1578 and 1587. The Persian account throws much light on the state of Georgia at the end of the sixteenth century, and it serves as a valuable supplement to von Hammer Purgstall's history of the war, based mainly on Turkish sources, and published as books 38 and 40 of his Histoire de l'Empire Ottoman (in Vol. viii of the French edition).Neither the historian of Turkey nor the editor of Don Juan appear to have made use of the material from Georgian sources which is available for this period, namely the provincial histories of Kartli, Samtzkhé, Kakheti and Imereti collated by Prince Wakhusht of Kartli during the eighteenth century, and published by Brosset in his Histoire de la Géorgie, 2ième partie, 1iere livraison, Spb. 1856.

Social Theory and National Culture: The Case of British and American Absolute Idealism, 1860–1900

1981 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 251-274
Author(s):  
David Watson
Keyword(s):  
National Culture ◽  
Social Theory ◽  
Leading Edge ◽  
The United States ◽  
Cultural Analysis ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Absolute Idealism ◽  
Political Theories ◽  
History Of

In this essay, taking as a case study the comparative history of the two groups that gave absolute idealism a leading edge in late nineteenth-century intellectual debate in the United States and Great Britain, I attempt to make a contribution to the recent trend toward the use of sophisticated or “difficult” ideas in comparative analysis (see Moore, 1979). My intentions are twofold: (1) to assist in the clarification of how “social theory” is developed, and (2) to provide an outline of how such comparative cultural analysis can be achieved. After a preliminary discussion of the concept of “social theory” and the component parts into which it can be separated, I proceed to identify the two groups in question, locate their philosophical schemes in the development of contemporary thought, and finally, attempt to demonstrate the value of the approach in an analysis of one aspect of their specifically social and political theories.

scholarly journals Historicism and the beginning of interdisciplinarity in the intellectual history of the 19th – early 20th century human being in time

2021 ◽  
pp. 45-60
Author(s):  
М.С. Киселева
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Early 20Th Century ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Absolute Idealism ◽  
Whole Person ◽  
History Of ◽  
History Of Culture ◽  
The University

В статье исследуется становление междисциплинарности в интеллектуальной истории XIX – начала ХХ в. Методологическим основанием историзма этого периода, соединяющего различные области исторических, филологических, социальных наук и психологии, стала идея связи человека со временем его жизни и рефлексивно со временем культуры и социума (концепт «человек во времени»). Философия абсолютного идеализма Гегеля принимала человека только как «чистую» природу, как рациональность. Показана трансформация понимания человека от «великого характера» в гегелевской философии истории к человеку времени ренессансной культуры Я. Буркхардта, сверхчеловеку будущего в философии Ф. Ницше и к целостному человеку во времени социума и культуры в науках о духе В. Дильтея. При всем различии трех концепций выявлено сходство методологических оснований в установлении связи человека со временем его жизни и историческим временем культуры и в принятии идеи человека как фундаментальной для различения эпох или типов в истории культуры. Автор считает, что Дильтей дал первый опыт философского обоснования наук о духе как междисциплинарного гуманитарного проекта, в центре которого находилась идея целостного человека времени своего «жизнеосуществления», и определил историзм как смысл гуманитарного знания в целом. The article examines the formation of interdisciplinary in intellectual history in the 19th – early 20th century. The methodological basis of the historicism of this period, which unites various areas of historical, philological, social sciences and psychology, was the idea of a person's connection with the time of his life and reflexively with the time of culture and society (the concept of “human being in time”). Historicism of the philosophy of absolute idealism by G.V.F. Hegel accepted human being only as "pure" nature, as rationality. In the 1860s at the University of Basel J. Burckhardt, F. Nietzsche and W. Dilthey developed the idea of human being in time in the history of culture, philosophy and hermeneutics. The transformation of understanding of a person is traced from a "great character" in Hegel's philosophy of history to a person of the time of the Renaissance culture developed by Burckhardt, to the Übermensch of the future in the philosophy of Nietzsche and to an integral person in the time of society and culture in the sciences of the spirit of Dilthey. The present study reveals the similarity of methodological foundations of the three concepts in establishing a connection between a person with the time of his life and the historical time of culture; and in accepting that the idea of ​​man was fundamental for distinguishing between eras or types in the history of culture. The author believes that Dilthey was the first to produce philosophical substantiation for the sciences of the spirit as the basis of an interdisciplinary humanitarian project, in the center of which is the idea of a whole person of the time of his "life-fulfillment", аnd defined historicism as the meaning of humanitarian knowledge in general.

Matter, Indian conceptions of

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Schweizer
Keyword(s):  
External Force ◽  
Atomic Structure ◽  
Indian Philosophy ◽  
Structural Characteristics ◽  
Physical World ◽  
Advaita Vedanta ◽  
Absolute Idealism ◽  
History Of ◽  
Macroscopic Objects ◽  
Ontological Analysis

During the long and complex history of Indian philosophy, a number of divergent conceptions of matter have been developed and explored. These conceptions diverge both with respect to the ontological analysis of matter, and with respect to its specific structural characteristics. In terms of ontological conceptions of matter, the rival positions of materialism, idealism and substance-pluralism are all advanced by competing schools of thought. For example, pure materialism is espoused by the Cārvāka school, while absolute idealism is defended by Advaita Vedānta, and varying forms of pluralism are advocated by the Sāṅkhya, Yoga, Nyāya and Vaiśeṣika schools. Regarding the structural characteristics of matter, the most interesting conceptions are advanced by the pluralistic philosophies. In particular, the Vaiśeṣika and Nyāya schools recognize five physical substances, four of which are held to possess atomic structure. According to this conception, matter is composed of imperceptibly small units or paramāṇus, which constitute the basic substrate in which perceptible qualities inhere. All macroscopic objects are transient composites of atoms, while the paramāṇus themselves are indivisible and indestructible. The atoms are held to be naturally at rest, and an external force is required to initiate motion. In contrast, the Sāṅkhya and Yoga traditions espouse a metaphysical dualism of the two basic categories of matter and consciousness, where the continuity and dynamic transformations of matter are emphasized. All of the diverse phenomena of the physical world result from modifications of a single underlying source known as pradhāna or primal matter, which is said to be continuous, all pervading, indestructible and imperceptible. Pradhāna exists in a balanced and unmanifest state of pralaya until it is disturbed by the presence of consciousness. This disturbance leads to an imbalance between the internal constituents of pradhāna, and the resulting disequilibrium accounts for the evolutionary transformations of the physical world.

Byron’s Don Juan in Russian and the ‘Soviet school of translation’

2016 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-43 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susanna Witt
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Period ◽  
Canon Formation ◽  
Don Juan ◽  
Russian Culture ◽  
Soviet School ◽  
History Of ◽  
Target Culture ◽  
Official Status

Acknowledging the significance of context and of translators as agents, this article is concerned with the establishment of ‘translational facts’ (Toury 1995) and its relation to canon formation in Russian culture of the Soviet period. The translational facts examined are the two complete renditions of Byron’s Don Juan to appear during the Soviet era: Georgii Shengeli’s version from 1947 and Tatiana Gnedich’s from 1959. The context in which they are considered is the development of the so-called Soviet school of translation as a concept, a process which roughly coincided with the intervening period. Drawing on Russian archival sources, the study offers a reconsideration of the ‘Soviet school of translation’ from perspectives beyond its own self-understanding and official status and looks at it as a construct with a complex history of its own. The analysis shows how translational facts may become signs in the target culture and how this, in the case of Byron, affected the formation of the Soviet translational canon.

scholarly journals PHILOSOPHER IN SPACE AND TIME OF CULTURE (CHRONOTOPE OF MAÎTRE À PENSER) PART II

2018 ◽  
pp. 41-45
Author(s):  
M. М. Rohozha
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Life Experience ◽  
Contemporary History ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
Time And Space ◽  
Self Organized ◽  
History Of ◽  
Personal Philosophy ◽  
The City

The paper deals with the research of philosophic way of life as an invariant of the Western culture. The author tries to reveal the answers to the questions: What is the influence of the time and place of life on a thinking person? Is it possible to put a question in such a way? The second part of the paper givse methodological explanation for such putting the questions. Two conceptual strategies of thinking in the contemporary history of philosophy are mentioned – compartmentalism and biographical method. The latter one allows understanding of the philosophizing through research of maître à penser. Such approach made possible cultural studies prospect for a philosopher’s life in the context of unique time and space. To designate the uniqueness of time and space, the category of chronotope (M. Bakhtin) was introduced in the paper. Chronotope sets condensed signs in a definite period of time at the result of which a unique image of a thinker is born in a definite cultural space. Uniqueness of time and space sets originality of philosophical quest of a thinker. Analysis of one’s philosophizing through the prism of one’s life allows us to compare proved and practiced dimensions, and affirm a status of “maître à penser”, if these dimensions are coincided. The second part of the paper is focused on the time and space of the epoch of Modernity, where public space of the city as a place of activity for a philosopher is inseparably linked to critically directed an self-organized general public. Special attention is focused on life activity of Albert Schweitzer and Hannah Arendt. The author concludes that unlike Antiquity and Middle Ages where we were focused on the images of philosophers, Modernity deals with personalities of philosophers. Schweitzer as well as Arendt personally testify to their life and philosophical practice. The point is that definite life experience according to personal philosophy is purely important moral milestone, transforming the person to worthy exemplary.

Lord Byron and Lady Byron

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
William H. Galperin
Keyword(s):  
Lord Byron ◽  
Don Juan ◽  
Missed Opportunities ◽  
The World ◽  
Everyday World ◽  
History Of

An overlooked aspect of Lord Byron’s short unhappy marriage to Annabella Milbanke remains the “singular,” everyday world of relation that marriage represented for him, both beforehand, when marriage was an abstraction performed in correspondence with Milbanke, and afterwards, when the Byron marriage and the world it figured was literally a history of missed opportunities that the poet recaptured and reinscribed in Don Juan. The finite, epistolary conversation that constituted the Byron courtship was more than a trial run at marriage, particularly as the opposite of what Byron disparagingly called “love.” It proved a stay against a future that, on the relational front and in Byron’s contemporaneous Eastern Tales, was devoid of either hope or possibility. Here, in the sway of anticipatory nostalgia, marriage day after day would be suddenly fathomable and as valuable as the monetary fortune Byron also sought, but as a history of missed opportunities.

scholarly journals Lo insólito en la novela Don Juan de Gonzalo Torrente Ballester : un nuevo concepto del mítico personaje y su lucha por la libertad

2015 ◽  
Vol 20 ◽  
pp. 29-39
Author(s):  
Joanna Mańkowska
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Don Juan ◽  
The World ◽  
Gonzalo Torrente Ballester ◽  
History Of ◽  
Making Friends ◽  
Novel Reading

Torrente Ballester in his 1963 book offers a novel reading of the myth by presenting Tenorio, who is denied both the chance to repent himself and the punishment of the Inferno. For more than three centuries, accompanied by Leporello, who reveals himself as a devil incarnate, travels the World making friends with artists who devote him their works, without understanding his tragedy, however. In Paris of the mid-twentieth century he emerges as working on the plays on Don Juan by independent theatres and visits places attended by young and passionate followers of Sartre. At times his soul leaves his winsome body, to which he is destined for eternity, and possesses a Spanish intellectual, with an aim of writing down the true history of Tenorio clarifying his conflict with God, a conflict in which the freedom to decide on one’s fate is one of the fundamental issues. He challenges Him by defending his right to be condemned for a life in sin. God proves indifferent to his desperate blasphemies and Don Juan is faced with the recognition of human condition as unable to satisfy desires and being one’s genuine inferno.

Complex Partial Epileptic-Like Experiences in University Students and Practitioners of Dharmakaya in Thailand: Comparison with Canadian University Students

2001 ◽  
Vol 89 (1) ◽  
pp. 199-206
Author(s):  
Todd Murphy ◽  
M. A. Persinger
Keyword(s):  
University Students ◽  
Partial Epilepsy ◽  
First Year ◽  
Human Species ◽  
Complex Partial Epilepsy ◽  
Practice Meditation ◽  
History Of ◽  
Personal Philosophy ◽  
Normal Feature ◽  
Two Populations

We tested the hypothesis that individuals who frequently practice meditation within another culture whose assumptions explicitly endorse this practice should exhibit more frequent and varied experience associated with complex partial epilepsy (without the seizures) as inferred by the Personal Philosophy Inventory and Roberts' Questionnaire for the Epileptic Spectrum Disorder. 80 practitioners of Dharma Meditation and 24 university students in Thailand were compared with 76 students from first-year courses in psychology in a Canadian university. Although there were large significant differences for some items and clusters of items expected as a result of cultural differences, there were no statistically significant differences between the two populations for the proportions of complex partial epileptic-like experiences or their frequency of occurrence. There were no strong or consistent correlations between the history of meditation within the sample who practiced Dharma meditation and these experiences. These results suggest complex partial epileptic-like experiences may be a normal feature of the human species.

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