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De Sancta Virginitate: On Holy Virginity

P. G. Walsh

in De bono coniugali and De sancta virginitate

The treatise incorporates two main themes, virginity in itself, and the necessity of humility in consecrated virginity. Virginity itself is considered from three aspects: first, Christ and his mother ... More

The treatise incorporates two main themes, virginity in itself, and the necessity of humility in consecrated virginity. Virginity itself is considered from three aspects: first, Christ and his mother are adduced as ideal types of fecund virginity. Second, virginity surpasses conjugal fidelity in merit; the goods of marriage are human goods, but consecrated virginity is angelic. But marriage is not to be disparaged by consecrated virgins. In demeaning it, the manichees misinterpret I Cor. 7, and Jovinian is condemned for equating marriage with it. Third, the nature of the reward in heaven is outlined. The second main topic of the treatise is the importance of humility. Scriptural models are proposed—the centurion, the Canaanite woman, the tax collector, and finally Christ himself.Less

Embedding Under Tense Operators

Berit Brogaard

in Transient Truths: An Essay in the Metaphysics of Propositions

David Kaplan was one of the most vivid supporters of the view that there are temporal contents which tense operators operate on. The conclusion that the truth-value of sentence content may be ... More

David Kaplan was one of the most vivid supporters of the view that there are temporal contents which tense operators operate on. The conclusion that the truth-value of sentence content may be sensitive to time shifts does not by itself qualify as temporalism. If there are tense operators in English, then Kaplan’s argument succeeds in establishing that temporal contents satisfy the condition that they are contents that some intensional operators operate on. Since we have already argued that temporal contents satisfy the other conditions for being a proposition, we could take Kaplan’s argument to show that temporal contents are propositions. In response to Kaplan’s argument, several eternalists have defended the view that sentences have two kinds of content, temporal and eternal, but that only eternal content has proposition-status. The two kinds of content are also known as ‘compositional content’ and ‘assertoric content’. Rather than simply referring back to the general objections to eternalism provided in the first three chapters, I shall here offer independent arguments against each of the double-content strategies.Less

The Doorkeeper

Anna Wierzbicka

in What Did Jesus Mean?: Explaining the Sermon on the Mount and the Parables in Simple and Universal Human Concepts

This chapter links the parable of the Doorkeeper and other “parables of vigilance” with the eighteenth‐century spiritual writer Jean Pierre De Caussade's “spirituality of the present moment.” It ... More

This chapter links the parable of the Doorkeeper and other “parables of vigilance” with the eighteenth‐century spiritual writer Jean Pierre De Caussade's “spirituality of the present moment.” It points out that the metaphor of the doorkeeper illuminates the idea of fulfilling God's appointed task (being a watchman, a doorkeeper) and the idea of urgency, and that it is aimed in particular at the following way of thinking:If God wants me to do something I don’t have to do it nowI can do it at some other time (later)This chapter argues that de Caussade's notion of “the sacrament of the present moment” illuminates the parable's message that God appears incognito in the duty or task of the present moment, and that watchfulness and readiness to recognize him, alert one to the opportunity to enter the Kingdom of God, by meeting God in the present moment.Less

Whence the Unity of Consciousness? Attentional Resonance

Jesse J. Prinz

in The Conscious Brain

This chapter investigates the unity of consciousness. Two conscious states are unified if they are part of the same overarching state. If consciousness is engendered by attention, then two states are ... More

This chapter investigates the unity of consciousness. Two conscious states are unified if they are part of the same overarching state. If consciousness is engendered by attention, then two states are part of the same state if they are co-attended. Since attention is implemented by gamma oscillations, this suggests that unity arises when different populations of neurons are phase-locked in the gamma range. Evidence from sensory integration and other sources is brought to bear in defence of this hypothesis. Attention and gamma are also used to explain unity over time. Three durations of the conscious moment are distinguished and related to attention: a minimal conscious instant, a minimal duration or now, and a more extended or specious present. Finally, it is argued that consciousness is not always unified, but appears unified whenever we look for unity, because looking for unity creates gamma coherence.Less

Conclusion

Jürgen Martschukat

in American Fatherhood: A History

The brief concluding chapter wraps up the arguments made with regard to the politics of family and fatherhood in US history. It also connects the historical analyses of the past to the questions and ... More

The brief concluding chapter wraps up the arguments made with regard to the politics of family and fatherhood in US history. It also connects the historical analyses of the past to the questions and issues of the present and thereby comments on the importance of history writing for how we see the world today and how we live our life.Less

The Actuality of Cinema: Alexander Kluge

Christopher Pavsek

in The Utopia of Film: Cinema and Its Futures in Godard, Kluge, and Tahimik

This chapter studies four of Alexander Kluge's major film and video works. Kluge's early documentary on the Nuremberg Party Grounds, Brutality in Stone (1961), is often described as an experimental ... More

This chapter studies four of Alexander Kluge's major film and video works. Kluge's early documentary on the Nuremberg Party Grounds, Brutality in Stone (1961), is often described as an experimental or critical documentary about the legacy of National Socialism, portrayed primarily through an exploration of the monumental architecture of the Nazi period. Yesterday Girl (1965) works against the mythology of the German “zero hour” after the World War II, in which the traumas of the past were repressed, while The Assault of the Present (1985) is concerned by the “temporal imperialism” of the New Media. The Fruits of Trust (2009) attempts to nurture the utopian principle of cinema within the seemingly hostile medium of television in an era marked simultaneously by the “timelessness of the earthly eternity” of capitalism, and a growing economic and environmental crisis that suggests that human beings' time on Earth might be all too limited.Less

“Post-Foucault”: The Critical Time of the Present

Penelope Deutscher

in Critical Theory in Critical Times: Transforming the Global Political and Economic Order

In this chapter, Deutscher argues for a different understanding of Foucauldian critique and of the possibilities for transformation of the present with which his concept of critique is typically ... More

In this chapter, Deutscher argues for a different understanding of Foucauldian critique and of the possibilities for transformation of the present with which his concept of critique is typically associated. Foucauldian critique, she argues, is “cumulative.” By exploring the diversity of analyses offered by Foucault, she shows that a number of the forms of power he described did not replace each other chronologically in a linear progression. Instead, as Wendy Brown has emphasized, forms of power coincide. But instead of coinciding a mere contingent assemblages, Foucault shows that modes of power redeploy elements belonging to other modes. His analysis thus reveals that such elements are forces of immanent contestation lying in the present. As such, Foucault’s cumulative understanding of critique proves itself timely when contemporary modes of governmentality (including omnipresent neoliberalism) appear to be particularly intransigent.Less

How Do We Think the Present? From Ontology of Contemporary Reality to Ontology without Being¹

Gabriel Rockhill

in Interventions in Contemporary Thought: History, Politics, Aesthetics

The opening chapter explores a philosophic question that reflexively sheds light on the orientation of the book as a whole: how can we write the history of the present? Against the backdrop of the ... More

The opening chapter explores a philosophic question that reflexively sheds light on the orientation of the book as a whole: how can we write the history of the present? Against the backdrop of the more specific question of how to understand the present state of philosophy, it turns to the late work of Michel Foucault and his unique account of the ontology of actuality or of contemporary reality (ontologie de l’actualité). It carefully reconstitutes his concern with providing a historico-philosophical justification of his own project, which he situates in a trajectory that begins with the emergence of the ontology of actuality in the later Kant. It assesses the contemporary relevancy of his critique of historical periodization and his redefinition of modernity in terms of a critical attitude. Given the apparent contradiction between his rejection of periodic history and his identification of a new era of historical thought, the chapter goes on to suggest that an alternative logic of history—founded on the three dimensions of time, space and social practice—would allow us to completely reformulate the way in which we think the present.Less

Introduction: The Living Present

Jeffrey Insko

in History, Abolition, and the Ever-Present Now in Antebellum American Writing

The Ever-Present Now: Time, History, and Antebellum American Writing begins with Garrison’s experience of the present moment’s dire intensity, because for him and a number of his contemporaries, that ... More

The Ever-Present Now: Time, History, and Antebellum American Writing begins with Garrison’s experience of the present moment’s dire intensity, because for him and a number of his contemporaries, that experience exemplifies an attitude and stance toward history and one’s own place in it that is the central focus of this book. The introduction establishes the Romantic concern with “the living present” as an ethico-political imperative through readings of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s well-known poem “A Psalm of Life” and William Lloyd Garrison’s little-known 1857 speech “The Living Present and the Dead Past.” The introduction argues that in their devotion to the present, Longfellow and Garrison give expression to a historical disposition at odds both with modern historiographical injunctions against “presentism” and with political moderation.Less

Conclusion: Demands of the Day

Paul Rabinow and Anthony Stavrianakis

in Demands of the Day: On the Logic of Anthropological Inquiry

This conclusion presents some final reflections on the labors of collaborative fieldwork. It also discusses the conceptual parameters of the terms “the contemporary” and “the present”.

Messianism, “Weak” and Otherwise

Alexander Gelley

in Benjamin's Passages: Dreaming, Awakening

Messianism for Benjamin was in no sense the expectation of an ultimate redemption but rather a willingness to confront the extreme alternatives posed by the present situation. This messianism is not ... More

Messianism for Benjamin was in no sense the expectation of an ultimate redemption but rather a willingness to confront the extreme alternatives posed by the present situation. This messianism is not equivalent to a utopian position. Where a utopia is future directed, Benjamin’s messianism is radically presentist, in the sense of Vergegenwärtigung, which stresses the dimension of realization or fulfillment in a present moment. What Benjamin termed “weak” messianism in the Theses is consistent with the fundamentally performative aim of his writing, designed to awaken a readership by means of image, example, anecdote, citation. The intent of The Arcades Project was to realize a textual medium that would have the kind of capacity that Benjamin ascribed to fashion and to revolution-“a tiger’s leap into the past.” This chapter traces, in a series of evolving stages, a discontinuous messianic current in Benjamin’s work, beginning with his early “The Life of Students” and extending to his preoccupation with certain fantastic and parabolic narratives.Less

Experience and the present

M. Joshua Mozersky

in Time, Language, and Ontology: The World from the B-Theoretic Perspective

The present enjoys a position of privilege in human experience. Why is this the case, if the world itself is tenseless, i.e. does not distinguish one time from any other? In this chapter it is argued ... More

The present enjoys a position of privilege in human experience. Why is this the case, if the world itself is tenseless, i.e. does not distinguish one time from any other? In this chapter it is argued that the tenseless theory of time can, when combined with a direct reference theory of temporal indexicals, and an account of the role that causation plays in perception, explain this phenomenon. It is concluded that the semantics of perceptual belief reports is tenseless and that even an eternalist world is one in which tensed language and thought would be useful.Less

“The Fire of Pain”: Life Dances On …, Home Improvements, The Present

George Kouvaros

in Awakening the Eye: Robert Frank's American Cinema

Chapter 4 considers how the formal strategies evident in the photographs Frank has produced since the publication of The Americans influence the storytelling structures and forms of address employed ... More

Chapter 4 considers how the formal strategies evident in the photographs Frank has produced since the publication of The Americans influence the storytelling structures and forms of address employed in the loose trilogy constituted by Life Dances On … , Home Improvements and The Present. In each of these works, Frank records the details of a world that is close at hand: a cup resting under a dripping faucet, flies crawling across a windowpane, dime-store souvenirs gathering dust on a windowsill. At the same time, he renders the presence of people and events that exist only through the processes of memory.Less

The Present in the Book of Qohelet

Mette Bundvad

in Time in the Book of Ecclesiastes

Chapter 4 discusses the present in Qohelet. Central to the chapter is an in-depth analysis of 3:1–15. First, the analysis outlines the temporal scheme of the poem in 3:2–8. This poem offers a ... More

Chapter 4 discusses the present in Qohelet. Central to the chapter is an in-depth analysis of 3:1–15. First, the analysis outlines the temporal scheme of the poem in 3:2–8. This poem offers a schematic presentation of events and activities as an interpretative framework, through which the times of an individual’s life can be understood and rendered meaningful despite their impermanence. Second, the chapter discusses the narrator’s rejection of this temporal scheme in 3:9ff.: the establishment of this kind of system radically exceeds the human ability to understand and decode temporal conditions. According to Qohelet, the human experience of alternating times prevents them from establishing any reliable patterns of expectations towards time—also in the present moment and their own everyday existence. Finally, Chapter 4 surveys material which is representative for Qohelet’s engagement with human society in the light of temporal reality (4:1–3 and 5:7).Less

Remembering East Africa

Margret Frenz

in Community, Memory, and Migration in a Globalizing World: The Goan Experience, c. 1890-1980

Chapter 7, ‘Remembering East Africa’, reflects on how migration is remembered, and how remembering or forgetting shape individual and collective memories and identities. East African Goans often ... More

Chapter 7, ‘Remembering East Africa’, reflects on how migration is remembered, and how remembering or forgetting shape individual and collective memories and identities. East African Goans often recall their lives in East Africa as having been the ‘best time’ of their lives, often silencing contentious experiences related to race, class, and gender. Many still regard East Africa nostalgically as ‘home’ and have ambivalent perspectives on return visits. Often, reunions have functioned as catalysts to help first generation migrants to live with a present that is perceived as ‘uncomfortable’. The interviews illustrate very clearly that how life in East Africa is remembered differs between second and third generation East African Goans now living in the UK, Canada, Goa, or East Africa.Less

Wise Man?

Ingo Trauschweizer

in Maxwell Taylor's Cold War: From Berlin to Vietnam

In the final chapter I widen the chronology to consider Taylor’s advice and commentary into the 1980s. Taylor appeared as a “Wise Man” in deliberations on Vietnam; he was one of the final holdouts ... More

In the final chapter I widen the chronology to consider Taylor’s advice and commentary into the 1980s. Taylor appeared as a “Wise Man” in deliberations on Vietnam; he was one of the final holdouts who thought the president should stay the course even after the Tet Offensive. He remained a liberal Cold War hawk in his public commentaries throughout the 1970s, when he became a member of the Committee on the Present Danger. In his 1984 testimony before a congressional committee that would ultimately craft the 1986 Goldwater-Nichols Act, Taylor stated that the JCS could not be reformed—the committee needed to be torn down. He remained consistent: he preferred one general to command the armed forces and offer powerful advice aligned with the president’s foreign policy.Less