PROBLEMS IN HORACE, EPODE 11

2015 ◽  
Vol 65 (2) ◽  
pp. 673-681
Author(s):  
A.J. Woodman

Fraenkel dismissed Epode 11 with the statement that it ‘is an elegant piece of writing, but there is little real life in it’. By this ambiguously expressed comment he did not mean that the poem fails to ‘come alive’, but that it is artificial: he saw the poem as little more than an assembly of themes and motifs which recur in other genres, especially epigram and elegy. This has also been the perspective of some other twentieth-century scholars: Georg Luck's self-styled ‘interpretation’ of the poem consists largely of a numbered list of thirteen motifs which the epode has in common with elegy and which in Luck's opinion were derived by Horace from Gallus. Alessandro Barchiesi, on the other hand, capitalizes on the perceived elegiac motifs in order to see the poem as a dynamic fusion of elegy and iambus. As for commentators, although older representatives seem to have regarded Epode 11 as generally self-explanatory, the poem receives increasing attention from Cavarzere, Mankin and Watson, the last of whom originally discussed some of its problems in a paper published twenty years earlier. Yet various problems still remain, and in this paper I propose to re-examine lines 1–6 and 15–18 in the hope that a clearer view of the epode as a whole may emerge.

2016 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 341-360 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Burri

The autonomy robots enjoy is understood in different ways. On the one hand, a technical understanding of autonomy is firmly anchored in the present and concerned with what can be achieved now by means of code and programming; on the other hand, a philosophical understanding of robot autonomy looks into the future and tries to anticipate how robots will evolve in the years to come. The two understandings are at odds at times, occasionally they even clash. However, not one of them is necessarily truer than the other. Each is driven by certain real-life factors; each rests on its own justification. This article discusses these two “views of robot autonomy” in depth and witnesses them at work at two of the most relevant events of robotics in recent times, namely the Darpa Robotics Challenge, which took place in California in June 2015, and the ongoing process to address lethal autonomous weapons in humanitarian Geneva, which is spurred on by a “Campaign to Stop Killer Robots”.


APRIA Journal ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 11-16
Author(s):  
José Teunissen

In the last few years, it has often been said that the current fashion system is outdated, still operating by a twentieth-century model that celebrates the individualism of the 'star designer'. In I- D, Sarah Mower recently stated that for the last twenty years, fashion has been at a cocktail party and has completely lost any connection with the public and daily life. On the one hand, designers and big brands experience the enormous pressure to produce new collections at an ever higher pace, leaving less room for reflection, contemplation, and innovation. On the other hand, there is the continuous race to produce at even lower costs and implement more rapid life cycles, resulting in disastrous consequences for society and the environment.


Author(s):  
Marlou Schrover

This chapter discusses social exclusion in European migration from a gendered and historical perspective. It discusses how from this perspective the idea of a crisis in migration was repeatedly constructed. Gender is used in this chapter in a dual way: attention is paid to differences between men and women in (refugee) migration, and to differences between men and women as advocates and claim makers for migrant rights. There is a dilemma—recognized mostly for recent decades—that on the one hand refugee women can be used to generate empathy, and thus support. On the other hand, emphasis on women as victims forces them into a victimhood role and leaves them without agency. This dilemma played itself out throughout the twentieth century. It led to saving the victims, but not to solving the problem. It fortified rather than weakened the idea of a crisis.


It was hardly to be expected but that an attempt to demonstrate the inconveniences arising from daily increasing competition in the business of life assurance should meet with resistance and reprobation. The large number of persons interested in novel undertakings of the character in question would naturally feel themselves aggrieved at statements which went to prove that such undertakings were mischievous because they could not be successful, and which sought to demonstrate their hopelessness of success by an expose of their actual condition; on the other hand, it is not much to be wondered at, that minds familiar only with a state of affairs so wholly different should regard with anxiety and alarm a succession of enterprises threatening not merely to encroach on their own field of operation, but, by a series of failures, to bring all alike into general suspicion and discredit. As in most other controversies, much allowance is to be made on either side. The interests of the two parties are probably not altogether antagonistic, but they can scarcely fail to come into serious collision unless placed under more carefully devised regulations than at present exist.


Human Affairs ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Krzysztof Skowroński

AbstractIn the present paper, the author looks at the political dimension of some trends in the visual arts within twentieth-century avant-garde groups (cubism, expressionism, fauvism, Dada, abstractionism, surrealism) through George Santayana’s idea of vital liberty. Santayana accused the avant-gardists of social and political escapism, and of becoming unintentionally involved in secondary issues. In his view, the emphasis they placed on the medium (or diverse media) and on treating it as an aim in itself, not, as it should be, as a transmitter through which a stimulating relationship with the environment can be had, was accompanied by a focus on fragments of life and on parts of existence, and, on the other hand, by a de facto rejection of ontology and cosmology as being crucial to understanding life and the place of human beings in the universe. The avant-gardists became involved in political life by responding excessively to the events of the time, instead of to the everlasting problems that are the human lot.


2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Wilkens

Is "literary fiction" a useful genre label in the post-World War II United States? In some sense, the answer is obviously yes; there are sections marked "literary fiction" on Amazon, in bookstores, and on Goodreads, all of which contain many postwar and contemporary titles. Much of what is taught in contemporary fiction classes also falls under the heading of literary fiction, even if that label isn't always used explicitly. On the other hand, literary fiction, if it hangs together at all, may be defined as much by its (or its consumers') resistance to genre as by its positive textual content. That is, where conventional genres like the detective story or the erotic romance are recognizable by the presence of certain character types, plot events, and narrative styles, it is difficult to find any broadly agreeable set of such features by which literary fiction might be consistently identified.


2011 ◽  
Vol 37 (9) ◽  
pp. 999-1010 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ignaas Devisch

French philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy is acting uneasily when it comes to contemporary politics. There is a sort of agitation in his work in relation to this question. At several places we read an appeal to deal thoroughly with this question and ‘ qu’il y a un travail à faire’, that there is still work to do. From the beginning of the 1980s with the ‘Centre de Recherches Philosophiques sur le Politique’ and the two books resulting out of that, until the many, rather short texts he published on this topic during the last years of the century, the question of politics crosses very clearly Nancy’s work. He not only fulminates against the contemporary philosophical ‘content’ with democracy. Instead of defending a political regime, he wants to think the form of politics in the most critical and sceptical way. To Nancy, the worst thing we can do in thinking contemporary politics, is taking it for granted that we know what politics is about today, given the evidence of the global democracy. So to him, we almost have to be at unease when it comes to politics. On the other hand, in thinking contemporary democracy, the work of Claude Lefort is undeniably the main reference. Long before the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the upsurge of an all-too-easy anti-Marxism, Lefort articulated in a nuanced way the formal differences between totalitarianism and democracy. According to Lefort, the specific ‘form’ of democracy is that it never becomes an accomplished and fulfilled form as such. In a certain sense, the only ‘form’ of democracy is formlessness, a form without form. In a democracy, the place of power becomes literally ‘ infigurable’ as Lefort says. Democracy stands for formlessness or the relation to a void. Nancy objects so to say against a ‘Leformal’ conception of democracy – the empty place, the formless, the ‘ infigurable’ or ‘ sans figure’, the ever yet to come. … This conception of democracy would still be caught in the infinite metaphysical, dialectical horizon of immanentism, while it pretends to have already left that horizon behind it, presenting itself as the finite alternative to the infinite totalitarian politics. Democracy as formlessness is indeed no longer based on a metaphysical Idea, Figure, or Truth. We want to clear up the philosophical sky of Nancy’s remarks by confronting them with some thoughts of Lefort.


2021 ◽  
Vol 77 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 617-642
Author(s):  
Antonio Di Chiro

In this essay we will try to analyze the thought of the philosopher Giorgio Agamben on the pandemic. The aim of the work is twofold. On the one hand, we will try to demonstrate that Agamben’s positions on the pandemic are not to be understood as mere extemporaneous statements, but as integral parts of his philosophy. On the other hand, we will try to show how these positions are based on a deeply paranoid and anti-scientific vision, since Agamben believes that the effects of the epidemic have been exaggerated by the centers of power in order to create a “state of exception” that allows to crumble social life and to use the fear of poverty as a tool to dominate society. We will try to demonstrate that it is precisely starting from the critique of Agamben’s positions that it is possible to rethink a philosophy and a politic to come and a new reorganization of social and intimate relations between human beings.


completed machine would almost certainly be less than half that of a completed machine of the same kind. How s1(3) operates has been the subject of a detailed and critical analysis by Robert Goff J in the case of BP Exploration Co Ltd v Hunt (No 2), the defendant was granted a concession to explore for oil in Libya. He did not have the physical resources to carry out the exploration himself, so he sold a half share in the concession to BP, on condition that they would bear the initial cost of exploration. Accordingly, under this arrangement, BP’s expenses at the outset were likely to be very substantial, but on the assumption that oil was discovered, that expenditure would be recouped as oil continued to come on stream. The nature of the contract was that should oil not be discovered, the risk would be borne by BP, but, on the assumption that oil was discovered, BP’s expenses would be paid for out of the defendant’s receipts. Oil was discovered in 1967, but in 1971, the Libyan Government expropriated BP’s share of the concession and, in 1973, the defendant’s share was also expropriated. Accordingly, BP had received some payment, but this went only so far as to cover two-thirds of their initial expenditure. On the other hand, since the defendant had no expenses, all moneys received by him amounted to profit once the concession had been paid for. Goff J adopted a two stage approach to s1(3), stating that it was necessary first to identify and value what benefit had been conferred on the defendant, since on the wording of s1(3), this set a ceiling on the amount which could be awarded by way of a just sum. Secondly, it was necessary to award a just sum, taking account of the value of the benefit conferred and the cost to the performer of the work he had done prior to the frustrating event. For these purposes, the benefit to the defendant will be assessed by reference to the end product of the service provided by the other party: BP Exploration Co Ltd v Hunt (No 2) [1979] 1 WLR 783, p 799

1995 ◽  
pp. 388-392

2004 ◽  
Vol 11 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 278-297 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel P. Veldsman

AbstractThe more recently proposed epistemological models (cf Gregersen & Van Huyssteen, eds., Rethinking Theology and Science: Six Models for the Current Dialogue) within the context of the science and religion debate, have opened up galaxie,s of meanirzg on the interface of the debates which are inviting for exploralive, theological travelling. But how are we epistemologically to judge not only oui journets but also the rethinking of the implications of these epistemological models for our understanding of religious experience and our experience of transcendence? The interdisciplinary space that has been opened up in an exciting post-foundational manner zuithirz these very debates, leaves us as rational persons, embedded in a very specific social and historical context, with the haunting cognitive pluralist question on how to reach beyond the limits of our own epistemic traditions (Wentzel van Huyssteen). This question is pursued as an effort on the one hand to unmask epistemic arrogance and, on the other hand, not to take refuge in the insular comfort of internally closed language-systems. It is an effort to address relativism and a 'twentieth-century despair of any knozuledye of reality' (Polkinghorne). It is finally an effort to conceptually revisit the implications of tltese models for our understanding of our culturally embedded religious experience.


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