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Nuria Sánchez Madrid (ed.): Hannah Arendt y la literatura, Bellatierra, Barcelona, 2016, 193 pp.
Get PDFNo es un artículo, sino una reseña
One Hundred Years of Forgotteness: Aesth-Ethics of Memory in Latin America
No full textThis paper is a response to the following question: how can we listen to, render audible, and thus resist the kind of erasures and institutional forms of oblivion imposed by power and political structures in Latin America? I propose to answer this question through the study of literary and artistic responses to a paradigmatic case of this kind of oblivion in the history of Colombia, namely, the matanza de las bananeras. By following the ways in which the case has been “recovered” in its undecidable character, first in One Hundred Years of Solitude, by Gabriel García Márquez, and then in José Alejandro Restrepo’s Musa Paradisíaca, I intend to show a concrete example of why, as Arendt suggests, “in their stubbornness, facts are superior to power,” and that “persuasion and violence can destroy truth, but they can never replace it.” I begin my argument with a discussion of Ángela Uribe’s use of the case of the matanza and her treatment of García Márquez’s depiction as a refutation of Arendt’s statement. I take Uribe’s analysis as a provocation to build my own reading of the kind of memory and survival of the matanzamade possible by García Márquez’s novel, and continued by Restrepo’s installation. I conclude by showing how, in both cases, the matanzastubbornly resists oblivion, even though, as Arendt suggests, the historical truth has indeed been destroyed.  
Prémontval’s “General Misunderstanding on the Question of Optimism”
Get PDFOne of the most original contributions to the optimism debate of the eighteenth century was put forward by the maverick French Enlightenment thinker, André-Pierre Le Guay de Prémontval (1716-1764), in an essay entitled “General misunderstanding on the question of optimism” (published 1757). This essay, which seeks to develop a “middle point” between the polarized pro- and anti-optimist positions that characterized the optimism debate, prefigures the development of process or neoclassical theism in important ways. The essay is presented here in English for the first time, along with an analysis of the essay itself and the context in which it was written.
References
[Anon.], Index librorum prohibitorum juxta exemplar romanum jussu sanctissimi domini nostri (Mechelen: P. J. Hanicq, 1838).
[Anon.], “Vues Philosophiques ou Protestations & Declarations sur les principaux objets des connoissances humaines, par Mr. de Prémontval,” Journal Encyclopedique, par une societé de gens de lettres. Pour le 15. Mai 1757. Tome IV. Premiere partie (Liege: Everard Kints, 1757), 28-40.
Johann Gottlieb Buhle, Literarischer Briefwechsel von Johann David Michaelis, 2 vols. (Leipzig: Weidmann, 1794).
Cornelia Buschmann, “Die Philosophischen Preisfragen und Preisschriften der Berliner Akademie der Wissenschaften im 18. Jahrhundert.” In Aufklärung in Berlin, edited by Wolfgang Förster, 165-228 (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1989).
Francis MacDonald Cornford, trans., Plato’s Cosmology: The Timaeus of Plato (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1997).
Daniel A. Dombrowski, A History of the Concept of God: A Process Approach (New York: State University of New York Press, 2016).
Samuel Formey, “Dissertation qui a remporté le prix proposé par l’Académie Royale des Sciences et Belles Lettres de Prusse, sur l’optimsme, avec les pieces qui ont concouru,” Nouvelle bibliothèque germanique 18 (1756), 22-32.
Johann Christoph Gottsched, De optimismi macula diserte nuper Alexandro Popio anglo, tacite autem G. G. Leibnitio, perperam licet, inusta (Leipzig: Breitkopf, 1753).
Immanuel Kant, “An attempt at some reflections on optimism by M. Immanuel Kant, also containing an announcement of his lecture for the coming semester 7 October 1759,” in Immanuel Kant, Theoretical Philosophy, 1755-1770, eds. and trans. David Walford and Ralf Meerbote (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 67-76.
[Martin Künzli], “Discours sur cette question, tout est-il bien? proposée par l’Académie Royale des Sciences et Belles Lettres de Berlin, pour le prix de l’année 1755.” In Dissertation qui a remporté le prix proposé par l’Académie Royale des Sciences et Belles Lettres de Prusse, sur l’optimsme, avec les pieces qui ont concouru, 1-31 (Berlin: Haude and Spener, 1755).
G. W. Leibniz, Theodicy, trans. E. M. Huggard (Chicago: Open Court, 1985).
[Gotthold Ephraim Lessing and Moses Mendelssohn], Pope—ein Metaphysiker! (Danzig: Johann Christian Schuster, 1755).
Avi Lifschitz, Language & Enlightenment: The Berlin Debates of the Eighteenth Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016).
Pierre Louis Moreau de Maupertuis, Essai de cosmologie (n.p.: n.p., 1751).
Pierre Louis Moreau de Maupertuis, “Les loix du Mouvement & du repos, déduites d’un Principe Metaphysique,” in Histoire de l’Academie Royale des Sciences et Belles-lettres. Année MDCCXLVI (Berlin: Ambroise Haude, 1748), 267-294.
André-Pierre Leguay de Prémontval, De Dieu et de la Religion: Suite du Diogene décent (Frankfurt: n.p., 1754).
André-Pierre Leguay de Prémontval, Du hazard sous l’empire de la providence (Berlin: J. C. Kluter, 1755).
André-Pierre Leguay de Prémontval, La monogamie, ou l’unité dans le mariage; ouvrage dans le quel on entreprend d’établir, contre le préjugé commun, l’exacte & parfaite conformité des trois loix, de la nature, de Moïse, & de Jesus-Christ, sur ce sujet, 3 vols. (The Hague: Pierre van Cleef, 1751-2).
André-Pierre Leguay de Prémontval, Le Diogene de d’Alembert; ou Diogene décent: pensées libres sur l’home & sur les principaux objets des conoissances de l’home (Berlin: n.p., 1754).
Prémontval, Le Diogene de d’Alembert; ou Diogene décent: pensées libres sur l’home & sur les principaux objets des conoissances de l’home (Amsterdam: n.p., 1755, new ed.).
[André-Pierre Leguay de Prémontval], L’esprit de Fontenelle ou recueil de pensées tirées de ses ouvrages (The Hague: Pierre Gosse, 1744).
André-Pierre Leguay de Prémontval, Memoires d’André Pierre Leguai de Prémontval, Professeur en Mathematiques et Belles-Lettres (The Hague: n.p., 1749).
André-Pierre Leguay de Prémontval, Panagiana panurgica, ou le faux evangeliste (The Hague: Jean Neaulme, 1750).
André-Pierre Leguay de Prémontval, Pensées sur la Liberté, tirées d’un ouvrage qui a pour titre: protestations et declarations philosophiques sur les principaux objets des conoissances humaines (Berlin and Potsdam: Chrétien Frédéric Voss, 1754).
André-Pierre Leguay de Prémontval, “Remarque sur cette définition de M. Wolf du mot aliquid; aliquid est cui aliqua notio respondent. §54. de l’Ontologie. p. 41,” in Histoire de l’Académie Royale des Sciences et des Belles-Lettres de Berlin MDCCLIV (Berlin: Haude and Spener, 1756), 440-443.
André-Pierre Leguay de Prémontval, Vues Philosophiques; ou protestations et declarations sur les principaux objets des connoissances humaines, 2 vols. (Berlin: Joachim Pauli, 1757).
Adolph Friedrich Reinhard, Le système de Mr Pope sur la perfection du monde, comparé à celui de Mr de Leibnitz, avec un examen de l’optimisme (Berlin: Haude and Spener, 1755).
Timaeus of Locri, On the Nature of the World and the Soul, trans. Thomas H. Tobin (Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1985).
[François Vincent Toussaint], Les moeurs (n.p.: n.p., 1748).
Eduard Winter, Die Registres der Berliner Akademie der Wissenschaften 1746-1766 (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1957).
Christian Wolff, Theologia naturalis, methodo scientifica pertractata. Pars prior, integrum systema complectens, qua existentia et attributa dei a posteriori demonstrantur (Frankfurt and Leipzig: n.p., 1736).
Christian Ziegra, Sammlung der Streitschriften über die Lehre von der besten Welt, und verschiedene damit verknüpfte wichtige Wahrheiten, welche zwischen dem Verfasser der im Jahr 1755. von der Akademie zu Berlin gekrönten Schrift vom Optimismo, und einigen berühmten Gelehrten gewechselt worden (Rostock and Wismar: Berger and Boedner, 1759)
Mapas nocturnos y mediaciones diurnas
No full textIn this essay, Colombian philosopher and essayist Jesús Martín-Barbero reflects on the transformations his work has gone through, from his initial attention to the question of the relation between media and mediation, and its connection to particular modes of seeing and listening structurally traversed by history and culture, to the issue of memory, history and temporality. Barbero emphasizes here the challenges that the singularity of Colombian reality pose to our colonized forms of doing history and telling the story of Colombian conflict, inviting us to reflect on the particular tasks that the current political and historical situation requires, if a real possibility of redistribution of power and political voice is ever to take place. By expanding Heidegger’s reflections on technique and its relation to our contemporary forms of temporality, he invites us to look for potentialities and possibilities of critique and change in the new spaces given to us by “virtual” reality. 
Langue du droit et sociabilité dans la doctrine savante médiévale (XIIe-XIVe siècles)
Get PDFBetween the twelfth and fourteenth centuries,
law progressively developed a language of institution of
the subject, by the enunciation of a discourse of truth
leading to highlighting a properly legal sociability. But,
whatever authority/body of truth it may be, law remains
however a pragmatic language. The juridical qualification
operation implemented by jurists to confront the right to
facts also builds a discourse of the plausible intended to
capture a real world, imperfect but perfectible by the
norm and its binding meaning. The order of the probable
affects in return the order of the true. Medieval jurists,
producers but also interpreters of this discourse of authority
and sociability, constantly oscillate between these
two registers, and legitimize by the discourse they produce
their capacity to produce this discourse, placing
themselves thus at the border between the articulation of
the text and its meanin
Il linguaggio profetico dell’animale politico. Nodi tematici e linee di sviluppo
Get PDFThe essay analyzes the language of selected
prophetical texts from the 14th century focused on several
themes: the prophet as narrator and denuntians; the bond
between history and prophecy; the interchange of certainty,
expectation, emotions; prophecy as political
propaganda. Starting from the definition of the prophet as
denuntians by John of Rupescissa, the study involves the
value of numbers in Rupescissa and Arnaldus of Villanova;
the value of images as prophetical language in Genus
nequam and Ascende calve; the figure of the pastor
angelicus in the Liber de Flore and political propaganda
in the short prophecy called Karolus filius Karoli. Together
with other texts, the Libellus de statu ecclesiae of
Telesphorus of Cosenza shows the link between prophecy
and history
La socievolezza umana nel Defensor Pacis di Marsilio da Padova
Get PDFIn his scholarly output spanning over thirty
years Cary Nederman has characterised the Defensor
pacis as a work deeply indebted to Cicero, especially with
regard to human sociability and the origin of society. This
is in spite of the numerous references to Aristotle that
Marsilius inserts in the chapters dealing with this question.
This paper examines the arguments and conclusions
advanced by Nederman, thus offering a detailed analysis
of the four chapters of the Defensor pacis directly or indirectly
related to the question of human sociability (chapters
3, 4 and 6 of Dictio I, and chapter 22 of Dictio II). It
emerges from this inquiry that Marsilius drew heavily on
Aristotle and on the medieval commentators on the Politics
L’ombre de Faux Semblant : fiction, tromperie, et vérité dans la poésie allégorique après le Roman de la Rose (France, Angleterre, et Italie)
Get PDFThe question of the epistemological status of
poetic language is a central concern in the Roman de la
Rose. The Rose itself is in fact conceived as an extended
reflection on the ability of poetry to convey philosophical
and transcendent truths. While Jean de Meun invokes this
possibility, his poem finally foregrounds the fictional and
fabricated nature of his own poetic vision, and highlights
the poet’s role as an producer of counterfeit truths. This
role is explored in particular through the character of
Faux Semblant, who acts as an embodiment of the liarparadox,
and becomes an emblem for the elusive and paradoxical
poetics of truth/deception that sustain the Roman
de la Rose in its entirety. This exploration of the intrinsic
deceptiveness of poetic art and the problematic role
of the poet, crystallises in a series of recurrent motifs
and concerns that haunt late medieval vernacular poetry
more broadly, especially in France, Britain, and Italy.
While the Franco-English tradition largely reproduces
Jean de Meun’s own scepticism concerning the veridical
status of poetic speech, the Italian tradition, especially in
the Fiore and in Dante’s work, systematically seeks to
suppress such scepticism, countering it with a stronger,
more ambitious authorial model of the poet as vates
Langage et politique chez Jean de Salisbury : les fondements du lien social
Get PDFJohn of Salisbury is well known as a being one
of the most important medieval political thinker and a
sharp defender of the liberal arts. But these two aspects of
his philosophy are rarely connected. This paper aims at
examining how the defence of the trivium is included in
political project. Indeed, language is both a mean which
allows to gather the men in a society ; and, mainly by its
affective dimension, a way of dividing them (especially
through flattery). This twofold aspect of language is at the
heart of John of Salisbury’s political project
L’homme animal politique et parlant selon Albert le Grand et Thomas d’Aquin
Get PDFThe present article intends to study, from the
point of view of moral philosophy, the Aristotelian definition
of man, as a ‘political animal endowed with language’,
in the interpretation of Albert the Great and
Thomas Aquinas. Regarding Albert, I take into account
his theory of happiness and friendship ; regarding Aquinas,
I study the conception of practical science, as well as
his theory of preaching