Mythos and Logos in Losev's Absolute Mythology

The paper analyses A.F. Losev's argument forthe identity of dialectical and mythicalthinking which forms the key part of his theoryof absolute mythology. Losev claims thatdialectical thinking is limited byphenomenological intuition. He fails torecognise, however, that this intuition itselfis a product of thinking. The same is true ofLosev's concept of `life' that is designed tolimit intellectual reflection. The mystery ofthe Absolute is, contrary to Losev's claim, nota threshold that dialectical thinking cannotcross, but it is, in fact, realised only bysuch thinking. This has a bearing on theChristian Neoplatonist doctrine of energisticsymbolism, which also plays a crucial part inLosev's philosophy of myth. Under the pressureof the Neoplatonist tradition Losev violatesthe demands of dialectical thinking in favourof myth's essential mysticism. And yet, becauseof the dialectical relation between rationalismand mysticism, Losev's attempt was not afailure, but a valuable contribution to thetask of illuminating this relation.     

Minding the Gap: Detachment and Understanding in Aleksej Losev's Dialektika mifa

Aleksej Losev's definition of myth centres onthe concept of detachment. In modern timesdetachment has most often figured in thecontext of philosophical aesthetics, where itis a cognitive category akin to Kant's``disinterestedness'' or the Russian formalists'``estrangement.'' However Losev's usage alsomakes reference to the ontological sense ofdetachment as contemplativeascent (cf. Meister Eckhardt'sAbgeschiedenheit). Thus, Losev's concept ofmyth combines both senses of detachment,binding perceptual attitude and being togetherin a double movement of resignation from theworld and union with meaning; this movementliterally makes sense out of reality. Ittherefore bears comparison to the treatment ofdistanciation in contemporary hermeneutics,where detachment is a key condition ofunderstanding. By investigating Losev'sconnections to other Russian thinkers, theauthor makes a case for a distinct Russiantradition of hermeneutic philosophy (V. Ivanov,G. Shpet, A. Bakshy, A. Losev).     

Similarities between Prescott Lecky's theory of self-consistency and Carl Rogers' self-theory

The teachings of Prescott Lecky on the self-concept at Columbia University in the 1920s and 1930s and the posthumous publications of his book on self-consistency beginning in 1945 are compared with the many publications of Carl Rogers on the self-concept beginning in the early 1940s. Given that Rogers was a graduate student at Columbia in the 1920s and 1930s, the striking similarities between these two theorists, as well as claims attributed to Rogers by Rogers' biographers and writers who have quoted Rogers on his works relating to self-theory, strongly suggest that Rogers borrowed from Lecky without giving him the proper credit. Much of Rogers' writings on the self-concept included not only terms and concepts which were original with Lecky, but at times these were actually identical.     

On the Religious Foundations of A.F. Losev's Philosophy of Music

The article considers A.F. Losev's philosophy of music in the context ofhis entire religious worldview and as the part of hisChristian-Neoplatonic philosophy. Synthesizing Pythagorean-Platonic andRomantic musical doctrines, Losev concludes: music is the expression ofthe life of numbers, a meonic-hyletic element that rages inside numericconstructions. So it is necessary to analyse the concept of number inthe system of Neoplatonic thought. In the Neoplatonic hierarchy of theuniverse both numeric sphere and music are located at the source of allthe eidei, above them and between the One (the first hypostasis) and theWorld Intelligence (the second hypostasis). Then music is considered inthe context of the relation between the uncreated Absolute (Tetrade A)and the created world (Tetrade B). Losev's doctrine on the Tetrades Aand B (connected not by essence but by energies) is the importantmodification of Neoplatonism. Finally the article considers Losev'saccount of music in relation to the absolutized individual person.     

The linguistic aporias of Alexei Losev’s mystical personalism

Alexey Losev’s concept of ‘personality’ was developed in his writings from the 1920s, “The Dialectics of Myth” and “The Philosophy of Name”. In his later works (e.g. on the aesthetics of the Renaissance and in his book about Vladimir Soloviev) Losev also understood the ‘personality’ outside of the boundaries of philosophy and theology. For him, the mystical dimension of personality in the end dominates logical and cultural structures of the subject. Losev’s concept of ‘personality’ as a myth, a symbol, rather than an abstract theory was an attack on the European individualism seen as a principle of the self-affirmation of the isolated subject.     

On the Generation that Squandered its Philosophers (Losev, Bakhtin, and Classical Thought as Equipment for Living)

The essay juxtaposes the intellectualpreoccupations and fraught careers of two great20th-century Russian philologist-philosophers,Aleksei Losev and Mikhail Bakhtin. AlthoughLosev's is the more crippling case, theexternal trajectory of their lives develops inrough parallel (bold, prolific productivity inthe 1920s; arrest and deportation in the1930s; slow reintegration in thepost-Stalinist era; recent revivals, cults,booms, and scandals connected with theirlegacy). What is more, the subject matterthat fascinated them often overlapped (theClassical world, the status of the Word,Dostoevsky). Still, differences overwhelm thesimilarities. The essay concludes withspeculation about these two types ofphilosopher-king squandered, martyred, andelevated by their home culture.     

MARTIN RÁZUS: Literary and Philosophical Reflections on Morality1

Martin Rázus (1888–1937) was one of the most important personalities of Slovak Lutheran social, political, cultural, literary, and intellectual life during the first half of the twentieth century. First, I examine the picture of Slovak rural morality portrayed in the works of Rázus, particularly his 1929 novel Svety[Worlds], in which Rázus presents the morality of the people in the Slovak countryside from the beginning of the twentieth century until the end of the 1920s. Second, as the ethical and moral issues of life are crucial topics of Rázus's philosophical and ethical reasoning, I examine Rázus's ethical treatise Argumenty[Arguments] (1932), in which he develops, explains, and philosophically justifies many of his ideas concerning the ethics and morality expressed in his literary works and political and religious essays.     

Producing Parsons' reputation: Early critiques of Talcott Parsons' social theory and the making of a caricature

This article examines the critical responses to Talcott Parsons' first major work, The Structure of Social Action (1937), and his two subsequent books, Toward a General Theory of Action and The Social System (both 1951). Because Parsons' work was the subject of such virulent debate, we cannot fully understand Parsons' impact on the discipline of sociology without understanding the source and nature of those early criticisms. I trace the responses to Parsons, first through book reviews and private letters and then in the more substantial statements of C. Wright Mills, George Homans, and Alvin Gouldner, from the largely positive but superficial reception of Structure to the polemics that followed Parsons' 1951 works. In the late 1930s and 1940s, Parsons' reputation grew steadily but there remained no careful reception of Structure, fostering resentment toward Parsons in some quarters while precluding a sophisticated understanding of his work. After 1951, a few critics capitalized on that tension, writing sweeping rejections of Parsons' work that spoke to a much broader audience of sociologists. That dynamic, coupled with Parsons' own indifference toward his harshest critics, produced a situation in which many sociologists simply chose not to read Parsons in the 1950s and 1960s, reinforcing a caricature and distorting perceptions of Parsons' place in mid‐twentieth‐century American sociology. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Losev's Development of Themes From Nietzsche's The Birth of Tragedy

Nietzsche's The Birth of Tragedy, andearly 20th century Russians' interpretationsand embellishments of it, informed Losev'stheories of music and myth and his studies ofthe religions of Apollo and Dionysus. Hiscomplex musical aesthetic includes the ideathat music is the expression of a fundamentallyDionysian reality structured by Apollonianelements. In The Dialectic of Myth, heargued that myth is a dialectical necessity(not just a necessity), attacked the secularmythologies of the Enlightenment and Marxism,and upheld ``Christian mythology'' (his term). In The Mythologies of the Greeks andRomans, he traced the religions of Zeus,Apollo, and Dionysus from paleolithic Crete tothe end of the Roman Empire.     

A nice arrangement of heterodoxies: William Mcdougall and the professionalization of psychical research

Joseph Banks Rhine (1895–1980) is usually considered the founder of modern professional parapsychology. Through his work at Duke University in the 1930s, he established a working research program (in the Lakatosian sense) for the controversial discipline, setting down various methodological standards and experimental procedures. Despite Rhine's clear and important influence on modern parapsychology, this article argues that he came to a stage that had already been set. Adopting recent theoretical advances in the study of scientific professionalization, it is argued that Rhine's mentor, the controversial British psychologist William McDougall (1871–1938), has a stronger claim to the parenthood of modern parapsychology than is typically recognized. Following McDougall's attempts to carve out and establish an institutional space for professionalized psychical research in 1920s America, furthermore, takes us to little explored connections between psychical research, Lamarckism, neo‐vitalism and policies of eugenics. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

The Religious Meaning of Culture: Paul Tillich and Beyond

Throughout his theological career Paul Tillich (1886–1965) was fundamentally concerned with the question of the religious meaning of culture. The answers that he gave – initially in the revolutionary ferment of 1920s–1930s Germany and then again in the brave new world of post‐World War II America – were profound and far‐reaching in their importance for twentieth‐century theology. This article will explore the development of Tillich's interpretations of the religious meaning of culture and apply his analyses to our contemporary religious and cultural situation by suggesting a trinitarian enlargement of Tillich's concept of theonomous metaphysics towards a multidimensional theology of culture.     

Semantic palaeontology and the passage from myth to science and poetry: the work of Izrail′ Frank-Kamenetskij (1880–1937)

The life and career of the Soviet scholar of myth and religion Izrail′ Grigor′evič Frank-Kamenetskij is discussed, tracing his development from a scholar working exclusively on semitology to a theorist of myth and literature. The scholar’s relationship to German philosophy and Biblical scholarship is outlined, along with his relationship to Soviet scholarship of the 1920s and 1930s. The development of the scholar’s work is related to his encounter with N. Ja. Marr in the early 1920s, and the way in which Marr’s doctrine underwent considerable revisions when subjected to German philosophy and applied to narrative material is detailed. Finally the way in which attention increasingly turned to the genesis of literary plots and poetic metaphor is discussed, along with both the influence such work exerted and the enduring value of such work today.     

The Necessity of Thinking Historically – Heidegger After Nietzsche

ABSTRACT

This paper is concerned with the turning that occurs within the work of Martin Heidegger. In particular it seeks to reveal it as a turning that takes place within the notion of history as it is elaborated by Heidegger in the difference between Nietzsche and Hölderlin, that is, in the difference between philosophy and poetizing. It locates the necessity for such a turning in Heidegger's dissatisfaction with his own thinking up to the early 1930s (as suggested in his Black Notebooks). In particular the paper focuses on Heidegger's confrontation with Nietzsche over the question of nihilism in the hope of drawing out the different approaches of each thinker in trying to think this problem historically, and how this confrontation helps move Heidegger's thought towards a more poietical way of thinking. The paper concludes that Heidegger, in seeking to distinguish his thought from that of Nietzsche's, not only owes a debt to Nietzsche but that Heidegger's non-public texts of the late 1930s and early 1940s are also formally indebted to him.     

A tale of four countries: How Bowlby used his trip through Europe to write the WHO report and spread his ideas

Attachment theory, developed by child psychiatrist John Bowlby, is considered a major theory in developmental psychology. Attachment theory can be seen as resulting from Bowlby's personal experiences, his psychoanalytic education, his subsequent study of ethology, and societal developments during the 1930s and 1940s. One of those developments was the outbreak of World War II and its effects on children's psychological wellbeing. In 1950, Bowlby was appointed WHO consultant to study the needs of children who were orphaned or separated from their families for other reasons and needed care in foster homes or institutions. The resulting report is generally considered a landmark publication in psychology, although it subsequently met with methodological criticism. In this paper, by reconstructing Bowlby's visit to several European countries, on the basis of notebooks and letters, the authors shed light on the background of this report and the way Bowlby used or neglected the findings he gathered.     

Speaking out of Turn: Martin Heidegger and die Kehre

' Speaking out of Turn : Martin Heidegger and die Kehre ' examines the difference between Heidegger's own understanding of 'the turning' and that understanding which originated with Karl Lowith and was later presented to English-speaking readers by William Richardson in Martin Heidegger: Through Phenomenology to Thought . The study focuses on Heidegger's own introduction to Richardson's book, and argues that, far from confirming Richardson's view that there is a 'Heidegger I' and 'Heidegger II' connected by the 'reversal' or turning, Heidegger sought to indicate with (sometimes indirect) reference to his own works that the 'turning' is a movement in thought that it was part of the original project of Being and Time to carry through, but which he only succeeded in describing much later. The study attempts to illustrate this by a close examination of the works to which Heidegger alludes in his Foreword to Richardson's book. Many of these were not available when Richardson published (1963), and so it has only more recently been possible to amplify Heidegger's earlier published works with reference to his lecture courses. The study concludes that the horizon of time and the analytic of Dasein never really disappear from his later thinking, as many have claimed, and proposes that the relationship between the earlier and later Heidegger be re-examined. This re-examination takes the form of accepting that far from the 'turning' representing a fracture, where Heidegger abandons the existential-temporal analytic of Dasein in favour of an attempt to think only being ( das Sein ) as such, the 'turning' represents the point of unity in Heidegger's work. This point of unity shows how Dasein and being 'belong together' in 'the event' ( das Ereignis ).     

Merton as Harvard sociologist: Engagement,thematic continuities,and institutional linkages

In this paper I explore the significance of the initial decade of Robert K. Merton's graduate and professional career, from 1931, when he entered the new doctoral program in sociology at Harvard, until 1939, when he joined the Department of Sociology at Tulane University as an associate professor and acting chairperson. Drawing on archival sources, as well as the professional literature, I examine how Merton engaged the exceptionally rich, interdisciplinary context of Harvard in the 1930s, including both interpersonal networks and diverse intellectual perspectives. In particular, I identify connections between Merton's early writing, “oral publications” and teaching, and three locally developed and dominant paradigms of sociology. Following an assessment of the influence of Merton's works published from 1934 to 1939, I trace continuities between Merton's achievements at Harvard and his subsequent teaching and research at Tulane and Columbia. I conclude that a fuller appreciation of Merton's “less noticed” decade in Cambridge is indispensable for understanding his overall career, and that it clarifies linkages across sociological work at three universities in the mid‐twentieth century. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

The emergence of sociology from political economy in the United States: 1890 to 1940

Professional sociology in the U.S. began as a field area within economics, but gradually emerged as a separate discipline. Using new data on joint meetings and the separation of departments, I track interdisciplinary relations through three phases: sponsorship (1890–1905), collaboration (1905–1940), and disengagement (post‐1940). In the early years, sociology was mostly a branch of economics departments. With the formation of the American Sociological Society, relations with economics began to be more characterized by professionally autonomous collaboration. The 1920s saw a large wave of sociology departments separating from economics. Still, joint annual meetings (including joint presidential addresses) remained the norm until 1940. Paradigmatic conflict between institutional and neoclassical economists was the major force that sustained the economics–sociology collaboration. As institutionalism faded from the scene in the late 1930s, so went interdisciplinary contact. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Compelling Fictions: Spinoza and George Eliot on Imagination and Belief

Spinoza took it to be an important psychological fact that belief cannot be compelled. At the same time, he was well aware of the compelling power that religious and political fictions can have on the formation of our beliefs. I argue that Spinoza allows that there are ‘good’ and ‘bad’ fictions. His complex account of the imagination and fiction, and their disabling or enabling roles in gaining knowledge of Nature, is a site of disagreement among commentators. The novels of George Eliot (who translated Spinoza's works) represent a significant development for those who aim to resolve such disagreement in favour of the epistemic value of the imagination and fiction. Although Eliot agreed with Spinoza that belief cannot be compelled, she nevertheless affirmed the potential of certain kinds of fiction to be not only compelling but also edifying. The parallel reading of Eliot and Spinoza offered here raises the question of whether his philosophy can accommodate a theory of art in which the artist is seen to be capable of attaining and imparting dependable knowledge.     

A Review of “The Relational Origins of Prejudice: A Convergence of Psychoanalytic and Social Cognitive Perspectives”

Abstract

Key concepts in social welfare and clinical social work - concepts such as person-in-environment, women's rights, prevention and outreach-had as precedents the pioneering theory and practice of Europe's free psychoanalytic clinics of the 1920s. Sex-Pol, a Viennese community-based clinical network created in 1927 by Wilhelm Reich, perhaps the most overtly political of the first psychoanalysts, was motivated by reformist social goals he shared with Sigmund Freud. This historical study of Sex-Pol draws on Reich's own words to explore his use of the term “social work” where clinical work is predicated on an activist ideology of human liberation.