The Birth of Tragedy and The Trauma of Birth

This article examines the early writings of Friedrich Nietzsche and Otto Rank in terms of Harold Bloom's notion of an "anxiety of influence." Like the "strong poets" in Bloom's theory, each of these innovators needed to resolve his ambivalence toward precursors to create new theories and approaches. Nietzsche and Rank are seen as "premature births," thinkers before their time; both went beyond their own early works and attempted self-creation. Through an emphasis on affirmation of life despite death's inevitability, both were able to free themselves creatively. Rank drew from Nietzsche's philosophy and his example in developing an early existential psychotherapy.     

The Birth Mother

No abstract available for this article.     

Richard Wagner and the Birth of The Birth of Tragedy 1

Abstract

Nietzsche writes that the ‘real task’ of The Birth of Tragedy is to ‘solve the puzzle of Wagner’s relation to Greek tragedy’. The ‘puzzle’, I suggest, is the intermingling in his art and writings of earlier socialist optimism with later Schopenhauerian pessimism. According to the former the function of the ‘rebirth of Greek tragedy’ in the ‘collective artwork’ is to ‘collect’, and so create, community. According to the second the function of the artwork is to intimate a realm ‘beyond’ this world of pain and death. The audacity of The Birth is that it attempts to show that Wagner can have his cake and eat it: the ‘Dionysian’, musical, element provides a ‘metaphysical comfort’, while the ‘Apollonian’, verbal, element draws a ‘veil of oblivion’ over the metaphysical, thereby allowing the artwork to solidify community. Contrary to the standard Anglophone view, this perspective on The Birth shows that Nietzsche’s intimate association with Wagner during the period of its creation lies at the heart of its philosophical content.     

jThe Birth of Difference

Although birth marks the entrance of a human being into the world and establishes the very possibility of experience the philosophical implications of this event have been largely ignored in the history of thought. This is particularly troubling in phenomenology in general and in the work of Martin Heidegger in particular. While Heidegger raises the issue of birth he drops it very quickly on the path to defining Dasein's existence as constituted from the standpoint of death, as being-towards-death. In this paper I argue, contra Heidegger, that intentional existence can only be understood from the standpoint of birth. I begin by showing that intentionality inheres in a double difference that is fundamentally dependent on birth insofar as birth is an original differentiating from prenatal existence. I conclude with the argument that only a philosophy that regards Dasein from the standpoint of birth, as being-from-birth, can give an adequate account of humans as beings who live with others and who can initiate sense constitution and action.     

The Embodiment of Birth

This paper rejects dualism between mind and body toview the self as an embodied biological entity. Rather thanseeing the body operating by passive mechanisms as Descartesargues, it holds it actively moves in and even defines its world. Carrying this perspective to medicine presents an attempt toincorporate or work with internal processes of the body; it issensitive to how patients identify with their bodies. Thecurrent discussion over the extent to which women should try tohave natural childbirths provides a concrete example of thedifferences between mechanistic and embodied approaches tomedicine.     

Birth order and introversion-extraversion

The relationship between birth order and introversion-extraversion was investigated. Subjects were 70 male and 77 female undergraduates, all from three-child families. The measure of introversion employed was the Social Introversion Scale (Scale 0) of the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory. A two-way analysis of variance indicated that first borns were more introverted than either middle-horns or last-horns, with no difference between the latter two groups. It was suggested that inconsistent results in this area may be due to the use of different measures of introversion.     

Birth order among homosexual men

Nicolosi and Byrd in 2002 summarized empirical research on birth order and sexual orientation in men, which research has documented that homosexual men have a later birth order than heterosexual men. They did not, however, note a more refined analysis of an earlier null finding by Siegelman. This 1998 reanalysis by Blanchard, Zucker, Siegelman, Dickey, and Klassen also confirmed the later birth order of homosexual men.     

The Moral Significance of Birth

Does birth make a difference to the moral rights of the fetus /infant? Should it make a difference to its legal rights? Most contemporary philosophers believe that birth cannot make a difference to moral rights. If this is true, then it becomes difficult to justify either a moral or a legal distinction between late abortion and infanticide. I argue that the view that birth is irrelevant to moral rights rests upon two highly questionable assumptions about the theoretical foundations of moral rights. If we reject these assumptions, then we are free to take account of the contrasting biological and social relationships that make even relatively late abortion morally different from infanticide.     

Birth control practices and conservatism

This study examined the relationship of conservatism to reports of contraceptive usage, reasons for nonusage of a particular birth control method, and knowledge of birth control information. The never married high conservative subjects who were sexually experienced revealed that they had (a) a lower frequency of usage as well as a lower variety of contraceptive methods; (b) endorsed the beliefs that it was morally wrong and that it was unnatural to use a given birth control method significantly more often as reasons for not using contraceptive techniques; and (c) less knowledge of birth control methods than did low conservative subjects who were sexually experienced. Results were interpreted to support the notion that the fear of loss of control of one's impulses and hence the basis for conservative attitudes are determinants of contraceptive usage.     

环境因素与出生缺陷

出生缺陷是严重影响出生人口素质的重要因素之一。引起出生缺陷的因素分为遗传因素和环境因素,单纯由遗传因素或环境因素引起的出生缺陷不到其总数的1/3,另外2/3以上的出生缺陷是由遗传因素和环境因素共同作用所导致的。因此,只有不断深入研究和认识导致出生缺陷发生的原因,辩证地分析不同环境因素在出生缺陷中的作用,才能采取相应的预防和治疗措施,这对于提高出生人口素质具有十分重要的现实意义。     

Birth as Labor and Natality

Abstract

While the embodied subject has become a crucial site of theorization in both the study of religion and feminism, the maternal subject has not yet received consideration. As double, divided in bodies and psyches, subject to partial deaths, opaque to itself, continuous and bounded, of double ontological and legal status, perhaps complexly racialized, perhaps complexly sexed and gendered, the maternal subject defies a liberal anthropology. This paper turns to Hannah Arendt’s work and reception as an important path for consideration of the political import of maternality. Arendt perpetuates a strong private/public distinction and locates maternality in the realm of labor and decisively outside the polis. Birth and maternality as apolitical labor drew strong criticism from Arendt’s first generation of interpreters. Yet this also articulates “flesh-and-blood” aspects of maternality in ways that now deserve greater consideration. Arendt’s famous notion of natality as the source of human newness has been received with enthusiasm by many feminists. I show that Arendt, in part because of the theological heritage of her anthropology of the creature, adopts a problematically disembodied notion of birth, one that effaces the maternal subject in the production of the politics of citizens.     

Birth Control Practices and Conservatism

This study examined the relationship of conservatism to reports of contraceptive usage, reasons for nonusage of a particular birth control method, and knowledge of birth control information. The never married high conservative subjects who were sexually experienced revealed that they had (a) a lower frequency of usage as well as a lower variety of contraceptive methods; (b) endorsed the beliefs that it was morally wrong and that it was unnatural to use a given birth control method significantly more often as reasons for not using contraceptive techniques; and (c) less knowledge of birth control methods than did low conservative subjects who were sexually experienced. Results were interpreted to support the notion that the fear of loss of control of one's impulses and hence the basis for conservative attitudes are determinants of contraceptive usage.