Rewriting German and Japanese primeval history: a comparative historical analysis of the Takeuchi monjo and ‘Himmler's Bible'

This study is concerned with two examples of religious re-interpretation of the origins of a ‘nation' legitimated by a text, respectively a ‘corpus' of material of allegedly ancient origin. The first examples are the Japanese Takeuchi monjo (‘Takeuchi texts'), which propose an extended and amended variant of the official ‘State Shintō' and its version of history and became the centre of a small ultra-nationalistic religious movement at the beginning of the 20th century. The second example is a text which was once labelled ‘Himmler's bible', the so-called Oera Linda Boek or Ura Linda Chronik, as it was introduced by its main German interpreter and exegete Herman Wirth in the 1930s. In both cases the texts overturn the view of history and mankind through insights into a so-far undetected prehistory.     

Non‐Analytic Logic

A logic focusing on the analytic a priori and explicitly rejecting the synthetic a priori ¹ developed in the early decades of the 20th century, largely through the efforts of the Logical Empiricists. This group was very influenced by Wittgenstein's early work Tractatus Logico‐Philosophicus. But Wittgenstein himself, later on, departed from the Tractatus in significant ways that the Logical Empiricists did not follow. Wittgenstein came later to accept the synthetic a priori, and out of this insight comes a non‐analytic logic that differs from standard 20th century logic in many distinct ways. This paper details these differences.     

Darwin's lost theory and its implications for the 21st century

This paper reports the reconstruction of the long ignored “second half” or human level completion for Darwin's theory of evolution. Pursuing the striking contradictions between what has been attributed to Darwin by his neo‐Darwinian and sociobiological heirs and what he actually said, in ignored sections of The Descent of Man and Darwin's long unpublished notebooks it uncovers a three‐level theory of the moral agent that foreshadows the emergence of 20th century social science and the late 20th century rise of the fields of systems science and humanistic psychology. Implications for a joint venture of natural science and social science in the completion of the humanistic and action‐oriented theory of evolution called for by the species‐threatening challenges of the 21st century are considered.     

From the individual to the collective: The emergence of a psychological approach to collective memory

Throughout much of the 20th century, psychologists have largely examined mnemonic processes through an individualistic lens at the expense of social influences. However, this perspective began to change toward the end of the 20th century and beginning of the 21st century, when psychologists began to better appreciate the social nature of remembering. In the present paper, we focus on a relatively recent and important evolution of this line of research: the emergence of a psychological approach to collective memory. Using an epidemiological approach to collective memory, we attempt to distil the extant and relevant psychological research and focus on how (collective) memories transmit, converge, and remain stable over time while considering the bidirectional relationship between collective memory and a mnemonic community's identity. We conclude with a discussion of research areas that psychologists should examine moving forward, which will ultimately provide a more holistic understanding of how collective memories emerge, remain stable, and/or change over time.     

‘Freud's speculations in ethnology’: A reflection on anthropology's encounter with psychoanalysis

In the early 20th century, many analysts – Freud and Ernest Jones in particular – were confident that cultural anthropologists would demonstrate the universal nature of the Oedipus complex and other unconscious phenomena. Collaboration between the two disciplines, however, was undermined by a series of controversies surrounding the relationship between psychology and culture. This paper re‐examines the three episodes that framed anthropology's early encounter with psychoanalysis, emphasizing the important works and their critical reception. Freud's Totem and Taboo began the interdisciplinary dialogue, but it was Bronislaw Malinowski's embrace of psychoanalysis – a development anticipated through a close reading of his personal diaries – that marked a turning point in relations between the two disciplines. Malinowski argued that an avuncular (rather than an Oedipal) complex existed in the Trobriand Islands. Ernest Jones’ critical dismissal of this theory alienated Malinowski from psychoanalysis and ended ethnographers’ serious exploration of Freudian thought. A subsequent ethnographic movement, ‘culture and personality,’ was erroneously seen by many anthropologists as a product of Freudian theory. When ‘culture and personality’ was abandoned, anthropologists believed that psychoanalysis had been discredited as well – a narrative that still informs the historiography of the discipline and its rejection of psychoanalytical theory.     

Science as a Paradigm for Halakhic Thought: an Introduction to the Theology of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik

In the 20th century there was a single individual whose personality provided the inspiration for, and whose writings defined the parameters of, what came to be known as Modern Orthodox Judaism. Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik (1903?–?1993) served as the Rosh Yeshiva (Senior Talmudic Scholar) of the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary, and Professor of Philosophy at Yeshiva University for almost 50 years. He was widely acknowledged, by all segments of the Jewish community, as the outstanding Talmudic scholar of his generation. At the same time, concern for the interface of tradition with modernity was central and pivotal to Soloveitchik's thought. In spite of his profound impact on American Orthodox Judaism, Soloveitchik's work is relatively unknown outside of this community. This article explores the implications of Soloveitchik's work for epistemology and methodology within the “science and religion” dialogue.     

Inconsistency and Ambiguity in Lichtheim′s Model

An in-depth examination of Lichtheim′s neurolinguistic model reveals that it fails even within its 19th century limitations. It fails in that it is neither unambiguous nor exhaustive and it is internally inconsistent. Moreover, given Lichtheim′s explanations of syndromes not predicted by the model it is not even falsifiable. The paradigmatic diagram-maker has failed to produce a model at all.     

Correlates and phenomenology of first and third person memories

Worry as a trait is an individual's general tendency to become worried, which in severe cases is associated with the diagnosis Generalised Anxiety Disorder. Mental time travel (MTT) is the ability to mentally project oneself into one's personal past or future, in terms of memories of personal past events or projections of possible events in the personal future. MTT can be voluntarily initiated or occur involuntarily. The current exploratory study investigated involuntary and voluntary MTT in the context of trait worry, thereby bringing together research on worry and MTT. High (N=20) and low (N=16) worriers recorded involuntary and voluntary autobiographical memories and future projections using a structured diary method. We predicted that MTT in high worriers would show signs of cognitive avoidance, such as reduced emotional intensity, more observer perspective, less visual imagery, or coming up with overgeneral or less self-relevant events. We found only partial support for our hypotheses in that high worriers rated personal memories and future projections lower on measures of self-relevance than did low worriers.     

Behold … All Things New: Uppsala 1968 and Its Mediatization as Film

The 4th Assembly of the World Council of Churches (WCC) in 1968 occurred during a period of increasing influence of the media in shaping society and culture. The documentary film Behold … All Things New, produced by Radio Sweden for the WCC's 1968 assembly in Uppsala, reflected this development. It was, however, both a promotional tool for the church and a sort of documentary. This article analyzes the film from the context of church media relations, examining the strengthened mediatization of the religious arena in the 20th century and giving close attention to the circumstances of the film's production, its narrative techniques, and visual realization. In this way, the film is made accessible as a historical source for the WCC and thus also for the history of the globalization of churches. The film places into perspective the connection between mediatization and secularization, as it represents the churches' integration into modern media society with all of its visual symbols of globality, ecumenism, and willingness to enter into dialogue.     

GENEROSITY: VARIATIONS ON A THEME FROM ARISTOTLE TO LEVINAS

This paper traces the concept and phenomenon of generosity from Aristotle to Emannuel Levinas and beyond. The question motivating this investigation is: must the generous act be restricted by a rational calculation of correct, or prudent, giving? Answers to this question vary. Aristotle and Kant would answer in the affirmative, while Emerson and Levinas would (apparently) not. The bulk of this paper is dedicated to Levinas's characterization of excessive generosity as a condition for the fundamental ethical relation, namely, the generous welcome of the Other. I end by considering the phenomenon of generosity from the point of view of the mid‐20^th century Mexican philosopher, Emilio Uranga.     

BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FOR! THE SURRENDER OF GENDER

Close examination of Freud's Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (1905a) reveals an ambiguity in Freud's language as he simultaneously tries to escape 19th‐century psychiatric paradigms concerning sexuality and perversion while also retaining a normative approach to adult sexuality that created new categories of pathology. The result is an ambivalent legacy that has both hampered and helped contemporary clinicians as they deal with a diverse array of presentations of gender and sexual orientation in today's world.     

A Systems Approach to Perception and Action

ABSTRACT

On the 50th anniversary of its publication, we look back on some of the intellectual contributions of Gibson's (1966) The Senses Considered as Perceptual Systems. This work is often seen as contributing a new perspective to our understanding of the 5 senses. In this paper, we explore another intellectual contribution: Gibson's treatment of perception–action as an irreducible, functional system. We review select examples of systems thinking from the physical, animal, and human social domains. Our suggestion is that a systems-level approach to social interactions would have been a natural extension of Gibson's ideas.     

The perception of sensation seeking in familiar and unfamiliar others

In Study I, 20 heterosexual couples filled out the Sensation Seeking Scale (Form V) for themselves and as they thought their partner would. The mean difference between the predicted score for one's partner and the partner's actual scale was -2.40 for the males and -1.10 for the females; neither of which significantly differed from 0. The predicted scores and actual scores were highly correlated (r = 0.58 for males and r = 0.66 for females). The results support the idea that people are accurate in their estimations of sensation seeking in familiar others.In study II, the ability to evaluate sensation seeking in unfamiliar others was investigated. Segments from four commercial movies involving six different characters were shown to subjects. After viewing one of these segments subjects filled out a sensation seeking scale as they thought the movie character would. A high level of inter-observer agreement was observed for these ratings. Moreover, the ratings for each of the six characters were congruent with the experimenters' prior judgements of each character's level of sensation seeking. These data support the hypothesis that rapid and accurate judgements of the sensation seeking trait in unfamiliar others are possible.     

Emmanuel Levinas and the New Science of Judaism

This article addresses Emmanuel Levinas's re‐conceptualization of Jewish identity by examining his response to a question he himself poses: “In which sense do we need a Jewish science?” First, I attend to Levinas's critique of modern science of Judaism, particularly as it was understood in the critical approaches of the nineteenth‐century school of thought, Wissenschaft des Judentums. Next, I detail Levinas's own constructive proposal that would, in his words, “enlarge the science of Judaism.” He retrieved classical textual sources that modern Judaism had neglected, while at the same time he enlarged Judaism's relevance beyond a historical community by turning to phenomenology as a rigorous science. Finally, I conclude with some reflections on the broader implications of this new science of Judaism for Jewish ethics and identity in a post‐war period.     

The cultural salience of moral character and virtue declined in twentieth century America

In a large corpus of American books, we tracked how frequently words related to moral excellence and virtue appeared over the twentieth century. Considering the well-established cultural trend in the USA toward greater individualism and its implications for the moral domain, we predicted that terms related to morality and virtue would appear with diminishing frequency in American books. Two studies supported our predictions: Study 1 showed a decline in the use of general moral terms such as virtue, decency and conscience, throughout the twentieth century. In Study 2, we examined the appearance frequency of 50 virtue words (e.g. honesty, patience, compassion) and found a significant decline for 74% of them. Overall, our findings suggest that during the twentieth century, moral ideals and virtues have largely waned from the public conversation.     

On avoiding bullshit

Author's note: By the time it is published this article will have been written more than a year ago; it was conceived and sketched out in letters to friends as far back as four years past, when the ideas in it would huve been considered quintessentially weird. Some things have changed since then–even since the summer of 1970 the most important being a climate of opinion antong a number of literate people, who are not yet in power anyplace in the world that I know of. Books have been published in the interim, Toper's Future Shock, Matson's The Broken Image, Mumford's The Pentagon of Power, Reich's The Greening of America, among others (Mumford is still the heavyweight); books of disparate vulue which are, nevertheless, symptomatic of the change, none of which I had the opportunity to read before I wrote this article. There are signs that the patient—us—may have a fighting chance. Only a chance, mind you, for there have appeared reactions which grow less subtle day by day, antagonisms that probably could have been predicted by anyone familiar with power's way of justifying its love affair with death. My article attempts to be predictive only to the extent that phenomena which are manifest imply their own futurity; if cause for optimism has appeared like a single power upon a dung heap, that too was always there in the nature of things. And high time!     

Character: The Prospects for a Personality‐Based Perspective on Morality

In the early parts of the 20th century, character made up a major part of psychology, specifically of personality psychology. However, an influential observational study of children's moral behavior, conducted by Hartshorne, May, and colleagues in the 1920s, suggested that consistency in morality‐related behavior was lower than many people expected. Some psychologists interpreted such results to mean that there was no consistency in moral behavior and thus that there were no stable, meaningful individual differences in moral behavior – character did not exist. Recent years have witnessed a reinvigoration of character, ethics, and morality as objects of psychological study. Our purpose in this paper is to contribute to this reinvigoration by reviewing the use of the concept of “character” within psychology, considering whether the evidence supports the notion of moral character as a psychological construct, and suggesting new prospects for research on moral character.     

The Holy Spirit in EG,TTL, and CTC: The Pneumatological Impulse for Christian Mission

This article examines the correspondence in the pneumatological impulse for mission among three documents: Evangelii Gaudium (EG), Together towards Life (TTL), and The Cape Town Commitment (CTC). This consonance in EG, TTL, and CTC is significant given the dissonance on theological and missiological perspectives across the representing ecclesial bodies since the mid‐20th century. Following a review of pneumatology in these three documents, the paper proposes a forward‐looking trajectory to a more expansive view of the Spirit's ever‐mysterious operations in the church, in missions, and in the world.     

PARRHESIA,PHAEDRA, AND THE POLIS: ANTICIPATING PSYCHOANALYTIC FREE ASSOCIATION AS DEMOCRATIC PRACTICE

This essay explores the mostly unexamined analogy of psychoanalytic free association to democratic free speech. The author turns back to a time when free speech was a matter of considerable discussion: the classical period of the Athenian constitution and its experiment with parrhesia. Ordinarily translated into English as “free speech,” parrhesia is startlingly relevant to psychoanalysis. The Athenian stage—in particular, Hippolytus (Euripides, 5th century BCE)—illustrates this point. Euripides's tragic tale anticipates Freud's inquiries, exploring the fundamental link between free speech and female embodiment. The author suggests that psychoanalysis should claim its own conception of a polis as a mediated and ethical space between private and public spheres, between body and mind, and between speaking and listening communities.