Article
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Body and Image in teaching of Medieval Philosophy
Libertad MARTINEZ LARRAÑAGA
Original title: El cuerpo y la imagen en la enseñanza de la Filosofía Medieval
Published in The Medieval Aesthetics
Keywords: Body, Image, Medieval Philosophy, Monotheistic creationism, Platonic dualism, Teaching, Theory of incarnation.
This paper describes a teaching experience developed as a teaching assistant of Medieval Philosophy at the College of Humanities – UNMDP, where the concepts of body and conforming and disconforming image were presented according to the theories of contemporary philosopher J. M. Schaeffer. This author seeks to explain the importance of the image in Western cultural tradition for its association with the body, an association that occurs in the medieval period from the synergy between three sources of thought: Platonic dualism, monotheistic creationism and the theory of incarnation. The lesson topic was specially chosen to present a contemporary elaboration on a medieval theme, and at the same time to perform a significant teaching experience with the use of images –both from the analyzed period and contemporary. Students were asked to analize aestheticaly and philosophicaly those images, with argumentative clarity, adequate use of the concepts developed in class and elements of visual language.
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The Aesthetic dimension of Existence. Life as a work of art. From Socrates (c.470-399) to Saint Augustine (354-430)
María CECILIA COLOMBANI
Original title: La dimensión estética de la existencia. La vida como obra de arte. De Sócrates (c.470-399) a San Agustín (354-430)
Published in The Medieval Aesthetics
Keywords: Confession, Foucault, Parrhesia, Truth.
The present communication consists of highlighting certain features of the parrhesiastic dimension present in Socrates so that, from this theoretical presupposition, we can develop an arc of reading with the confession in Saint Augustine. The purpose is to build a line of continuity with what we can consider an act of veridiction in the Foucauldian sense. We are motivated by the interest in marking a line between a parrhesiastic function and a confessional device and see what ethical-anthropological consequences are given from such acts. Above all, how both discursive practices, which obey specific rules of formation, are related to the so-called arts of existence linked to the etho-poietic dimension of making life a work of art; this is the path we want to travel to think the aesthetic question, associated with ethics and politics, as acts that occur within the framework of power relations that produce transformations on the real.
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Images of the body in the rhetorical ethos of Cicero (106-43 a. C.) and Descartes (1596-1650)
Giannina BURLANDO
Original title: Imágenes del cuerpo en el ethos retórico de Cicerón (106-43 a. C.) y Descartes (1596-1650)
Published in The Medieval Aesthetics
Keywords: Body images, Cicero, Descartes, Rhetoric.
The main hypothesis of the study tries to establish that there are images of bodies, which play the role of figuring a certain rhetorical ethos in both Cicero and Descartes. Both are critical authors of the rhetoric inherited from their predecessors, who in turn build their new rhetorical ethos. The first section shows a rhetorical ethos permeated by images of neo-academicist bodies of the mythical-epic type that mirror the vital culture of Cicero. The second to the fifth section includes the perspective and images of neo-Renaissance mathematical-geometric bodies in the work of Descartes, in both cases, the images of bodies have sign value of their times.
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Alcibiades’s silens: notes of aesthetics and philosophy in Pico (1463-1494), Erasmus (1467-1436) and Bruno (1542-1600)
Julián BARENSTEIN
Original title: Los silenos de Alcibíades: notas de estética y filosofía en Pico (1463-1494), Erasmo (1467-1436) y Bruno (1542-1600)
Published in The Medieval Aesthetics
Keywords: Aesthetics and Philosophy, Erasmus, Giordano Bruno, Pico della Mirandola, Silens.
Of the multiple influences that Plato’s philosophy has had on Renaissance thought, in this paper we are interested in focusing on a specific and even minimal question, namely, that reference to the silens that appears in Sympsium (215b-c). In our work we propose, then, to trace the presence of the concept of Silenus in three authors: Pico della Mirandola (1463-1494), Erasmus of Rotterdam (1467-1436) and Giordano Bruno (1542-1600). We will stop, in this way, in the famous Epistle that Pico sent to Ermolao Barbaro in 1485 and that is part of the De Genere dicendi philosophorum, in the monumental Adagia of Erasmus, especially in the adage 2201, Sileni Albibiadis, and in the dialogues Spaccio de la bestia trionfante and Cabala del cavallo Pegaseo by Giordano Bruno. The Silens, as is well known, are hollow figurines, horrible looking, disgusting and despicable, inside which are full of gems, exotic jewels and precious. Our research aims to show that, according to the selected authors, this is the philosopher’s own way of seeing himself, his aesthetics –whose most finished and original example is Socrates– and, by extension, the way of being proper to philosophy.
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The art of deceiving: the Mandrake, as Machiavelli’s political lesson
Nilo Henrique Neves dos REIS
Original title: El Arte de engañar: la Mandrágora como lección política de Maquiavelo
Published in The Medieval Aesthetics
Keywords: Fraud, Machiavelli, Political thinking, The Mandrake.
The comedy The Mandrake is inserted in the role of the political writings of Niccolò Machiavelli in that it also maintains a relationship with the concepts of the corpus maquiavellicus, mainly approaching The Prince. This interlacing allows us to understand how fraud becomes an expedient in the actions of the characters for the achievement of their private projects. However, it is imperative that they construct virtuous discourses that legitimize their actions, for, insofar as their goals can sometimes be considered ignominious by tradition, such actions must be enveloped in illusions that must replace reality by staging for an actor, who seeks to gain collective acquiescence to legitimize the pursuit of his glory. The piece shows how fraud is used to achieve an end and, at the same time, without hurting dominant values. The plot arises under the pretext of causing the comical, but showing the tragedy of politics, and being perhaps an instrument of reflection to understand how well-hidden private interests can be pursued without offending collective interests. Thus, in this way, this writing intends to demonstrate that reading The Mandrake is another way of getting to know Florentino’s political thinking.
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The analogy and its forms on the Thomas’ de Vio (1469-1534) De nominum analogia
Nicolás ARIEL LÁZARO
Original title: La analogía y sus formas en el De nominum analogia de Tomás de Vio (1469-1534)
Published in The Medieval Aesthetics
Keywords: Analogy, Aristotle, Saint Thomas Aquinas, Thomas de Vio Cardinal Cajetan.
This work studies the analogy’s estructure and its forms as was conceibed by Thomas de Vio on his Tractatus de nominum analogia. As it is well known, the Cardinal preferred the analogy of proportionality to be used in the fields of metaphysics, i. e. the notion of “ens”, and desestimated the analogy of intrinsic denomination (recovered later by Suárez). On the other hand, Cajetan writes a paper to offer a clear notion about the forms that the analogy should be understood according to Aquinas’ and Aristotle’s original doctrines. After we present the way that the Philosopher studied this topic, and after we had presented Aquinas’ ideas, we will go deeply into the differences between all the mentioned authors. Finally, our conclusions.
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The transit of the medieval truth to the modern knowledge – Chronicle of a phase that out of orbit
Carlos ENRIQUE BERBEGLIA
Original title: El tránsito de la verdad medieval al conocimiento moderno – crónica de una fase que se desorbita
Published in The Medieval Aesthetics
Keywords: Authority, Belief, Effectiveness, Limit, Need, Order, Precision, True.
The Middle Ages, in their lengthy centuries of existence, sum up a polysemous era. It is an epoch that bridges the gap between a preceding time, which it knows and from which it extracts enhanced knowledge and experience, and a succeeding time, which it ignores as a human period but knows at a suprahuman level, a knowledge coded as the end of times, which they consider imminent, although that imminence may take centuries to come true. Polysemous because, in spite of appearances, and much interpretation with an ideological bias that considers it a monolithic era ruled by just one way of thinking and acting in consequence, it treasures and displays literatures expressed in languages that, later on, will come to light in their full richness with the dawn of nationalities, philosophies that, though influenced by their theological and Greco-Latin root, become prodromes of future thought, technological and architectonic changes that will last indelibly. It was an age that possessed extended self-awareness, in contrast with the following ones, which reprocess it at a more and more accelerated pace and occasionally downplay its importance. It believed it was the owner of absolute truth; in this respect it does differ from subsequent times, except for the means it implemented to defend it, given that those “subsequent times”, in spite of disowning it, do not usually resign themselves to the fragility of the knowledge it obtains and resort to inquisitorial methods to defend it. The subtitle of this essay refers to the exorbitance that characterized the end of this era, depreciated or appreciated depending on the spirit of those times succeeding it, which means that each period reinterprets it, the destiny of everything human, which, from “our perspective”, medieval people sought to overcome.
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Clement of Alexandria (c. 150-215) and the use of musical metaphors and musical myths in his texts
Eirini ARTEMI
Published in The Medieval Aesthetics
Keywords: Clement of Alexandria, Hymns, Music, Musical metaphors, Musical myths, New Song, Protrepticus.
Clement of Alexandria or Titus Flavius Clemens was familiar with classical Greek philosophy and literature. When he converted to Christianity, he tried to draw some clear distinctions against the paganism. Many things from paganism were interpreted by a way that serve Christian theology. In Clement of Alexandria’s Protrepticus, the church father tries to explain how the well-known classical music-myths can be used to create the knowledge of a Superior “New Song”. Instead of that, Christians serve the New Song – Jesus in Church and outside the Church, they continue to “amuse themselves with impious playing, and amatory quavering, occupied with flute-playing, and dancing, and intoxication, and all kinds of trash. They who sing thus, and sing in response, are those who before hymned immortality, –found at last wicked and wickedly singing this most pernicious palinode, “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die”. Clement explains that by this way christians remain christians in name so they are dead in God not tomorrow. But not tomorrow in truth, but already, are these dead to God. In this paper, we are going to show that the polemic of Clement Alexandria was not against ancient music and musical instruments, but against the way that they were used by Christians. Also, we will analyse the method that Clement employs the musical metaphors and musical myths in his texts in order to educate Christians and to manage to earn the salvation.
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A contribution to the study of a scarcely known atín translation: The Life of John the Almsgiver [BHL 4392]
Olga SOLEDAD BOHDZIEWICZ
Original title: Una contribución al estudio de una traducción latina poco conocida: la Vida de Juan el Lismonero [BHL 4392]
Published in The Medieval Aesthetics
Keywords: John the Almsgiver, Latin hagiography, Leontius of Neapolis, Re-writing, Translation.
Paris, BNF, Lat. 3820, copied during 14th century, is a liturgical manuscript, an homiliary-legendary, written for its use at the cathedral of St. Trophime in Arles. There the life of John the Almsgiver stands, as it is usual for byzantine martyrologies, in No-vember. The text appears to be a “re-adaptation” of the hagiography written by Leon-tius of Neapolis rather than a proper translation of it, for a selection of its chapters gets a new organization in order to fit the pattern of a more conventional vita. The purpose of this paper is to make a first approach to analyse this scarcely studied text by considering its translation and rewriting techniques.
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On beauty and love in the transition from paganism to Christianity
Humberto Schubert COELHO
Original title: Sobre a beleza e o amor na transição do paganismo ao Cristianismo
Published in The Medieval Aesthetics
Keywords: Augustine, Beauty, Love, Plato, Plotinus.
While Plato is considered an absolute grounding for aesthetics, invaluable contributions to the concept of beauty were offered by the Christian thought. Although the underestimation of such contribution as a mere reflex of Platonism is not sustainable, it is undeniable that substantial part of platonic ideas on beauty and the role of love in the connection between consciousness and the supreme transcendent metaphysics of the source of being, which is identified with the beauty, exerts the most powerful influence on the Christian conception. The aesthetics in Antiquity, thus, consists in a dialogue between the beautiful Greek form and the Christian sentiment on the light of platonic idealism. Therefore, in order to understand the introspection and sublimation of Christian aesthetics the study of the delicate transition between cultural, religious and philosophical realms, and how this transition intensifies the emphasis on the role of love in the aesthetical economy, is mandatory.
