Journal articles on the topic 'Ronald John Criticism and interpretation'

Abstract In her seminal book on metafiction, Patricia Waugh describes this practice as an obliteration of the distinction between “creation” and “criticism.” This article examines the interplay of the “creative” and the “critical” in five American metafictions from the late 1960s, whose authors were both fictional writers and scholars: Donald Barthelme’s Snow White, John Barth’s Lost in the Funhouse, William H. Gass’s Willie Masters’ Lonesome Wife, Robert Coover’s Pricksongs and Descants and Ronald Sukenick’s The Death of the Novel and Other Stories. The article considers the ways in which the voice of the literary critic is incorporated into each work in the form of a self-reflexive commentary. Although the ostensible principle of metafiction is to merge fiction and criticism, most of the self-conscious texts under discussion are shown to adopt a predominantly negative attitude towards the critical voices they embody – by making them sound pompous, pretentious or banal. The article concludes with a claim that the five works do not advocate a rejection of academic criticism but rather insist on its reform. Their dissatisfaction with the prescriptivism of most contemporary literary criticism is compared to Susan Sontag’s arguments in her essay “Against Interpretation.”

Abstract Moberly discusses John Barton's Nature of Biblical Criticism and takes issue with Barton's portrayal of theological interpretation as hostile to the values of biblical criticism. After showing how Barton misrepresents theological interpretation, not least because of a failure to do justice to the changing frames of reference of critical scholarship, Moberly extends the discussion to include the preunderstandings that interpreters inevitably bring to the Bible in ways analogous to how one reads a classic; the way in which appreciation of deep literature relates to personal maturity; and the way in which theological dogma, rightly understood, can make truer one's perception of reality.

Abstract Moberly discusses John Barton's Nature of Biblical Criticism and takes issue with Barton's portrayal of theological interpretation as hostile to the values of biblical criticism. After showing how Barton misrepresents theological interpretation, not least because of a failure to do justice to the changing frames of reference of critical scholarship, Moberly extends the discussion to include the preunderstandings that interpreters inevitably bring to the Bible in ways analogous to how one reads a classic; the way in which appreciation of deep literature relates to personal maturity; and the way in which theological dogma, rightly understood, can make truer one's perception of reality.

The paper is an essay in the history of interpretation. Its subject is John Skinner’s book on the life of Jeremiah, Prophecy and Religion (1922). The main aim is to place the work in its historical, theological and cultural context, to explain Skinner’s conviction that Jeremiah’s life marks the emergence of personal religion in Israel and points towards Christianity. Attempts at such contextualization by J. Henderson and M.C. Callaway are studied and shown to be inadequate. Skinner’s religious context and theological education are then reviewed and are shown to be sufficient to account for his belief in the pivotal role of Jeremiah in the evolution of ‘religion’. The paper finally addresses the present-day significance of Skinner’s work and concludes that while Prophecy and Religion is of limited value for the interpretation of Jeremiah, Skinner’s life and work as a whole as an evangelical believer engaged in radical biblical criticism is a valuable model neglected over the last 100 years.

<p><strong>RESUMO:</strong></p><p><span id="docs-internal-guid-decdab21-6e60-7f17-85b2-a2ed5562f90b"><span>O presente artigo tem por objeto as principais críticas que Andrei Marmor, em seu livro </span><span>Interpretation and Legal Theory</span><span>, apresenta à concepção de interpretação defendida por Ronald Dworkin. Em um primeiro momento, Marmor sugere que, para Dworkin, toda e qualquer conclusão sobre o Direito seria objeto de interpretação, o que não seria correto quando analisamos, por exemplo, o modo como seguimos certas regras e convenções. Em um segundo momento, Marmor argumenta que a perspectiva dworkiniana defende uma objetividade impossível de ser alcançada na interpretação: o fato de que compartilhamos valores de natureza incomensurável, por exemplo, implica na impossibilidade de se considerar que uma interpretação será, todas as coisas consideradas, melhor que outra. Analisando tais críticas à luz das respostas que Dworkin ofereceu ou poderia ter oferecido, conclui-se que a visão de Marmor sobre a concepção dworkiniana de interpretação é incorreta, na medida em que ignora distinções que lhe são centrais, como a diferença entre “conceitos criteriais” e “conceitos interpretativos”, e sobre a natureza integrada dos valores que compartilhamos socialmente. Ainda assim, o debate entre ambos os autores ressalta sua clara natureza metodológica, sendo importante para a compreensão do “estado da arte” da Teoria do Direito contemporânea de vertente analítica.</span></span></p><p><strong>ABSTRACT:</strong></p><p dir="ltr"><span>This paper focuses on the main criticisms presented in Andrei Marmor’s </span><span>Interpretation and Legal Theory</span><span> to Ronald Dworkin’s conception of interpretation. In the first criticism, Marmor suggests that in Dworkin’s theory each and every conclusion about what the law is in a given case is a result of interpretation, which cannot be correct when we think, for example, about the way we follow certain rules and conventions. In the second criticism, Marmor argues Dworkin supports an impossible objectivity view on interpretation: the fact that we share values of incommensurable nature, for example, implies that it is impossible to consider that one interpretation can be the best, all things considered. Considering both criticisms and the answers that Dworkin offered or could have offered to it, this paper concludes Marmor's view about Dworkin's concept of interpretation is incorrect, considering that Marmor ignores central distinctions of Dworkinian thought, such as the difference between "criterial” and “interpretive” concepts, and about the integrated nature of values we share on society. Nevertheless, the debate emphasizes its methodological nature, and is important to understand the state of art of the analytical contemporary legal theory.</span></p><div><span><br /></span></div>

In recent years, several significant translations have been published by Vladimir Vasilyevich Starovoitov, which undoubtedly expand the ideas of Russian specialists about classical psychoanalysis, its criticism and the subsequent development of Freudian ideas. The article analyzes the works of John D. Sutherland, Ronald W.F. Fairbairn, Sandor Ferenczi and Benjamin Kilborne. An idea is given about the dynamically complex and contradictory process of the formation of psychoanalytic schools and individual teachings. The problems of the theory of psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic technique are considered, the issues of applied and clinical psychoanalysis, the development of personality and the emotional world of a person are discussed.

No one will deny John E. Hill's claim that he has written an "unabashedly didactic" book (p. xi). This is not social science, or political theory, or history as it is usually understood by those disciplines. I do not mean that as a criticism, for there is great merit in writing as a concerned citizen-scholar. Hill puts his political cards on the table. He is a self-described "moderate liberal" (p. xi) who wants universal health insur- ance, public funding of elections, more restraints on the corporate sector, a more progressive tax system, more spend- ing on education, and community service programs. He also wants liberals to rethink their attitude toward morality: They need to be more forthright about the importance of morali- ty-social virtue-for the health of the Republic. In addition, Hill does not shy away from telling us that he does not like "individualistic excess" (p. ix), Alexander Hamilton, Ronald Reagan, or the religious Right.

The Tale of Igor’s Campaign and The Gododdin, two poetic texts crucially important for the history of Early Russian and Welsh literature respectively, have a very dark history. Both are preserved in only one reliable source and are supposed to be composed about 600 years before this edition or manuscript was created. Anna Dybo and John Koch however propose an attempt of reconstruction for the Ur-Text of these poetic masterpieces. In this article we compare the framework within which these reconstructions were created. Whereas Anna Dybo relies mainly on contemporary texts, John Koch in the absence of such monuments has to rely more on historical interpretation.

Violence and conflict in the name of religion have increased in Indonesia, including Maluku. Social strife in Maluku provides evidence of the reality of an objectionable and properly managed society. Conflict in the name of religion has contributed to legitimization with bible texts, including Deuteronomy 7: 1-11 and John 14: 6. Therefore, this article is the result of re-interpretation utilizing ideological criticism of these biblical texts. Through the interpretation, the authors found that the exclusive narrative of Deuteronomy 7: 1-11 and John 14: 6 was influenced by the social, political, and economic situation. Thus, both texts need to be reinterpreted contextually regarding the plurality of Indonesian society. In the end, this article emphasizes that the concept of God's people cannot be interpreted exclusively but refers to all humankind universally.

The article analyses and discusses the concepts of symbol and allegory in relation to Jean Baruzi’s classic study of the poetry of St. John of the Cross, Saint John of the Cross and the Problem of Mystical Experience. These concepts have been accepted to greater or lesser degree by the majority of St. John of the Cross criticism. My reading attempts to trace the historical circumstances that conditioned Baruzi’s approach and argues for the need to reassess the reach and the pertinence of applying these aesthetic categories in the interpretation of 16th century mystical poetry, taking the conditions and unique specifics determined by the epoch and the parameters of the tradition of Christian mysticism as interpretive horizon.

In this article I draw on John Dugard's criticism of apartheid judges to initiate a discussion of the role and functioning of judges in the post-apartheid era. Using John's critique of the limits of judicial interpretation in an illegitimate order, I extend the analysis to review the record of the Constitutional Court in adjudicating socioeconomic rights cases post-1994. In doing so I propose a radical interpretation of the Court's role in society and an activist functioning of judges in South Africa's constitutional democracy. I conclude that, notwithstanding the momentous changes in the South African legal order since 1994, John's critique of the judiciary retains much value and applicability today.

This article examines one of the key plots of the monograph by the English scientist Roger Vernon Scruton “Fools, Frauds and Firebrands: Thinkers of the New Left”, edited in London by Bloomsbury Publishing. This plot concerns the analysis and criticism of the views of two leading American representatives of the mentioned socio-political ideological direction: John Kenneth Galbraith and Ronald Dworkin. In each case, the author demonstrates an individual approach, individual assessments of his “wards”, plunging into the argumentation of the named thinkers, analysing along the way many independent plots. The author noted many of Scruton’s statements’ polemical fervour and undisguised provocativeness. However, he pays tribute to the outstanding intellectual abilities of his “attack” objects and tries to systematically and substantiate his attacks in detail. All this ultimately led to the appearance of a fairly original text, which, although not an outstanding work, will attract the attention of specialists and everyone interested in the topic of ideological confrontation in the modern world.

In both Matthew and Mark, John's death is presented as a flashback, providing the necessary background for Herod's musings about John redivivus. Unlike Mark, however, Matthew does not return to the narrative present; the next event follows in temporal sequence not with Herod's statement but with John's death. Traditional methods of interpretation are able to explain how this narratological solecism came about. But what sense can we make of it as readers? Making use of appropriate elements of narrative and reader-response criticism, this paper will explore the possible effect of this unresolved flashback on the experience of reading.

Falstaff, Elgar's tragic symphonic study, is at once program music, a minor piece of Shakespearean criticism, early modernist tonal and structural experiment, and a cynical musical commentary on humankind's "failings and sorrows." A satisfactory analysis of the work calls for a discussion of the program, the Shakespearean literary criticism that Elgar based his interpretation on and cited in his own published analysis of the work, and a structural analysis that can make sense both of a variety of generic implications (sonata, rondo, and multimovement deformations) as well as the complex associations between keys, motives, persons, and ideas in the work, together with its overall tonal structure. As this multilayered piece is examined from these different angles, Elgar's interpretation of the character of Sir John Falstaff (as presented by or inferable from Shakespeare) is revealed as an idiosyncratically gloomy view of human relationships and existential possibilities. It is also an intensely personal exploration of late-tonal musical language, its symbolic potential, its structural logic, and its relation to the musical tradition--Elgar's most complex, adventurous, and rewarding.

According to the traditional (or ‘whig’) interpretation of history, sometime in the seventeenth century science was born in the form that we know today, in a new spirit that can best be summed up by the motto of the Royal Society: nullius in verba, take nobody's word for it. In the next few centuries this new critical way of looking at reality was instrumental in the creation of a coherent view of the world, and of that world's history, which was found to be increasingly at odds with traditional claims, most famously in the case of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution. By the end of the nineteenth century, the divide between science and religion was described by means of words such as ‘conflict’ and ‘warfare,’ the terms used by John William Draper and Andrew Dickson White in the titles of their respective books: History of the Conflict between Religion and Science (1874) and History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom (1896).

This paper offers, first, an analysis and critique of John Henry Newman’s theorizing of real assent, in comparison with Jean-Luc Marion’s own phenomenological investigation of Revelation and Religious Experience. In conversation with the results of these analyses, I offer a critique of a certain hermeneutical criticism of Marion’s oeuvre. This, as I attempt to show, dovetails with certain strong criticisms towards Newman’s own interpretation of religious experience, insofar as it highlights the demand for some discussion or theorization of a standpoint beyond hermeneutic circularity.

As we approach the 21st Century, enormous technical advances are being made in the acquisition of galaxy redshifts. This Joint Discussion offers a perspective on those advances and the associated redshift surveys. It is representative, but by no means all inclusive.My introduction offers some historical background, against which the new methods and achievements can be measured.Redshift surveys tells us about the spatial distribution and evolution of galaxies. Yet the study of large-scale structures in the distribution of galaxies goes back further than one might imagine. The first accurate description of the Virgo Supercluster was given by John Herschel in the mid-19thCentury. To paraphrase Sir John, “Virgo is the central condensation of a roughly spherical cluster of nebulae - our system lies outside the denser part of the cluster, but is involved with its outlying members - forming an element of some one of its protuberances or branches”.Victorian science might have beaten Hubble had more people believed John Herschel - and had he himself more confidence in his interpretation. Few were prepared to accept the ‘Island Universe’ theory that it implied, and strong criticism followed. Moreover, Herschel was very reluctant to go against the beliefs of his revered father, William Herschel, who, though once believing in the ‘Island Universes’, had in later life accepted that all nebulae were somehow gaseous condensations in our system. Consequently, even John Herschel’s textbook still stated the older, incorrect interpretation.

This article is a critical response to John Minger's recently published piece ‘Can social systems be autopoietic?’. It draws attention to instances in this piece where Mingers has misconstrued Luhmann's theory – especially in the central concepts of openness and closure, system-environment relation, interaction, and functionality, but also in the interpretation of the role which Luhmann ascribes to the political system – and it attempts to give a more accurate analysis of these terms, and of their place in Luhmann's overall sociology. The article also asserts, more generally, that to criticize Luhmann from the perspective of action-centred theory, as Mingers has done, fails to reflect on and integrate Luhmann's direct challenge to perspectives of this kind. The article concludes with the argument that legitimate criticism of Luhmann should set out a more immanent account of his sociology, and should not simply have recourse to the more traditional sociological perspectives, which Luhmann has already effectively called into question.

AbstractThis article, originally presented as the presidential address at the 2021 SNTS meeting, held virtually via Leuven due to Covid-19 conditions, investigates the nature of Pauline interpretation, past and present. It brings into the scholarly conversation a neglected ancient source, John Chrysostom's occasional homily on 1 Cor 7.2–4 (Hom. 1 Cor. 7–4 (CPG 4377)), and provides an analysis of key passages showing how the late antique orator-bishop seeks to turn Paul's words from the fifties to Corinth into a magical incantation, and, as inscribed on various materials, a talisman against the evils associated with porneia. The article concludes with defence of the category ‘Christian love magic’ and an argument that New Testament studies constitutes a unified field which should unite (rather than separate out) the work of philology, historical contextualisation, literary criticism, humanistic commitments and hermeneutical sophistication as we trace and analyse the ways human agents construct meanings with New Testament texts, then and now.

Abstract John Chrysostom, circa 349–407 ce, wrote “On Vainglory, or The Right Way to Raise Children,” which purports to be about raising all Christian children. In fact, out of ninety chapters, only one deals with girls. Even more significant are the numerous overlooked children in the text, who are present but whose Christian education is never discussed because they are enslaved. This paper utilizes childist criticism to draw these enslaved children from hiddenness into plain sight. The paper is situated in the context of Jesus’ teaching about children because Chrysostom believes that the best way to raise children is by teaching them stories from the Bible, Hebrew Bible first, then New Testament, but instead of an openness to all children he discusses only freeborn, elite boys. Chrysostom’s treatise exposes the context of how few children in late antiquity could be shaped by biblical interpretation intended for all children. (147 words)

This essay focuses on the alleged attack by Robert Greene on Shakespeare as an “upstart crow,” a work reprinted in almost every collection of Shakespeare’s works, and a document that has produced its own body of scholarly assessment. Employing recent textual criticism of the print industry in early modern England —including works by Zachary Lesser, John Jowett, Jeffery Masten, and D. Allen Carroll— we re-read “Green’s Groatsworth of Wit” as a kind of literary criticism that helps to illuminate both its own textual status as well as the material conditions of the late sixteenth-century theatrical world which produced it. Following a review of the basic lines of interpretation of the piece, I examine the nexus of the Henry Chettle, Robert Danter and Greene connection, in an attempt to show that by considering the “collaboration” between these three, we should come to a better understanding of the document itself. Equally important, by re-examining the text, reviewing the printing process, and rethinking the authorial voice of the work, I hope to re-situate the pamphlet’s place in the present debate on Shakespeare and his contemporaries.

Among the various theoretical insights which seek to explain the emergence (and, for our purposes, the amendment) of ‘social’ legislation, the interpretation advanced by Oliver MacDonagh to explain nineteenth century governmental developments is widely known. This approach, which ascribes legal changes to the ‘pressure of events’, is built upon a five-stage model, progressing from the ‘discovery’ of an ‘evil’, to its administrative solution by means of legislative enactment. MacDonagh's formulation attracted, in turn, the criticism of those students of nineteenth century government growth, who pointed to the influence of Benthamite ideas as the forcing-house of change. Latterly, John Goldthorpe has sought to place emphasis on the role of social movements in galvanising legal reforms, suggesting how different interest groups might vie with one another in a pluralistic struggle for success.

Penelitian ini membuktikan bahwa kajian kesusastraan dengan menggunakan new historicism mampu mengungkap pelbagai kekuatan budaya, sosial, ekonomi, dan politik yang menyetubuh dan menyelinap dalam setiap sela teks sastra yang merupakan ranah estetik (aesthetic richness). Penelitian ini mengungkapkan bahwa karya sastra tidak dapat dipisahkan dengan pelbagai konteks zaman dan praksis budaya, sosial, ekonomi, serta politik yang melingkupinya. Penelitian ini tidak sependapat dengan konsep new criticism John Crowe Ransom (The New Criticism, 1941 dan Criticism as Pure Speculation, 1971) dan William K. Wimsatt dan Monroe Beardsley (The Intentional Fallacy, 1946 dan The verbal Icon, 1954) yang mengatakan bahwa karya sastra merupakan autotelic artefact. Sehingga menjadi tidak tepat ketika pemahaman terhadap sastra dikaitkan dengan pengarang, pembaca, maupun konteks di luar karya sastra. Penelitian ini mendukung konsep new historicism Stephen Greenblatt (Practicing New Historicism, 2000) yang menyatakan bahwa dunia imajinatif-estetis tidak pernah terlepas dari relasi kekuasaan dunia realitas yang termanifestasi dalam karya sastra sebagai apresiasi estetis individu dan praksis budaya, sosial, ekonomi, dan politik. Berdasarkan interpretasi kritis new historicism Greenblatt terhadap novel Ukhruj Minha Ya Mal’un diperoleh hasil penelitian berupa pemahaman karya imajinatif yang penuh dengan simbol yang lebih lengkap dan dalam (deeper understanding of value) dengan melibatkan konteks ekstrinsikalitas karya sastra di dalamnya dan novel Ukhruj Minha Ya Mal’un hadir sebagai tanggapan reflektif-imajinatif Saddam Hussein sebagai pengarangnya.[This research proves that literary studies using new historicism can reveal the various cultural, social, economic, and political forces that intercourse and sneak in every literary text: aesthetic richness. This research reveals that literary works cannot be separated from the various contexts of the era and the cultural, social, economic, and political praxis that surround them. This study disagrees with the concept of new criticism John Crowe Ransom (The New Criticism, 1941 and Criticism as Pure Speculation, 1971) and William K. Wimsatt and Monroe Beardsley (The Intentional Fallacy, 1946 and The verbal Icon, 1954) literature is an autotelic artifact. So it is not appropriate when the understanding of literature is associated with authors, readers, and contexts outside of literary works. This research supports Stephen Greenblatt's new historicism concept (Practicing New Historicism, 2000), which states that the imaginative-aesthetic world is never separated from the power relations of the world of reality which are manifested in literature as an individual aesthetic appreciation and cultural, social, economic, and political praxis. Based on the critical interpretation of Greenblatt's new historicism of the Ukhruj Minha Ya Mal'un novel, the research results are in the form of a deeper understanding of imaginative works of symbols (deeper understanding of value) involving the context of the extrinsicality of literary works in it and the novel Ukhruj Minha Ya Mal. 'un appears as the reflective-imaginative response of Saddam Hussein as the author.]

Immanuel Kant is recognised as one of the first philosophers who wrote systematically about global justice and world peace. In the current debate on global justice, he is mostly appealed to by critics of extensive duties of global justice. However, I show in this paper that an analysis of Kant's late work on rights and justice provides ample resources for disagreeing with those who take Kant to call for only modest changes in global politics. Kant's comments in the Doctrine of Right clarify that he thinks we need a coercively enforced global civil condition. But his work also contains ideas that imply that within such a global legal order there must be no extreme forms of poverty and inequality, and that the current holdings of states are by no means conclusive possessions without confirmation by the global legal order we have a duty to establish. Thus, this paper challenges the prevailing interpretation of Kant as a conservative thinker about global justice that is held, for instance, by the leading contemporary liberal thinkers such as John Rawls, Thomas Nagel, and Ronald Dworkin.

Milton's Samson has long been a character about whom readers are irreconcilably divided. Current anxiety over terrorism has made it all the more inviting to see Milton's dramatic poem as a criticism of Samson's slaughter of the Philistines, a sentiment emphatically expressed in John Carey's recent claim that “September 11 has changed Samson Agonistes, because it has changed the readings we can derive from it while still celebrating it as an achievement of the human imagination.” This paper interrogates the association of Milton with present-day antipathy to religious violence and seeks to sophisticate the position of critics who now find terrorism an inescapable presence in the field of literary interpretation. The brand of reading most necessary in current discussion is one that avoids the reactionary temptation to cleanse literary texts of sympathy with religious violence and to view such violence as the province solely of the Other.

Introduction: the subject of the paper is the analysis of the concept of legal principles of the authoritative American jurist Ronald Dworkin, formulated by him in the essay “The Model of Rules” and formed the core of his initial challenge to the doctrine of legal positivism. The paper based on the general scientific and specific scientific methods pursues a dual goal – first, to systematize R. Dvorkin’s understanding of the specifics of legal principles and their consequences for the criticism of positivism, and second, to assess the potential of the author’s considered ideas outside of American-British law. Results: the paper summarizes the proposed R. Dworkin’s interpretation of legal principles as standards that differ from legal rules in terms of “logical and regulatory” parameters, the grounds for legalizing and significance in judicial justification, and also shows the connection of this interpretation with the negation of the key ideas of positivism. At the same time, it is noted both an unconventional view of R. Dworkin for the domestic jurisprudence and legal practice, the otherness of the criteria for understanding and specification of legal principles, and the insufficiency of a number of the author’s statements. Conclusions: on the one hand, the paper states the “weakness” of the arguments of R. Dworkin’s explanation of the grounds for legalizing the principles and their strict opposition to the rules; on the other hand, it emphasizes the value of these arguments for explaining the “weight” of the principles and conflicts between them, for understanding the procedures for restricting the fundamental rights, etc., which makes it necessary and possible to further develop the concept of the American jurist, including taking into account the experience of continental and Russian law.

This paper considers Sarah Siddons’s cross-gender performances as Hamlet in relation to critical fascination with the character’s interiority in the early Romantic era. An examination of the responses to Siddons’s Hamlet in the context of late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century studies of the play reveals that Siddons’s contemporaries saw the actress’s femininity and acting methods as particularly effective for conveying the sensibility and irresolution that became increasingly associated with Hamlet in literary criticism of the period. In particular, the responses to Siddons’s performances emphasise Hamlet’s first encounter with his father’s Ghost, a scene often considered the focal point of definitive performances by actors like Thomas Betterton, David Garrick, and Siddons’s brother, John Philip Kemble. The fact that these commentators describe Siddons’s Hamlet as superior to her brother’s and praise her reactions in the Ghost scene suggests that Siddons succeeded in creating a dramatic interpretation of the character that aligned with the Romantic focus on Hamlet’s inner life.

AbstractThis article offers a critique of Ronald Dworkin’s article “A New Philosophy for International Law”, (Philos Public Aff 41: 1–30, 2013). It begins by showing that Dworkin’s moralised theory of law is built on two highly questionable background assumptions. On the one hand, a descriptively implausible characterisation of a positivist-voluntarist view of international law as the reigning “orthodoxy”. On the other hand, the methodologically questionable assumption that a theory of international law must discharge the dual function of explaining the validity of international law in a manner that underwrites its presumptive legitimacy. In its core part, the article then offers a sustained criticism of Dworkin’s moralised account of the validity and legitimacy of international law. Various problems are identified with the “principle of salience” that Dworkin offers in place of consent as a ground for international law. A key concern is the difficulties that stem from Dworkin’s willingness to proceed on the “fantasy” assumption that his theory needs to get off the ground, i.e. that there is an international court with compulsory jurisdiction and reliable mechanisms for enforcing its judgements. Finally, the article concludes with some thoughts on how Dworkin’s “fantasy-based” approach led him to over-estimate the degree to which international law can be a vehicle for the global spread of liberal democratic values. More minimalist ambitions for international legal order, along the lines suggested by John Rawls in The Law of Peoples, seem more realistic.

Smith is considered the father of the labour theory of value developed by David Ricardo and Karl Marx and simultaneously of the cost-of-production theory of value developed by John Stuart Mill and Alfred Marshall. This polysemy is partly because Smith is developping the terminology to refer to value and measure of value, and often uses it with much imprecision. That has led to different interpretations about his position on these issues, most of them derived from an error of interpretation of Ricardo and Marx. This paper reviews the concepts developed by Smith to formulate his theory of value (value, real price and exchangeable value). Our interpretation of his texts on value does not coincide with what has traditionally been done. According to our interpretation, it would not be correct the criticism made by Ricardo and Marx on Smith’s position about the role of labour as measure of value. For these authors, Smith is not consistent in proposing that the value of a commodity is defined or measured as the amount of labour necessary to produce it and simultaneously as the amount of labour that can be purchased by this commodity. We try to show that for Smith the labour has a double role –as source and measure of value–, and that to it is due the confusion that generates his use of some terms: Smith proposes labour as a measure of value because he conceives it as a source of value. With this interpretation it becomes clear, paradoxically, that Smith holds a labour theory of value that substantially corresponds to the one later developed by Ricardo and Marx.

Цель данной статьи - доказать, что Ориген не отказывался от универсалистских идей в поздний период творчества. В пользу правдоподобности такого изменения в эсхатологии Оригена высказывался Рональд Хайне. Автор статьи, не соглашаясь с позицией Хайне и используя в качестве доказательства интерпретацию Оригеном фрагмента 1 Кор. 15, 24-28, показывает, что александрийский богослов всегда оставался верен своей концепции всеобщего восстановления. Аргументация автора основана на таких произведениях Оригена, как «Комментарий на Евангелие от Иоанна» и «Гомилии на Левит». В статье делается особый акцент на том, что универсализму Оригена присуще острое эсхатологическое напряжение. In this article it is argued that Origen did not abandon his universalist ideas in the late period of his career. In his monograph, Ronald D. Heine made some remarks in favour of the plausibility of such a change in Origen’s eschatology. Disagreeing with Heine’s position and using as evidence Origen’s interpretation of 1 Cor. 15, 24-28, the author of the article demonstrates that Origen always remained faithful to his concept of universal restoration. The argumentation is based on such works by Origen as «Commentary on the Gospel according to John» and «Homilies on Leviticus». In this article, a particular emphasis is made on the fact that a sharp sense of eschatological tension was intrinsic to Origen’s universalism.

In recent criticism, arguments about whether domesticity in The Wide, Wide World (1850) empowered or disempowered women, and whether it was embraced or critiqued by Warner and her contemporaries, have been founded upon, or at least buttressed by, readings of horses and horsemanship. The interpretation of Ellen Montgomery's riding lessons as a metaphor for her disempowerment, and the ubiquitous denunciation of John Humphreys as "brutal horse-beater," however, have little grounding in the nineteenth-century horsemanship on which Warner drew. While for centuries horses in Western culture had been associated with human passions and horsemanship with their forcible domination, a combination of new methods for disciplining equines and new forms of recreational riding rendered the equine body, in the nineteenth century, discursively situated to communicate the internalized discipline and self-regulation that was necessary to make a human body middle class. Through horseback riding and other lessons, Ellen attains the particular mental and bodily development necessary for her to become a proper, sentimental, middle-class woman who is inserted into a network of power relations-a network in which Ellen attains power over other kinds of women who fail to meet the standards that she does. Historical contextualization also reveals that John's horsemanship accords quite well with nineteenth-century standards and would not have been seen as abusive by his contemporaries. As nearly all arguments about The Wide, Wide World's resistance to domestic ideology have been predicated upon John's propensity for horse-beating, this essay calls for a reexamination of what has become a principal claim of Warner criticism.

Will Ladislaw's words, which so disillusion the young Dorothea, might also depress the modern interpreter of Newton's theology. Encountering the bulk of Newton's manuscript theology, it is tempting to sympathize with Dorothea's eventual response to The Key to all Mythologies, and to want nothing of it. The assessment of John Conduitt, Newton's son-in-law and executor, that his ‘relief and amusement was going to some other study, as history, chronology, divinity, and chemistry’ has in the past provided an ample excuse for those who have wished to take such a course, and to ignore Newton's biblical criticism. In the last three decades, however, Newton scholarship has come to terms with its hero's twilight activities, and reclassified them as being at least as important to him as the natural philosophy of the Principia, and intimately bound up with the thinking behind that philosophy. But although many modern scholars are now reluctant to see Newton as Stephen Hawking in breeches, historians of science have tended to concentrate on the implications for Newton's philosophy of his religious and alchemical writings, and in the process often have distorted their religious context. Historians of ideas have been beguiled by Newton's disciples, and by the esoteric texts from Newton's library, to ride hobbyhorses of their own which do not always illuminate Newton's reasons for writing theology. There is a danger of ‘knowing what is being done by the rest of the world’ before troubling with what Newton was up to when he worried about religion and theology, channelling his energies into treatise after treatise on the interpretation of prophecy. I want to suggest what some of Newton's concerns may have been, by looking at his ideas of religious duty and of the Church, and to liberate Newton from his disciples for long enough to consider some of his ideas about the relationships of prophetic and natural philosophical explorations of divinity.

This article considers Bentham's response to the criticism of utilitarianism that it allows for and may even require the sacrifice of some members of society in order to increase overall happiness. It begins with the contrast between the principle of utility and the contrasting principle of sympathy and antipathy to show that Bentham regarded the main achievement of his principle as overcoming the subjectivity he found in all other philosophical theories. This subjectivism, especially prevalent in theories of rights, might well lead to the sacrifice of the individual. The principle of utility was presented as an ‘objective’ theory that avoided the difficulties of other moral and political theories. The article also considers the importance of universally applicable ends, such as security and equality, as part of the principle of utility, and especially Bentham's view of maximizing pleasure as being a distributive rather than an aggregative idea. The article concludes by criticizing H. L. A. Hart's interpretation of the role of equality and rights in Bentham and John Stuart Mill, and argues that Mill's doctrine of moral rights builds on foundations originally established by Bentham, foundations which would preclude the sacrifice of individuals.

In 1999, Rodney Stark announced that the secularization theory had died and should be buried in a graveyard of failed doctrines. He presented the rationale for this verdict in Secularization, R.I.P., which was supposed to show that the theory of secularization is not capable of correctly describing either the past or the current state of religiosity in European countries, and even more so in the rest of the world. While Stark’s findings have been accepted by many scholars, the current researches show that Stark was too hasty with his conclusion, and the theory of secularization still has significant descriptive and explanatory potential. Thus, the results of recent research by Ronald F. Inglehart show that, although religions continue to play an important role in the modern world, their importance is steadily declining even in countries and regions that were previously considered permanently religious (for example, in the United States or in South America). Accordingly, Inglehart speaks of “recent acceleration of secularization” as the reality in which most countries in the world live. In the situation of the ongoing discussion about how fully and accurately the secularization theory is able to describe the laws and mechanics of social changes, it also becomes relevant to consider the question of why the previous criticism of the theory, including that of Stark, was not very effective. It seems that in Stark’s case the following factors have played a negative role: an ideologized approach equating the theory of secularization with secularism, the interpretation of the subjective religiosity of some societies as an unchangeable constant, which, moreover, should be accepted as constant for all other societies, and an extremely simplified interpretation of fundamental principles of secularization theory, which, according to Stark, is no more than the prophecy about the end of religion. The incorrectness of some Stark’s critical ideas is demonstrated by a statistical analysis of long-term trends in the religiosity of Iceland, Great Britain, and the United States. The most telling example seems to be that of Iceland, whose religious landscape has changed dramatically over the past three decades and bears little resemblance to the image of rural religiosity of the 1980s that Stark drew in Secularization, R.I.P., and which he considered unchanged.

I still remember the thrill of reading for the first time, as an undergraduate, Frederick Ahl's seminal articles ‘The Art of Safe Criticism’ and the ‘Horse and the Rider’, and the ensuing sense that the doors of perception were opening to reveal for me the (alarming) secrets of Latin poetry. The collectionWordplay and Powerplay in Latin Poetryis a tribute to Ahl, and all twenty-two articles take his scholarship as their inspiration. Fittingly, this book is often playful and great fun to read, and contains some beautiful writing from its contributors, but also reflects the darker side of Latin literature's entanglement with violence and oppression. For the latter, see especially Joy Connolly's sobering discussion of ‘A Theory of Violence’ in Lucan, which draws on Achille Mbembe's theory of the reiterative violence of everyday life that sustains postcolonial rule in Africa (273–97), which resonates bleakly beyond Classical scholarship to the present day. Elsewhere there is much emphasis (ha!) on the practice and effects of veiled speech, ambiguity, and hidden meanings. Pleasingly, Michael Fontaine identifies what he calls ‘Freudian Bullseyes’ in Virgil: a ‘correct word that hits the mark’ (141) that also reveals – simply and directly – the unspoken guilty preoccupations of the speaker: Dido's lust for Aeneas, Aeneas’ grief-stricken sense of responsibility for Pallas’ death. A citation from F. Scott Fitzgerald'sTender is the Nightprovides the chilling final line of Emily Gowers’ delicious article about what ripples out beyond the coincidence of sound of Dido/bubo. The volume explores subversive responses to power (for example, the articles of Erica Bexley and David Konstan), as well as the risk of powerful retaliation (Rhiannon Ash considers the political consequences of poetry as represented by Tacitus). There are also broader methodological reflections on interpretation, from musings on the reader's pleasure at decoding the hidden messages of wordplay such as puns, anagrams, and acrostics (as Fitch puts it, ‘the pleasure of wit, combined with the pleasure of active involvement’ [327]) to exploration of the anxiety of a reader who worries that they may be over-interpreting a text. Contributions variously address the ‘paranoia’ of literary criticism and the drive to try to ground meaning in the text and prove authorial intention: while John Fitch asks if the wordplay ‘really is there’ in the etymological names used by Seneca in his plays (314), Alex Dressler's article (37–68) helps frame the various modes of interpretation that we find in subsequent articles, by putting interpretation itself under scrutiny. His intriguing analysis introduces the helpful motif of espionage (interweaving Syme's possible post-war role in intelligence with Augustan conspiracy and conspiracy theories) and concludes that – like double agents – ‘secret meanings’ need a handler (53) and we readers need to take responsibility for our own partisan readings.

THE BIBLE & ANCIENT SCIENCE: Principles of Interpretation by Denis O. Lamoureux. Tullahoma, TN: McGahan Publishing, 2020. 218 pages. Paperback; $15.99. ISBN: 9781951252052. *"Simply stated, I believe the literary genre of Genesis 1-3 is an ancient account of origins. Notably, it is deeply rooted in ancient science" (p. 195). *Denis O. Lamoureux is Professor of Science and Religion at St. Joseph's College at the University of Alberta. He possesses three earned doctorates (dentistry, theology, and biology) and tells of an intellectual and spiritual journey out of atheism, through fundamentalism, and to his current position. Consequently, if there was ever a model voice that displays the academic and personal experience necessary to speak formidably about the hermeneutical issues associated with Genesis 1-3 and the other creation texts of the Bible, it is Lamoureux. *The study begins with what seems like a simple question, "Is the Bible a book about science?" However, before the opening chapters are completed, the reader understands that the question is anything but simple. In fact, the difficulty of the conversation is poignantly displayed when he offers answers to his leading question from two giant figures within the evangelical tradition. Henry M. Morris answers in the affirmative, but Billy Graham answers negatively. Yet, to his credit, Lamoureux does not dwell on this disagreement. He quickly emphasizes that a proper answer to his question requires an entanglement with issues of hermeneutics, or principles of interpretation (p. 13). Consequently, the remainder of the book is a journey through the wild and woolly world of biblical hermeneutics on the way to answering the question of whether the Bible is a book about science. *Lamoureux guides the reader toward his answer by discussing twenty-two hermeneutical principles that range from the mundane topics of "literalism," "literary genre," and "historical criticism" to the more complex, such as "cognitive competence," "accommodation," and "concordism." Each chapter is devoted to one principle, and all the chapters are organized similarly. They discuss the principle and then specific applications to the creation texts. This approach produces manageable-sized chapters that can be pondered without a fear of being overwhelmed by complex arguments; however, presenting an argument by a series of propositional statements can obfuscate how each proposition interacts with the others and how they all cooperate. In Lamoureux's defense, however, he does well to minimize any dissonance. *Ultimately, Lamoureux finds himself landing between Morris and Graham when answering his leading question. According to Lamoureux, the Bible contains science, but it's ancient science. And that qualification makes all the difference. The biblical writers are indeed talking about the origins of the universe, but they are doing so in terms of an Iron Age worldview while using Iron Age concepts. Therefore, their "science" is incompatible with the scientific inquiry and discourse of today. This conviction implies that concordism neither does justice to the text and its message nor frames a useful conversation. *In pushing back against any simplistic appropriation of the Bible's message upon the demands of modern scientific discourse, Lamoureux offers a very nuanced proposal. But at its heart is a respect for the ancient worldview of the biblical authors with all its frustrating peculiarities. For example, Lamoureux emphasizes how things such as the rhetoric and ahistorical symbolism of parables must be respected. Simple enough; however, Lamoureux also recognizes that ancient Israel perceived the universe through a three-tiered concept, a reality that finds itself alongside flat-earth theories in the hall of fame of modern-day cosmological ludicrousness. Similarly, ancient Israel's botanical awareness was clearly ignorant of the data we have today. Therefore, Lamoureux's discussions eventually bring the reader to a crossroad. How can a reader respect the Bible if it is invoking principles of, say, botany or any other field of science, in ways that run counter to contemporary scientific discourse? Is the reader confronted with the terrible situation in which they must support the Bible's claims despite the contradictory scientific evidence? Are they forced to abandon any notion of inerrancy? *It is at this point that the integrity of Lamoureux's argument reaches a critical point. His argument cannot work without certain hermeneutical principles. First, the principle of accommodation argues that God accommodates himself to humanity--through language, culture, concepts, etc.--in order to ensure effective communication. So, in the example of Israel's botanical awareness, God is "using the botany-of-the-day" to ensure that the audience would understand the message. Similarly, this should also be applied to Israel's three-tiered universe and other cosmological concepts. Second, the message-incident principle argues that the mode of communication is incidental to the core message. To be clear, "Incidental has the meaning of that which happens to be alongside and happening in connection with something important" (p. 46). Therefore, applied to the creation texts, ancient science is incidental but important to delivering spiritual truths (p. 47). Third, Lamoureux champions incarnational inspiration. According to Lamoureux, the incarnation, as understood in Jesus, becomes the analogy par excellence for understanding the nature of scripture. It is fully divine and fully human. The Bible, like Jesus, transcends time and history. And God's perfect message comes through finite and imperfect humanity. *Many of Lamoureux's arguments echo similar arguments made by biblical scholars in recent memory. For example, Kenton Sparks, in God's Word in Human Words: An Evangelical Appropriation of Critical Biblical Scholarship (2008), emphasized accommodation in his attempt to balance a conviction that the Bible contains factual errors but is also inerrant. Peter Enns systematically argued for incarnational inspiration, as in Inspiration and Incarnation: Evangelicals and the Problem of the Old Testament (2005). John Walton and Brent Sandy display affinities to Lamoureux's message-incident principle in their work The Lost World of Scripture: Ancient Literary Culture and Biblical Authority (2013). Consequently, the pitfalls that face these scholars face Lamoureux as well. If accommodation explains the scientific ignorance of the biblical writers, is inerrancy the best description of scripture? Or, because the incarnation is unique to the realities of Jesus, how appropriate is it to invoke it as an analogy for something else? At what point does it break down (cf. Ben Witherington, The Living Word of God [Waco: Baylor University Press, 2007], 35-49)? *I wholeheartedly agree with Lamoureux that it is paramount for the interpreter to dutifully consider the text on its own terms, particularly since I take seriously the notion that God used ancient Israel to communicate his redemptive plan. Thus, the interpreter should yield to Israel's concepts, conventions, and philosophies on the way to understanding the message before they move to appropriation for theological discourse. Nevertheless, several elements in The Bible and Ancient Science could be fine tuned. These include Lamoureux's framing of the discussion of translating Genesis 1:1 (pp. 75-81) as a text-critical issue, when it is more of a translation problem. Lamoureux also presents a generic, almost flat, portrait of the classic criticisms of biblical studies (e.g., textual criticism, literary criticism, historical criticism) that does not support a nuanced understanding of their results for the creation texts. *A little more significant is Lamoureux's understanding of Paul's typological argument in Romans 5. He struggles with the possibility that Paul's argument appears historical in nature. He states, *"As a consequence, Paul undoubtedly believed Adam was a historical person and that the events of Genesis 2-3 really happened. However, it must be emphasized that Paul's belief in the reality of Adam and the events in the Garden of Eden does not necessarily mean they are historical" (p. 175). *Thus, he is forced to wrestle with the implications of his argument as it confronts the semantics of the text. He may well have been influenced by Enns in how he tries to navigate this, but a difficult tension remains (Peter Enns, The Evolution of Adam: What the Bible Does and Doesn't Say about Human Origins [2012]). For Lamoureux, and Enns for that matter, it is difficult to advocate a framework-like typology which usually interprets historical figures in the context of history as, in this instance, functioning with a significant level of historical ignorance. *A deeper commitment to comparative investigations would also have enhanced Lamoureux's argument. He is certainly aware of non-Israelite texts and how they help us understand the concepts, conventions, and message of the biblical text, for he references them in his discussions of worldview and ancient conceptions of the universe. However, reading Genesis 1-2 in the shadow of texts such as the "Enuma Elish" and the "Memphite Theology" crystalizes the form and function of the genre as well as the Old Testament's theological emphases. *Nevertheless, overall Lamoureux gets far more right than wrong and this work is valuable. It makes potentially complicated concepts accessible and applies them to the very important debate about what "inerrant" means when describing the nature of scripture. *Reviewed by David B. Schreiner, Associate Dean and Associate Professor of Old Testament, Wesley Biblical Seminary, Ridgeland, MS 39157.

Introduction: the genesis of ‘informal empire’In 1953 John Gallagher and Ronald Robinson published an article entitled ‘The Imperialism of Free Trade’, which has since become a landmark in the study of nineteenth-century British imperialism. Seeking to overturn long-cherished notions of a mid-Victorian ‘indifference’ and a late-Victorian ‘enthusiasm’ for empire, it proposed a basic continuity of policy whereby British industrialisation caused an ever-extending and intensifying development of overseas regions for both strategic and economic purposes. Hence the suggestion of a working definition of imperialism as ‘the sufficient political function of this process of integrating new regions into the expanding economy’. In switching the focus of a definition of imperialism from the way in which Britain was able to assert her superiority over weaker, subordinate nations to the impetus and motivation behind such expansion, traditional conceptions of empire were suddenly shattered. Indeed, as Robinson and Gallagher maintained, ‘The conventional interpretation of the nineteenth century empire continues to rest on the study of formal empire alone, which is rather like judging the size and character of icebergs solely from the parts above the water-line’.2The whole framework of reference for a study of British imperialism was being recast, the revised assumption being that the empire of formal dominion, which can loosely be defined as control through annexation and constitutional subordination, is not comprehensible in isolation. Rather, the assertion of British paramountcy, which for Robinson and Gallagher lies close to the very heart of imperialism, was achieved by informal means if possible, or by formal annexation when this was deemed necessary.

In the advertisement prefacing Charles O’Conor’s Dissertations on the antient history of Ireland (1753), the editor challenged an unnamed gentleman who had, apparently, smeared the good name of the author. The editor, Michael Reily (who went under the cognomen ‘Civicus’) was intricately involved in this dispute from its early stages and did not spare any criticism for the individual he deemed responsible, Dr John Fergus, the erstwhile friend and associate of both Reily and O’Conor. ‘A Gentleman of great Reputation’ alleged Reily, had branded O’Conor with ‘the meanest Species of Immorality’. The dispute did not centre on some esoteric point of Irish mythology or any disagreement over issues of interpretation. It was not even, at least not in any direct way, a rift over political issues regarding the penal laws and the status of papists in the Irish polity, a tendency quite prevalent among the fissiparous Catholic organisations and pugilistic personalities of this period. Rather, it was wholly concerned with those most pertinent aspects of existence for an eighteenth century gentlemen – credit and honour. The disagreement was about Newton’s Chronology and its application to the Irish annalistic corpus as a means of validating the latter – not about the principle of its applicability, nor regarding the minutiae of dates or similar arcana, but to who should gain the credit for appropriating Newton’s prestige to such a particularly Irish topic.

Despite being early in his tenure on the U.S. Supreme Court, Justice Neil Gorsuch has already made his presence known. His October 16, 2017 statement respecting the denial of certiorari in Scenic America, Inc. v. Department of Transportation garnered significant attention within the legal community. Joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito, Justice Gorsuch questioned whether the Court’s bedrock 2-part test from Chevron, U.S.A. v. NRDC—whereby courts must defer to an agency’s reasonable interpretation of an ambiguous statutory term—should apply in the case. Justice Gorsuch’s criticism of the Chevron doctrine was not a surprise. In the months leading up to his confirmation hearing, legal scholars pored over his opinions while he was a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit, and they had already unearthed his discomfort with the Chevron doctrine. Similarly, through an analysis of his originalism ideology and textualist approach to judicial decision-making, they have attempted to predict how Justice Gorsuch will decide future cases in other important areas of the law. To date, however, Justice Gorsuch’s view on the Seminole Rock deference doctrine has gone unexamined by scholars. Known as Chevron’s “doctrinal cousin,” the Seminole Rock doctrine directs federal courts to defer to an administrative agency’s interpretation of its own regulation unless such interpretation “is plainly erroneous or inconsistent with the regulation.” Especially given the profound practical importance of the doctrine in our administrative state and the Court’s recent interest in it, an assessment of Justice Gorsuch’s view is not merely academic. This essay provides that assessment. First, the essay examines the Seminole Rock deference doctrine and explores the Court’s recent interest in the doctrine. Part II analyzes Justice Gorsuch’s likely view on the Seminole Rock doctrine by examining key Tenth Circuit opinions that will influence his view on Seminole Rock while on the Supreme Court. The essay concludes that although Justice Gorsusch would likely be very skeptical of Seminole Rock, he should ultimately choose to retain the doctrine provided that the Court continues to provide safeguards that would mitigate or even mute any perceived over-reach that the application of Seminole Rock allows in our administrative state.

RETHINKING HISTORY, SCIENCE, AND RELIGION: An Exploration of Conflict and the Complexity Principle by Bernard Lightman, ed. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2019. ix-307 pages, with notes, selected bibliography, and index. Hardcover; $50.00. ISBN: 9780822945741. *First some background to the making of Rethinking History, Science, and Religion. This edited collection by Bernard Lightman, Professor of Humanities at York University, Toronto, Canada, and past president of the History of Science Society, is the product of a two-day symposium on "Science and Religion: Exploring the Complexity Thesis," during the International Congress of History of Science and Technology in Rio de Janeiro in 2017. One can consider this to be a companion volume to The Warfare between Science and Religion: The Idea That Wouldn't Die, edited by Jeff Hardin, Ronald L. Numbers, and Ronald A. Binzley (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2018).1 *In one way, Rethinking History, Science, and Religion is a focused and daring work. It asks a fundamental question directed at much of contemporary historiography in the field of science-religion relations: if science and religion are not perpetually in conflict, as ever so many historians have claimed over the past fifty years, is complexity a better, if not the best, way to recount the relationship between science and religion? Complexity is the solution first proposed by John H. Brooke in his now classic 1991 text, Science and Religion: Some Historical Perspectives (Cambridge University Press).2 In fact, Lightman dedicates his edited book to John H. Brooke, the leading proponent of complexity. *But what does the "complexity thesis" add to our discussion? Is it really a thesis? Is it a principle? Does it explain or does it rather describe the situatedness and contingency of the science-religion relationship, its cartography, as David Livingstone might say? Is its sole positive feature to discourage us from making facile assumptions about the relationship between science and religion? Or does it simply add another c-word to our vocabulary: complexity instead of contrast, concordance, compatibility, conflict, conversion, complementarity (or harmony)? Brooke has famously said, "There is no such thing as the relationship between science and religion. It is what different individuals and communities have made of it in a plethora of different contexts" (p. 321, italics original, Science and Religion). That statement certainly invites one to consider a complexity thesis. *Although the role of complexity has been a conversation topic for several years,3 Lightman wants to gauge the current "pulse of the field." He wishes contributors to test the "complexity principle" in scholarly contexts other than the usual Christian West (often seen as Europe and the USA/Canada), as well as in public spaces. This move invites an additional question: will the complexity thesis be able to provide a coherent narrative, or will it merely give us one contextualized example after another with no perceptible trend to bind them together? If there are many complex stories to tell, then it seems that a master-narrative or pattern would be a pipedream at best. *After an introduction by Bernard Lightman, the book is divided into three sections: Part I: The Local and the Global; Part II: The Media and the Public; and Part III: Historiographies and Theories. The book concludes with "Afterword: The Instantiation of Historical Complexity," written by John Hedley Brooke. *Part I contains four chapters ranging from a local context (chap. 1, "The Stigmata of Ancestry: Reinvigorating the Conflict Thesis in the American 1970s," by Erika Lorraine Milam), to more global ones (chap. 2, "Three Centuries of Scientific Culture and Catholicism in Argentina: A Case Study of Long-Term Trends," by Miguel de Asúa; chap. 3, "Reexamining Complexity: Sayyid Ahmad Khan's Interpretation of 'Science' in Islam," by Sarah A. Qidwai; and chap. 4, "Christian Missionaries, Science, and the Complexity Thesis in the Nineteenth-Century World," by John Stenhouse). *Each of these chapters addresses the complexity thesis with a different focus. Erika Milam argues that the supposed conflicts between science and religion "gained rhetorical traction" by both scientific creationists and die-hard evolutionists because they both denied the complexity of their own origins. Irven DeVore's studies of primate behavior is used as a template to test that thesis. Miguel de Asúa identifies three trends in Argentinean scientific culture: (1) colonial period harmony, (2) nineteenth-century conflict, and (3) twentieth-century indifference. Sarah A. Qidwai calls us to carefully consider the interpretation of science in Islam rather than by Islam in the 1865 self-published commentary by Sayyid Ahmad Khan (1817-1898). John Stenhouse examines whether Ronald Numbers's suggestion that we introduce some mid-scale patterns (or generalizations) such as "naturalization, privatization, secularization, globalization and radicalization," aids us in understanding the complexity of science/religion relationships in the nineteenth century. Stenhouse concludes that a study of missionary science outside the West complicates Numbers's attempt to "simplify complexity," and does not do justice to missionary practices well into the twentieth century. *Part II contains five chapters examining the role of the media and public response to science/religion discussions and events: chap. 5, "Creating a New Space for Debate: The Monthlies, Science, and Religion," by Bernard Lightman; chap. 6, "Darwin's Publisher: John Murray III at the Intersection of Science and Religion," by Sylvia Nickerson; chap. 7, "The 'Harmony Thesis' in the Turkish Media, 1950-1970," by M. Alper Yalçinkaya; chap. 8, "A Humanist Blockbuster: Jacob Bronowski and the Ascent of Man," by Alexander Hall; and chap. 9, "Teaching Warfare: Conflict and Complexity in Contemporary University Textbooks," by Thomas H. Aechtner. *In summary, these chapters illustrate how insights from the study of print culture, communications studies, and visual studies have broadened our more "familiar grooves" of explanation and deepened our understanding of science and religion. *Part III is to my mind the most stimulating section, one in which some of the leading historians of science and religion present (their) historiographies and theories. It contains four chapters: chap. 10, "Revisiting the Battlefields of Science and Religion: The Warfare Thesis Today," by Ronald Numbers; chap. 11, "From Copernicus to Darwin to You: History and the Meaning(s) of Evolution," by Ian Hesketh; chap. 12, "Scale, Territory, and Complexity: Historical Geographies of Science and Religion," by Diarmid A. Finnegan; and chap. 13, "Conflict, Complexity, and Secularization in the History of Science and Religion," by Peter Harrison.4 *Focusing on two of the chapters: In a relatively short chapter (a "brisk survey" of eight pages), Numbers explores the factors that contribute to the continued support of the warfare thesis and the "growth of the opposing neo-harmonist point of view" (p. 183). Contemporaries such as Carl Sagan, Francis Crick, Stephen Hawking, William Provine, the New Atheists, and Christian and Muslim fundamentalists such as Ken Ham and Adnan Oktar are considered. Numbers chides scholars who legitimately question the warfare thesis but often do not address popular audiences. *Peter Harrison argues that we need to make complexity intelligible. Although historians are often averse to meta-narratives, he considers them to be both "unavoidable and indispensable." Harrison defends the utility of a master-narrative, at least something that rises above mid-scale patterns (such as those suggested by Ronald Numbers). He appeals to Charles Taylor's view of secularization as one way to begin to address the relation between science and religion. Taylor, for instance, distinguishes between science as cause of religious disbelief and science as a retrospective justification for it. Secularization involves a change in the conditions of belief which Taylor contributes to transformations within Western Christianity.5 *In "Afterword: The Instantiations of Historical Complexity," John Hedley Brooke reflects on each of the contributed chapters. He provides a concise judgement about complexity: "Understood neither as a thesis competing with other theses nor as a prescription to seek out complexity for its own sake, but as a heuristic guiding principle for a critical research methodology, it ceases to be trivial and has proven fertile" (pp. 239-40). *Brooke once again restates his earlier view on complexity: it is a "corrective to essentialist and reductionist narratives of conflict," and complexity's primary function is to critique conflict narratives as well as facile harmonizing ones. *For anyone interested in exploring the latest in the historiography of science and religion, read this stimulating and informative book. You will be challenged. Whether the contributors do justice to the central role and character of religion one will have to judge. I for one have my doubts. If we consider our lives as lived to be religion, then religion is not irrelevant to, or in conflict with, or an influential factor on, but rather the very ground for scientific practice. *Notes *1See my review in PSCF 71, no. 3 (2019): 183-84. *2See my essay review, "Telling the Story of Science and Religion: A Nuanced Account," British Journal for the History of Science 29, no. 3 (1996): 357-59. *3See Part 2, "Complexity and the History of Science and Religion," in Recent Themes in the History of Science and Religion, ed. Donald A. Yerxa (Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 2009). *4Peter Harrison's book The Territories of Science and Religion (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2015) has been described by Ronald L. Numbers as "the most significant contribution to the history of science and religion since the appearance of John Hedley Brooke's landmark study, Science and Religion: Some Historical Perspectives." [See Matthew Walhout's review in PSCF 67, no. 4 (2015): 281-84.] *5For a more extensive discussion of "science causes secularization," see Peter Harrison's article "Science and Secularization," Intellectual History Review 27, no. 1 (2017): 47-70. *Reviewed by Arie Leegwater, Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, Calvin University, Grand Rapids, MI 49546.

In his opinion in John A. MacDonald, Railquip Enterprises Ltd and Vapor Canada Limited, Chief Justice Laskin commented that in the future it might be necessary to reconsider the 1937 Labour Conventions Decision which established the « watertight compartments » doctrine applicable to the implementation of treaties concluded by Canada. According to this doctrine as it was set forth by the Privy Council, the fact that Canada can enter into treaties with other countries does not mean that the Federal Parliament of Canada can legislate contrary to the distribution of powers provided for by sections 91 and 92 of the British North America Act. In his article, Professor Bonenfant recalls the criticism which the Privy Council evoked, particularly that which appeared in the June, 1937, issue of The Canadian Bar Review. If the Supreme Court of Canada wishes to revise the decision of the Privy Council, it will not be hampered by the rule of stare decisis. But, Professor Bonenfant writes, whatever the judicial solution may be, it would probably be better to follow the example of other countries, particularly the example provided by article 32 of the Constitution of the German Federal Republic, and seek a political solution. In this domain as in others, if federalism has failed in Canada, he writes that it is perhaps because the interpretation of Canada's Constitution has been left to the intellectual virtuosity of the members of the Privy Council and of the Supreme Court.

Abstract This essay outlines the history of Alexandrism in the Middle Ages, focusing on the reception of Alexander of Aphrodisias in the late-medieval universities. Alexander of Aphrodisias met with severe criticism in the 13th century from William of Auvergne, Albert the Great and Thomas of Aquinas among others, but in the 14th century this attitude changed completely with John Buridan, giving way to a positive and productive adoption of his theories. The centerpiece of the controversy was Alexander's doctrine that the human soul is similar to the animal soul and hence mortal "like the soul of a dog or a donkey." Previously condemned as the absurd thesis of an outsider - wrongly so, because Alexander was perfectly in line with a long peripatetic tradition beginning with Dikaiarch of Messene and Straton of Lampsakos -, this doctrine was now considered philosophically superior to and sounder than the competing theories of Averroes and the Roman Catholic faith. In connection with this doctrine, Buridan stated that some higher species of animals have the ability to think like a man or an ape (sicut homo vel simia) and that an ape can even be said to have some reason. Buridan's interpretation of Alexander was disseminated at the universities of the 14th and 15th centuries by his many followers, including Lawrence of Lindores, Marsilius of Inghen (who defended Alexander against Albert the Great), Nicholas of Amsterdam, Biagio Pelacani of Parma and Benedikt Hesse of Kraków.

Resumen Piero Sraffa (1898·1983) es considerado uno de los economistas más destacados de todos los tiempos. La solidez de su crítica a la teoría de Marshall de la empresa y al concepto marginalista del capital como factor de producción ha sido reconocida incluso por sus oponentes; en el campo de la historia del pensamiento económico no puede hacerse caso omiso de su interpretación de la obra de David Ricardo y de su reconstrucción del núcleo conceptual analítico del "enfoque del excedente"; en el campo de la teoría del valor los resultados de Producción de mercancías por medio de mercancías constituyen el punto de partida de cientos de trabajos. Este artículo presenta una visión general de la vida y la obra de este insigne economista italiano, destacando, en primer término, la importancia que en tal trabajo de Sraffa tuvieron Antonio Gramsci, Ludwig Wittgenstein y John Maynard Keynes; enseguida se exponen, de manera sintética, los principales aspectos de la Revolución Sraffiana. Abstract Piero Sraffa (1898-1983) is considered one of the most distinguished economists of all times. 771e solidity of his criticism to Marshall s theory of the firm and to the marginalist concept of capital, as a factor of production, has been acknowledged even by his opponents. In the field of economic thought we cannot omit his interpretation of David Ricardo's work and his reconstruction of the analytical core of the "surplus approach ". In the field of the theory of value the conclusions of Production of Commodities by Means of Commodities constitutes the point of departure of hundreds of works. This paper presents a general view of the life and work of this distinguished Italian economist. Firstly in underlines the influence of Antonio Cramsci, Ludwig Wittgenstein and John Maynard Keynes in the Sraffa's work and is followed by a synthetic exposition of the main aspects of the Sraffian Revolution. Palabras claves: Economía política, revolución Sraffiana.

This paper seeks to demonstrate that madness is not perceived in its strict sense but it can equally stand for ecological sensitization as indicated by Butake and Nkengasong’s dramaturgy. The plays of these playwrights indicate that environmental advocacy is a strange phenomenon in the universe and is welcomed by a few persons in the community who are regarded as strange beings in the midst of destructive and domineering humans. The paper argues that modernity and technological development have blinded humanity to an extent that anyone who still holds to environmental conservation is seen as a mad person. Madness is a complex word and the root cause of stigmatization, whose existence and concreteness can be seen in its interpretation. Its paradox lies in its existence or complexities when analyzed. According to Sueellen Campbell, madness is an aspect of the society which humans do not want to accept. Wild, on her part, sees madness as the strange behaviour or frenzy state in man. Madness exposes some realities of man’s true self which he does not want to acknowledge in his life/ society. The methodology adopted for this paper is a comparative and an analytical study of the texts. The article is predicated on the hypothesis that madness is not often regarded in its pure state but often incubates a certain reality when analysed. The theoretical framework used for the analysis of this paper is ecocriticism that addresses the question of ecological consciousness. Ecocriticism is a theory of literary criticism that studies the relationship between literature and the physical environment as defined by Glotfelty Cheryll and it is relevant in treating the issues discussed here. This work is based on Sueellen Campbell’s tenet which holds: “From the Middle Ages on, in different ways at different times, we have called mad what we do not want to acknowledge in ourselves, what we do not want to acknowledge in our society […]” Glotfelty & Fromm, 128). It considers madness as a means of societal escapism from environmental truth. Campbell’s view is of interest as he evokes the term madness which is in light with the objective of the paper. Only abnormal people dodge from societal obligations and stigmatise the just as they are called mad. The conclusion arrived at is that environmental protection is still observed by a handful of persons as a reality. Humans have a long way to go and need sensitization talks in order for it to be understood. Those interested in ecological conservation are termed mad and end up with name calling/ stigmatized as mad.

ABSTRACT This research is the result of a historical research, which aims to reconstruct the emergence and growth of movement in Surakarta in colonial period. This study answers the questions of dynamics and movement in Surakarta, which include: (1) background factors of the dynamics and movement in Surakarta in colonial period, and (2) the form of dynamics and movement. The method used in this study is historical method, which consists of four stages, namely heuristic, source criticism, interpretation, and historiography. The historical paradigm used is that of John Tosh, i.e. to reconstruct history by understanding the social background and circumstances that cause the development of an event, and the direction of its changes. As for the reconstruction of the past, this study uses the model of the central circle. In this model, it is assumed that the incident at the center of the circle will have consequences in the vicinity. In turn, the center of the circle and the surrounding areas will lead to a new center around which will also result in new symptoms. The theory used is the theory of conflict, social movements, and resistance ideology. The use of the social theories is important for the study of history to expand in space (synchronous), in addition to remaining in the basic ground pattern of history that extends in time (diachronic). This study found historical facts that, in a piece of history of the movement in Indonesia, there are various factors and form of the dynamics of movement in Surakarta at colonial period. Dynamics and movement in Surakarta motivated by external factors (pressure from Western imperialism) and internal one (increasing struggle of indigenous organizations and modern media). The form of dynamics and movement in Surakarta are central circular, complex and interrelated in various fields, namely social and cultural sectors, agrarian, economic, political and religion. The results of this research have contributed knowledge to the discipline of history, especially in the exposure and reconstruction of a history fragment of the dynamics and movement of natives (indigenous people) in the revolt imperialism. In addition, the role of religion movement in forming a moving situation is found in this study. It indicates that this research can also contribute to the discipline of History of Islamic Culture.

AbstractTheology in Greece today is the outcome of a long and complex historical process in which many different, and even contradictory, trends and theological proclivities have converged and continue to converge, thereby defining its shape and agenda. The present article tries to provide, in four sections, both a descriptive and critical account of this complex and fascinating history.Among these trends, a decisive role is attributed in the first section of the paper to the so-called ‘generation of the 1960s’ (including among others pre-eminent Greek theologians such as Metropolitan of Pergamon John D. Zizioulas, Christos Yannaras, Nikos Nissiotis, Fr John Romanides, Panagiotis Nellas), a Greek theological movement for renewal inspired mainly by the theology of the Russian diaspora and the call to ‘return to the Fathers’, which was instrumental in shaping contemporary Orthodox theology both in Greece and outside the Greek-speaking world.In the second section are given the reactions to and criticism of the ‘theology of 1960s’. There were strong disputes and rejection on the one hand by conservative Greek academic and ecclesiastical circles, and on the other hand from the opposite progressive side (mainly the professors of the Theology School of Thessaloniki University during the 1990s), which accused this theological movement of conservatism and anti-Westernism.The emergence of the agenda initiated by the new theological generation (of 2000) is discussed in the main and longer (third) section. This new theological agenda and its principal characteristics come from points of disagreement with the theologians of the generation of the 1960s, and from a renewed and more inclusive understanding of Orthodox theology which goes beyond the problématique, the language and the agenda of the 1960s. Among the topics raised and discussed by the new trends of Greek theology are: the rediscovery of eschatology and its dynamic interpretation, ecclesiological issues, such as the centrality of the episcopal office, and the critique of the dominant place of monasticism in the life of the church, the movement of liturgical renewal, the revalorisation of mission, the rediscovery of ethics and the dilemma of ethics versus ontology, the renewed interest in political theology, the overcoming of anti-Westernism and of the West–East divide as a central interpretative key, a more constructive relationship between Orthodoxy and modernity, the critical approach of the ‘return to the Fathers’ movement, the reconsideration of the devaluation of biblical studies, the emergence of an Orthodox feminist theology and the debate on women's ordination, the radical critique of religious nationalism, and the devolution into Byzantinism and ecclesiastical culturalism.In the fourth section the article names the settings and institutions that are hosting the new theological trends in Greek Orthodoxy, mainly mentioning the leading Greek Orthodox theological quarterly Synaxi, the official scholarly journal of the Church of Greece, Theologia, the Biblical Foundation of Artos Zoes and its Bulletin of Biblical Studies and, finally, the Volos Academy for Theological Studies. An overall group vision and esprit de corps which could integrate the individual efforts and provide an identity, clearly missing from the above-mentioned picture, are demanded from the two theological schools of Athens and Thessaloniki.The article concludes by briefly reviewing the conservative and fundamentalist reactions towards this new theological agenda, and by highlighting the urgent need for contemporary Greek theology to face the new, dynamic and particularly challenging global context, and to continue to reflect and to act towards Christian unity, as well as move to reconciliation between Christian East and West, Eastern and Western Europe.

Within legal scholarship there is a tendency to use (perhaps overuse) “paradigm shift” in ways far removed from the process famously described by Thomas Kuhn. Within the field of evidence, however, a phenomenon very similar to a paradigm shift, in the Kuhnian sense, is occurring. Although not on the scale of the transformation from Newtonian to Einsteinian physics or other tectonic shifts in science, the best understanding of juridical proof is shifting from probabilism to explanationism. For literally hundreds of years, proof at trial was assumed to be probabilistic. This assumption was given sustained scholarly attention and support beginning with the 1968 publication of John Kaplan’s path-breaking article that generated a rich literature explaining virtually all aspects of juridical proof as probabilistic, from the basic nature of relevancy through the processing of information to the final decision about the facts. Although probabilism quickly became the dominant paradigm, some analytical difficulties were detected quite early (“anomalies” or “irritants” in the words of Kuhn), beginning with L. Jonathan Cohen’s demonstration of certain proof paradoxes. These were extended by Ronald Allen, who also demonstrated the incompatibility of Bayesian reasoning with trials and proposed an analytical alternative. Again a complex literature ensued with the defenders of the dominant paradigm attempting to explain away the anomalies or to shield the probabilistic paradigm from their potentially corrosive effects (in what in fact on a very small scale is precisely what Kuhn explained and predicted with respect to paradigm shifts in science). Over the last two decades, these anomalies have become too irritating to ignore, and the strengths of the competing paradigm involving explanatory inferences (referred to as the relative plausibility theory) have become too persuasive to dismiss. Thus the paradigm shift that the field is now experiencing. We provide here a summary of the relative plausibility theory and its improvement on the probabilistic paradigm. As Kuhn noted, not everybody gets on board when paradigms shift; there are holdouts, dissenters, and objectors. Three major efforts to demonstrate the inadequacies of relative plausibility have recently been published. We analyze them here to demonstrate that their objections are either misplaced or unavailing, leaving relative plausibility as the best explanation of juridical proof. It is interesting to note that two of the three critiques that we discuss actually agree on the inadequacies of the probabilistic paradigm (they provide alternatives). The third concedes that explanationism may provide a better overall account of juridical proof but tries to resuscitate a probabilistic interpretation of burdens of proof in light of one particular analytical difficulty (i.e., the conjunction problem, which arises from the fact that proof burdens apply to the individual elements of crimes, civil claims, and defenses rather than a party’s case as a whole). In analyzing the alternative positions proposed by our critics, we demonstrate that their accounts each fail to provide a better explanation than relative plausibility.

“And now the new system of government came into being. For the first time since the accession of the House of Hanover, the Tory party was in the ascendant.” So wrote Lord Macaulay concerning the early years of George III's reign. In Macaulay's essay on the earl of Chatham one can find all the elements of the Whig myth of the reign of George III. Most of these ideas have been safely laid to rest by Sir Lewis Namier and modern research; we now know that there was neither a new system of government at the accession of the king nor anything resembling a Tory party. George III was not the tyrant depicted in the Declaration of Independence, there was no plot in the imagined cabinet of “king's friends” to overthrow the constitution, and when, with respect to the colonies, the king declared that he would abide by the decision of his Parliament, he was taking a stand on the side of Whig principles and the Revolution Settlement.One element in the putative resurgence of Toryism that Macaulay and other Whig historians emphasized was High-Anglican political theology. G. H. Guttridge, for example, in his English Whiggism and the American Revolution (1942) well understood the differences between the Toryism of the period of the American Revolution and that of the earlier century. Tories had come to accept the Revolution Settlement, the Hanoverian succession, and even “a modicum of religious toleration.” But if they had lost the bloom of monarchical sentiment, they retained the concept of a state unified above sectional and party interests. Guttridge's formulas were admittedly too simplistic and they justly invited criticism, but one of the overlooked merits of his work was that he located the continuity of conservative thought in its religious aspect. He observed that, “Standing for the two great Tory principles, national unity and a religious sanction for the established order, the Church of England was the central institution of Toryism—the state in its religious aspect, and the divine principle in monarchical government.” The demolition of the Whig interpretation, however, has resulted in a thorough-going neglect of political discourse, and several notable examples of this deconstruction bear directly upon Anglican political thought. In his introduction to the History of Parliament John Brooke wrote that during the American Revolution the Anglican clergy in England had no specific attitude toward the war or any other aspect of government policy. When the reprint of G. H. Guttridge's essay appeared in 1963, Ian Christie wrote a vigorous rebuttal to the idea of a revival of Toryism in the early part of George III's reign without a single reference to the Anglican Church.

AbstractJosua Bruyn's article 'Towards a Scriptural Reading of Seventeenth-Century Dutch Landscape Paintings' (1987) elicited a great deal of criticism for both its method and its occasionally sweeping conclusions. To a certain extent this criticism is understandable. It does not however mean that recently initiated, cautious attempts to peer below the surface of the painted landscape should be aborted. It is still highly unlikely that the landscape was the only Dutch 'genre' without any intentions other than to beguile the eye. Following Wiegand and Falkenburg, each of whom has researched and interpreted the work of a single artist (Ruisdael and Patinir respectively), the author, too, focuses on one artist. Claes Jansz. Visscher is generally regarded as the publisher and artist who decisively influenced the acceptance of the landscape as an autonomous work of art without a narrative or moral tenor. One of his first publications of his own work was the series Plaisante Plaetsen of about 1611, consisting of an allegorical title print, a view ofZandvoort with the list of contents, followed by ten small landscapes in the environs of Haarlem. The author offers an iconographic analysis of the first two sheets, comparing them with Visscher's religious views, as far as these can be deduced from his life and work. Visscher was an orthodox Calvinist, and his ideas about the place of art and the artist in society were presumably formed by John Calvin's dogma. There are two ways of looking at this. In the first place Calvin, obedient to the Second Commandment in Mosaic Law, purged public worship of Divine or human representations. He did see a task for art outside the church, but only if it had a didactic, edifying character. However, another aspect of Calvin's teachings suggests that art and religion are compatible. His dogma hinges on a view of earthly reality which, unlike that of mediaeval theology, is not negative but positive: a visible reflection of the invisible divine presence. Accordingly, instead of shunning the world and nature, man should enjoy and indeed investigate them in order to gain knowledge of God's creation and thus of God Himself. This idea of creation and the concomitant mission to investigate were of great significance for the development of empirical science. The same now applied to art, inasmuch as it pursues the visual examination of nature and its registration on the flat surface. This implies works of art done 'from life' rather than 'from the mind', and generated the tradition of the empirical, 'topographical' landscape art which flourished in seventeenth-century Holland alongside the landscape which was a mental invention composed of separate elements. Seen against that background, Visscher's two representations may be interpreted as follows: 'This series is intended as a monument to Haarlem. The city boasts not only a glorious and devout past but also most pleasant surroundings. They can compare with Classical landscape, but have a character of their own, and may therefore be praised both in Latin and Dutch. The city may bask in the knowledge that God directs the radiant light of his mercy on her, as the sun shines upon Haarlem's dunes. But Haarlem's glory does not render her haughty: the thorntree in her coat of arms is a reminder that all earthly things are transient. Let the sight of this city and the knowledge of her history thus incite the beholder to sobriety and diligence. Should this mean that you have no time to visit the pleasant spots in the surroundings of Haarlem, these pictures offer you a walk on paper. Be mindful that your own conduct in life match the tenor of this print. 'I, Claes Janszoon Visschcr, the printer of these views, am an educated and versatile artist and a God-fearing man. My work as an artist may be seen as the portrayal of what 1 have read in the book of creation. With my art I open a window on God's nature as it were, not only in the form of these lifelike memories of my walks around Haarlem, but on God's creation as a whole, as its chief elements are condensed in this panorama which also contains a reference to my own name and emblem.' The moment at which these two representations were published suggests that they were intended as a visual programme, not only for this modest series of prints but for Visscher's entire activities as an artist and publisher of prints. His approach to nature, incidentally, is wholly in keeping with that of the poets of his day, who presented their pastoral verses as paeans to creation and the Creator. The notion of a pious walk on paper stayed alive throughout the seventeenth century. In 1685, for instance, a book of meditations on God's nature was published, and reprinted many times; it took the form of walks around Haarlem, illustrated with six landscapes done 'from life', including a view of Haarlem in the manner of Vermeer's celebrated panorama. The above interpretation does not preclude a particular didactic or other associative value in individual landscape motifs. Even then, however, and perhaps first and foremost, they are depicted as the object of (pious) enjoyment. In all these cases a message is conveyed. It is the artistic formulation of the message that determines the work's quality. Seen in this light, the painted landscape in the seventeenth century was not intended primarily for artistic enjoyment but was meant to inspire personal meditation, even if for art-lovers the latter tended to recede into the background in practice.