In the beginning of Roberto Bolaño’s novel 2666, three academics travel to Switzerland for a conf... more In the beginning of Roberto Bolaño’s novel 2666, three academics travel to Switzerland for a conference and while there decide to visit the residence of an artist named Edwin Johns. The painter’s current home is a lunatic asylum and Johns is notorious for having cut off his painting hand, embalming it and attaching it to a self-portrait. When asked why he mutilated himself, he replies that he believes in investments, the flow of capital. The act’s madness and its linkage with capital is a preview of the madness that pervades the entire novel. In Bolaño’s world, Johns and the lunatic asylum are metonymic for society. The objectives of this paper are two-fold. The first is to examine the critiques which Bolaño makes about global investments and to show how the madness in 2666 is associated with economic neoliberalism. The second objective is to determine if Bolaño offers a solution and if so, to evaluate his solution against several philosophical and theological treatments for economic neoliberalism.
My proposition is that Dante constructs his system of punishment from three streams: the legal tr... more My proposition is that Dante constructs his system of punishment from three streams: the legal traditions of medieval Tuscany that were inherited from previous legal systems, Classical philosophical and Scholastic theological ideas about crime, sin and punishment and Dante’s artistic creativity. The question that I will answer is how Dante’s system of punishment in the Inferno reflects his culture and that culture’s history versus how the punishment in the Inferno is unique to Dante’s creative enterprise. By tracing these three streams, I will explain the basis for Dante’s theory of punishment and as a result normalize the otherness of punishment in the Inferno.
The subject of sex obsesses and perplexes our contemporary society. Although we have moved from 1... more The subject of sex obsesses and perplexes our contemporary society. Although we have moved from 19th century hidden Victorian sexuality to 21st century blatant Trumpian sexuality, erotic love confuses and embarrasses us. For a considerable time, members of the philosophic academy have remained silent on the subject, as if all serious philosophical discussion needed to exclude the topic of sexuality. Within the recent past, however, the situation has changed. Two philosophers who write on the subject are Emmanuel Levinas and Jean-Luc Marion. In this paper, I intend to analyze Emmanuel Levinas’s text Totality and Infinity and Jean-Luc Marion’s texts The Erotic Phenomenon and Prolegomena to Charity concerning erotic love.
My proposition is that even though the Apocalypse of Paul and Tundale’s Vision share common after... more My proposition is that even though the Apocalypse of Paul and Tundale’s Vision share common after-life literary images and symbology, their ideas of judgment and mercy reveal significant differences. Each vision’s historical and cultural context can help to explain the differences in how they express judgment and mercy and how they develop their narrative strategies.
In the beginning of Roberto Bolaño’s novel 2666, three academics travel to Switzerland for a conf... more In the beginning of Roberto Bolaño’s novel 2666, three academics travel to Switzerland for a conference and while there decide to visit the residence of an artist named Edwin Johns. The painter’s current home is a lunatic asylum and Johns is notorious for having cut off his painting hand, embalming it and attaching it to a self-portrait. When asked why he mutilated himself, he replies that he believes in investments, the flow of capital. The act’s madness and its linkage with capital is a preview of the madness that pervades the entire novel. In Bolaño’s world, Johns and the lunatic asylum are metonymic for society. The objectives of this paper are two-fold. The first is to examine the critiques which Bolaño makes about global investments and to show how the madness in 2666 is associated with economic neoliberalism. The second objective is to determine if Bolaño offers a solution and if so, to evaluate his solution against several philosophical and theological treatments for economic neoliberalism.
My proposition is that Dante constructs his system of punishment from three streams: the legal tr... more My proposition is that Dante constructs his system of punishment from three streams: the legal traditions of medieval Tuscany that were inherited from previous legal systems, Classical philosophical and Scholastic theological ideas about crime, sin and punishment and Dante’s artistic creativity. The question that I will answer is how Dante’s system of punishment in the Inferno reflects his culture and that culture’s history versus how the punishment in the Inferno is unique to Dante’s creative enterprise. By tracing these three streams, I will explain the basis for Dante’s theory of punishment and as a result normalize the otherness of punishment in the Inferno.
The subject of sex obsesses and perplexes our contemporary society. Although we have moved from 1... more The subject of sex obsesses and perplexes our contemporary society. Although we have moved from 19th century hidden Victorian sexuality to 21st century blatant Trumpian sexuality, erotic love confuses and embarrasses us. For a considerable time, members of the philosophic academy have remained silent on the subject, as if all serious philosophical discussion needed to exclude the topic of sexuality. Within the recent past, however, the situation has changed. Two philosophers who write on the subject are Emmanuel Levinas and Jean-Luc Marion. In this paper, I intend to analyze Emmanuel Levinas’s text Totality and Infinity and Jean-Luc Marion’s texts The Erotic Phenomenon and Prolegomena to Charity concerning erotic love.
My proposition is that even though the Apocalypse of Paul and Tundale’s Vision share common after... more My proposition is that even though the Apocalypse of Paul and Tundale’s Vision share common after-life literary images and symbology, their ideas of judgment and mercy reveal significant differences. Each vision’s historical and cultural context can help to explain the differences in how they express judgment and mercy and how they develop their narrative strategies.
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