Search

This article outlines the philosophy of language of the vitalist philosopher Ludwig Klages, as it can be found in his late work Language as the Source of Psychology ( Die Sprache als Quell der Seelenkunde). First published in 1948, this treatise is full of examples of how everyday usage of words should give us pause for thought – underlining the link between philosophy and life that is inherent to the project of vitalism or Lebensphilosophie. In line with the remit for submissions to this issue of the Journal of European Studies intended to mark 50 years since its inception, the article reflects the interest of its contributor (translation studies and the history of ideas), forms part of a larger project to retrieve the thought of a largely forgotten thinker, and showcases a work that occupies a key position in the history of twentieth-century thought and has been seminal to the contributor’s own development. For ultimately Klages’s philosophy of language illustrates the truth of Goethe’s maxim, ‘the point of life is life itself’.

Although this book draws on work dating back to the early 1990s, its appearance now could not be more timely. For the claim made by Francis Fukuyama in The End of History and the Last Man (1992) th...

In 1882, Ernest Renan famously remarked that, ‘if the growth of Christianity had been arrested by some mortal malady, the world would have been Mithraic’ (Renan 1882, 579). From the work of Franz C...

This chapter argues that, for Nietzsche, the world is both disenchanted and enchanted. From a transcendental perspective (associated with Judeo-Christianity), the world is disenchanted; it is ‘the work of a suffering and tormented God’. Yet from an immanent perspective, the world is in fact enchanted — or potentially so, and the means by which Nietzsche proposes to re-enchant (or rediscover the primordial enchantment of) the world is the doctrine of eternal recurrence. In Thus Spoke Zarathustra, his animals proclaim Zarathustra to be ‘the teacher of the eternal recurrence’, and this passage has caught the attention of numerous commentators, including Heidegger and Deleuze. Another critic of Nietzsche’s doctrine of eternal recurrence is Ludwig Klages, himself deeply invested in the challenges of disenchantment and re-enchantment. Central to Klages’s philosophy is his doctrine of the ‘reality of images’ and his related notion of ‘elementary similarity’. Elementary similarity informs the kind of perception he associates with die Seele, that is, with the soul or the psyche, and which he regards as essentially symbolic. Can the concepts of identity, similarity, dissimilarity, and difference, Paul Bishop asks, help us to relate and coordinate the thought of Klages, Jung, and Deleuze — and not just in relation to Nietzsche?

This chapter places the reception of Schopenhauer in fin de siècle Austria in its historical context before considering in more detail various areas of intellectual and cultural life where the impact of Schopenhauer has been or may be detected. These include music, Freud and psychoanalysis, gender and misogyny (Weininger and Sacher-Masoch), literature (Karl Kraus, Hofmannsthal, Schnitzler, Rudolf Kassner, and Hermann Broch), philosophy (Fritz Mauthner and Wittgenstein), and visual art (Klimt). Some critics have placed considerable emphasis on the influence of Schopenhauer in these areas, whereas others see his impact as less significant. The chapter concludes by considering Schopenhauer from a characterological angle, arguing that, to the extent that the thinkers, writers, and painters of fin de siècle Austria regarded their intellectual, cultural, and artistic deeds as, in Schopenhauer’s words, “the impression or copy of the character, the mirror of the will,” they were participating in his project of “looking into this mirror” and “recogniz[ing] our innermost self, the kernel of our will.” In this respect it is legitimate to speak of a deep affinity between Schopenhauer and fin de siècle Austria, one that is far more significant than any specific details of his reception.

Spatial variations in entrepreneurial activity have been shown to be a time persistent phenomenon in many countries. This paper analyses how these spatial variations have been affected by the recent financial crisis within the context of theories of regional resilience and adaptability. The analysis applies Exploratory Spatial Data Analysis techniques to data on firm births across Local Authority Districts of Great Britain during the period 2004–2012. The results demonstrate that, whilst the overall shape of the spatial distribution of firm births remained persistent, there is evidence of an increase in regional inequality. This is primarily associated with a divergence between London and the rest of the distribution. London, together with part of its surrounding area, appears to constitute a resilient entrepreneurial regime that has generated a dynamic, adaptive response to the crisis with high rates of new firm formation in contrast to other regions which have remained locked into lower rates of...

‘Playful yet serious, expansive yet intimate […] a veritable Eden pregnant with the promise of delight and knowledge’ – as Fayaz S. Alibhai reminds us, gardens in Islam are ‘quintessential represen...

This chapter contextualizes Plato chronologically and geographically, providing a detailed reading of the allegory of the cave in book 7 of the Republic. The allegory itself provides us with a clue to its political implications: the people in the cave are prisoners; they are sitting there in chains, and while they may think they are free, they are not. These individuals are prisoners who have to be liberated; they have to undertake, literally, a revolution by turning their heads around from the wall of the cave to the fire. For all the mystical connotations in this passage, Plato insists that the dialectic is an essentially rational process, and the state he describes—however odd from a modern perspective—is one ultimately founded on reason.

Habermas stands as a symbol of continuity with the Platonic tradition, which operates through dialogue, such as the ones conducted by Socrates and reconstructed by Plato. For Habermas, central to any philosophical activity is a setting he calls the “ideal speech situation,” and this Habermasian notion brings us back to the discourse of Platonism and to the allegory of the cave. First, it returns us to the importance of speech, dialogue, and discourse; second, it is ideal and yet, without it, we cannot be truly rational; third, it highlights the ethical dimension of political theory; and fourth, it reveals a religious dimension to politics. In the famous debate in 2004 between Habermas and Cardinal Ratzinger (later Pope Benedict XVI), the question of religion moves to the fore.

Despite, or perhaps because of, the uncertainty of its origins, the strand of Islamic spirituality known as Sufism has increasingly attracted the attention of scholars and popular culture alike. Th...

This review discusses Jung and Intuition: On the Centrality and Variety of Forms of Intuition in Jung and Post-Jungians, a study of the notion of intuition in the work of Jung. It concludes that the chief of many insights brought by Nathalie Pilard’s work is an appreciation of the importance in Jung’s thought of the notion of empathy.

It is now usual to write BCE and CE rather than BC and AD, and this gesture is no empty or ‘politically correct’ tokenism: rather, it subtly yet powerfully reminds us that, before the world turned ...

In a recent volume, the author has proposed a revival of Jung's notion of the archaic, and this chapter seeks to extend this argumentation in close relation to the problem of time. Opening with an examination of such localized depictions of the archaic as Ovid's and Seneca's description of caves, Porphyry's analysis of Homer's cave of the nymphs, & the 1930s German film Ewiger Wald (Enchanted Forest), this article suggests that what these evocations of the archaic have in common is their emphasis on a particular dimension of time. This dimension, perhaps best described as an Eternal Now, is analysed with references to Plato’s definition of time as an image of eternity in the Timaeus and Nietzsche's evocation, in his Thus Spoke Zarathustra, of the ‘midday vision’ in which the Now is revealed as eternal. According to Jung, what Nietzsche had experienced, along with analogous experiences from various cultures, constituted a primordial affirmation of humankind, an instance of what Jung defined as asn ‘archetype’. Jung distinguished between two kinds of archetypal rebirth experience: one of the transcendence of life in general (subdivided into ritual-induced and immediate experiences), the other of one’s own subjective transformation (divided into a further eight sub-categories). For Jung, the noontide vision in ‘At Noontide’ belongs in the former category of the transcendence of life, and constitutes a classic example of the spontaneous, ecstatic, or visionary experience. Indeed, Jung considered its details to be so accurate that he wrote ‘it is just as if Nietzsche had been present’ at a performance of the mysteries of Eleusis. In a sense, Jung is entirely correct to associate Nietzsche with the great Mysteries: as Socrates remarks in the Phaedo, ‘many bear the emblems, but the devotees are few’, and ‘these devotees are simply those who have lived the philosophical life in the right way’. Later in Zarathustra the eponymous prophet cries out: ‘O happiness! O pain! Oh break, heart!’ (§11) ― for ‘midnight is also midday’ (§10). But how can this be? One answer is that the identity of midday and midnight recalls the initiatory moment into the Eleusinian Mysteries as described by Apuleius in his Metamorphoses, or The Golden Ass. Moreover, the midnight sun or black sun (soler nigus) is a motif in alchemy, belonging to the first stage of the alchemical opus. In conclusion, it is argued that Jung's notion of the archaic offers a way to discuss the ‘inner nature’ of humankind.

Bishop P. The spatial distribution of personal insolvencies in England and Wales, 2000–2007, Regional Studies. This paper analyses the evolving spatial distribution of personal insolvencies across England and Wales from 2000 to 2007 utilizing a range of exploratory techniques including inequality measures, spatial autocorrelation, Markov chains and mobility indices. The analysis reveals an intricate pattern of spatial clustering, fragmentation, persistence and mobility. Whilst average insolvency rates have increased, levels of spatial inequality have fallen, implying a degree of convergence. However, there is considerable mobility of areas within the distribution. A widespread and growing spatial cluster of high insolvency rate areas is located across South West England and a shrinking cluster with low rates is centred in London. Bishop P. 英格兰及威尔士 2000–2007 年间个体破产的空间分布，区域研究。利用一系列解释工具，包括不平等指标、空间自相关性、马尔可夫链和流动性指数，本文分析了英格兰及威尔士 2000–2007 年间个人破产的空间分布。分析揭示出空间积聚、分散、持续以及移动性的复杂模式。在平均破产率上升的情况下，空间不公平水平下降，暗示出一定程度的融合。然...

Identifying and measuring low carbon activities at the local authority level faces a number of problems related to the proliferation of overlapping low carbon concepts, a lack of data related to meaningful low carbon sectors and the rapidly changing nature of the sector. This paper provides a critical overview of the low carbon concept and presents a hybrid method of measurement involving a compromise between relatively costly bottom-up methods of data collection and the limitations of using existing data sources and statistical categories. The method maps existing national and regional survey data to the local level using an iterative scaling approach, utilising the recently developed concept of low carbon, environmental goods and services. The method is illustrated by outlining its application in the case of Plymouth within the context of a recent pilot study for the Low Carbon Framework.

In brief: The authors studied how physicians perceive the role of physical education in managing childhood obesity. Ninety-six pediatricians and 97 family physicians returned questionnaires that included four statements about multidisciplinary interaction among health care professionals and six statements about physical education programs. Although the results of the survey indicated that physicians may not be aware of the current role of physical education in obesity management, they said the role should be greater. The authors suggest that physicians and physical educators establish avenues of communication so they can work together for the benefit of obese children.

The late nineteenth century saw a renaissance of interest in the thought of the German Romantic philosopher, F.W.J. Schelling. This paper takes Jung's engagement with Schelling and his awareness of Schellingian ideas and interests (notably, the mysterious Kabeiroi worshipped at Samothrace) as its starting-point. It goes on to argue that a key set of problematics in German Idealism — the relation between freedom and necessity, between science and art, and ultimately between realism and idealism — offers a useful conceptual framework within which to approach Jung's Red Book. For the problem of the ideal is central to this work, which can be read as a journey from eternal ideals to the ideal of eternity. (Although the term ‘idealism’ has at least four distinct meanings, their distinct senses can be related in different ways to Jung's thinking.) The eloquent embrace of idealism by F.T. Vischer in a novel, Auch Einer, for which Jung had the highest praise, reminds us of the persistence of this tradition, which is still contested and debated in the present day.

With reference to the current debate surrounding the humanities in the West, this paper draws on subsequent theoretical explorations of disenchantment to analyse what numerous observers describe as the ‘crisis’ of our universities. Engaging both Jungian thought and the Frankfurt School to understand the psychological dynamics of ‘disenchantment’ as experienced on campus, it investigates Adorno's notion of the ‘totally administered society’ and — more broadly — surveys some of the arguments proposed to explain this decline. Moving beyond, on one hand, the lamentation and hand-wringing nostalgia for a long-lost past and, on the other, what some have termed a ‘new managerialism’ that inhabits an acronym-ridden climate of control, it tries to discern, in what is undoubtedly a political and an economic problem, the contours of a psychological crisis, whose resolution cannot ignore the archetypal dimension of the collective soul.

Taking Jung’s interest in Goethe as its starting-point, this paper examines the theory of creativity presented and embodied in Goethe’s Faust, before turning to Nietzsche’s often misunderstood reflections on the creative function of war. Using the dialectical relation of creation and destruction as its interpretative matrix, it offers a reading of two, often overlooked, poems by writers central to the German lyric tradition in the twentieth century, Rainer Maria Rilke and Stefan George. Arguing that Rilke’s “Five Hymns” and George’s “The War” are texts that deserve, despite (or because of ) their difficulty, closer analysis, this paper suggests that the uncomfortable message of these two works makes sense from a Jungian perspective on the world.

The UK National Lottery has been in operation since 1994. An examination of the regional distribution of awards per head of population suggests marked spatial disparities with London doing particularly well and Scotland, Northern Ireland, Wales and the North East faring much better than other regions. Such disparities also exist at English Local Authority level with funding in London and some major provincial centres doing much better than more rural authorities. Such inequalities may give grounds for concern, given that they appear to replicate those for other types of Government spending. The results of an empirical model designed to explain the spatial distribution of awards suggest that, in addition to a London effect, levels of deprivation have a positive impact. Another important explanatory variable which has a positive impact on lottery funding is the qualifications of residents which might plausibly reflect the quality of lottery bids received from an area. However, once these factors are taken account of, there is little evidence that rural areas fare badly.

J. W. Gregory arrived in Glasgow from Melbourne in 1904 to take up the post of foundation Professor of Geology in the University of Glasgow. Soon after his arrival in Glasgow he began to push for the setting up of teaching in Geography in Glasgow, which came to pass in 1909 with the appointment of a Lecturer in Geography. This lecturer was based in the Department of Geology in the University's East Quad. Gregory's active promotion of Geography in the University was matched by his extensive writing in the area, in textbooks, journal articles and popular books. His prodigious output across a wide range of subject areas is variably accepted today, with much of his geomorphological work being judged as misguided to varying degrees. His ‘social science’ publications – in the areas of race, migration, colonisation and economic development of Africa and Australia – espouse a viewpoint that is unacceptable in the twenty-first century. Nonetheless, that viewpoint sits squarely within the social and econom...

Carol Diethe: Historical Dictionary of Nietzscheanism, second edition. Lanham, MA; Toronto; Plymouth: The Scarecrow Press, 2007, lviii + 358 pp. £59.00 (hb.). ISBN 978-0-8108-5613-4 Nietzsche: On t...

In contrast to the conventional view of Ludwig Feuerbach as a left-wing Young Hegelian, this article argues that his primary contribution to philosophy is to be found in his later ethics, the basis of which may be discerned in his earlier writings. Over and above recent work on Feuerbach's aesthetics, his relation to Herder, and the relationship between aesthetics and ‘theological politics’ in his thought, Feuerbach's philosophy can re-evaluated, in relation to Epicurus and the French libertin tradition, as articulating an ethics of hedonism. In The Essence of Christianity (1841), the Nachlass fragment ‘Elementary Aesthetics’ (1843), and his Principles of the Philosophy of the Future (1843) Feuerbach moves towards the vitalist materialist position that culminates in his (proto-Nietzschean) insight in ‘Against the Dualism of Body and Soul, Flesh and Spirit’ (1846) into the world as an ‘aesthetic phenomenon’, thus laying the foundations for his recognition of the centrality of sensuous pleasure to the ethic...

In an essay on Nietzsche's view of morality written in 1891, Eduard von Hartmann suggested that Nietzsche's most important contribution to philosophy was in the sphere of ethics; at the same time, he drew attention to the affinity between Nietzsche's ideas and the philosophy of Max Stirner. Hartmann's remarks open up Nietzsche's philosophy to examination in terms of a radically materialist framework. Nietzsche sees the ethics of asceticism, and hence Christianity, as a consequence of metaphysical dualism (which his materialist monism rejects), a stance which enables him to advance a positive, because physiologically based, sexual ethics. His philosophy proposes a profound and instrinsic relationship between the sexual and the aesthetic. This article shows how an appreciation of the radical materialism advanced by Nietzsche serves as evidence of the relevance of his philosophy to contemporary concerns and debates in ethics, and explores Nietzsche's ethical programme to develop ‘a more Goethean attitude tow...

In two passages Friedrich Nietzsche discusses the relation between reaction and revolution. In the second of these texts Nietzsche deploys a structure of argumentation found in the writings of Friedrich Schiller, termed 'binary synthesis'. Similarly, the notions of reaction and revolution form two master concepts in the political thought of Thomas Mann. The phrase 'Conservative Revolution', often associated with Mann, is used in the lecture 'Das Schrifttum als geistiger Raum der Nation' (1927) by Hugo von Hofmannsthal, which demonstrates the argumentational structure of both 'Hegelian' and 'binary' synthesis. Understanding Mann's political writings in general and Betrachtungen eines Unpolitischen (1918) in particular in terms of binary synthesis reveals an essential continuity in his politico-cultural thought. Mann's 1929 paper on Freud is centred on the opposition of irrationalism and the rational, culminating in his definition of psychoanalysis as 'a manifestation of modern irrationalism that unambiguously resists reactionary misuse'. The same binary synthetic structure underlying Goethe's concept of 'highest reason', Schiller's notion of 'second nature', and Mann's conception of reaction and revolution, informs his discussion in Betrachtungen eines Unpolitischen of the relation between Geist and Leben, which offers a parallel to Hofmannsthal's position in his 1927 lecture. Mann's political essays reveal his insight into how, out of reaction, there can come revolution, and his cultural task is best described, using an expression from his discussion of Kleist's Amphitryon, as the attempt to create a 'conservatism of the future'.

Gripaios P. and Bishop P. (2005) Government output and expenditure in UK regions and sub‐regions: an analysis of the new experimental accounts data, Regional Studies 39 , 805–813. This paper examines the regional and sub‐regional distribution of UK state spending by analysing new data available from recently published Regional Government Accounts. The data indicate wide variations in public spending per head across regions, with London being a particular beneficiary. The results do not indicate any relationship between Gross Domestic Product per head and public spending, and they suggest that, in total, government spending is doing little to ameliorate regional inequality. If the state wishes to pursue an active regional policy, it hence needs to consider the regional dimension of all state functions, not simply those associated with traditional regional policy.

This paper presents an analysis of the reputation of estate agents within the context of principal-agent theory. It is argued that the poor reputation of many agents arises from a combination of product and market characteristics including product intangibility and heterogeneity, joint production by vendor and agent, infrequent purchasing, low barriers to entry and environmental uncertainty. Various solutions to the problem are discussed including certification, contingent contracts and reputation-building. An empirical analysis based on a recent survey of estate agents suggests that a link between reputation and the form of contract signed may help to reduce the problems in the market. The paper concludes with a discussion of policy options for the improved regulation of the industry.

Although Schopenhauer is usually described as a philosopher of pessimism, this article examines the extent to which The World as Will and Representation is concerned, not only with metaphysics, but also with social critique; and the positive, indeed ‘optimistic’, implications such a reading might have for an understanding of Schopenhauer's aesthetics. Schopenhauer's philosophy contains a moral or ethical element, which means that, even if he regarded life as ‘an unpleasant business’, it would be wrong to conclude that he had no appreciation of the world as a locus for practical activity. Thanks to the cultural impact of Weimar Classicism and its controversy with the Romanticism of Jena and elsewhere, as well as through his personal acquaintance with Goethe, Schopenhauer inevitably came into contact with Schiller's aesthetic theories, which provide an indispensable background to understanding what is at stake in Schopenhauer's own aesthetics. Schopenhauer's emphasis on the impermanency of pleasure can be seen to underscore the ethical imperative to pay attention to our own life, and to question, in the most concrete, down-to-earth terms, our representation of our life and what, in life, we will.

This article examines the technical efficiency of museums based upon data derived from a questionnaire survey of South West England. A stochastic frontier production function is estimated with output measured in terms of visitor numbers. The Cobb-Douglas function is shown to be the best representation of the production function. Average levels of efficiency are estimated to be fairly low at 45.5% with wide variations across museums. The results indicate that high levels of public funding and voluntary activity have a significantly negative impact on technical efficiency. It is argued that further research is needed to develop more sophisticated measures of the output of cultural industries and understand the economic importance of volunteers.

This paper examines the impact of ownership and a variety of other variables on the likelihood of innovation and the presence of an R&D function within a national sample of UK defence related firms. It is shown that foreign ownership has a negative indirect impact upon innovation. Mixed support is found for the Schumpeterian approach to innovation. Involvement in export markets, technological opportunity and R&D collaboration are shown to have a positive impact on innovation.