Extravagance and mediocrity of virtue: Their divergence and the possibility of demagoguery

In the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle refers to Socrates five times: four references are to the contentious Socratic doctrine that “virtue is knowledge” the fifth is in the discussion of irony, “such as that of which Socrates was accused.” These issues are not conjoined accidentally. “Manifest appearances” attest that we can do worse than we know or know better than we do. Yet, the “problem of incontinence'’ is only half of the problem of the divergence of character and intellect, the mediocre and the extravagant in virtue. The other half of the problem is the capacity of some to do or act better than they know, vice's ability to imitate virtue, the disloyal talent's employment of demagoguery, the clever vice of irony.     

传统叙事话语的颠覆与消解--论"前先锋派"小说的现代性

20世纪80年代中期,以写"城市文化"为代表的"前先锋派"青年作家群,如刘索拉、徐星等,以强烈的叛逆精神,从生存方式的批判角度,挑战权威,消解正统,其作品刻意表现平庸、荒诞、滑稽,以揭示现代人的生存状态、精神焦虑与迷惘的情绪.其文本叙事广泛采用反讽与黑色幽默的表达技法,在揶揄调侃中达到对传统叙事话语的颠覆和消解.     

Irony Practice: Reconstructing Structural Social Work: Enlightenment from Neoclassical Sociology

Structural social work has been expanding its influence while experiencing marginalized crises since 1970s: with the expansion of neo-conservatism, the structural perspective is incompatible with the liberal-based system at the political level. In recent years, the “critical reflection practice” established through the reunification of the socialist tradition of social work has become increasingly prosperous, but it has not been possible to answer the question of legitimacy in its own theory. The purpose of this paper is to reflect the crisis of the traditional sociology by analyzing the crisis of western sociology, and to try to reconstruct the critical social science by talking with Iván Szelényi and others to sort out the concept of “irony” as a methodology and the mission of contemporary intellectuals. Under the inspiration of relevance of classical sociology and social work, this paper provides insights to the reconstruction of social work.     

麦克尤恩小说《赎罪》中的反讽叙事

麦克尤恩在小说《赎罪》中结合使用了情景反讽和浪漫主义反讽两种反讽叙事策略。围绕罪与赎的问题,这些反讽前后呼应,在事物的对立中颠覆读者的旧有思维模式,让读者在震惊之余,对文本之外的人性、战争和世界的本质进行深入思考。     

Spinoza Now

Abstract

This discussion of Infinitely Demanding explores the terms of the paradox with which Critchley is centrally concerned: how an ethico-politics can at once begin in disappointment and yet allow for engagement, the infinite renewal of commitment and optimism. Placing this in critical relation to the paradox Rorty meets with his account of the "private ironist and public liberal" in Contingency, Irony, Solidarity, I argue that Critchley's ethico-politics invokes the possibility of a non-ironical categorical imperative, at the meeting point of finitude and the infinite and at the heart of what is also a political space of intersubjectivity. I examine the logic of humour and of commitment within the Kantian frame thus suggested, arguing for their relevance to certain aspects of anarcho-activism, but also for their limitations in desperate circumstances, posing the risk that Critchley's preferred politics falls back into liberal complacency.     

The Presence of Tragedy

Abstract

This paper argues that modernity can only be properly understood when tragedy is viewed as one of the conditions internal to it. Modernity and tragedy are not mutually exclusive, as Hegel and Schlegel, for example both argue, but mutually inclusive. Each is determined by the other—as tragic modernity and as modern tragedy.     

试论莫里哀喜剧讽刺艺术——富有“意味”的笑

莫里哀喜剧的讽刺属于含笑的讽刺。这种讽刺所含的笑,并非指单纯生理或心理方面的笑,而是具有烧毁一切无价值的丑恶东西、引导人们去肯定和追求有价值的真善美之巨大威力的那种健康、审美的笑。这种审美特征来源于他对喜剧的社会软化作用与娱乐性能以及两者关系的透辟认识和辩证把握,还有他对喜剧"笑"的本质及其独特心理矫正功能的洞察和悟彻。     

汉末魏晋时期的经学与辞赋

汉末魏晋时期经学衰微,但在某些时期又显现出复兴的趋势,经学对文学的影响不绝如缕.在经学文学观的影响下,汉末魏晋时期产生了许多歌功颂德、匡时救俗的赋作.建安时期,经学的余绪犹存,接绪两汉辞赋的传统,关乎美刺讽谕的赋作不少.魏明帝时期的辞赋充斥着浓厚的尊君思想和谶纬成分.晋氏受禅以后,经学复兴,歌功颂德之作不断涌现.东晋王朝偏安于江左一隅,此时润色鸿业的辞赋仍然存在.汉末魏晋时期是文学的自觉时代,文学创作张扬个性,突出个人情感.抒情赋的大量涌现与古文经学对个性觉醒的启迪作用关系密切,王肃之学重视亲情,经学的因素在一定程度上影响着抒情赋的创作.     

The Oprah shows I would like to see

This essay addresses how Oprah's book choices are inevitably affective but not necessarily feminist. By reading Oprah's book choices as highly individualistic, I analyze how her choices might be more aggressive and more complex, thereby offering a sense of community rather than the power of individuality to her huge audiences. My argument is based on a belief in Oprah's communicative power, and especially if her book choices were invested with more complications than individual resolutions.     

Barack Obama and the American island of the colour blind

ABSTRACT

Kuryla maps a metaphorical American island of the colour blind—in law, public rhetoric and culture—in the process locating the first black president of the United States on it, evaluating the claim that his presidency represents a colour-blind or post-racial politics. Barack Obama rejects colour blindness as a fact in the present yet gestures to its ‘better history’ (his modern transposing of Lincoln's ‘better angels’) while refusing any theoretical resolution of the idea. Obama, in public pronouncements and by sheer fact of his being and his biography, reveals the epistemic irony of the colour-blind idea, its persistence amid the conditions of its impossibility.