I was asked to give a series of lectures on Russian history, which I did, uniting them under the general title of the 'Reasons for the Russian Catastrophe of the 20th Century and Possibilities to overcome it'. I believed then, as I do now, that it is an essential topic to study in order to try to answer two closely related questions:

Why in the twentieth century, after the Bolshevik coup, Russia has been a constant source of aggression? and Is there any hope that Russia can change radically, stop being an aggressor and become a peace-loving democratic nation like the EU and NATO countries? I tried to suggest my answers in the six lectures I gave in Brno between October and November 2022 in English. The university later proposed to publish them as a short book. I agreed with enthusiasm, hoping that my texts would contribute to a better understanding of the tragic fate of my people in past and present centuries, the processes that led to the war, and thus to the building of a more lasting peace once it is over. Andrey Borisovich Zubov

This book offers the first survey of philosophical pedagogy in Jewish culture during the Middle Ages, with a focus on Northern France, the Provence, Italy and Spain. By examining not only the discourse of renowned philosophers such as Maimonides and Gersonides, but also oft-neglected manuscript evidence of educational practices and students' notes, the book offers a nuanced understanding of the medieval Jewish intellectual landscape and shows how Jewish educators brought intricate debates on metaphysics, ethics, and epistemology into the classroom. The book also sheds light on the broader societal and cultural contexts that influenced these philosophical pursuits. An essential read for anyone interested in the history of philosophy, Jewish studies, or medieval intellectual culture, this book celebrates the enduring legacy of Jewish philosophical thought and its pivotal role in shaping the intellectual currents of the Middle Ages.

This book examines the modalities of human relationships and technology as reflected in the musical thinking of the authors of art music of the 20th and early 21st centuries. The discursive and reference frame of the treatise consists mainly of individual artistic poetics and more general musical-aesthetic reflections embedded in the basic theoretical concepts of technology and its functions in culture and society. The departure point for the work is Heidegger's lecture Die Frage nach Technik, in which he suggests humanising technology through art. The book chapters examine the relationships between man, music, and technology from three points of view. Chapter 3 deals with music from a technical point of view, chapter 4 analyses the transformation of the musical artefact in the developmental arch of the 20th century from numerical abstraction through digitisation to materialisation in musical as well as non-musical art forms. Chapter 5 is a representation of man and his thinking in relation to technology in music. Here we distinguish between four basic types of attitudes in musical thinking on technology, categorised by the degree of influence attributed to technology: techno-utopian/techno-optimistic, techno-realistic, techno-sceptic, and post-technological. In the latter, we define four basic artistic strategies forming separate types: critical attitude, adaptation of technological models, recycling, and inspiration. These strategies are ranked from generally negative attitudes through specifically positive to generally positive.

Can the functioning of human society be compared to the functioning of tumors in the human body? How do tumors come about? Why are we so interested in them? What can we learn from them? In this book, the multicellular organism is presented as a complex system consisting of multiple cells working together, while tumors arise from the abandonment of cooperation and violate the basic principles necessary to maintain a healthy body. Based on General Systems Theory, the author traces parallels with, and extrapolations from, the rules of cooperation and their potential corruption in other complex systems as well, including human society. In addition to a detailed introduction of the basics of tumor formation and development, the book offers reflections on the question of whether human beings, like tumor cells, tend to corrupt in dangerous and self-destructive ways the most important rules for the healthy functioning of the social system to which they belong.

In recent decades, the Ancient Egyptian realm of pictorial script and meta-textuality has been the focus of many research projects. Foremost among them is the innovative and ground-breaking sub-field that was helmed by Prof. Orly Goldwasser, exploring the study of classifiers and the ways in which Ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphs mirror the Ancient Egyptian mind. Taking Goldwasser's pioneering work as its inspiration, this volume draws together contributions from some of the leading voices in Egyptology and neighbouring fields to illuminate different aspects of the use of Ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphs, their semiotic value, and of the language that they record, as well as looking more broadly at the use of signs, pictorial systems, script, learning processes, and classifications. Together, these chapters offer a unique and multi-layered picture of the ways in which Ancient Egyptian language and Hieroglyphs emerged within Ancient Egyptian culture, and the means by which they interacted with other script systems and languages.

Recueil de petits traites et extraits sur la musique conserves dans les sources manuscrites des XIe et XIIe siecles, eclairant l'histoire des theories a cette epoque et leurs implications pour la pratique du chant liturgique. Des notes explicatives replacent cet ensemble composite dans la perspective des evenements qui affectent alors la codification et la normalisation des repertoires. source: Electre]

Our lives are saturated with images. They exert an unparalleled power in contemporary culture. However, the power of images is in fact nothing new. Although texts are often the most important historical sources for academics, the image played an enormous role for those who actually lived in these past societies. Images communicated all manner of concepts and messages to a much wider audience than theological texts. Throughout history, images frequently depicted God, human beings, and their relationship in a manner that was meant to teach theology and inspire awe. Historically speaking, most people who have done theological reflection have done so in intimate conversation with the images seen in sacred spaces. This volume explores how images themselves are theology, how they influence sacred texts and theological concepts in a way that words cannot on their own. In part one, the book presents five essays investigating the ways in which images have shaped sacred and theological texts. In part two, the book offers five discussions of the sort of theological work that images can perform that words are unable to do. The volume concludes by outlining areas for future research and exploration based on the insights achieved among the chapters. The collection is, in its totality, a celebration of how central the image has been in shaping theology and how it should continue to do so.

This book provides a detailed narrative history of the dynasty and confederation of the Yuezhi, whose migration from western China to the northern border of present-day Afghanistan resulted ultimately in the creation of the Kushan Empire. Although the Yuezhi have long been recognised as the probable ancestors of the Kushans, they have generally only been considered as a prelude to the principal subject of Kushan history, rather than as a significant and influential people in their own right. The evidence seemed limited and ambiguous, but is actually surprisingly extensive and detailed and certainly sufficient to compile a comprehensive chronological political history of the Yuezhi during the first millennium BCE. The book analyses textual, numismatic and archaeological evidence in an attempt to explain the probable origin of the Yuezhi, their relationship with several Chinese dynasties, their eventual military defeat and expulsion from the Gansu by the Xiongnu, their migration through the Ili Valley, Ferghana and Sogdia to northern Bactria, and their role in the conquest of the former Greco-Bactria state. All of these events were bound up with broader cultural and political developments in ancient Central Asia and show the extraordinary interconnectedness of the Eurasian historical processes. The domino-effect of the migration of the Yuezhi led to significant changes in the broader Eurasian polity.

In recent years, archaeologists working at Norse sites across the North Atlantic have excavated a number of very small churches with cemeteries, often associated with individual farms. Such sites seem to be a characteristic feature of early ecclesiastical establishments in Norse settlements around the North Atlantic, and they stand in marked contrast to church sites elsewhere in Europe. But what was the reason behind this phenomenon? From Greenland to Denmark, and from Ireland to the Hebrides, Iceland, and Norway, this volume presents a much-needed overview of small church studies from around the North Atlantic. The chapters gathered here discuss the different types of evidence for small churches and early ecclesiastical landscapes, review existing debates, and develop a synthesis that places the small churches in a broader context. Ultimately, despite the varied types of data at play, the contributions to this volume combine to offer a more coherent picture of the small church phenomenon, pointing to a church that was able to answer the needs of a newly converted population despite the lack of an established infrastructure, and throwing new light on how people lived and worshipped in an environment of dispersed settlements.

Le professeur Noel Duval, a la forte personnalite, a marque le renouveau des etudes sur l'antiquite tardive. Se consacrant plus particulierement a l'Afrique romaine et byzantine, il en a etudie l'histoire tardive et l'archeologie, en particulier celle des eglises paleochretiennes. Mais ses interets se sont portes aussi sur la Gaule a la fin de l'antiquite, et, plus largement, a l'ensemble du bassin mediterraneen. Sa disparition, en 2018, a ete incontestablement une grande perte. Ses amis et ses eleves ont tenu a honorer sa memoire en rassemblant un recueil de contributions scientifiques sur des sujets sur lesquels il avait travaille, mais aussi en evoquant sa memoire et sa personnalite.

Gandharan art developed around the first century BCE till the fourth century CE in parts of present-day Afghanistan and Pakistan and has been the focus of intense scholarly debates in both Classical and South Asian Studies for many decades. In this book, Ashwini Lakshminarayan offers for the first time a specialized study on gender using Gandharan material culture and convincingly proposes new readings of visual culture beyond Eurocentric and postcolonial interpretations. This book sets the stage with a detailed overview of the contexts in which Gandharan art was located in Buddhist sites by analysing the gendered use of space, and the gender and activities of donors and administrators. At its core, the book gives prominence to the stone reliefs of Gandhara and examines how male and female bodies are represented, how they interact, and how gender symbolised ideals and values. With an important comparative overview of the Gandharan artistic production and new illustrations, this work is indispensable for all those interested in the study of gender in ancient art, the interaction between Graeco-Roman and Indic cultures, and the development of the early Buddhist artistic tradition in South and Central Asia that also shaped Buddhist visual culture eastwards in China.

Numbers, weights, and measurements, and the systems underpinning them, have always been a fundamental part of human society. Developed at different ways and at different times, such systems have provided a foundation for science, technology, economy, and new ways of engaging with and understanding the world. This volume aims to explore the background to numbers and measurements in more detail by drawing together specialists from a growing field of research. The contributions gathered here offer new and interdisciplinary insights into how the development of mathematical ideas and systems evolved, early metrological systems, the exchange of goods and their impact, the standardization of measuring tools, and the impact of such concepts. This unique volume is deliberately set broad, both geographically and chronologically, in order to compare and contrast changes over time and between peoples, and in doing so it sheds new light on the social and scientific developments among both prehistoric and early historic societies.

These volumes present a selection of papers delivered in Paris at the XV International Congress of the Societe Internationale pour l'Etude de la Philosophie Medievale, August 22-26, 2022. The appearance of the term radix positionis in medieval debates inspired the contributors to investigate whether there was something that could be considered radical thought in the Middle Ages and, if so, what the roots of this radical thought were in the different philosophical traditions in various geographical, cultural, religious, and linguistic contexts (Arabic, Greek, Hebrew, Latin). Medieval philosophy often engaged in a quest for origins, but it could also be radical in its methodology or in its attitude when it refused any compromise on its principles or basic concepts, be they innovative or rediscovered. Radicalism could be conceived as extremism in pushing a hypothesis, procedure, or line of inquiry to its limits, leading to extreme positions. Radical thought could mean being intellectually inflexible on principles, obstinate in embracing theses that broke from tradition, progressive but also extremist. The contributions in these volumes thus analyse case-studies of doctrinal conflict, dogmatic struggle, and condemnation by religious or academic institutions, presenting examples of both intellectual courage and philosophical intransigence.

Veneration of the supernatural was, in ancient times, interwoven into the fabric of the surrounding landscape. Caves, rivers, lakes, mountains, and water springs all formed conduits for a relationship between divinity and nature, and sanctuaries were established as dedicated sites of worship. Taking Central Italy as its main focus, this volume unravels layers of history and archaeology in order to shed light on the religious practices, sacred sites, and profound connections that have long existed between landscapes and religious places in this region. Through a synthesis of archaeological evidence and scholarly analysis, the chapters gathered here unveil the significance of temples, sanctuaries, ex-votos, religious productions, and ritual spaces, and provide a comprehensive understanding of how Etruscan and Roman societies engaged with their sacred surroundings. The result is an important reassessment of the religious dimensions that helped to shape the antique landscape of Central Italy.

Chancelier de l'Universite de Paris, Jean Gerson (1363-1429) est surtout connu comme theoricien de la theologie mystique et par son action reformatrice au sein de l'Eglise pendant les annees difficiles du Grand Schisme, ou il joua un role de premier plan. Or si la carriere universitaire et l'action politique de Gerson font de lui un intellectuel parisien, l'evidence de la transmission manuscrite et imprimee designe sans equivoque le Rhin superieur comme la region ou la diffusion des uvres du chancelier a ete la plus foisonnante. Intervenant a une echelle comparable a la diffusion manuscrite des uvres de Thomas d'Aquin, le rayonnement de l'uvre de Gerson a ceci de spectaculaire qu'il depasse largement le milieu universitaire et qu'il se deploie en moins d'un siecle. Le paradoxe reste pourtant intact de pourquoi l'Allemagne, et non la France, s'impose comme le lieu de rayonnement de l'uvre de Gerson dans des proportions aussi importantes quantitativement ? Pour repondre a cette question, l'etude de la reception de l'uvre du chancelier ne peut pas faire l'economie d'une reevaluation de la tradition manuscrite et imprimee des 15e et 16e siecles a partir des temoins preserves dans les bibliotheques du Rhin superieur. En privilegiant le cas de Gerson comme point d'observation, ce volume se propose de renouveler les perspectives de l'histoire intellectuelle et culturelle dans le long 15e siecle en focalisant sur l'histoire des textes, les conditions et les circonstances de leur transmission, afin de dresser une cartographie des reseaux de communication dans la region rhenane dans les decennies qui entourent l'invention de l'imprimerie.

In the first half of the nineteenth century, Belgium was repeatedly praised as a country of collectors and amateurs, and private art and antique collectors were important and highly visible actors in urban cultural life. At a time when the public museum was still a relatively recent innovation, private collections were quite easily accessible for local and international visitors of the same social rank as the collectors. By the beginning of the twentieth century, however, the collector's position in the public sphere had changed dramatically. Private collections were less accessible to an ever-expanding and increasingly culture-consuming public, and functioned more strongly in the context of the personal and explicitly private aims and networks of their owners. This book uncovers the premises and reasons for private collectors' shifting public role and relevance in nineteenth-century Brussels, Antwerp and Ghent. It examines the specific social, cultural, political, artistic and material context of private collectors' activity. Its main focus is on three related issues: 1) collectors' social profiles and networks; 2) collectors' tastes; and 3) the function, accessibility, display and reception of the collections. Attention is also paid to the differences between Brussels, Antwerp and Ghent with regard to the urban collecting cultures. The book intends to further our understanding of the diverse ways in which private collectors interacted with the social, cultural and artistic life of their cities and what the collectors' changing relationship to the public sphere can tell us about broader shifts in nineteenth-century culture, art and society.

The sound image of Otherness has been a significant source of inspiration for Western music, especially since the late eighteenth century. Encounters with the racial and geographical Other fomented interest in unfamiliar musical traditions, which informed exotic projections by Western composers. This volume explores aspects of musical exoticism and its staging during the long nineteenth century, with a special focus on the Mediterranean. This diverse and yet historically interconnected region was arguably the heart of the exotic enterprise during this period. The intersection of exoticism, nationalism and empire is considered, with a special focus on the situation of Spain as both source of local colour and purveyor of musical exoticism. The essays in this volume explore elements of exoticism across a range of musical styles: from song to opera and the popular musical stage, and from instrumental to symphonic works. The analysis of this corpus also involves the examination of musical culture in dialogue with literature and figurative arts. While many of the essays focus on constructions of exoticism in individual works, several essays focus on repertories of musical exoticism and their coverage in musicological literature.