Because it is all too easy to (accidentally) make assumptions about what first-year students know about language, in 2019-2020 my lit and comp type courses will begin with a segment on language, before moving on to sentences, paragraphs, and essays.

Our exploration of language will start by jumping into a story, to help us identify the 8 parts…[Read more]

John 20:24-29 – the Doubting Thomas Narrative – is explored in terms of the thesis that Jesus showed Thomas wounds absolutely identical to the wounds originating at the time of the crucifixion. John understands the risen Jesus to enact sovereignty over time in this passage. This was a new stage in John’s Christological Development and aug…[Read more]

In interpreting the risen Jesus’ action of appearing ‘out of nowhere’ at John 20:19-20 (and Luke 24:36) and his inferred action of rising from the dead at John 20:5-7 (and Luke 24:12), the consensus of both classical and modern biblical tradition has been to understand these actions as Jesus in some sense passing through physical objects and there…[Read more]

In the section ‘Jesus Christ, Lord of Time’ in Church Dogmatics III/2 Karl Barth held that lordship or sovereignty over time was central to the reality of the risen Jesus. I argue that his enacting sovereignty over time coincided with the very resurrection of time itself – the past recapitulated in the present – in a way necessarily invol…[Read more]

The recent popularity of the film version of Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings has renewed interest in this widely read work set in the realm of Middle-earth. A careful study of Tolkien’s work can be used to raise several philosophical questions, particularly in the area of ethics. This course will examine such questions, also considering topics fro…[Read more]

Gabor Lukacs’ 2008 book on “Kaitai Shinsho: The Single Most Famous Japanese Book of Medicine & Geka Sōden: An Early Very Important Manuscript on Surgery” is a bibliographical contribution to the comparative history of the introduction of Western science in East Asia. It focuses on two illustrated manuals of anatomy and surgery in Japanese, adap…[Read more]

In ancient China, portentology was a “science” in its own right, a specialised field of knowledge developed by rational individuals who endeavoured to fathom the concealed mechanisms at work beneath the spectacles of history and the world at large. This paper focuses on the nomenclature of portents (observed phenomena interpreted as auspicious or…[Read more]

“Buddho-Taoism” is a neologism that appeared in Western academic discourse during the late nineteen-forties, was put to various uses without being consensually defined, enjoyed a brief vogue around the turn of the twenty-first century, and began to fall from grace in recent years. This neologism implicitly created new epistemic repertoires der…[Read more]

Diplomatische Transkription und Leseversion nach Freiburg, Universitätsbibliothek, Hs. 1500,7, fol. 38r-43v

Das Wunderbare in der deutschsprachigen Rezeptliteratur des 15. Jahrhunderts, in: Stefanie Kreuzer und Uwe Durst (Hg.), Das Wunderbare. Dimensionen eines Phänomens in Kunst und Kultur (Traum – Wissen – Erzählen 3), Paderborn: Fink 2018, S. 233–250.

IL REALE E L’IMMAGINARIO. Critica dell’infinito e dell’infinitesimo. Continuo reale e ideale. La metafisica del calcolo. Immaginario e immaginazione. Bibliografia

METAFISICA E MATEMATICA. Continuo e discreto. L’ambiguità dell’attimo. Il principio di continuità. Forza viva e forza morta. Tra Platone e Democrito

L’INTERPRETAZIONE DEL CALCOLO. Il nuovo secolo. La ripresa delle ostilità. La giustificazione del calcolo infinitesimale. Tra sé e sé. Interpretazione e immaginario. Regole e princìpi

LE PRIME CONTROVERSIE. Quantità incomparabilmente piccole. Il primo contendente. La disputa con Nieuwentijt. Irrealtà dell’infinitesimo. Ultimi strascichi polemici

LA PUBBLICAZIONE DEL METODO. Un nuovo algoritmo. La scuola concorrente. Flussioni nel tempo e nello spazio

LA NASCITA DEL CALCOLO LEIBNIZIANO: La geometria degli indivisibili. Infiniti indivisibili attuali. Gli anni d’apprendistato di Leibniz. L’aritmetica degli infinit.i Verso l’analisi infinitesimale. Il triangolo caratteristico. La fondazione del calcolo

INTRODUZIONE: Metafisica dell’infinitamente piccolo. L’analisi leibniziana. L’infinitesimo e il calcolo. La scomposizione del mutamento

A particular aspect of the confrontation between modern philosophy and the aristotelian tradition regards the so-called psychology of faculties. On this ground, it is for modern thought much harder, in comparison to the field of natural sciences, to differentiate itself from concepts, theories, and terminologies which characterize the still…[Read more]

The paper deals with Leibniz’s manuscript writings on the foundation of infinitesimal calculus since 1702: the mathematician’s late theory, and the preparatory works to his “Cum prodiisset atque increbuisset”, are presented. An edition of Leibniz’s unpublished DEFENSE DU CALCUL DE DIFFERENCES is provided as an Appendix.

Within the context of an increasingly dystopian sense of global crisis, how can the idea of Utopia help us galvanise political literary readings? This special session will present a roundtable discussion in which panelists consider how we can use utopian methods to understand different kinds of literary texts, reflecting upon the importance of the…[Read more]