The present study has been primarily provoked from the inadequacy of both late and present presuppositionalists to sufficiently answer or refute the more philosophical, transcendental challenges levelled against Van Til’s Transcendental Argument for the Existence of God (hereafter TAG). Given this shortcoming—which, with it, comes an atm…[Read more]

Spanish abstract: Unas notas sobre el final del libro ‘El lugar del hombre en el cosmos’ de Fred Spier, sobre la sostenibilidad de la actual comunicación globalizada. La Gran Historia sitúa al ser humano en el contexto de la evolución cósmica y de la ecología de los recursos. Vivimos hoy en la Era de los Combustibles Fósiles. Con esta energ…[Read more]

Unlike French stereo photographers, who flooded the market with Spanish views, the most important British publishers and photographers rarely made Spanish views. Quite possibly this was precisely because of the rapid market penetration of the French, such as Gaudin, Ferrier and others, and in spite of the leading British photographic houses, such…[Read more]

The first time that there is historical steadfastness of the presence of a photographer in a warlike conflict, as graphic correspondent is in the war of Crimea, in 1854-55. In the successive conflicts armed with importance that happen from this date, 1859 and 1860, with the reunification of Italy and other episodes in the British empire, the photo…[Read more]

This essay traces some of the contexts and media in which “Heracles-Hercules” – as a hero between virtue and hubris – was visible in European societies from the end of the middle ages onwards. It discusses whether this example of the reception, appropriation and transformation of classical myths in the early modern period can be understood as a…[Read more]

For two years, from 1788 to 1790, Duchess Anna Amalia of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach (1739-1807) exchanged her familiar surroundings with Rome and Naples. She undertook her furthest and most ambitious journey at the age of almost 49. For the only time the princely widow left Germany or the German territories of the Reich. During her stay, the Duchess…[Read more]

This article analyzes the nexus between collective violence, temple violation, and military glory in 1 and 2 Maccabees by comparing two festivals established in the context of revolt and guerilla warfare; namely, Hanukkah and Nicanor’s Day. It argues that the accounts of the origins of these two festivals in 1 and 2 Maccabees reinforce the close c…[Read more]

The period of masonic internationalism in the last third of the 19th and first third of the 20th centuries saw the most visible – and controversial – attempts to organisationally model the “cosmopolitan imperative” of freemasonry. The various freemasonries in Europe saw themselves as links in a world-spanning “chain of brothers” forged by the…[Read more]

This article examines the political role of illness in Émile Zola’s ‘La Faute de l’abbé Mouret’ (‘The Sin of Father Mouret’, 1875) in articulating the difference between a religious and a secular body. Published in the early French Third Republic (1870–1940), this novel shows the Zolian body as the nexus upon which religious and republi…[Read more]

In ‘Degeneration’ (1892), Max Nordau included Émile Zola in his theory that fin-de-siècle artists were a danger to society. According to Nordau, the ‘false science’ in Zola’s Naturalist novels would erode social progress in their alleged preoccupation with disease, sexual deviancy and amorality. This article proposes that degeneration is, how…[Read more]

Haussmann’s re-building of Paris in the 1850s and ’60s had created an ordered city. However, the bourgeoisie used the new urban configurations as a weapon against the lower classes. This article describes the spaces of the underground and the overground: the underground is the metaphorical and literal rubbish heap for those in the lower parts of…[Read more]

Freedom of or from religion. Freemasonry as an international testing ground for fundamental societal issues (c. 1850–1930)
In masonic internationalism, key framework parameters of masonic activity were negotiated. They concerned the fundamental societal issue of how religious freedom (freedom to practise religion) and liberty of conscience (…[Read more]

Several documents from Egypt and Ḫatti (especially the Amarna letters and the Egyptian-Hittite correspondence) mention envoys and messengers in charge of diplomatic contacts between the two countries. Cuneiform and hieroglyphic transcriptions of Egyptian names at Ugarit hint at an actual presence (in Ugarit and Karkemish) of officials coming f…[Read more]

Based on a discussion of the theoretical contributions of Claude Lévi-Strauss and Pierre Clastres, this article explores social relationships as more than a human dimension. Though strongly analysed by both anthropologists, these relationships appear to involve indigenous societies’ whole ecological and cosmological system. In this sense, re…[Read more]

Espigando el diverso y abigarrado contenido del primer artículo dedicado a la biografía de Mencía de Mendoza, es bastante curioso el hecho de que su humilde y opaco autor, que no se atrevió a firmar la pieza, otorgase veracidad a una supuesta conversación entre la dama y su marido. Según este relato, en una de las ocasiones en que el noble guerr…[Read more]

It is my modest goal in this essay to trace how Nock uses conversion to produce religion(s) and then to explore its similarities to and differences from an analogous construction of religion-through-conversion in late antiquity.

Text Analysis is a broad term that covers many approaches and technologies. Those initially stemming from the academic sphere have come to enter the commercial, and today there is a wide interplay between the two. A further dichotomy is that between natural language and computational approaches. Over time, approaches have come to draw upon each…[Read more]

The huge proliferation of textual (and other data) in digital and organisational sources has led to new techniques of text analysis. The potential thereby unleashed may be underpinned by further theoretical
developments to the theory of Discourse Stream Analysis (DSA) as presented here. These include the notion of change in the discourse stream…[Read more]

The Connections between ancient approaches to rhetoric, as found in Plato and Aristotle, the prime ancient theorists of rhetoric, and modern linguistic approaches to register and genre theory, as in Hallidayan linguistics, show continuity of thought across the centuries. They also suggest that there may be such things as universal rhetorical…[Read more]

This article examines the mixture of hostile and amicable relations that Bavarian fighting men had with French civilians during the Franco-Prussian War, when civilians provided food, fodder and quarters to the invading armies and sometimes took up arms against them. Relying mainly on published personal narratives, this article looks at the…[Read more]