Huxley’s Brave New World portrays a futuristic hyperbole of mankind’s future as a result of technological advancements. From a New Historical perspective, this essay examines how BNW satirizes contemporary society by satire where the audience is both a part of the problem and solution. Through the use of satire Huxley’s novel successfully portrays horrific examples of how human life in a not so distant future may find that the technology which revolutionized our lives actually enslaves us. Post-novel examples such as Hitler and his Nazi regime is a real life example of the type of totalitarian regime that is possible as a direct result of scientific progress in many fields. In this paper, however, posterity is excluded from the analysis. Instead this essay focuses on the contemporary society as depicted in early 20th century literature and how it reflects identifiable satirical elements in BNW. The analysis depicts how several discourses of contemporary industrialized Britain such as rationalism, socialism, industrialism, freedom, religion and political indifference are reflected in the novel. Ultimately, Huxley’s dystopian reflection of human future taunts us, the audience, by directly and indirectly illuminating the dangers of blindly accepting scientific advancements in the name of progress. The one, perhaps most relevant question the novel raises is – are we truly free when we are free to have the most wonderful time?

Uppsatsen utgår i stora drag från Wolfgang Kemp's receptionsteorier för att diskutera arkitekten Ferdinand Bobergs bidrag till den svenska arkitekturen inom industrin under 1800-talets andra hälft. Vattentornet vid Mosebacke i Stockholm fungerar i detta arbete som en utgångspunkt för att förstå Bobergs arkitekturella värdegrund och formmässiga ideologi. Uppsatsen ägnar också att etablera en övergripande förståelse av vattentornets plats i arkitekturrummet – hur vattentornet samverkar med den omedelbara miljön i både dess samtid och nutid. Mosebacke vattentorns återvändande till tidigare stilepoker inom arkitekturen diskuteras i detta arbete utifrån begreppet historicism och fungerar här som en central frågeställning som kontinuerligt bearbetas i uppsatsen. Utifrån dokumentation i form av artiklar, målningar och fotografier, som berör vattentornet vid Mosebacke, har det kunnat konstaterats att det välkomnades av samtiden och är än idag en påminnelse av den ”nya” arkitekturens frammarsch i den moderna staden. Sökord: Ferdinand Boberg, arkitektur, Stockholm, Genius Loci, industri, historicism, plats, vattentorn, Mosebacke.

The thesis deals with the Town Hall of Klatovy - specifically its reconstruction according to Josef Fanta's plans. The main aim of the thesis was to understand and describe the reasons for applying Neo-Renaissance as late as in the 1920s and also to find out how this belated choice was perceived. First the causes of the reconstruction are explained and then the causes why it was Fanta who was approached. Based on the sources the work documents other key personalities who played an important part in forming the new town hall. A separate chapter is dedicated to the aims they set and which led towards applying the Neo-Renaissance style. For better understanding of this choice both the history of the Town Hall of Klatovy and a wider context of Neo-Renaissance and town halls are introduced. A big part of the thesis deals with the then criticism which arose against Fanta's project (mainly in 1921) and which made it a topic connected not only with Klatovy. The reconstruction of the Town Hall of Klatovy thus became an illustrative example of the clash of the generations and their different attitudes towards monuments.

Dans le domaine de la philosophie politique, le nom de Leo Strauss (1899-1973) s’associe à une tentative de réhabiliter un type de questionnement aussi ancien que la philosophie elle-même. Critique des types modernes de connaissance, Strauss considère, avant tout, que l’historicisme est un esprit menaçant de notre temps, mais il est aussi l’« adversaire le plus sérieux » de la philosophie politique : toute norme se réduit à un fait historique contingent jusqu’à prendre toute force d’obligation et de légitimité, c’est ainsi que la philosophie se trouve dans l’histoire elle-même devenue Histoire. Comment Strauss interprète-t-il l’historicisme, si ce terme ne connaît pas d’une unanimité ? Alors que l’on fait une enquête généalogique, à la lumière straussienne, de la modernité pour en étudier la genèse et la crise, on peut constater que Strauss, en remontant à Machiavel et Hobbes qui avaient déjà commencé à préparer la voie de l’historicisme, cherche à définir un nouvel historicisme qui se développe dans l’école historique du XIXe siècle, et connaît son apogée sous une forme radicale représentée par Nietzsche et Heidegger. Dans cette reconstruction de Strauss de l’historicisme, nous montrons qu’il propose un retour aux Anciens comme moyen de dépasser l’historicisme vers l’anhistorique, allant vers la transcendance que l’homme, par sa nature, peut atteindre : l’intransigeance de la dignité de la philosophie substantialiste pourra résister à un tel historicisme fondé sur la croyance en l’idée de progrès. / In the field of political philosophy, the name of Leo Strauss (1899-1973) is associated with an attempt to rehabilitate a type of questioning as old as philosophy itself. Criticism of modern types of knowledge, Strauss considers, first of all, that historicism is a threatening spirit of our time, but it is also the “ most serious adversary ” of political philosophy : all norms are reduced to a historical contigent fact which could arrive any point of assuming any force of obligation and legitimacy, that’s how philosophy finds itself in history itself, which has become History. How dœs Strauss interpret historicism, if this term dœs not know a unanimity ? With a genealogical investigation of modernity to study its genesis and crisis, in the Straussian light, we can see that Strauss, going back to Machiavelli and Hobbes who had already begun to prepare the way of the historicism, seeks to define a new historicism that develops in the historical school of the nineteenth century, and reaches its peak in a radical form represented by Nietzsche and Heidegger. In Strauss’s reconstruction of historicism, we show that he proposes a return to the Ancients as a means of going beyond historicism towards the ahistorical, going towards the transcendence that the humain beings can attain by their nature : the intransigence of the dignity of substantialist philosophy can resist such a historicism based on the belief in the idea of progress.

The subject of the master's thesis is the Church of the Protection of the Mother of God in the Marfo-Mariinsky Convent in Moscow, the early work from 1908-1912, which has not drawn attention in the Czech scientific literature. A special chapter is devoted to the history of the Marfo- Mariinsky Convent, its founder Grand Duchess Elizabeth and her personality and conventual life. The church is described in an analytical way as a specific Gesamtkunstwerk, which unites architecture, interior decoration, sculptural decorations and iconography. The analysis and the interpretation of the church focus on references to the traditional Russian architecture. Two chapters distinctively explain the place, which the church takes in Alexey Viktorovich Shchusev's and Mikhail Vasilyevich Nesterov's numerous works. The thesis contains documents of the church and exterior and interior photos.

No description available.

In 1604, James had newly ascended to the throne and England was now part of Great Britain. The Puritans-largely silenced during Elizabeth's reign-began again to assert political influence and call for reformation to both the state and the church. This is the context in which Shakespeare wrote Othello and Measure for Measure. In both plays, the role of the government in Cyprus or Vienna hinges upon the passions of a single authority figure. Both Angelo and Othello cause political unrest because they mismanage sexuality. In the case of Othello, his unfounded sexual jealousy leads to the death of Desdemona, Emilia, and himself. In Measure for Measure, Angelo's unbending literal interpretation of law threatens the life of Claudio, and his newly awakened lust threatens the virtue of Isabella. Both Othello and Angelo, through their self-government and sexual management, put those around them at risk. My study uses the techniques of New Historicism to contextualize Othello and Measure for Measure in terms of both sexuality and religion. I intentionally avoid the typical Marxist perspective of New Historicism and instead focus on religion as itself an organizing and motivational principle. This thesis examines these two plays together because of their chronological synchronicity and their thematic unity. Looking at Othello and Measure for Measure together provides a somber look at the attitudes toward sexual transgression and the role of the church in 1604. The quandaries raised in Othello are highlighted in Measure for Measure, but also resolved. Through the Duke's labors as the church-masquerading state, Measure for Measure discovers societal stability through the institutional church.

The aim of this paper is to explore the theme of history in Husserl’s phenomenology, a theme to which he had a complex relation. While in his programmatic text, Philosophie als strenge Wissenschaft, he opposed himself to the so-called “historicism” of some of his contemporaries, claiming that it leads to relativism, he later in his career sought to incorporate historical reflections into the core of the phenomenological method. The challenge, then, is to understand, or perhaps to reconcile, the tension between Husserl’s early anti-historicism and his later turn toward history and historical reflections. By highlighting some of the key points in the development of his phenomenology, such as the distinction between static and genetic analysis, this tension is shown to be nothing but apparent. By expanding the scope of his notion of essences to also include motivations, origins, and ideals, the later Husserl gives to phenomenology a fundamentally historical and temporal dimension. A central component in this development, it is argued, is the notion of sense-reflection (Besinnung), connecting phenomenology both to historical and ethical concerns. In later texts such as Die Krisis der europäischen Wissenschaften, sense-reflection is used in a variety of contexts: as indicating the retrieval of historically lost meaning (such as that within the sciences); as indicating the Socratic ethos of self-knowledge (Selbstbesinnung); and lastly, as indicating the process of performing the phenomenological reduction. Ultimately, according to Husserl, only by engaging in historical sense-reflections can phenomenology become a truly rigorous science, seeking to clarify the meaning of science as an intersubjective project aiming toward the realization of human rationality and reason.

Ce projet de recherche met en dialogue Antonio Gramsci et Michel Foucault autour du thème du Pouvoir. Les deux philosophes sont arrivés, chacun à leur manière et selon leur parcours spécifique, à méditer la tendance du pouvoir – entendu comme instrument polyvalent de coercition – à pénétrer presque toutes les sphères de l'existence humaine. Mon approche historique et comparatiste permettra de creuser la pensée humaniste du second Gramsci et de montrer comment lui et Foucault retravaillent les thèses de Machiavel, en focalisant sur l'exercice de la force active à des fins de consolidation du pouvoir et ce, au-delà des limites de la politique ordinaire ou quotidienne. Si, depuis la Révolution française, les rapports de force sont « traduits » en termes idéologiques, reste qu'il faut comprendre la manière historique dont l'idéologie forme les imaginaires sociaux. Gramsci s'intéressait, comme Georges Sorel avant lui, aux effets institutionnels (civiques surtout) sur les mentalités dites populaires. Foucault, à son tour, étudie le processus de subjectivation selon les grandes structures socio-économiques et selon « l'éthos pastoral », qu’il identifie comme le paradigme de la « gouvernementalité ». Les questions soulevées par les auteurs, et la lecture qui en sera faite, nous permettront de comprendre comment se construit le consensus et surtout comment sont mises en œuvre les pratiques discriminatoires qui permettent de consolider un certain type de consensus. Ce projet veut donc servir d’outil d'interprétation des dynamiques politico-économiques de notre temps. Gramsci et Foucault concourent en ce sens à tirer au clair le fonctionnement de l'idéologie et de la vérité dans la consolidation des rapports de force, et donc dans la perpétuation du Pouvoir. / This research project puts Antonio Gramsci and Michel Foucault in dialogue around the theme of Power. Each in his way, these philosophers pondered the significant tendency of power to penetrate, as a versatile instrument of coercion, into almost all spheres of human existence. My approach delves into the humanist thought of the second Gramsci and shows how he (and Foucault) reworks Machiavelli's theses, focusing on the exercise of active force for the purpose of power consolidation and this, beyond the limits of ‘everyday’ politics. If power relations, since the French Revolution, have been “translated” into ideological language, it remains necessary to understand historically how ideology shapes social imaginaries. Like Georges Sorel before him, Gramsci was interested in the institutional (notably, civic) effects on so-called popular mentalities. Foucault, in his turn, studied the process of subjectivation according to vast socio-economic structures and to the evolution of the “pastoral ethos”, a paradigm of “governmentality”. The questions raised by the authors, and the reading of them here, will allow us to understand how consensus is constructed and how practices of discrimination are implemented, allowing a certain type of consensus to be consolidated. This project, therefore, aims to provide a tool for interpreting the political and economic dynamics of our time. In that sense, Gramsci and Foucault can be used to show how ideology and truth function in the consolidation of power relationships, and thus in the perpetuation of Power itself.

No description available.