Dreams have a privileged status among all the images. They do not depend on our will and appear to give evidence of the spontaneous eruption in our life of a power that is beyond us. Their most remarkable characteristic is that they make us believe they contain a mystery, that they open a door onto the reverse side of things, revealing to us an enigma to which we must find the key. The interpretations of dreams may differ, but everyone concedes that they have a power of transcendence with regard to the world of the wake. It is through dreams that the divine power has most frequently chosen to appear to its elected. The signs of dreams (if not of the other images of night, the stars) were considered when the future was to be foretold. But dreams, certainly also, restore to us a past long since effaced from our memory, dreams betray our most secret desires, ignored even by our conscience, and it is hence on dreams that we rely to discover the hidden motivations of our aberrant behaviour. In dreams things speak to us from a distance, people absent or even dead communicate with us; how many friends and lovers, whom life has separated, find each other every night and experience what Gérard de Nerval calls a second life? We pronounce the word “dream” when we want to describe an event that has astonished us, delighted us, and fulfilled us beyond what we would have dared to hope.

The symbol is a form composed by man more unconsciously than consciously. With primitive peoples, this form seems to have been born from the desire to penetrate to the kernel of supernatural or magical power by means of a concise formula, all-inclusive or ambiguous, particularly through a magic incantation or a song. This penetration, however, is only possible if one understands the inner structure of such a power. According to primitive belief, the true seat of this power is not found in the world of our direct experience but in a magical area in which it rests in a completely abstract, latent state. In this condition it has not yet spread out into various shapes which it has to assume for concrete manifestation but appears completely homogeneous and solid. Moreover, the innermost substance (kernel) of this power is always organized antinomically. From this fundamental tendency to include opposites in a dualistic way, thunderstorms for example emerge as a dual combination of fire and water. Also dualistic is the “fiery stream of volcano and smithy,” the light-dark, hermaphroditism, etc. Psychologically, the original dual event is expressed in the fusion of love and hatred or the combination of a lust for power with inferiority.

In contemporary African cultures women are going beyond domestic areas and getting involved in public affairs. They are acting in the social sphere. They are taking an active part in campaigns during the election process. Although in contemporary Africa these new ways of participating in public affairs are still closely associated with the religious domain, women are a major factor of social change in today's Africa.

For a good while, men of high intelligence have been extolling a strictly descriptive phenomenological theory of art, concerned with the work of art itself and with its effect upon the spectator or the audience. Moreover, theories exist which tend in this direction, but sometimes they are still contaminated with the methods of psychological aesthetics, and sometimes they devote too much effort to combating those methods and to defining their own theory rather than putting it to the test of application.

The work of art is an object that exists solely for the human understanding, but which exists for it objectively—that is to say, outside or beyond individual variations of perception. Anyone who wishes to achieve results in this field—provisional results, to be sure, but at least concrete and capable of being verified or corrected—must describe both the common denominators and the distinctive traits of such objects.

In a sense it is easier to talk about human unity in the biological sciences than from the perspective of the human and social sciences, especially as these have developed over the last thirty years. If paleontology, biology and neurology make it possible to emphasize physical constants evident for the entire human race, to the contrary it seems impossible to find similar unity in the social systems and the cultural values that define the radical identity of a group, a community or a nation. Apartheid, racism, intolerance and prejudices everywhere express differences that most frequently derive from social imagination but that function no less strongly as determining forces for human cultural production and historical conduct.

This article represents a programmatic attempt to relate the subject of aesthetics to the wider scope of issues concerning the nature of the human mind. In addition to a criticism of the aesthetics’ isolationism, it provides an outline of orthodox cognitivism and also of the more recent philosophy of embodiment, and sees the latter as a natural context for aesthetic concerns. The author argues that not only may the results of brain research be instructive for a more profound understanding of beauty but also that the subtlety and richness of aesthetic studies can be insightful for empirical studies of the neural system. That beauty is not reducible to brain processes does not mean that a possible lesson from neuroscience has no explanatory value for aesthetics; at the same time the article affirms the stand that the aesthetic, being one of the most profound traits of the human mind, cannot be fully captured in empiricist terms. What is needed is a multidisciplinary exchange that requires a shift from the comfort of the traditional views and an opening that might prove potent for the aesthetics of the present times which should not deprive itself of an ambition to participate in deciphering the ‘mysteries’ of the mind, cognition, and action.

It is often said that religious disaffection is largely the result, not so much of intellectual doubts, as of the experiential sense of the world's suffering and injustice. Much of the Enlightenment polemic revolved around the problem of the theodicy and, according to a survey of the attitudes of German proletarians in 1906, the majority's religious disbelief appeared to stem from the failure of religious systems to cope adequately with the “‘injustice’ of the order of the world.”

In the same essay, however, Weber distinguishes three radical attempts to answer the problems posed by the world's imperfections. These, he claimed, “...give rationally satisfying answers for the basis of the incongruity between destiny and merit, the Indian doctrine of Kharma, Zoroastrian dualism, the predestination decree of the deus absconditus. These solutions are rationally closed; in pure form, they are found only as exceptions.”

This is how Montaigne explains the principles which he followed in his role as mayor, a statement whose very expression casts all the light needed on the nature of what has been called Montaigne's conservatism. In Montaigne's political language, to conserve is defined by its opposition to innovate. Conservation receives its lexical “value” from its contrasting relation with innovation and with “novelties.” This semantic pair, common in sixteenth-century French and in most European languages, is profoundly different from the present system. In today's language, the concept of conservatism (itself of recent formation) is defined principally in terms of the notion of progress or (because of the symmetry of the suffixes) of progressionism, in the sense which it had taken on during the 18th century, but the antonym innovation has not ceased contributing to the “value” of conservation. Today's semantic system cannot avoid attributing to “conservatism” an essentially antithetic function in reference to historic “progress,” or to theories of progress in which innovation is generally seen in a favorable light.

Degradation has been associated with earning a livelihood in the arts since at least Plato, who showed disdain for the sophists who taught rhetorics for money. Aristotle with his concept energeia—which he designated as all activities that do not pursue an end but exhaust their full meanings in the performance itself—infused into western tradition the idea that only what we do for its own sake is noble. The lucre-versus-glory conflict pervades all writings on art from Leonardo and Vasari to the 19th century idea of the “pot au feu” and “making concessions” to the public. Only to paint for glory and immortality is noble, to submit to the whims of a patron is treason to art itself. These attitudes are rejected by many contemporary artists as anachronistic and sentimental snobbishness. Many artists, on the other hand, consider them viable. For them, living up to these ideals and subsisting at the same time is a dilemma. Patronage has virtually disappeared and the public purchases paintings from the well-established artists. Many resolve their dilemma by entering commercial or, as many prefer to call it, advertising art because there is a large and increasing demand for their skills. These circumstances, together with the historical sentiments referred to, led me to ask the following questions: What social-psychological conflicts do artists experience when they enter advertising art? What changes do they undergo in their identity as they mature as commercial or advertising artists? And what are the implications of working in advertising art for the artist, his art and for the mass society of which he and his work are a part? These questions formed the basis of an empirical study of 53 commercial artists who were living in Chicago. Part of that study is described in this paper.

The adverse report of the Academy of Sciences, published in 1784, failed to put an end to the proselytism of Mesmer's early followers, nor did it scale down their ambitions to gain scientific recognition. The allure of mystery, the taste for wonders and the call of the unknown prevailed, and throughout that century numerous clashes occurred between the scientific establishment and those demanding its recognition. Their demand was founded not so much on a theoretical construct as on people's personal experiences as actors or witnesses, which were perceived to be true simply because they were nearly always profoundly disturbing. The fact is that, despite the observations of scientists such as Faraday, anyone could put questions to an ecstatic in a state of trance, have a medium summon the dead, or communicate with the “other world” by table-turning. Insofar as it rejected the validity of the most commonly accepted “research programmes”, the challenge to the institutions that were the guarantors of received knowledge was a major one.

In the contemporary Moslem-Arab societies, does the function of the intellectual recall that of the classic scholar, at once counsellor of the great people, honor of the city or of the village, and regulator, through the culture, through judicial consultation or through the education, of the social life? Any analogy too greatly stressed would be hazardous. After having sketched the constitutive movement of the Moslem civilization and its present state, we may then attempt to appraise the situation of the intellectual between the power and the cultural system.

The coming year introduces a notable name for commemoration-Simon Bolivar. Since his birth only two centuries have elapsed, it is true. Yet I propose to go back two millennia or more, to Rome: imperial Republic and world empire.

The past is too much with us, so it may be objected anywhere, and not least in the New World. Why bring up “portions and parcels of the dreadful past” (I adopt the phrase of an English poet)? The lessons of history, it will pertinently be observed, are either obvious or fallacious. That maxim need not deter rational enquiry. The experience of antiquity offers valid comparisons, if and when the social and political setting is similar. On that count, human history becomes real, alive, intelligible.

In recent years empiricism has been under persistent attack, and serious questions have been raised about the ability of empiricism to provide the basis for a viable philosophy of science. The attack has been sufficiently vigorous, and in some quarters sufficiently successful, that many now maintain that empiricism is dead. My aim in this paper is to argue that, rather than being ready for embalmment and emplacement in the museum of philosophic oddities, empiricism is very much alive, and the central thesis of empiricism remains the cornerstone for any viable philosophy of science. This is not to say that the recent attacks on empiricism have been without a point, rather, they have put anyone who would defend empiricism in the position of having to rethink many datails of the empiricist viewpoint. But it is the details, the way in which empiricism has been elaborated by its proponents, not the central empiricist insight, that must be reconsidered.

Much has been written and said about music's time, much less— at least in recent epochs—about time's music. Today this most subtle, yet most powerful form of music finds fewer and fewer listeners. It has become, in fact, harder and harder to listen to. The “congruent melodies,” i.e. “the rhythms of times which were given to us to alleviate our labors” (as the 13th-century music theorist had put it) have long since been silenced and drowned by subsonic noises.* In its organization of time, Western civilization has, to an appallingly large extent, replaced rhythmic aliveness with abstract measures, reducing it to a “functional mechanism” (Baudrillard 1974). The main tools by which these measures are set, the clock as we know it and the modern calendar, are obviously, taken as such, remarkable achievements, but in their impact on our lives they are not so much companions enabling us to be “in harmony with things at the right moment” (see the Chinese shih, Larre 1976) as they are hostile guardians “watching our steps.”

What is man? “The feather of an angel was brought and tied to a donkey's tail that the donkey perhaps might turn into an angel”.

Thus writes the greatest of all Persian-writing mystical poets of Islam, Maulânâ Jalâladdân Rûmî (1207-1273) in his conversations, Fîhi mâ fîhi, when pointing to the mystery of man's existence : man is able to attain a rank superior to that of the angels (who have no free will and are eternally good) provided he develops his God-given faculties of reason and love; but he can sink lower than a beast if he neglects his spiritual powers and falls a prey to sensual pleasures and crimes owing to the misuse of his rational faculties.

In this age of “free-sex”, gurus, Hare-Krishna chanters and transcendental meditation teachers J. Кrisimamurti stands almost alone as a non-guru of outstanding grandeur. His lecture tours in major centers of the world remind one of the historical Buddha who reversed the Upanishadic tradition of teaching in a forest hermitage to a select few by travelling on foot from village to village in North-Eastern India to carry his message of love, compassion and understanding to the masses regardless of caste, color or sex. But historical comparisons are never complete. Whereas the Buddha used the local dialect, adapted his message to the intellectual level of his audience and made free use of stories and parables, Krishna-multi lectures in the English language in his intense analytic style to rapt audiences without any such aid. No wonder the Buddha's appeal and impact historically has been infinitely wider than that of Krishnamurti. And yet, both eschewed dogma, tradition and metaphysical subtleties, and deliberately refused to offer any sugar-coated pills and panaceas for overcoming the pervasive human condition of suffering. They endeavoured to make people “see” and “understand” the human condition in an act of total awareness so as to take them to the very brink of that “creative emptiness”, ultimate freedom and radical change which alone is conducive to the attainment of transcendent peace. In other words, the doctrine of Krishnamurti as that of the Buddha is not for the weak and effeminate who need “crutches” of all kinds but for those who have the courage to help themselves by an act of understanding the way things are without being entangled in theories and conceptual puzzles. It is the intention of this paper to analyze, understand and critically evaluate Krishamurti's concepts of self, action and freedom.

In recent years, the relationships between systems of symbolic representations and cities have given rise to an often rich and stimulating consideration among various specialists in human sciences, namely, historians, anthropologists, semiologists and sociologists, among others. Urban conglomerates can no longer be conceived as simple assemblages of more or less functional constructions. The city is as much a mental concept as it is a physical reality. It is made up of images that give it a meaning. It does not exist independently of the sum of subjective interpretations that are continually made by its inhabitants. Our Western perception of the city may be influenced by romanesque literature or the memory of a painting, in other words, by imaginary worlds. It varies according to individual memory: each of us is attached to the different urban spaces of his souvenirs, emotions arising from family history or the duration of a lifetime. These personal projections are all the more important because they command a certain number of daily actions and furnish a framework of orientation to every citizen. They contribute to giving a moral quality to urban space and transform physical objects into concepts, into more or less determined signs.

The earth, the abode of the only form of intelligent life in the universe of which we are aware, is a minor member of a system of nine planets, 40 or so moons and about 100 billion asteroids orbiting around the Sun, an average-size member of the 100-billion-star community making up our galaxy, the Milky Way. It is the third planet to the Sun, which it orbits, following an almost circular elliptical path maintaining an average distance of 1.5×108 km, with the longest and the shortest radii now being 1.53×108 km and 1.47×10 km respectively (Fig. 1). This orbit is subject to changes in its “eccentricity” (i.e., in how much it deviates from a circle) with periods of 105 and 4×10 years5 years (Fig. 2A). In addition, the elliptical orbit itself slowly rotates as shown in Fig. 2B, in what we call the precession.