One of the minor tragedies of the mid-twentieth-century American hegemony is that we listen to Glenn Gould, rather than to the European women who outshine him - Maria Tipo, and, here, the shimmering Marcelle Meyer. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=shgkSppX3yI
Author: David Lloyd Dusenbury
Postdoctoral fellow at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Author of The Space of Time (2014), Platonic Legislations (2017), and The Innocence of Pontius Pilate (2020). Regular contributor to the Times Literary Supplement, Los Angeles Review of Books, etc.
The circulation of the blood in late antiquity: Nemesius of Emesa
Was the circulation of the blood discovered by William Harvey in the 17th century? Probably. But several 17th-century humanists thought it was described rather well by a 4th-century Syrian bishop. See the opening paragraphs of my article in the new issue of Early Science and Medicine, "The Government of the Body".
The Innocence of Pontius Pilate: “Fascinating”
Delighted that John Milbank finds The Innocence of Pontius Pilate to be "a fascinating treatment of how interpretations of the trial of Jesus have greatly informed Western understandings of law, of religion and of the secular".
The Innocence of Pontius Pilate: “Brims with erudition”
The first review of my next book is in. According to an eminent legal historian, it is "an original, compelling contribution that brims with erudition. A work of real sweep and ambition." Gratifying to hear!
In case we’ve forgotten –
"The world was quite old in Homer's times, and the East quite cultured." - Claude Fleury, Les Mœurs des Israélites (Paris, 1681). Cit. G. G. Stroumsa, A New Science: The Discovery of Religion in the Age of Reason (Cambridge, Mass. 2010), 56.
“They differ in no way from us ordinary mortals”
A young African philosopher, Synesius of Cyrene (died ca 414), planning a trip to Athens, & complaining to his brother about how insufferable provincials are when they come back from Athens: "They differ in no way from us ordinary mortals. They do not understand Aristotle and Plato better than we, but nevertheless they go about… Continue reading “They differ in no way from us ordinary mortals”
The only way
"The only way to make a reasonably comfortable home for ourselves on this earth, is to humbly include the absurd in our calculations." - Friedrich Dürrenmatt, The Pledge (1958), ch. 28
“Claustropolis or Cosmopolis?”
"Claustropolis or Cosmopolis? A society of enforced seclusion or a society of forcible control? Actually, the dilemma itself seems illusory, with the temporal compression of instantaneity and the ubiquity of the age of the information revolution." - Paul Virilio, The Original Accident (Cambridge, 2007), 68 (text compressed)
A rather poetic definition of wind
"Wind is a rush of air which changes its name as it changes place." - Mansur, aka John of Damascus, De Fide Orthodoxa II 8
“Yet they make predictions”
This has a weirdly contemporary feel. "Of the future both the angels & demons are alike ignorant; yet they make predictions." - Mansur, aka John of Damascus, De Fide Orthodoxa II 4
