Search results for ""Author Jean-Marie Durand""

In April 2010, scholars of Assyriology and Biblical Studies at the Collège de France, Paris, gathered for a colloquium to discuss the archaeological and textual evidence for the ways in which ancient Near Eastern societies dealt with their dead. How did these societies view the "afterlife", and what kind of relationship did they have with those who lived before them?For the cuneiform documentation, this raises, for example, the question of how the living commemorated their deceased, particularly by means of the kispum funerary rite whose specific practice and meaning remain to be explored. The distance between the two traditions most strongly represented at this colloquium, the Akkadian and the biblical tradition, is clearly reflected in the repugnance displayed by normative Hebrew sources towards the mortal remains of the body. In Hebrew thought, as it is presented in some biblical texts, death and the deceased are associated with the idea of impurity, while other texts reveal the desire and attempt to establish contact with the world of the dead. Furthermore, Hebrew sources exhibit a biased discourse on traditions relevant to the death and burial of their kings.Certain traditions, of both cuneiform and biblical origin, bear testimony to the idea that human remains, particularly the bones, can retain remnants of the living being after death.The fascinating topic of necromancy, the possibility of communicating with the deceased, is represented here in biblical and Ugaritic sources which also attest the practice of burying the dead in residential houses.

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As a philosopher and a novelist, Tristan Garcia inhabits two worlds, metaphysics and literary fiction, like an amphibious creature moving between the land and the sea, breathing in both air and water. He is drawn to metaphysics because, as he puts it, metaphysics is the edge of the abyss of thought, the unstable frontier of indeterminacy where thinking is no longer constrained by the principles of logic or the law of non-contradiction. Metaphysics seeks to describe the world from outside one’s own point of view. It aims at an ecstatic reconstruction of what keeps us locked up in our conditions, in our time and place, here among the living, with our subjectivities and within our situations. It gives us an idea of all constraints from a point of view that posits the possible absence of the constraint of having a point of view. The ambition of this slender book – which is at the same time a concise introduction to Garcia’s work and thought – is to help us grasp and transform the conditions of our existence by paying equal attention to what is ending and what is just beginning, to the dusk and to the dawn. Until we cannot hold our breath any longer.

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The international conference organized by the College of France on April 6-7, 2009, addressed a major theme within Near Eastern ideology: the "Young Hero." Different from those "elders" who were given power by traditionalistic Near Eastern civilizations and whose anthroponymy proudly underlined their eldership, the young hero nonetheless succeeds most of the time, or at least for a time, through his personal gifts as much as the inconstancy of gods who do not always favor the same men. Illustrations are multiform. We chose to show that the theme's typology matched precise criteria within time periods. Over a millennium and a half, each of the different ways of apprehending this figure corresponds to a specific attestation type. It was not possible, even at a regional level, to establish a complete "young hero" typology. Various forms pertaining to romanced myth, most often through epic form, but also to historical discourse, have been studied by our contributors.After a general introduction, the first part deals with historical and literary accounts of the young hero's (un)successful rise to kingship: Samsî-Ãrah, Idrimi, David, Saul and Esarhaddon. The authors then find a section on non-royal young heroes yet depicted by means of royal categories: Samson, Moses and Daniel. Two contributions on Athaliah and Esther deal with the theme of feminine heroism, and a last section focuses on heroic friendships: GilgameÅ and Enkidu, David and Jonathan, Achilles and Patroclus.

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As a philosopher and a novelist, Tristan Garcia inhabits two worlds, metaphysics and literary fiction, like an amphibious creature moving between the land and the sea, breathing in both air and water. He is drawn to metaphysics because, as he puts it, metaphysics is the edge of the abyss of thought, the unstable frontier of indeterminacy where thinking is no longer constrained by the principles of logic or the law of non-contradiction. Metaphysics seeks to describe the world from outside one’s own point of view. It aims at an ecstatic reconstruction of what keeps us locked up in our conditions, in our time and place, here among the living, with our subjectivities and within our situations. It gives us an idea of all constraints from a point of view that posits the possible absence of the constraint of having a point of view. The ambition of this slender book – which is at the same time a concise introduction to Garcia’s work and thought – is to help us grasp and transform the conditions of our existence by paying equal attention to what is ending and what is just beginning, to the dusk and to the dawn. Until we cannot hold our breath any longer.

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