К оригинальной истории Третьего рейха

The article by E. Bloch raises the question of how the intellectual heritage of the distant past is appropriated by modern political movements. The author draws attention to the actualization of ancient folk dreams at the beginning of the twentieth century. He focuses on the reception of medieval religious teachings by the mass consciousness of Germans during the period of the birth of Nazism in Germany in the 1920s — 1930s. The way in which the concepts of medieval consciousness „leader“ and „Third Reich“ were introduced into the consciousness of contemporaries, Bloch qualifies as „deception“, distortion of their original meaning, transformation of meanings into opposite ones. The philosopher shows that the term „Third Reich“ has a long, truly revolutionary history, since in the original the Third Reich denoted the socio-revolutionary ideal dream of Christian heresy: the dream of the Third Gospel and the world corresponding to it. Bloch examines the influence of chiliasm on many historical revolutionary movements. Modern socialism, according to Bloch, is an attempt to realize the dreams of the medieval masses without mystical coloring. Then, the article traces in detail the evolution of the concept of „liberator of the oppressed“, „leader“ from the most ancient times; it also analyzes book texts and oral legends. The author emphasizes the constant motif of the „resurrected“ or „awakened“ Kaiser-liberator and his place in the mass consciousness. The conclusion is made about how the use of this image helped the Nazis in establishing their popularity. The article pays special attention to the life and ideas of Abbot Joachim Florsky (XII century) as an iconic figure of the socio-chiliastic turn. Bloch is interested in Florsky in connection with another important motif of the Middle Ages, which was actualized by Nazism: „this world’s Gospel“. Bloch analyzes the predecessors of Florsky’s teaching — Eriugen and the Saint Victorians. He proves that in Florsky’s interpretation, the mystical movement of the soul along the steps was projected onto the entire process of the movement of humanity, its history. He „put the earth under strict Christian requirements“, which should be implemented in the last, third stage. Further, Bloch traces the development of the idea of the trinity of stages of the historical movement from the Old Testament eschatological motives, Augustine, through the German Enlightenment and Romanticism up to the present (Fyodor Dostoevsky, Henrik Ibsen and others). Bloch concludes that „the neglect of the old ways and forms does not go unpunished“. The main result of the study can be understood as an indication that the old forms of mass dreams can be used by modern political forces with completely different goals and effects.В статье Э. Блоха ставится вопрос о том, как присваивается интеллектуальное наследие далекого прошлого современными политическими движениями. Он обращает внимание на актуализацию древних народных мечтаний в начале ХХ века. Конкретно он рассматривает рецепцию средневековых религиозных учений массовым сознанием немцев в период зарождения нацизма в Германии 1920-х — 1930-х годов. Способ, которым внедрялись такие концепты средневекового сознания, как «вождь» и «третий рейх» в сознание современников, Блох квалифицирует как «обман», как искажение их первоначального смысла, превращение значений в противоположные. Философ показывает, что термин «Третий рейх» имеет давнюю историю, подлинно революционную, так как в оригинале «Третий рейх» обозначал социально-революционную идеальную мечту христианского еретичества: мечту о Третьем Евангелии и соответствующем ему мире. Блох рассматривает влияние хилиазма на многие исторические революционные движения. Современный социализм, по Блоху, является попыткой воплощения мечты средневековых народных масс, но без мистической окраски. В статье подробно прослеживается эволюция концепта «освободителя угнетенных», «вождя» с самых древних времен, анализируются книжные тексты и устные легенды. Подчеркивается постоянный мотив «воскресшего» или «проснувшегося» кайзера-освободителя и его укорененность в массовом сознании. Делается вывод о том, как помогало нацистам использование этого образа в установлении их популярности. Особое внимание уделяется жизни и идеям аббата Иоахима Флорского (XII век) как знаковой фигуре социально-хилиастического поворота. Флорский интересует Блоха в связи с другим важным мотивом Средневековья, актуализированным нацизмом: «посюсторонним Евангелием». Блох анализирует предшественников учения Флорского — Эриугену и сен-викторианцев — и доказывает, что в трактовке Флорского мистическое движение души по ступеням было спроецировано на весь процесс движения человечества, его историю. Он «поставил землю под строгие христианские требования», которые должны быть реализованы в последней, третьей стадии. Далее Блох прослеживает развитие идеи троичности стадий исторического движения от ветхозаветных эсхатологических мотивов, Августина, через немецкое Просвещение и романтизм вплоть до современности (Достоевский, Ибсен и другие). В заключение Блох делает выводы, что «пренебрежение старыми путями и формами не остается безнаказанным». Основной итог исследования трактуется как указание на то, что старые формы массовых мечтаний могут быть использованы современными политическими силами совершенно с различными целями и эффектами

Phase-fluctuating 3D condensates in elongated traps

We find that in very elongated 3D trapped Bose gases, even at temperatures far below the BEC transition temperature Tc, the equilibrium state will be a 3D condensate with fluctuating phase (quasicondensate). At sufficiently low temperatures the phase fluctuations are suppressed and the quasicondensate turns into a true condensate. The presence of the phase fluctuations allows for extending thermometry of Bose-condensed gases well below those established in current experiments.Comment: 5 pages REVTeX, 3 figures, misprints correcte

Mach-Zehnder Bragg interferometer for a Bose-Einstein Condensate

We construct a Mach-Zehnder interferometer using Bose-Einstein condensed rubidium atoms and optical Bragg diffraction. In contrast to interferometers based on normal diffraction, where only a small percentage of the atoms contribute to the signal, our Bragg diffraction interferometer uses all the condensate atoms. The condensate coherence properties and high phase-space density result in an interference pattern of nearly 100% contrast. In principle, the enclosed area of the interferometer may be arbitrarily large, making it an ideal tool that could be used in the detection of vortices, or possibly even gravitational waves.Comment: 10 pages, 3 figures, Quantum Electronics and Laser Science Conference 1999, Postdeadline papers QPD12-

The four modes of thinking framed by utopian discursivity. Or why we need Utopia

This article stands for the idea that Thomas More was a founder of discursivity. Based on this notion (which Michel Foucault applied to Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud), the article examines the four modes of thinking prospective thinking, critical thinking, holistic thinking and creative thinking that are framed by utopian discursivity. Ultimately, the description of these modes of thinking aim to ground the authors conviction that, because of the way they organise our reflection on the possibilities for the development of our society, they are the tools we need to construct a better future

The Code of Protest. Images of Peace in the West German Peace Movements, 1945-1990

The article examines posters produced by the peace movements in the Federal Republic of Germany during the ColdWar, with an analytical focus on the transformation of the iconography of peace in modernity. Was it possible to develop an independent, positive depiction of peace in the context of protests for peace and disarmament? Despite its name, the pictorial selfrepresentation of the campaign ‘Fight against Nuclear Death’ in the late 1950s did not draw on the theme of pending nuclear mass death. The large-scale protest movement in the 1980s against NATO’s 1979 ‘double-track’ decision contrasted female peacefulness with masculine aggression in an emotionally charged pictorial symbolism. At the same time this symbolism marked a break with the pacifist iconographic tradition that had focused on the victims of war. Instead, the movement presented itself with images of demonstrating crowds, as an anticipation of its peaceful ends. Drawing on the concept of asymmetrical communicative ‘codes’ that has been developed in sociological systems theory, the article argues that the iconography of peace in peace movement posters could not develop a genuinely positive vision of peace, since the code of protest can articulate the designation value ‘peace’ only in conjunction with the rejection value ‘war’

Optical Bragg, atom Bragg and cavity QED detections of quantum phases and excitation spectra of ultracold atoms in bipartite and frustrated optical lattices

Ultracold atoms loaded on optical lattices can provide unprecedented experimental systems for the quantum simulations and manipulations of many quantum phases and quantum phase transitions between these phases. However, so far, how to detect these quantum phases and phase transitions effectively remains an outstanding challenge. In this paper, we will develop a systematic and unified theory of using the optical Bragg scattering, atomic Bragg scattering or cavity QED to detect the ground state and the excitation spectrum of many quantum phases of interacting bosons loaded in bipartite and frustrated optical lattices. We show that the two photon Raman transition processes in the three detection methods not only couple to the density order parameter, but also the {\sl valence bond order} parameter due to the hopping of the bosons on the lattice. This valence bond order coupling is very sensitive to any superfluid order or any Valence bond (VB) order in the quantum phases to be probed. These quantum phases include not only the well known superfluid and Mott insulating phases, but also other important phases such as various kinds of charge density waves (CDW), valence bond solids (VBS), CDW-VBS phases with both CDW and VBS orders unique to frustrated lattices, and also various kinds of supersolids. The physical measurable quantities of the three experiments are the light scattering cross sections, the atom scattered clouds and the cavity leaking photons respectively. We analyze respectively the experimental conditions of the three detection methods to probe these various quantum phases and their corresponding excitation spectra. We also address the effects of a finite temperature and a harmonic trap.Comment: REVTEX4-1, 32 pages, 16.eps figures, to Appear in Annals of Physic

Designing spin-1 lattice models using polar molecules

We describe how to design a large class of always on spin-1 interactions between polar molecules trapped in an optical lattice. The spin degrees of freedom correspond to the hyperfine levels of a ro-vibrational ground state molecule. Interactions are induced using a microwave field to mix ground states in one hyperfine manifold with the spin entangled dipole-dipole coupled excited states. Using multiple fields anistropic models in one, two, or three dimensions, can be built with tunable spatial range. An illustrative example in one dimension is the generalized Haldane model, which at a specific parameter has a gapped valence bond solid ground state. The interaction strengths are large compared to decoherence rates and should allow for probing the rich phase structure of strongly correlated systems, including dimerized and gapped phases.Comment: 24 pages, 5 figure