Destí i història (Conferència del cercle «Germania». Primavera de 1862)

Si poguéssim contemplar amb una mirada lliure i sense prejudicis la doctrina cristiana i la història de l’església, ens veuríem obligats a expressar algunes opinions oposades a les idees generals. Però, atès que des dels primers dies de vida estem sotmesos al jou del costum i dels prejudicis, dificultats en el nostre desenvolupament natural i condicionats en la formació del nostre temperament per les impressions de la nostra infantesa, creiem que hem de considerar gairebé com un delicte el fet d’escollir un punt de vista més lliure, que ens permetés emetre un veredicte imparcial i adequat al nostre temps sobre la religió i el cristianisme. Un intent com aquest no és l’obra d’algunes setmanes, sinó l’obra d’una vida. Ja que, com es podria destruir l’autoritat de dos mil·lennis, el fiançament dels homes més ingeniosos de tots els temps, mitjançant els resultats de cabòries juvenils, com podria un sobreposar-se mitjançant fantasies i idees immadures a tots els dolors i tot allò beneït pel progrés d’una religió profundament arrelada en la història del món

Einstein on the beach: A study in temporality

This is an Author's Accepted Manuscript of an article published in Performance Research, 17(5), 34 - 40, 2012, copyright @ Taylor & Francis, available online at: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/13528165.2012.728438.In this paper I seek to examine and analyse the sense of duration induced by performances of Einstein on the Beach, and the entailed sense of time which its internal structure creates. I initially sketch out the stylistic context and artistic intentions of this work's creators, Glass and Wilson, and I briefly describe the process of its creation. Certain features of this process indicate how the work may be interpreted. Having cited the creators' thoughts on structure and temporality, I address directly aspects of Einstein's temporal effects, comparing it to works of similar lengths. I give the briefest synopsis of its staging and motifs. I then outline three kinds of devices which seem to inform our temporal sense of this work as spectators. In the final section I invoke two ideas which serve as analogies to help characterise this work's overall effect on us: Heidegger's notion of the ‘hermeneutic circle’ and, more speculatively, Nietzsche's ‘theory’ of Eternal Recurrence

Civility, Enlightenment, and Society: Conceptual Confusions and Kantian Remedies

Originally published in American Political Science Review, http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayJournal?jid=PSR. Copyright American Political Science Association

Nietzsche on Film

This is the final version of the article. Available from Edinburgh University Press via the DOI in this record.This article tracks the many appearances of Friedrich Nietzsche throughout the history of cinema. It asks how cinema can do Nietzschean philosophy in ways that are unique to the medium. It also asks why the cinematic medium might be so pertinent to Nietzschean philosophy. Adhering to the implicit premise that, as Jacques Derrida once put it, ‘there is no totality to Nietzsche's text, not even a fragmentary or aphoristic one,’ the essay's mode of argument avoids reductive totalization and instead comprises a playful sampling of variously Nietzschean manifestations across dissimilar films. It begins with an extended account of Baby Face, a 1933 drama from which the abundant references to Nietzsche were either altered or expunged ahead of theatrical release. It then maps some of the philosophical consistencies across two genres in which characters read Nietzsche with apparent frequency: the comedy and the thriller. While comedies and thrillers both treat Nietzsche and his readers with suspicion, and do so for perceptive historical reasons, the essay then asks what an affirmatively Nietzschean film might look like. It explores this possibility through a discussion of cinematic animation in general and then more specifically via several critically familiar films that self-consciously evolve their aesthetic through Nietzsche's philosophy. The essay concludes by affirming Béla Tarr's final film as one of the medium's greatest realizations of a Nietzschean film-philosophy. The Turin Horse, released in 2011, is exemplary because it takes Nietzsche as a narrative premise only to sublate that premise into a unique visual style

Així parlà Zaratustra. Fragments

El document forma part dels materials docents programats mitjançant l'ajut del Servei de Política Lingüística de la Universitat de ValènciaFragments d'Així parlà Zaratustra traduïts al catal

How We Became Authentic

This is a postprint (accepted manuscript) version of the article published in Ethos 37(1):148-53. The final version of the article can be found at http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1548-1352.2009.01034_1.x (login required to access content). The version made available in Digital Common was supplied by the author.Accepted Manuscriptye

Quantum Geometry and its Implications for Black Holes

General relativity successfully describes space-times at scales that we can observe and probe today, but it cannot be complete as a consequence of singularity theorems. For a long time there have been indications that quantum gravity will provide a more complete, non-singular extension which, however, was difficult to verify in the absence of a quantum theory of gravity. By now there are several candidates which show essential hints as to what a quantum theory of gravity may look like. In particular, loop quantum gravity is a non-perturbative formulation which is background independent, two properties which are essential close to a classical singularity with strong fields and a degenerate metric. In cosmological and black hole settings one can indeed see explicitly how classical singularities are removed by quantum geometry: there is a well-defined evolution all the way down to, and across, the smallest scales. As for black holes, their horizon dynamics can be studied showing characteristic modifications to the classical behavior. Conceptual and physical issues can also be addressed in this context, providing lessons for quantum gravity in general. Here, we conclude with some comments on the uniqueness issue often linked to quantum gravity in some form or another.Comment: 16 pages, Plenary talk at ``Einstein's Legacy in the New Millenium,'' Puri, India, December 200

Cryogenic Q-factor measurement of optical substrates for optimization of gravitational wave detectors

Future generations of gravitational wave interferometers are likely to be operated at cryogenic temperatures because one of the sensitivity limiting factors of the present generation is the thermal noise of end mirrors and beam splitters that occurs in the optical substrates as well as in the dielectric coatings. A possible method for minimizing thermal noise is cooling to cryogenic temperatures, maximizing the mechanical quality factor Q, and maximizing the eigenfrequencies of the substrate. We present experimental details of a new cryogenic apparatus that is suitable for the measurement of the temperature-dependent Q-factor of reflective, transmissive as well as nano-structured grating optics down to 5 K. In particular, the SQUID-based and the optical interferometric approaches to the measurement of the amplitude of vibrating test bodies are compared and the method of ring-down recording is described