Jean-Luc Nancy, a Romantic Philosopher?:on romance, love, and literature

This paper will, in its successive steps and movements, revolve around one single question, a question that might, at first sight, come across as somewhat irrelevant or even impertinent within the context of philosophical or academic discourse. How romantic is Jean-Luc Nancy? Or: is there a specifically Nancyan sense of romance? Notwithstanding these somewhat unscholarly formulations, I am increasingly convinced that the question of love, or indeed more specifically of romance, is the most intimate inspiration of Nancy’s work, the key unlocking all other keys. The theme of love has always played an important role in his work, from the early essay “Shattered Love” (“L’amour en éclats,” 1986) to his later works on the body and pleasure. In this paper, I will touch upon a number of these texts, but I will more particularly refer to two of Nancy’s more recent works, the yet untranslated book Sexistence from 2017 and Expectation: Philosophy, Literature (2018, published in French in 2015 as Demande: Littérature et philosophie). The question of romance, that is, the question of passionate interaction, of intrigue, of writing, of dramatization. This quite heterogeneous web of associations already implies a number of age-old philosophical issues: the relation between love and thinking; the relation between love and literature; and, subsequently, between philosophy and literature; the issue of the relation itself. The knot uniting these issues under the single heading of “romance” has been most firmly tied about two centuries ago, in the late eighteenth-century movement of early German, i.e., Jena, Romanticism, that significant moment in intellectual history where the barriers between philosophy and literature were broken down and where, quite generally put, the sense of the world was conceived of as a matter of romanticization. Although Nancy himself would be reluctant to call himself a Romantic philosopher in this historical sense of the word, this is exactly what I want to argue here: I want to show that Nancy’s philosophy of love – and by extension his philosophical thinking tout court – should be placed in the tradition of German Romanticism, rather than in that of, for instance, phenomenology, ontology, or philosophy proper. This claim is massive in its depth and scope and can impossibly be explored here in an exhaustive way. Instead, I will flesh out this perspective by advancing four successive hypotheses that enable to mark the contours of what I call Nancy’s romanticism. With this exploration, I hope to do three things at once: firstly, to underscore what I take to be the core or pulse of Nancy’s thinking: the issue of romance; secondly, to investigate to what extent this romantic pulse might be traced back to the Romantic tradition; and, thirdly, to emphasize why Nancy’s romantic thinking is relevant for us today

Kafka Shared between Blanchot and Sartre

Ever since their translation in the course of the 20th century, the works of Kafka have been widely appreciated by French intellectuals. Kafka's greatest admirers include Maurice Blanchot and Jean-Paul Sartre, both of whom consider his work an exemplary illustration of their own poetical-philosophical views. This is remarkable, because Blanchot's and Sartre's respective views are generally conceived of as opposites. Apparently, then, these two authors who are so divergent in their philosophical views and literary criticism, as well as in their own literary works, find themselves on the same page in their appreciation of Kafka. I will argue that this shared appreciation not only reveals some unexpected points of agreement between them, but also facilitates an interesting intellectual encounter between Blanchot and Sartre in the late 1940 s. It is, we will see, only on the basis of an agreement with regards to Kafka's work that their ways can part.</p

Risk assessment of thrombosis associated with central venous catheters

Venous thrombosis is a well-known complication of central vein catheters (CVCs), which may cause serious morbidity and may result in potentially lethal complications such as pulmonary embolism. In this thesis the general risk of CVC related thrombosis has been assessed, i.e., what is the overall risk of developing CVC related thrombosis? Which patients are prone to develop thrombosis with its associated morbidity? Are we able to predict this risk by routine surveillance in "high-risk" patients? Better knowledge of the incidence of CVC related thrombosis and identification of high-risk groups will assist clinicians in decision making about CVC use in the various patient-groups and in whom anticoagulant prophylaxis may be warranted. In summary, the a priori determination of common inherited and acquired risk factors may form a basis to guide (prophylactic) treatment decisions. Vulnerable patients may benefit the most, i.e. those who have a high risk of clinically manifest thrombosis, and who are at risk of hemorrhage, such as patients who undergo intensive chemotherapy. Besides, surveillance of these patients with screening by ultrasound, or alternatively surveillances cultures, may be useful to identify patients at high or low risk for clinically manifest CVC related thrombosis, and focused early intervention may be initiated.LEI Universiteit LeidenKlinische epidemiologi

MR imaging in cerebral amyloidoses : entering a new phase

The general aim of this thesis was to explore the possibility to detect changes related to amyloid deposition in vivo using ultra-high field MRI. The central finding of the work presented in this thesis is the cortical phase change on T2*-weighted sequences that we observed in AD patients using this novel ultra-high field imaging approach at 7T. It has been demonstrated that such phase measurements are a reliable indicator of iron content in the brain. It is known that amyloid depositions co-localize with iron accumulations. However, in autopsy material of AD patients, in addition to amyloid deposition, neurofibrillary tangles as well as tau deficiency were also found to co-localize with neuronal iron accumulation. In addition to iron, myelin and deoxy-hemoglobin can also contribute to phase changes. Although the exact origin of the observed phase changes in AD is not completely clear, these changes could have value for diagnostic purposes and as a biomarker.the Internationale Stichting Alzheimer Onderzoek (ISAO), Alzheimer Nederland (Amersfoort) and Philips Healthcare NetherlandsUBL - phd migration 201

Clinical patterns in Parkinson's disease

The clinical heterogeneity of Parkinson__s disease (PD) patients may reflect the existence of subtypes of the disease. PD subtypes have often been defined by a classification according to researcher-specified criteria, such as age-at-onset or predominant clinical motor features. The general objective of this thesis was to identify and characterize clinical subtypes in PD by a data-driven approach, based on a comprehensive assessment of all relevant PD domains. In order to obtain insight in the associations and coherence of impairments that are involved in the disease, we evaluated the contributions of impairment and disability domains to health-related quality of life in patients with PD. Subsequently, the data of the PROPARK cohort was used to study coherency patterns within the motor domain and in the spectrum of motor and nonmotor domains. In our study on subtypes, first, we systematically evaluated the result s of earlier studies that performed cluster analysis to identify subtypes in PD, after which we applied cluster analysis on data of the PROPARK cohort in order to identify subtypes of the disease.UBL - phd migration 201