Isaiah 14:4b–20 describes the denial of burial or the disinterment of a king who desires to become like a deity. השלכת מקברך in v. 19 has been understood to mean non-burial or disinterment of the king's remains from the tomb. However, the verb שלך in the context of a dead body is used elsewhere for the abandonment of a corpse.
Denial of the king's burial is specified as a punishment for the king who transgressed the worship of YHWH in the context of the conflict between the royalty and the prophets of YHWH (1 Kgs. 14:11–13; Jer. 22:18–19). The worship of the dead served to deify the dead. The language of vv.13–14 seems to describe the deification of the dead king since a tomb can be used as a place for the worship of the dead. This presupposes that the tomb is the base of the connection between the dead and the living. Therefore, this study adds a suggestion to the previous understanding. מן is a preposition to indicate the reason, and קברך indicates the reason of king's punishment, “your tomb”. We can see that קבר in this context denotes a place for worship of the dead.
This criticism of the worship of the dead is placed in a textual context (Isa. 13–14) which contrasts YHWH's people with foreigners. This would be considered a warning to their own king, taking the form of criticism of a foreign king.
Through these analyses, it becomes clear that the author(s) of 14:4b-20 well understood the importance of the tomb. That is, the claim that kings lose the possibility of being buried in tombs is based on the point that tombs were regarded as a place of the worship of the dead, and they used this point in their criticism.

抄録全体を表示

In his seminar, Theory and Practice (1975–1976), Derrida closely scrutinises Heidegger's readings of Aristotle in his 1953 conferences, Question Concerning Technology and Science and Meditation, drawing particular attention to a specific thesis presented by Heidegger. According to Heidegger, what Aristotle called αἴτιον (aition), signifying what is responsible, was transformed in its Latin translation into the notion of causa, or more precisely, causa efficiens. Heidegger’s thesis attracts Derrida's attention because Aristotle clearly enumerates four kinds of αἴτια (aitia) in Physics and Metaphysics, one of which apparently corresponds to causa efficiens. This raises the question: Why does Heidegger insist that the notion of causa efficiens is the product of translation, concealing Aristotle's original writings?
This paper tries to provide an answer to this question, left open by Derrida, by detouring through the late Schelling's reading of Aristotle. Answering this question will then enable us to investigate Heidegger's questioning of technology.
In his introductory lectures to Philosophy of Revelation (1841–1842), Schelling interprets the “unmoved mover” in Aristotle's Metaphysics as causa finalis (αἴτιον τελικόν) by distinguishing it from causa efficiens (αἴτιον ποιητικόν). In this context, Schelling evokes the difficulty that medieval philosophy faced in incorporating Aristotle's proof of the existence of God into Christianity. Thomas Aquinas's five ways of proving God’s existence, presented in Summa Theologiae, attest to the difficulty of this incorporation. His arguments, seemingly similar to that of Aristotle, contain, however, a version quite foreign to the latter: a demonstration based on the series of causae efficientes.
In his lecture Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics (1929–1930), Heidegger criticises Thomas's commentary on Aristotle for reinterpreting Aristotle's metaphysics into the metaphysics of causa prima. Heidegger describes the transformation of the philosophical concept of αἴτιον into causa as correlative to the transformation of the Greek term τέχνη (techne) in modern times. The term τέχνη, which signified in Aristotle one of the five paths to the truth, underwent a transformation of its meaning to causa efficiens: a cause producing an effect, a tool that aims for effectivity.
Hence, by examining the late Schelling’s interpretation of Aristotle and its affinity with Heidegger's thesis on the deformation of Aristotle's philosophy in Latin scholastic thought, this paper will clarify the fundamental connection between modern technology and metaphysics.

抄録全体を表示

In the following, I analyze Emmanuel Levinas' philosophical conception of the “State” in the early 1950s. What is remarkable in “Freedom and Command” (1953) is that he claims, based on his original interpretation of Plato's “Just State,” that the State is necessary to ensure freedom. According to him, the State must be established in order to realize and maintain the command that the free subject has instituted so as to avoid being ruled by a “tyranny.” However, this command can also become a kind of tyranny that imposes another order on the subject. It is the case when this command is inherited by the new Others. How is this inheritance possible? Levinas solves this question by thinking that, if they are reasonable, they accept this command because it is always and already reasonable, being conditioned by what Levinas calls a “discourse prior to discourse.”
War is also a tyranny constraining the free subject. The others, during war, appear as a collective and do not have faces. It is necessary, then, to ask whether the command in the State always compels the subject to fight with tyranny in order not to be ruled by it. Through this questioning, we can spell out the difficult conception of the “State” in the early thought of Levinas.

抄録全体を表示

As well known, the period from the 10^th to the 12^th centuries is the time of the emergence of Dikduk (the traditional Hebrew Grammar in Judaism) and Kabbalah (the medieval Jewish mysticism); in the 10^th century, Saadia Gaon writes Hebrew grammar and his dictionary for the first time in history as well as the commentary on the book of Yezirah, that is also about the same time when the Masoretic codex of Aleppo is completed by Ben-Asher the authority of the vocalization and the accent signs of the biblical text as attested in the famous Mishne Torah of Maimonides; and toward the end of the 12^th century, the title of Sefer ha-Bahir begins to be spread in vocabulary of kabbalists as an early teaching of Sefirot theory.
The interest in the origin of Dikduk and Kabbalah in the 16^th century is renewed with the quest of the historical Masora by Levita who denies the origin of the Masoretic signs and marks of vocalization and accent to be seen as of the ancient tradition from the time of Moses. At this, Azariah De Rossi refutes to Levita by quoting a passage from Sefer ha-Bahir by which he tries to prove the antiquity of Masoretic vocalization an integral to the square letters of the Torah Scroll since Ezra's time. Thus, as the controversy abruptly comes to the spotlight as asking on the connection of mysticism with Hebrew Grammar, the refutation of De Rossi is not entirely clear but demands the explanation of his historical logic in asking why De Rossi finds a kabbalistic text such as Sefer ha-Bahir as valid to argue the antiquity of the Masoretic tradition of grammatical signs of sound.

抄録全体を表示