Fainting in classical art.
Publisher Summary Fainting (syncope) is a temporary loss of consciousness and posture. Fainting is far commoner than epilepsy, but in art, epileptic seizures are more commonly depicted than fainting. Syncope typically happens in particular situations such as hot crowded environments, including restaurants or aeroplanes, in the doctor's surgery, or in the bathroom at night; specific triggers include prolonged standing, emotional trauma, and pain. Emotional turmoil, particularly grief, usually causes the syncope shown in art; the common causes of syncope in real life, such as prolonged standing and being in hot environments, are rarely shown. Moreover, women in art are much more likely to faint than men, and typically are young, beautiful, and reacting to grief; in real life, the sex ratio only slightly favors women. When men are shown to faint in art, it is often through serious, even life-threatening causes such as severe blood loss or terminal illness. Simple faints in art, particularly in women, often has overtones of a psychogenic component (‘‘swooning’’). Thus, the fainters are often painted with pink skin, eyes closed, and held upright, seemingly without coming to harm.
Neurology in the National Gallery
Illness, though ever present, is seldom the deliberate subject of art. Obvious malformations may appear as examples of the grotesque2'3 but more subtle depiction of disease is sometimes detected in classical works4'5. Neurology encompasses a broad range of medical disorders and so neurological themes in art are often recognized, either directly appearing in the pictures themselves69 or indirectly resulting from neurological disease in the artist10-13. The National Gallery, in Trafalgar Square, London, houses representative works from all major European artists in its magnificent collection of over two thousand paintings. Here are described several of the Gallery's paintings with neurological themes.
The honesty of thinking : reflections on critical thinking in Nietzsche's middle period and the later Heidegger
This dissertation engages with contemporary interpretations of Nietzsche and Heidegger on the issue of self-knowing with respect to the notions of honesty and authenticity. Accounting for the two philosophers' developing conceptions of these notions allows a response to interpreters who conceive the activity of self-knowing as a primarily personal problem. The alternative accounts proposed take as a point of departure transitional texts that reveal both thinkers to be engaged in processes of revision. The reading of honesty in Chapters 1 and 2 revolves around Nietzsche's groundwork on prejudice in Morgenrothe (1880-81), where he first problematizes the moral-historical forces entailed in actuating the 'will to truth'. The reading of authenticity in Chapters 3 and 4 revolves around Heidegger's lectures on what motivates one's thinking in Was heist Denken? (1951-52). The lectures call into question his previous formal suppositions on what calls forth one's 'will-to-have-a-conscience', in an interpretation of Parmenides on the issue of thought's linguistic determination, discussed further in the context of Unterwegs zur Sprache (1950-59). Chapter 5 shows how Heidegger's confrontation with Nietzsche contributed to his ongoing revisions to the notion of authenticity, and to the attending conceptions of critique and its authority. Particular attention is given to the specific purposes to which distinct Nietzschean foils are put near the confrontation's beginning--in Heidegger's lectures on Nietzsche's second Unzeitgemasse Betrachtung (1938), and in the monograph entitled Besinnung (1939) which they prepare--and near its end, in the interpretation of Also Sprach Zarathustra (1883-85) presented in the first half of Was heist Denken? Chapter 6 recapitulates the developments traced from the vantage point of the retrospective texts Die Zollikoner Seminare (1959-72) and the fifth Book of Die frohliche Wissenschaft (1887). Closing remarks are made in relation to recent empirical research on the socio-environmental structures involved in determining self-identity.