Nietzsche’s late text, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, has an important formal aim: to release images from the demands of reason. It also has a moral aim – to release the human will from its enslavement to preordained images, including from the image of itself. What would an image be for which its viewer still had to be invented? for which its viewer was being invented – in the image itself? This is the adventure of Nietzsche’s major work, which, like some literary works, is drunk with images, but they take a certain path of development, from knowing images to willing images. Instead of an image that presents knowledge for a knower, Nietzsche, through trial and error, develops a “willing image,” which first has a negative task, to liberate the will from its tie to established knowledge. But across the momentous book he also gradually sets aside images that stimulate an already existing will. The aim of Thus Spoke Zarathustra is thus like the aim of some literature, to give desire, wishing, wanting, hoping, and loving a new landscape in which it can change its genre and its objects, where it can learn to self-determine.

This chapter introduces the following corpus of texts from ancient Egypt, and outlines the differing meanings ascribed to slavery and dependence from antiquity to modern times. The terms used for dependents and slaves in the various languages of the texts translated here – Egyptian (Hieroglyphic, Hieratic, Demotic, and Coptic), Greek, and Arabic – are briefly presented, and defining features of the condition of those so labelled are discussed. How and from where such persons were acquired, their life experiences, and the different forms of exploitation in which they were involved are introduced, as are forms of slave resistance and limits to the archaeological and textual evidence available, and so to what we can learn from it.

In this chapter we review how social media affect body image and eating behaviour. In asking how visual images, text messages and the like alter attitudes to the body, we review evidence from experiments and observational studies. We consider whether social media produce clinically severe eating disorders or exacerbate existing ones, and whether social media can be a positive resource for people suffering from eating disorders. We discuss the options for prevention or treatment of eating disorders and body image concerns using social media or other digital resources.

This chapter offers an opinionated overview of the role of evidence when it comes to the justification of religious beliefs. After clarifying what is meant by “Evidentialism,” the chapter turns to an examination of two central objections that have been pressed against Evidentialist theories of justification. The first objection is that traditional Evidentialist theories make the justification of religious beliefs too difficult. The second objection is that more recent Evidentialist theories make the justification of religious beliefs too easy. A key finding of the chapter is that a form of seemings-based Evidentialism called “Phenomenal Explanationism” avoids both of these difficulties while providing a plausible account of the relationship between evidence and religious beliefs. Hence, although the chapter does not establish that Evidentialism is correct, it does provide reasons for thinking that Evidentialism should be seriously considered.

Appearance Prejudice and Discrimination against Black Women discusses Black women’s substantive experiences of discrimination based on their appearance. Black women experience biases around body features, skin color, hair, personal grooming choices, and other appearance-related variables. Black women also receive constant messages about how they do not meet mainstream beauty standards. These messages may cause women to internalize negative self-images. We offer therapists strategies to support Black women to deconstruct beauty stereotypes and foster cultural beauty ideals to help manage and reject societal invalidations.

We are living in an era in which appearance and body image can become the main focus of thoughts and behaviours, resulting in physical, psychological, and social suffering, about which patients, health professionals, and organizations may or may not have insight. This chapter presents the case of a 32-year-old man with body dysmorphic disorder (BDD) who presented for a psychiatric consultation because he believed that his current psychotropic medication was preventing him from achieving his desired body shape. Exercise had become such an overwhelming preoccupation that it was having negative effects on the other areas of his life, and thus required intervention. Possible etiological and maintenance factors, in particular excessive and dysfunctional exercise behaviours (exercise addiction), were explored. Remission of symptoms only occurred after psychotherapy was included as part of the intervention, demonstrating the positive effects of a treatment plan that combines pharmacology with other therapeutic approaches.

This chapter examines the significance of the two principal features of the faculty of judgment: its characteristic activity of reflection and its constitutive principle of purposiveness. It directly engages the metaphysical resonances of Kant’s text insofar as it seeks a supersensible substratum to nature. Through an analysis of objective purposiveness, it argues that what appears to us out in the territory appears to us in its possibility. In this, what appears to us is the very ground of appearance itself, which is seen to be a kind of fundamental ordering to all appearance. It further argues that the pleasure of subjective purposiveness yields a more expansive, cosmic sense of human beings’ belonging to or being fit for the world. The things that are out there in the world are, in their structure, not only ordered, but ordered for us. Lastly, this chapter suggests that our relation to this ordering is interpretative, thus opening a future for metaphysical inquiry that is rooted not in speculation, but in reflection.

Representing Samuel Johnson, whose towering intellect and larger than life persona dominated his era, posed a challenge for portrait painters and caricaturists alike. His public image, which coalesced over several decades, has continued to mutate and proliferate long after his death. Expanding the idea of serial portraiture, this chapter examines pairs or clusters of related images across various artists and media, focusing on the formative function of Johnson’s portraits in and after life and their central role in mythologizing him as a literary colossus. This chapter is particularly interested in tracing how visual representations of Johnson morphed over time, were appropriated and reproduced, and interacted dialogically, creating a kaleidoscopic, multifaceted, complex portrait of Johnson. As his close ties with artists, his support of artistic institutions, his print collection, and his collaboration in the creation of numerous portraits amply demonstrate, Johnson was not the ignorant philistine disinterested in his image that he at times

professed to be.

This chapter begins the sociolinguistic journey of the book, focusing on quantitative analysis of compliments alongside more detail-oriented qualitative analysis. Compliments, as a speech act, work to attribute ‘goods’ to others and thus naturally carries larger value judgments about what a society views as ‘good.’ Compliments in childrens’ movies likewise act as a lens to reveal what the filmmakers consider worthy of praise in their characters — and importantly, whether that varies by gender. In Disney and Pixar films, compliment giving is not presented as particularly gendered but receiving compliments skews towards female recipients. Qualitatively, female characters on-screen together are portrayed as using compliments as a routine politeness strategy and female villains use the guise of this practice to hide more nefarious purposes. This chapter also finds some tentative initial evidence linking femininity and politeness. While compliments are used by both male and female characters, the female characters use compliments as a routine politeness or rapport-building strategy, whereas male characters complimenting another outside task-based settings is less routine, and at times even framed as a climatically “big deal.” This suggests that although characters of either gender can compliment, compliments as a routine politeness strategy is still associated more closely with femininity.

Chapter 3 charts the prevalence of physical description in Senecan tragedy, arguing that this is not a symptom of Rezitationsdrama, but a consequence of Seneca’s interest in physiognomy and pathogonomy, both of which use bodily signals to evaluate the quality of people’s internal psychological / emotional / mental states. Like coherence and exemplarity, physiognomic analysis unites the quasi-personal and purely fictional elements of character, on the one hand by encouraging audiences to infer a psychology behind characters’ surfaces, and on the other by focusing attention on textual signs and symbols. This chapter discusses the confluence of bodily and mental states in Seneca’s Phaedra and Oedipus.

More common than Dante’s afterdeath schematic was that of St Thomas Aquinas; both have a supernal heaven, but Thomas’s infernal regions, based on Scripture and tradition, consisted of the limbo of the Fathers, emptied by Christ at his death, at the highest; immediately beneath it was the temporary hell of purgatory; under that was the limbo of infants; and at the very bottom was the region of the perpetually damned.It was believed that both souls in heaven (the saints) and the suffering souls in purgatory could somehow return to the earth’s surface, and it was also believed that some of the departed souls suffered their purging on earth instead of, or as well as, in purgatory (the ghost in Hamlet is a late example). It was assumed that these souls of the ‘saved dead’ had knowledge of what was happening among still-embodied mortals, and they were able (with divine permission) to have immediate means of communication with them.

This chapter explores offensive language related to physical appearance and physical difference. We discuss perceptions of ugliness and beauty, and offensive language with regard to height, weight, clothes, hair color, and other physical features. We tackle stereotypes and derogatory language against redheaded people, bias against baldness and grey hair, fat shaming, thin shaming, and the claim that abusing overweight people is the “last acceptable bigotry.” The discussion includes historical cases of prejudice against appearance (e.g., the Elephant Man, ugly laws, freak shows, and human zoos) and more contemporary cases.