What are we talking about?

As in the case of voluntary movement, all of these observations from the cognitive neurosciences reinforce Spinoza's rejection of causal relations of the mental upon the body, thus confirming the second movement of Ethics III, 2.

Does this nevertheless imply a belief in an inverse causality, of the body upon the mental, which Ethics III, 2 rejects just as forcefully? Is brain activity the cause of the feelings, thoughts and, more generally, of all the representations of an image, a word or a number, with which it is correlated?

There is an apparent tendency to answer this question in the affirma¬tive in the descriptions provided by many neurobiologists of results in the cognitive sciences. This tendency also appears in the commentaries of phi-losophers who are interested in the neurosciences and who reflect on the implications of the project of the naturalisation of the mind within which this work is carried out. Indeed, these spectacular results naturally lead to a description of mental phenomena in terms of brain activities. Moreover, the medical applications of these results understandably strengthen this tendency, since the direct or indirect intervention into the brain of a subject produces obvious effects upon her mental state.

We must ask ourselves, however, to what extent the language used in such descriptions, when it results in the affirmation of a causal relation between the body and the mind, in fact leads to confusion – to a materialist monism of body and mind that is simultaneously a dualism, one that is most often disavowed (if not unconscious!) insofar as it concerns the mysteries of the alleged causal interactions between the two.

In this chapter, I explore how holistic understandings of ‘total pain’ are often framed in terms of narrative to both communicate and legitimise Saunders's holistic outlook. In this way, ‘total pain’ parallels the more recent field of narrative medicine. However, using archival evidence and later criticisms of narrative medicine, I outline the consequent risks of confusing how ‘total pain’ might be communicated through narrative and/or understood via a narrative sensibility, and how narrative-based methods might in some instances alleviate ‘total pain’. Saunders's term therefore allows us to reassess the relevance of received notions of narrative medicine when a patient is dying, particularly regarding the limitations and redemptive nature of conceiving of a ‘good’ death in narrative terms.

NARRATIVE, MEANING AND PAIN

I ended Chapter 3's exploration of the various holistic approaches to ‘total pain’ with nursing scholar Anne Lanceley's suggestion that aspirations towards holism in pain management should be replaced by a focus on meaning (1995). In her argument Lanceley invokes Arthur Kleinman's work on narratives to compare holistic approaches like ‘total pain’ unfavourably with more recent attention to narrative and story in clinical environments. Kleinman's study The Illness Narratives (1988) kick-started interest in what has become the wider field of narrative medicine, whose advocates utilise narratives in healthcare situations to variously assist diagnosis, foster empathy and restore a sense of wholeness. For its proponents (e.g. Frank, 1995; Greenhalgh and Hurwitz, 1998; Charon, 2006), narratives not only communicate the complexity of illness but also respect patient voice and engage practitioners in their patients’ lived experience in ways that can be beneficial to care and cure.

The question of another legacy of Paul is often addressed in terms of its socio-political ramifications. In the previous chapters, I have shown that one cannot limit this legacy to these ramifications: a present-day philosophical portrait of Paul should begin with painting the onto¬logical and ethical features of these letters. Yet, this obviously does not mean that the socio-political dimension of this legacy can be left aside. In this and the next chapter, I argue that this legacy concerns in the first place how the notions of outcast, spirit and exception affect our understanding of law and community. This chapter examines what the Pauline dialectic of exception means for Paul's account of the law. The next chapter continues this examination, focusing on community.

In the cultural, modern reception of Paul's letters, there is probably no issue as important as that concerning nomos or ‘law’. The modern, especially Protestant interest in Romans, from Luther to Barth, concerns exactly Paul's suspension of the law. For a philosophical interpretation, nomos is also a key focus since it directly concerns Paul's statements about law, faith and grace, which are the conceptual resources of a new politico-philosophical language at the heart of the question of political theology.

Paul's use of the term nomos raises several questions, not least with respect to which law he actually means. Does he refer to the Jewish law, the law of the cosmos, or Roman law, that is, does the law concern the ethical, the cosmological, or the political or constitutional law? Taubes suggests that ‘[i]t is all of these in one’, thus making the concept even more complex.

Pedro Costa is one of the most distinctive filmmakers in contemporary global art cinema. Since the late 1980s, he has directed a body of work that is easy to recognise but difficult to explain. From the outset, the visual, thematic and narrative characteristics of his oeuvre convey an evolving yet coherent filmic universe which is at once austere, highly stylised and cryptic. The making of his films likewise suggests the stoicism and artistry of an uncompromising filmmaking ethos. From the late 1990s onwards, Costa's films have been produced through a digital video low-budget filmmaking process which relies on protracted collaborations with non-professional actors recruited largely from the poor suburbs of Lisbon. Inevitably, reception discourses around the Portuguese filmmaker commonly make a bridge between the aesthetic characteristics and the production conditions of his films. Costa is commonly characterised as an obsessive and slow filmmaker, fiercely independent and having a mercurial relationship with producers.

Over the years, Costa has become one of the most internationally celebrated Portuguese filmmakers, alongside his compatriots Manoel de Oliveira, João César Monteiro and, more recently, Miguel Gomes and João Pedro Rodrigues. Whilst accruing critical esteem and the support of a burgeoning international fan base, Costa's exposure remains limited to cinephile fringes around the art-house and film festival circuits. Moreover, and as with other contemporary filmmakers catering mostly to boutique cinephiles, his creative output also finds receptive audiences on a variegated international circuit composed of academic-related venues, art galleries and museums. Costa's reception, however, remains mixed and his films provoke praise and derision in equal measures.

THE next morning brought me two letters; one from Mrs. Everard, telling me that she and the Colonel had resolved on coming to Paris.

“All the nice people are going away from here,” she wrote. “Madame Didier and her husband have started for Naples; and, to crown our lonesomeness, Raffaello Cellini packed up all his traps, and left us yesterday morning en route for Rome. The weather continues to be delicious; but you seem to be getting on so well in Paris, in spite of the cold there, we have made up our minds to join you, the more especially as I want to renovate my wardrobe. We shall go straight to the Grand Hotel; and I am writing to Mrs. Challoner by this post, asking her to get us rooms. We are so glad you are feeling nearly recovered – of course, you must not leave your physician till you are quite ready. At any rate, we shall not arrive till the end of next week.”

I began to calculate. During that strange interview in the chapel, Heliobas had said that in eight days more I should be strong enough to undergo the transmigration he had promised to effect upon me. Those eight days were now completed on this very morning. I was glad of this; for I did not care to see Mrs. Everard or anyone till the experiment was over. The other letter I received was from Mrs. Challoner, who asked me to give an “Improvisation” at the Grand Hotel that day fortnight.

When I went down to breakfast, I mentioned both these letters, and said, addressing myself to Heliobas

In this chapter, I consider ‘total pain’ as a form of medical holism. While usually valued for how it understands pain as more than just physical, subsequent interpretations of the term reflect Saunders's own flexible use of ‘total pain’, as outlined in Chapter 1. While interpretations that separate ‘total pain’ into multiple parts can appear to sanction reductionism, I use various historical forms of medical holism to explore how ‘total pain’ also tolerates interpretations that acknowledge the complexities of issues like embodiment or indeterminacy. I end by using a distinction established by Lawrence and Weisz to suggest that seemingly contradictory versions of the holism of ‘total pain’ coexist in diverse professional and educational contexts as forms of either cognitive or cultural holism.

RISKING REDUCTIVE INTERPRETATIONS

‘Total Pain’ as a Form of Medical Holism

All those paying more than passing attention to ‘total pain’ seem interested in the idea as part of a person-centred approach to medical care that looks beyond conventional understandings of physical pain. However, authors are broadly split into those who describe a simple teaching model that helpfully breaks down a complicated patient experience into separate elements, and those who see ‘total pain’ as the key to a wider approach which negotiates issues of meaning and personhood by understanding that a patient's experience of pain cannot be divided. Both challenge biomedical reductionism by highlighting how pain at the end of life is a complex whole with constituent parts. Yet, while ostensibly communicating the same message, the two approaches ultimately represent conflicting understandings of how the ‘total’ of ‘total pain’ functions in relation to its parts.

Whereas it would be fair to say that the films commonly subsumed under the term ‘slow cinema’ do not by necessity adhere to, or even engage with, environmental activism, the cinematic trend parallels ecocriticism's recent rise to prominence and ecologically minded movements such as ‘slow living’, ‘slow food’ and ‘slow travel’. Through realist modes of production based on duration and observation, contemporary slow films arguably postulate a new-found awareness of the natural world and testify to a renewed fascination with rural lifestyles and untouched environments, such as villages, jungles and forests. This is exemplified by the films by directors as diverse as Carlos Reygadas, Lav Diaz, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Béla Tarr, Lisandro Alonso and Michelangelo Frammartino among others, all of which place emphasis on remote spaces whose cyclical, seasonal and artisanal temporalities seem to impose themselves upon the film's own pace, thus opening it up to the vagaries of nature and animal life.

As I shall explore in this chapter, this environmental emphasis is, in principle, divorced from the anthropomorphic impetus that often animates conventional nature documentaries, being instead exemplary of a commitment to recording the natural world in its fortuitous and serendipitous quality. Thus, as exemplified by films as disparate as Blissfully Yours (Sud sanaeha, 2002), Silent Light (Stellet Licth, 2007) and The Turin Horse (A Torinoi lo, 2011), one cannot fail to take notice that landscapes, vegetation, sunlight, water, the weather, the wind in the trees, in short, the sheer contingency of the natural world, are as much an integral part of the slow film's aesthetic as are its solitary and sparse human protagonists.

Since the 1990s, the letters of the apostle Paul have been high on the philosophical agenda, and since the turn of the century there has been an upsurge in publications on Saint Paul and contemporary European philosophy, continuing now for more than two decades. This development may be considered surprising for several reasons. The philosophers examining Paul's letters do not share his religious beliefs. Moreover, one might have expected – hoped or feared – that, after Nietzsche's devastating critique of the apostle, there would be no role left to play for Paul in philosophical thought, at least to the extent that it is not invested in specific religious or theological presuppositions. Yet, there it is.

The basic questions I would like to answer in this study is the fol¬lowing. Wherein lies the philosophical potential of the apostle's letters for thought today? And which philosophical legacy can be discovered in the apostle's letters for our current moment? This particular focus of this study's questions means that I am concerned with Paul among philosophers – not among dogmatists, New Testament scholars, religious scientists or historians of ancient culture.

THE morning of the next day dawned rather gloomily. A yellowish fog obscured the air, and there was a closeness and sultriness in the atmosphere that was strange for that wintry season. I had slept well, and rose with the general sense of ease and refreshment that I always experienced since I had been under the treatment of Heliobas. Those whose unhappy physical condition causes them to awake from uneasy slumber feeling almost more fatigued than when they retired to rest, can scarcely have any idea of the happiness it engenders to open untired, glad eyes with the morning light; to feel the very air a nourishment; to stand with lithe, rested limbs in the bath of cool, pure water, finding that limpid element obediently adding its quota to the vigour of perfect health; to tingle from head to foot with the warm current of life running briskly through the veins, making the heart merry, the brain clear, and all the powers of body and mind in active working condition. This is indeed most absolute enjoyment. Add to it the knowledge of the existence of one's own inner Immortal Spirit – the beautiful germ of Light in the fostering of which no labour is ever taken in vain – the living, wondrous thing that is destined to watch an eternity of worlds bloom and fade to bloom again, like flowers, while itself, superior to them all, shall become ever more strong and radiant – with these surroundings and prospects, who shall say life is not worth living?

In 2015, two seminal works of the Portuguese Cinema Novo, Os Verdes Anos (Green Years, 1963) and Mudar de Vida (Change One's Life, 1966), were rereleased for the Portuguese commercial cinema and home cinema circuits. Exhibited and circulating for decades through poor-quality theatrical and VHS copies, the two feature films, both directed by Paulo Rocha, were subjected to a prolonged and careful digital restoration of image and sound initiated in 2011 and supervised by Pedro Costa. The restoration work of Rocha's films was only completed after his death, in December 2012. The process, nonetheless, illustrates the aesthetic complicity shared, and relation of trust established, between the two filmmakers over the years.

The working process around the restoration of Rocha's films provides us with clues as to how Costa's creative and technical competence is not merely confined to the films he authored and directed over the last three decades. As examined in Chapter 6, Costa's filmmaking activities also include the recuperation of his own works, as the re-mastering processes of Blood and Casa de Lava demonstrate. During the last decade, such expertise has also been extended to films of other filmmakers who were an influence on both his work and professional attitude. This aspect of Costa as a ‘recuperation’ agent, it should be noted, started earlier when he took the initiative to help recover and restore Jean Eustache's documentary Numéro Zéro (1971), which was considered lost until 2003.2 These activities around film recuperation, moreover, are extended to exhibition and circulation. Costa's active role in film promotion encompasses both his films but also, for instance, the championing of the cinema of António Reis and Margarida Cordeiro within international cinephile circles in which his own work commonly circulates.

ROSES, roses! An interminable chain of these royal blossoms, red and white, wreathed by the radiant fingers of small rainbow-winged creatures as airy as moonlight mist, as delicate as thistledown! They cluster round me with smiling faces and eager eyes; they place the end of their rosegarland in my hand, and whisper, “Follow!” Gladly I obey, and hasten onward. Guiding myself by the fragrant chain I hold, I pass through a labyrinth of trees, whose luxuriant branches quiver with the flight and song of birds. Then comes a sound of waters; the riotous rushing of a torrent unchecked, that leaps sheer down from rocks a thousand feet high, thundering forth the praises of its own beauty as it tosses in the air triumphant crowns of silver spray. How the living diamonds within it shift, and change, and sparkle! Fain would I linger to watch this magnificence; but the coil of roses still unwinds before me, and the fairy voices still cry, “Follow!” I press on. The trees grow thicker; the songs of the birds cease; the light around me grows pale and subdued. In the far distance I see a golden crescent that seems suspended by some invisible thread in the air. Is it the young moon? No; for as I gaze it breaks apart into a thousand points of vivid light like wandering stars. These meet; they blaze into letters of fire. I strain my dazzled eyes to spell out their meaning. They form one word – HELIOBAS.

In discussions of slow cinema, it is often claimed that the use of extended takes provides spectators with space and time to contemplate the image but, in this essay, I shall argue that, for these films, sound is also an important part of the experience of cinematic duration. In slow cinema, soundscapes composed of location sound recording, field recordings and an absence (or minimal use) of musical score, foreground the material and sensory nature of matter on-screen thus enabling a sense of ‘connectedness’ between the acoustic space of reception and that of the diegesis.

Films by ‘slow’ directors, such as Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Jia Zhangke, and Lisandro Alonso, for example, capture the mundanity of the everyday while creating an immersive experience for the spectator through long takes and a sound design that produces a dense auditory field. Shifts in pitch and timbre draw in the spectator more deeply, submerging us into the diegetic world of the film that is at times populated by the heavy drone of insect life, the violent sway of leaves in the trees or the reverberation of traffic noise. At other times, however, the films grant a sense of intimacy (sometimes uncomfortably so) through very localised sounds that appear too near or strangely audible considering their point of origin within the visual field. Often recalling the use of sound in structural/materialist film, in slow cinema ambient sound can become noise; detached from signification, the auditory dimension loses ‘meaning’ and becomes ‘feeling’, experienced on and through the body of the spectator, at the same time as it is experienced by characters on-screen (Suárez, 2008: 86; Lovatt, 2013: 65).