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Jon Stewart Ph.d.,
Dr. habil. theol. & phil.
Institute of Philosophy Slovak Academy of Sciences |
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Poul
Martin Møller's "Thought on the Possibility of
Proofs of Human Immortality" and Other Texts
Translated
and edited by Finn
Gredal Jensen and Jon Stewart Leiden:
Brill 2022
A classicist, philosopher, and poet, Poul Martin Møller was an important figure in the Danish Golden Age. After the early death of his wife in 1834, Møller was plunged into an extended period of depression. This traumatic event led him to think more profoundly about the question of the immortality of the soul. Møller had long been interested in Hegel’s philosophy, and this same issue was central to the then current debates in the Hegelian school. In 1837 he published his most important philosophical treatise, “Thoughts on the Possibility of Proofs of Human Immortality with Regard to the Latest Literature on the Subject.” This work gave an overview of the German debates about the issue and Møller’s own critical evaluation of them. It was read and commented upon by the leading figures of the Golden Age, such as Johan Ludvig Heiberg, Frederik Christian Sibbern, and Søren Kierkegaard. It proved to be the last important work that Møller wrote. He died in March of 1838 at the age of 43.
________________________
An
Introduction to Hegel’s Lectures on the Philosophy
of Religion:
The Issue of Religious Content in the Enlightenment
and Romanticism This work attempts to give a basic introduction to Hegel’s religious thinking by seeing it against the backdrop of the main religious trends in his own day that he was responding to, specifically, the Enlightenment and Romanticism. The study provides an account of the criticism of religion by key Enlightenment thinkers such as Voltaire, Lessing, Hume, and Kant. This is followed by an analysis of how the Romantic thinkers, such as Rousseau, Jacobi and Schleiermacher, responded to these challenges. For Hegel, the views of these thinkers from both the Enlightenment and Romanticism tended to empty religion of its content. The goal that he sets for his own philosophy of religion is to restore this lost content. A detailed account is given of Hegel’s Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion with an eye to the issue of the content of religious faith. It is argued that the basic ideas of the Enlightenment and Romanticism are still present today and that this remains an important issue for both academics and non-academics, regardless of their religious orientation. ________________________
Hegel’s
Century: Alienation and Recognition in a Time of
Revolution
Cambridge:
Cambridge
University Press 2021 The
book is the category winner in philosophy
See the homepage of the Slovak Academy of Sciences See
the homepage of the Institute of Philosophy of
the Slovak Academy of Sciences
Slovak Academy of Sciences Prize for Scholarly work for 2021 
June 30, 2022
Many
students who attended Hegel’s lectures in Berlin in
the 1820s recalled with nostalgia in later life the
stimulating intellectual environment that radiated
from the ideas they heard in his lecture hall. This
atmosphere still existed a decade after his death, as
zealous students continued to flock to Berlin to study
with Hegel’s students in the 1840s. Over the coming
decades these students would come to constitute the
leading lights in Continental philosophy in the
nineteenth century: Feuerbach, Bauer, Kierkegaard,
Engels, Marx, Bakunin, and others. The present work is
an introduction to the history of this development. It
takes as its point of
departure
two concepts that originated
in Hegel’s
Reviews
"It is often thought that Hegel's
philosophy fell into a rather deserved obsolescence by
the middle of the nineteenth century. But Hegel's
Century shows that even while Hegelianism waned,
Hegel's concerns with alienation and recognition
continued to set the agenda for European philosophy,
both inside and outside the universities. It offers a
magisterial yet accessible guide to those thinkers,
mystics, and revolutionaries who appropriated these
Hegelian themes for radically new purposes." Mark Alznauer - Northwestern University
“In
this wide-ranging and important study, Jon Stewart
provides a convincing account of Hegel’s influence on
the philosophy that came after him, focusing on the
themes of alienation and recognition. Following these
themes through a range of central thinkers, from Heine
through to Engels, he shows how the shadow cast by
Hegel was a long one – and that we are living with
these issues still. Stewart is an engaging, well
informed and perceptive guide to this central
tradition in the history of ideas, and will bring the
debates alive for a range of different audiences.”
“Among
other
things, this book is to be celebrated for its clarity
and breadth of exposition. In an age of increasing
academic specialization, Stewart shows great range in
tackling such a broad theme from such an
intellectually active century. This work spans the
fields of at least philosophy, theology, literature,
and political theory, and displays a commanding
knowledge of central texts from the period and the
socio-historical context in which they appear.” “Hegel’s
Century is a great book for advanced
undergraduates, graduate students, and even professors
who would like to get a better sense of Hegel’s impact
on the philosophical world, or would like to know a
bit more about the intellectual climate of the
nineteenth century. Its analyses are clear and
▪
"The Complexity of History of Reception:
▪
“Notes
to a Marxist Phenomenology: The
Body and the Machine in Engels’ The Condition of the
Working Class in England,” ▪
“Kierkegaard
como hegeliano,” El Arco y la Lira: Tensiones y
Debates Filosóficos, no. 9, 2021, pp. 161-167.
▪ "Hegel’s Philosophy of Religion as a Phenomenology," in Filozofia, vol. 75, no. 5, 2020, pp. 386-400. ▪
"The
Crisis of the Danish Golden Age as the Problem of
Nihilism," in The
Crisis of the Danish Golden Age and Its Modern
Resonance, edited by Jon Stewart and
Nathaniel Kramer, Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum
Press 2020 (Danish
Golden Age Studies, vol. 12), pp. 123-168.
The
Struggle
with Nothingness: Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press 2023 The
twentieth
century is the period best known for thematizing the issue
of nihilism with, for example, the works of the
existentialists. For this reason, most philosophical or
literary histories of this topic start with Nietzsche and
move on from there. This study aims to show that the
background for the tradition of twentieth-century nihilism
was already well established in the nineteenth century.
The thesis of the work is that the true origin of modern
nihilism can be found in the rapid development of the
sciences in the Enlightenment that established a new
secular worldview that gradually displaced the old
religious one. The modern scientific view presented a
picture of human beings as increasingly small and
insignificant in the vastness of space and time. This led
to discussions about and literary portrayals of different
issues related to nihilism in the first half of the
nineteenth century, long before Turgenev and Nietzsche
made the term fashionable. Drawing on the importance of
Enlightenment science, this work tries to gain insight
into the nature and development of nihilism in the
nineteenth century. Check
out the new articles:
“The
Misnomer of Relativism in the Modern World:
The Rise of Individualism"
in the online journal Culturico (21 May, 2021):  ________________________
“What is
it to be Human? The Dominance of Subjectivity,” in
the online journal Aeon
(2
November, 2020):
 ________________________
The
Palgrave Handbook of German Idealism and Existentialism
Edited by Jon
Stewart Basingstoke
and New York: Palgrave Macmillan 2020
This Handbook explores the complex relations between two great schools of continental philosophy: German idealism and existentialism. While the existentialists are commonly thought to have rejected idealism as overly abstract and neglectful of the concrete experience of the individual, the chapters in this collection reveal that the German idealists in fact anticipated many key existentialist ideas. A radically new vision of the history of continental philosophy is thereby established, one that understands existentialism as a continuous development from German idealism. ________________________
Oxford:
Oxford University Press 2020
This
work presents a philosophical analysis of the development
of Western Civilization from antiquity to the Middle Ages.
It traces the various self-conceptions of the different
cultures from ancient Mesopotamia to Medieval Christendom.
The thesis is that as human civilization took its first
tenuous steps, it had a very limited conception of the
individual. Instead, the dominant principle was the wider
group: the family, clan or people. Only in the course of
history did the idea of individuality begin to emerge. The
conception of human beings as having an inner sphere of
subjectivity subsequently had a sweeping impact on all
aspects of culture and largely constitutes what is today
referred to as modernity. ________________________ The
Crisis of the Danish Golden Age and Its Modern Resonance Edited
by Jon Stewart and Nathaniel Kramer Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press 2020 (Danish
Golden Age Studies, vol. 12) The
historical circumstances of the Danish Golden Age are
well known: the Napoleonic Wars, the bombardment of
Copenhagen, the state bankruptcy in 1814 with the
ensuing financial crisis, the Revolution of 1848, and
the establishment of a parliamentary democracy in 1849.
There were peasant reforms, religious upheavals, and
changes in class and social structures. These events
constituted the milieu in which the Golden Age was born
and developed. The guiding idea of the present volume is
that these different crises served not just as a
backdrop or as obstacles but rather as catalysts for the
flowering of culture in the Golden Age. Despite
their
many debates and polemics among themselves, the leading
figures of Golden Age Denmark were generally in agreement
about the fact that their age was in a state of crisis.
The dramatic events spilled over into the various cultural
spheres and shaped them in different ways. The articles in
this volume trace the different crises as they appear in
literature, criticism, religion, philosophy, politics and
the social sciences. The contributing authors draw
compelling parallels between the perceived crisis of the
Golden Age and the acute issues of our own day. The
articles collected here thus together show the continuing
relevance of the Golden Age for readers of the
twenty-first century. ________________________
Faust, Romantic Irony, and System:  German Culture in the Thought of Søren Kierkegaard
Copenhagen:
Museum
Tusculanum Press 2019 (Danish Golden Age Studies, vol. 11)
Kierkegaard readers are familiar with his dogged polemic with Hegelianism, his critique of Friedrich von Schlegel’s Romantic irony, and his visit to Schelling’s lectures in Berlin. However, these are only a few well-known examples of a much deeper relation of influence and inspiration. Kierkegaard read German fluently and was interested in many different authors and thinkers from the German-speaking countries. The auction catalogue of his personal library reveals a wealth of works in German from a number of different fields. Given his famous criticisms of the Hegelians, Schlegel, and Schelling, one might be tempted to believe that Kierkegaard was anti-German. But this is clearly not the case since he had high praise for some German thinkers such as Hamann, Lessing and Trendelenburg. The present work is dedicated to an exploration of Kierkegaard’s relation to different aspects of Germanophone culture. Its goal is to gain a better appreciation of the importance of the various German sources for his thought. The points of contact are so numerous that it can truly be said that if it were not for the influence of German culture, Kierkegaard would not have been Kierkegaard and the Danish Golden Age would not have been the Golden Age.
Reviews "This text leaves the reader with an entirely new perspective on Kierkegaard. Of course, Kierkegaard readers knew that the Dane was in dialogue with Hegel and that he occasionally refers to German theologians or literary figures, but the vast scope of this usage has gone unnoticed. Stewart demonstrates beyond a doubt that virtually all of Kierkegaard’s writings and indeed his academic agenda itself were in some way shaped by German thought. Indeed, Kierkegaard would never have been the thinker that he was without his interaction with the German intellectual tradition. This is an exciting new perspective that breaks with traditional wisdom....Jon Stewart’s new book Faust, Romantic Irony, and System: German Culture in the Thought of Søren Kierkegaard is of a very high academic standard, and it contributes in many respects new insights and promising perspectives to research in the field. The work will be highly relevant not only for researchers and scholars but for the general reader too." István Czakó, Pázmány Péter Catholic University "The Scandinavian countries have long been receptive to cultural currents flowing northward from the south. This has been especially the case as concerns Denmark in its relation to German culture, and this influx of ideas was particularly intense during the Danish Golden Age. Stewart’s manuscript covers a broad swath of these influences in exploring Kierkegaard’s entanglement in various aspects of Germanophone culture. Stewart’s work intends to cultivate greater appreciation of the significance of these sources for Kierkegaard’s creative work. Therefore, source work research is the functioning methodology that has allowed Stewart to identify the nature, scope, and extent of effects streaming from particular authors, writings, topics, and issues to shape Kierkegaard’s deliberations. ________________________
Hegel’s
Interpretation of the Religions of the World: In
his Lectures on the
Philosophy of Religion, Hegel treats the religions
of the world under the rubric “the determinate religion.”
This is a part of his corpus that has traditionally been
neglected since scholars have struggled to understand what
philosophical work it is supposed to do. The present study
argues that Hegel’s rich analyses of Buddhism, Hinduism,
Zoroastrianism, Judaism, Egyptian and Greek polytheism, and
the Roman religion are not simply irrelevant historical
material, as is often thought. Instead, they play a central
role in Hegel’s argument for what he regards as the truth of
Christianity. Hegel believes that the different conceptions
of the gods in the world religions are reflections of
individual peoples at specific periods in history. These
conceptions might at first glance appear random and chaotic,
but there is, Hegel claims, a discernible logic in them.
Simultaneously a theory of mythology, history and
philosophical anthropology, Hegel’s account of the world
religions goes far beyond the field of philosophy of
religion. The controversial issues surrounding his treatment
of the nonEuropean religions are still very much with us
today and make his account of religion an issue of continued
topicality in the academic landscape of the 21st century.
"Hegel's
Interpretation of the Religions of the World is a
thorough study of a neglected aspect of Georg Wilhelm
Friedrich Hegel’s philosophy of religion: the role of
history in Hegel’s overall philosophical construction.
. . . Stewart’s book must be regarded as an
extremely valuable piece of scholarship for both
philosophers of religion and—more importantly—scholars of
religion." ________________________
"Stewart
documents
the way in which Hegel used his sources to explain how
various world religions made sense in the broader
context of their conceptions of humanity, divinity, and
individuality ... Although the author does not spare
Hegel from criticism, he demonstrates that the
philosopher's approach to non-Christian traditions was
far from an exercise in parochial apologetics; rather,
it represented a decisive step in the direction of a
contemporary multicultural understanding of religion ...
Recommended." J. A. Gauthier, CHOICE ________________________
“Stewart
has the requisite expertise, and he has written an
important book. He possesses a mastery of the many sources
utilized by Hegel; he shows the pivotal position of Determinate
Religion in the lectures as a whole; he reveals
many connections between the lectures on religion and
those on the philosophy of world history and the history
of philosophy; he discusses the rise of Orientalism in the
nineteenth century and Hegel’s role in it; he analyzes the
impact of G. F. Creuzer on Hegel; and he demonstrates the
connection between “the logic of the gods,” human
self-recognition, and the slow progression of freedom in
culture and history.” ________________________
“Jon
Stewart’s
important recent book Hegel’s Interpretation of the
Religions of the World examines Hegel’s account of
what he called “Determinate Religion,” the title of the
second, massive part of the Lectures on the Philosophy
of Religion. In the four different iterations Hegel
gave of these lectures during his Berlin years, the
attention of this crucial section was devoted to an
ever-expanding and changing exploration of the great world
traditions of religious thought and experience. Stewart’s
careful sifting of the wealth of sources that Hegel used
for this part of his lectures is key for any attempt at
understanding Hegel’s changing stance on issues like
religious pluralism and the larger relation between his
conception of history and the systematic concerns that lie
behind Hegel’s account of religion and Absolute Spirit
more broadly.”
________________________
“With
Hegel’s Interpretation of the Religions of the World,
Jon Stewart has amply carried out his ‘wish to explore in
detail Hegel’s historical interpretation of these various
world religions.’ In so doing, he has provided a context
within which to appreciate the content of Hegel’s
interpretations. He has successfully argued in favor of
the importance of the determinate religions for a fuller
understanding of Hegel on the consummate religion. He has
as well and, especially important, prepared the way for
further historically oriented studies in Hegel’s
philosophy of determinate religion. And he has, in effect,
launched a challenge to develop a contemporary Hegelian
phenomenology of determinate religion, namely, to paint
anew philosophy’s gray in gray.” ________________________
“…we
all stand in debt to Jon Stewart’s masterful new
synthesis, Hegel’s Interpretation of the Religions of
the World: The Logic of the Gods, for what he
achieves is nothing less than an account of Hegel’s
philosophy of religion that begins to do justice to
Hegel’s own unique conception of what a history of
religions must be. He does this by integrating Hegel’s
discussions of various religions in the lecture courses on
the philosophy of religion, especially the accounts
offered in the long neglected determinate religion
section, with treatments taken from the lectures on the
philosophy of art, the history of philosophy, and world
history, which provide a broader view of the historical
and cultural worlds in which those religious
belief-systems and practices arose and flourished. Stewart
offers us a richly detailed overview, in the best sense
of that term, one that is buttressed by significant
discussions focused on the state of academic studies at
the time when the various religions that Hegel examines
were prominent; and he also identities and explores the
most pivotal sources that Hegel uses to construct his
accounts. This latter dimension of Stewart’s work enables
him to advance significantly our understanding not only of
Hegel’s history of religions, but also the concrete and
varied ways in which that history was shaped by
Eurocentrism. In this way, Stewart’s philological work
contributes to an interpretation of Hegel on religion that
brings a broadened view of his thought into important
contemporary debates about the role of religion in society
and the problems of a deeply and profoundly pluralistic
world…. Let me conclude then by once again recalling that
Hegel’s Interpretation of the Religions of the World
marks a significant advance, in my judgment, in the
burgeoning scholarship on Hegel’s account of determinate
religions and his project for a history of religions more
broadly….students of Hegel’s philosophy of religion will,
no doubt, remain in Stewart’s debt for years to come.” ________________________
________________________ See
the special issue of the journal Owl
of Minerva dedicated to this book.
See the online article about the book.
New
Editor for Philosophy Series Published by Brill
Studies in the History of Western Philosophy Series: Value Inquiry Book Series Editor: Jon Stewart Today
research in the history of Western philosophy is a global
phenomenon. The series features the work of leading
scholars from the different subfields, regardless of where
they are found in the world. Philosophy is a discipline
substantially enriched by a broad dialogue of perspectives
that transcend the local contexts – the Studies in the
History of Western Philosophy series provides a forum for
this dialogue. The series also strives to showcase the
modern importance and relevance of the history of Western
philosophy to pressing issues of our day. This series
seeks single-author monographs and collected-author
volumes that demonstrate that the texts, figures and
debates from the history of the Western tradition are
still very much alive in the academic field of philosophy,
and in many areas beyond its conventional boundaries. First
volume of the series under the new editorship:
 Modern and Postmodern Crises of Symbolic Structures: Essays in Philosophical Anthropology Edited by Peter Šajda Leiden and Boston: Brill 2021 In debates about philosophical anthropology human beings have been defined in different ways. In Modern and Postmodern Crises of Symbolic Structures, the contributors view the human being primarily as animal symbolicum. They examine how the human being creates, interprets and changes symbolic structures, as well as how he is affected and impacted by them. The focus lies on the context of modernity and postmodernity, which is characterized by a number of interrelated crises of symbolic structures. These crises have affected the realms of science, religion, art, politics and education, and thus provoked crucial changes in the human being’s relations to himself, others and reality. The crises are not viewed merely as manifestations of dysfunctions, but rather as complex processes of transformation that also provide new opportunities. ________________________ The
second volume of the series under the new editorship:
The
articles in The Bounds of Myth, edited by
Gustavo Esparza and Nassim Bravo, shed light on the
internal shapes of the mythological discourse, showing
the way in which myth borders religion, science,
literature, theology, i.e., other forms of rationality.
The contributing authors of the volume claim that myth
is a valid form of thought and that the former evolves
within other forms of discourse, even though its
composition is independent and even precedes the latter.
_______________________
The
Original Age of Anxiety Why
was
anxiety such a major issue for Søren Kierkegaard and his
contemporaries? This book revisits the “original” age of
anxiety, the time and place where Kierkegaard’s
ground-breaking thoughts on anxiety were formed. The
pseudonym used by Kierkegaard in The Concept of Anxiety
(1844), Vigilius Haufniensis, is Latin for “the watchman
of Copenhagen.” A guiding question is what the vigilant
Haufniensis might have observed in his city—and especially
in the literary culture of his time and day? Exploring
freedom in many forms, Kierkegaard and his contemporaries
found combinations of fear and desire that have later been
considered symptomatic of modernity.
“An
Analysis of the
Religion of the Maya: A Hegelian Approach
based on the Lectures on the Philosophy of
Religion and the Lectures on the
Philosophy of Art” Critics have argued that the development of the world religions that Hegel sketches in the Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion is a crass expression of 19th-century Eurocentrism. This criticism aims to undermine Hegel’s claim about the necessity of this development. If one wanted to defend Hegel against this charge, it would be necessary to explore other religions that he failed to treat and to see to what extent, if at all, they can be said to fit into his scheme of the development of world religions. If his theory is really universal as he claims, then we would expect to find this same kind of development in other religions, besides the ones that Hegel himself was familiar with. In the present paper I wish to do this by means of an exploration of the religion of the Maya in pre-Columbian Mesoamerica. My thesis is that the polytheism of the Maya, in fact, fits very well into Hegel’s scheme. I argue specifically that it corresponds generally to the stage occupied by the Egyptian religion on Hegel’s account. Hegel’s Lectures on the Philosophy of Art also play a key role in this analysis since, I argue, similarities between the two cultures can perhaps best be seen by their artworks which depict their conceptions of their gods. International Congress: “Hegel’s
Aesthetics Today” University of Urbino "Carlo Bo" Palazzo Veterani, Aula 3 Urbino May 4, 2022 10:00 am (CET) ________________________
"Hegel’s Diagnosis of Modern
Alienation, and the Story of the Fall, and its
Echoes Bauer, Heine, and Bakunin" In his Lectures on the
Philosophy of Religion, Hegel gives a
provocative and heretical interpretation of the Fall
in Genesis. Surprisingly, his focus on key concepts
such as alienation and freedom proved to be highly
influential for the development of social-political
thinking in the 19th century. In this paper I trace
this development in the works of Hegel’s students
Heinrich Heine and Bruno Bauer, as well as Mikhail
Bakunin (who can be regarded as one of his students
at a second remove). All three of these thinkers
make use of Hegel’s interpretation of the Fall in
order to support their quite different agendas. Thus
a largely overlooked part of Hegel’s philosophy of
religion is transformed into a fruitful seed when it
is transplanted into the field of social-political
philosophy. May 19, 2022: 2:00-3:30 pm (CET) Research Seminar, Comenius University, Bratislava "Hegel as a Source of Inspiration for Heine, Feuerbach, and Marx April 6, 2022 _______________________
"The Development of the Individual in Society" The Carlos Llano Lectures Departamento
de
Humanidades, Universidad Panamericana, Aguascalientes,
Mexico The
first lecture will be held online: on Thursday,
October 14, 2021 from 17:00-20:00 CET The
second lecture will be held online: on Friday, October
15, 2021 from 17:00-20:00 CET To
register, you just need to click here and give your name
and e-mail: https://forms.gle/LSA7LGsahHkCjG5E7
The
main line of argument traces the various self-conceptions
of different cultures as they developed historically,
reflecting different views of what it is to be human. The
thesis is that through examination of these changes we can
discern the gradual emergence of what we today call
inwardness, subjectivity, and individual freedom. As human
civilization took its first tenuous steps, it had a very
limited conception of the individual. Instead, the
dominant principle was that of the wider group: the
family, clan, or people. Only in the course of history did
the idea of what we now know as individuality begin to
emerge, and it took millennia for this idea to be fully
recognized and developed. The conception of human beings
as having a sphere of inwardness and subjectivity
subsequently had a sweeping impact on all aspects of
culture, including philosophy, religion, law, and art:
indeed, this notion largely constitutes what is today
referred to as modernity. Lecture 1, October 14 Introduction Part
1:
Analysis of Sophocles’ Oedipus the King Part
2:
Analysis of Socrates in Plato’s Apology Conclusions:
The
New Role of Subjectivity Lecture 2, October 15 Introduction Part
1:
Analysis of Seneca’s Letters Part
2:
Analysis of the Gospel of Matthew _______________________
Annual Book Prize of the Slovak Academy of Sciences 
June
28, 2021 _______________________
"Teaching
Philosophy in Different Countries:
Reflections on Authority or the Lack thereof
Department
of Philosophy, Faculty of Arts, Matej Bel University
Platform:
MS Teams. We kindly ask everybody who is interested to
participate to register
Abstract:
Teaching is a social event, and the classroom is a part of a wider society. What takes place in the teaching context is thus invariably a reflection of the wider society. In this paper I wish to make some reflections based on several years of teaching philosophy in many different countries. I will explore how the social context of a given country influences the nature of the pedagogical approach and techniques used. My claim is that basic social structures concerning authority find their way into the classroom in ways that are not always conducive to the learning process. Read moreAnnual Book Prize of the Slovak Academy of Sciences  June 23, 2020
_______________________
Honorary
title of Private Professor Awarded from May
25, 2020
_______________________
Annual
Book Prize of July
2, 2019 The book Hegel’s Interpretation of the Religions of the World: The Logic of the Gods (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2018) was awarded the annual book prize of the Slovak Academy of Sciences under the category "Scientific Monographs in a Recognized Publishing House."
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