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Books > Reference & Interdisciplinary > Interdisciplinary studies > Cultural studies > History of ideas, intellectual history
Ever since Darwin, scholars have noted that cultural entities such as languages, laws, firms and theories seem to 'evolve' through sequences of variation, selection and replication, in many ways just like living organisms. These essays consider whether this comparison is 'just a metaphor', or whether modern evolutionary theory can help us to understand the dynamics of different cultural domains. The 'evolutionary paradigm of rationality' has a significant role to play throughout the human sciences, but raises complex issues in every cultural context where it is applied. By fostering discussion between scholars from a wide range of research traditions, this volume aims to influence the evolution of all of them.
Until the nineteenth century Jacques-Auguste de Thou (1553-1617) was among the most famous and most valued of historians. While his first fame was a succes de scandale - the History of His Time was placed on the Index in 160g - de Thou's work quickly found favor with the humanistically-educated learned class throughout Europe. The esteem in which the History was held transcended religious divisions. The historian received letters of praise from staunchly orthodox Spain and Portugal as well as from heretic England and Germany; through the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries his History was read with enthusi asm by certain cardinals at the very curia which condemned it; and so staunch a champion of orthodoxy as Bishop Bossuet did not hesitate to appeal to "such a great author" for support in his own historical works. ! To the philosophe of the Enlightenment de Thou's impartiality in de scribing the impassioned times through which he lived and the exact yet eloquent style with which he wrote the History of His Time were familiar touchstones. Voltaire appealed to the "truthful and eloquent de Thou" again and again in his works,2 William Pitt rose in the House of Commons to quote the words of the "great historian of France" during the early years of the French Revolution,3 Lessing 4 and Herder 5 praised him with poetic hyperbole, and Edward Gibbon re ferred to "the authority of my masters, the grave Thuanus and the philosophic Hume . . . .
This volume focuses on six topics of research that are particularly
relevant not only for Montaigne's writing but for the late
sixteenth century: the genre of the essay, its style, pedagogy,
politics, religion, and historiography.
2 Peter of Aillyl wrote his Concepts and Insolubles, according to the best 3 estimate, in 1372. He was at that time only about twenty-two years old. He was born around 1350" in Compiegne in the De de France, although his 5 family name associates him with the village of Ailly in Picardy. In 1364 he entered the University of Paris as a 'bursar' (i. e., the recipient of a scholarship) at the College de Navarre. He received the degree of Bachelor of Arts in 1367 and taught there until 1368, when he entered the Faculty of Theology. He became a Doctor of Theology in 1381. In the years that followed, Peter was very active in the 'conciliar' movement and in negotiations to bring about the end of the Great Schism of the West. He was elevated to the rank of Cardinal in 1411 by Pope John XXIII, the successor of Alexander V in the 'Pisa' line of Popes. He took an active part in the Council of Constance (1414-1418), which ended the Great Schism and elected Pope Martin V. Peter died on August 9, 1420. Most of the secondary literature on Peter of Ailly concerns his role in church politics, his writings on the Schism and on ecclesiastical reform, and various aspects of his theology. But Peter was active in a number of other areas as well. He wrote several works, for instance, on geography and astron 6 omy, including an Imago mundi read by Christopher Columbus."
The purpose of this book is to describe the Duke of Rohan's role as a political leader of the Huguenot party from 1621 to 1629 placing somewhat less emphasis on his military achievements. It makes no claim to biographical completeness. The narrative is based on con temporary books and pamphlets and on manuscripts in the Biblio theque nation ale, the British Museum, and the Public Record Office. Research was also done at the Newberry Library, the Library of Congress, and at the University of Wisconsin's Memorial Library, notably in its Montauban, Tank, and French Pamphlet collections. In the preparation of this book I have received advice and assistance from many people. Personal thanks are due to William P. Kaldis, Jack Ray Thomas, and Howard S. Miller for reading the manuscript and to my wife Anna for typing several drafts of it. Marguerite Chris tensen, reference librarian at the University of Wisconsin, helped me secure a number of rare volumes on interlibrary loan. I would also like to thank Cynthia Kaldis for translating a large number of diplo matic letters from Seventeenth century Latin."
The earliest scientific studies of Jewish messianism were conducted by the scholars of the Wissenschaft des Judentums school, particularly Heinrich Graetz, the first great Jewish historian of the Jews since Josephus. These researches were invaluable because they utilized primary sources in print and manuscript which had been previously unknown or used only in polemics. The Wissenschaft studies themselves, however, prove to be polemics as well on closer inspection. Among the goals of this group was to demonstrate that Judaism is a rational and logical faith whose legitimacy and historical progress deserve recognition by the nations of Europe. Mystical and messianic beliefs which might undermine this image were presented as aberrations or the result of corrosive foreign influences on the Jews. Gershom Scholem took upon himself the task of returning mysticism and messianism to their rightful central place in the panorama of Jewish thought. Jewish messianism was, for Scholem, a central theme in the philosophy and life of the Jews throughout their history, shaped anew by each generation to fit its specific hopes and needs. Scholem emphasized that this phenomenon was essentially independent of messianic or millenarian trends among other peoples. For example, in discussing messianism in the early modern era Scholem describes a trunk of influence on the Jewish psyche set off by the expulsion from Spain in 1492.
This book investigates the contested ways in which
eighteenth-century German philosophers, scientists, poets, and
dramatists perceived and represented China and Africa from 1680 to
1830. Tautz demonstrates in compelling ways that reading China
allowed for the integration of cultural difference into
Enlightenment universalism, whereas seeing Africa exposed
irreducible differences that undermined any claims of universality.
By working through the case of eighteenth-century Germany and
Europe, the book adds an important cross-cultural and historical
dimension to questions relevant to our world today.
This study has grown out of an interest in French education and cul ture that dates from fondly remembered student days in France. Specifically, it is an attempt to explain the educational thought of Claude Fleury, a literate, responsible homme de leUres who analyzed the historical origins of public education as it existed in seventeenth-cen tury France and, on that basis, proposed what he considered to be a more generally useful program of studies. Generous space has been devoted to historical, social, and pedagogical background in an effort to place Fleury's thought in its proper cultural context; namely, that of the decline of the Classical Age and the dawn of the Age of Reason. This background material represents also an attempt to explain, at times in detail, the origin of Fleury's Traite du Choix et de la Methode des Etudes and his rise to scholarly and pedagogical prominence at court. It is possible that Fleury's thought, while of most immediate interest to students of seventeenth-century cultural history, will be of interest also to a more general audience. In particular, those charged with providing education that must respond to the ever increasing practical needs of society and at the same time give to contemporary man a of his cultural heritage may find in Fleury's thought some useful sense historical perspective. It is a pleasure to acknowledge that this study would not have been possible without the encouragement and guidance of Dr. William W."
There is no better way to understand a society's assessment of its own success or failure than an examination of its theories of education, because any attempt to improve national performance will be reflected in educational policy. This study is a comprehensive account of the evolution of American educational theory from the colonial period to the present. It includes a broad discussion of the foundations upon which early Americans built their educational policy, as well as influential factors unique to the American experience. From the Revolution to nineteenth century reform efforts to the turbulent twentieth century, educational theory has been adapted to suit the needs of an ever-changing, multicultural society. Throughout U.S. history key objectives have affected the character of education, particularly curriculum. One main thrust for reform has been the belief that equality in education serves the national interest. Examination of the historical attitudes toward the education of African Americans provides a valuable insight into this process. Today America is experiencing significant difficulties in making its educational system succeed, and the negative social effects of this deterioration are already apparent. The future success of educational theory lies in international cooperative efforts.
Erkenntnis und Irrtum. Skizzen zur Psychologie der Forschung. Von E. MACH Emer. Professor an der Unlversltlt Wlen. LEIPZIG Verlag von Johann Ambrosius Barth 1905. INTRODUCTION XIII On a number of occasions Mach expressed the sentiment, especially in his correspondence, that America was the land of intellectual freedom and opportunity, the coming frontier for a new radical empiricism that would help to wash metaphysics out of philosophy. In 1901 he sponsored the German edition of Concepts and Theories of Modern Physics (1881) 2 by J. B. Stallo, Cincinnati lawyer and philosopher. Mach warmly endorsed Stallo's book because his scientific aims so closely approximated his own, and because Stallo rejected the latent metaphysical elements and concealed ontological assumptions of the mechanical-atomistic inter pretation of the world. The second edition of Wiirmelehre was dedicated to Stallo in 1900. The fourth edition of Populiir-wissenschaftliche Vorlesungen (1910), containing seven new essays, was dedicated to Harvard Professor of physiology, philosophY, and psychology, William James. Mach had a strong intellectual affinity for James' pragmatism because, like himself, he recognized that James had come to radically empirical views from science. Both men took pure pre-conceptualized experience, from which the mental and physical predicates of experience are composed, to be neutral rather than real, unreal, objective or subjective."
The history of American universities is punctuated by shifts in the terms on which the mission of higher education is defined and debated. A dramatic moment with lasting effects came with the introduction of German-speaking exile intellectuals in the Hitler era. In Germany, the academic culture of the early twentieth century was torn by the struggle between Wissenschaft and Bildung, two symbolic German terms, whose lack of precise English equivalents is a sign of the different configuration in America. The studies in this book examine the achievements of numerous influential emigre intellectuals against the background of their mediation between the two cultural traditions in science and liberal studies. In showing the richness of reciprocal influences, the book challenges claims about the disruptive influence of exile culture on the American mind.
Although the works of Francis Hutcheson are unfamiliar to most students of philosophy, it cannot be said that he has been entirely ignored. To be sure, most of the recent writers who deal with Hutcheson's philosophy do so in the course of writing about Hutcheson's famous contemporary, David Hume. This is true, for example, of Norman Kemp Smith, whose book entitled The Philosophy of David Hume 1 includes much detailed information concerning Hume's indebtedness to Hutcheson. But others have written about Hutcheson on his own account. William R. Scott's Francis Hutcheson,2 although mainly biographical and historical, is well worth reading. In his article "Some Reflections on Moral-Sense Theories in Ethics," 3 C. D. Broad presents a sustained analysis of the sort of theory held by Hutcheson. D. Daiches Raphael's The Moral Sense 4 is competent, interesting, and especially valuable in its treatment of epistemological issues surrounding the moral sense theory. William K. Frankena's article entitled "Hutcheson's Moral Sense Theory" Ji is search ing and profound. And, most recent of all, a book by William T. Black stone has appeared entitled Francis Hutcheson and Contemporary Ethi cal Theory. 6 One of the difficulties encountered in presenting a study of Hutcheson is that all of his books are extremely rare. Fortunately, L. A. Selby-Bigge'l) 1 Nonnan Kemp Smith, The Philosophy of David Hume (London: Macmillan and Co. , Limited, 1949). Ii William Robert Scott, Francis Hutcheson (Cambridge, Eng. : Cambridge Uni venity Press, 1900).
This volume brings together twenty original essays on the changes and continuities in gender relations and intersecting politics of sexuality, race, class and location. The book is located in debates about contemporary culture at a moment of rapid technological change, global interconnectedness and the growing cultural dominance of neoliberalism and postfeminism. The collection traverses disciplines, spaces and approaches. It is marked by an extraordinarily wide focus, ranging from analyses of celebrity magazines and makeover shows to examinations of the experiences of young female migrants, 'mail order brides' and young women who repudiate feminism. The contributions are united by their attempts to think through the ways in which experiences and representations of femininity are changing in the twenty-first century. Are we seeing new femininities? Are neoliberalism and postfeminism constructing new identities and subjectivities? What kinds of analytic tools and cultural politics are needed to critically engage with the current moment? This book will be of interest to everyone studying gender, media or cultural studies.
Part of a series which offers contemporary work and research in the areas of methodology and the history of economic thought, this volume concentrates on the work on John R. Commons.
It is a common belief that in France the study of medieval literature as literature only began to gain recognition as a valid occupation for the scholar during the nineteenth century. It is well known that historians of the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries looked to the literary productions of the Middle Ages for materials useful to their researches, but it is only recently that the remarkable frequency of this reference has been appreciated and that scholars have become aware of an unbroken tradition of what might best be described as historically ori ented medievalism stretching from the sixteenth century to our own. The eighteenth century has drawn the greatest number of curious to this field, for it is evident that the surprisingly extensive researches undertaken then do much to explain the progress made a century later by the most celebrated generation of medievalistst. Very slowly we are coming to see the value of the contribution made by little known schol ars like La Curne de Sainte-Palaye, Etienne Barbazan and the Comte de Caylus."
Erkenntnis und Irrtum. Skizzen zur Psychologie der Forschung. Von E. MACH Emer. Professor an der Unlversltlt Wlen. LEIPZIG Verlag von Johann Ambrosius Barth 1905. INTRODUCTION XIII On a number of occasions Mach expressed the sentiment, especially in his correspondence, that America was the land of intellectual freedom and opportunity, the coming frontier for a new radical empiricism that would help to wash metaphysics out of philosophy. In 1901 he sponsored the German edition of Concepts and Theories of Modern Physics (1881) 2 by J. B. Stallo, Cincinnati lawyer and philosopher. Mach warmly endorsed Stallo's book because his scientific aims so closely approximated his own, and because Stallo rejected the latent metaphysical elements and concealed ontological assumptions of the mechanical-atomistic inter pretation of the world. The second edition of Wiirmelehre was dedicated to Stallo in 1900. The fourth edition of Populiir-wissenschaftliche Vorlesungen (1910), containing seven new essays, was dedicated to Harvard Professor of physiology, philosophY, and psychology, William James. Mach had a strong intellectual affinity for James' pragmatism because, like himself, he recognized that James had come to radically empirical views from science. Both men took pure pre-conceptualized experience, from which the mental and physical predicates of experience are composed, to be neutral rather than real, unreal, objective or subjective."
The problem of universals is one of the main philosophical issues. In this book the author reconstructs the history of the problem considering a selection of medieval representative texts and authors. The source of medieval and postmedieval debate is identified in the Socratic-Platonic survey on the definition of concepts. In the Categories, Aristotle discusses important topics concerning the relations that exist between logical terms. In particular he establishes a kind of predication principle: categorial terms have a certain predication relation if (and only if) some facts expressed by ordinary sentences hold. The Categories also because of their particular disciplinary status, halfway between logic and metaphysics, leave a number of questions open. Among these questions, a particularly intriguing one is Porphyry's riddle: are there genera and species? And, if there are such things, what are they like?
Over three hundred years ago, the paramount modern Catholic exegete, Cornelius a Lapide, S.J., wrote that the 25th of March, 2000, was the most likely date for the world to end. Catholic Millenarianism does not let the day pass without comment. Catholic Millenarianism offers an authoritative overview of Catholic apocalyptic thought combined with detailed presentations by specialists on nine major Catholic authors, such as Savonarola, Luis de LeA3n, and AntA3nio Vieira. With its companion volumes, Catholic Millenarianism illustrates a hold apocalyptic concerns had on intellectual life, particularly between 1500 and 1900, rivaling and influencing rationalism and skepticism. Catholics do not ordinarily expect a messianic reign by earthly means. Catholic Millenarianism shows instead what is common to Catholic authors: their preoccupation with the relationship between linguistic prophecies and the events they foretell. This makes the perspectives offered as surprisingly diverse as their particular times, and the book itself interesting and worth repeated reading.
The Rise and Fall of Latin Humanism in Early-Modern Russia argues that, between 1650 and 1789, Russia flirted with Western Europe's Latin Humanism. However, all levels of society, especially the nobility, consistently rejected the pagan authors of Latinate culture, propagated by the Ukrainian clergy. An examination of the printing industry, of Latin teaching, of private libraries in Russia, and excursions into the thought of Russia's "enlighteners", demonstrate that Latin authors had little impact on Russia and its nobility that was traditionally regarded as the advocate of Western educational and cultural values. The book contributes to our understanding of the reforms of Peter the Great, of Catherine's "enlightened" reputation, of the origins of the intelligentsia and of the cultural ties between Russians and the peoples they annexed in early modern times.
Thomas Holden presents a fascinating study of theories of matter in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. These theories were plagued by a complex of interrelated problems concerning matter's divisibility, composition, and internal architecture. Is any material body infinitely divisible? Must we posit atoms or elemental minima from which bodies are ultimately composed? Are the parts of material bodies themselves material concreta? Or are they merely potentialities or possible existents? Questions such as these - and the press of subtler questions hidden in their amibiguities - deeply unsettled philosophers of the early modern period. They seemed to expose serious paradoxes in the new world view pioneered by Galileo, Descartes, and Newton. The new science's account of a fundamentally geometrical Creation, mathematicizable and intelligible to the human inquirer, seemed to be under threat. This was a great scandal, and the philosophers of the period accordingly made various attempts to disarm the paradoxes. All the great figures address the issue: most famously Leibniz and Kant, but also Galileo, Hobbes, Newton, Hume, and Reid, in addition to a crowd of lesser figures. Thomas Holden offers a brilliant synthesis of these discussions and presents his own overarching interpretation of the controversy, locating the underlying problem in the tension between the early moderns' account of material parts on the one hand and the programme of the geometrization of nature on the other.
The intent of the present work is chiefly the presentation of a running commentary, preponderantly historical in complexion, on the detail of the text of St. Anselm's dialogue De Grammatico. At the same time the making intelligible of that text has demanded the concurrent proffering of logical elucidations. The framework adopted for the latter is the Ontology of S. Lesniewski. The unsuitability of other current systems of logic for the analysis of medieval doctrines has been suggested in HLM I. Hereunder the line of analyses proposed in HDG (an introduc tory study of De Grammatico) will for the most part be maintained, with only a few modifications. Changes which further study might demand would in any case involve not so much an abrogation of the HDG ver sions, but rather certain complications of detail on the lines indicated in HLM, HEE, and Hoi. Readers who happen to be out of sympathy either with modem logic as a whole, or with the Lesniewskian systems in particular, may be assured that the historical thread of the commentary remains for the most part unaffected by issues connected with such logics. Much of the historical material contained in the commentary consists of quotations from the logical works of Boethius. Some of that material may at first sight appear prosaic and tedious."
What role did the performance of poetry, music, song, and dance play in the political life of the ancient city? How has philosophy positioned itself and articulated its own ambitions in relation to the poet tradition? The Polis and the Stage poses such questions through a reading of Plato last, longest, and unfinished work, the Laws. Plato's engagement with the Greek poetic tradition has long been recognized as foundational in the history of literary criticism, but the broader critical and philosophical significance of the Laws has been largely ignored. Although Plato is often thought hostile to mimetic art, famously banishing poets from the ideal city of the Republic, this book shows that in his final dialogue Plato made a striking about-face, proposing to rehabilitate Athenian performance culture and envisioning a city, in which poetry, music, song, and dance are instrumental in the cultivation of philosophical virtues. The psychological underpinnings of aesthetic experience and the power of mimetic art to predispose a society to specific kinds of constitutions are central themes throughout this study. Plato's views of the performative properties of language and genre receives systematic treatment in this study for the first time. Performance as a mechanism of sexual construction-a network of social practices uniquely suited to communicate and enforce normative conceptions of gender and erotic pleasure-is another focus, with special attention given to positions occupied by women in the culture envisaged in the Laws. As a whole, Marcus Folch's book provides an integrated interpretation of Plato's final dialogue with the Greek poetic tradition, an exploration of the dialectic between philosophy and mimetic art, which will be of interest to anyone concerned with understanding ancient Greek performance and the emergence of philosophical discourse in fourth-century Athens.
This book has two purposes. The first is clearly historical, the second is more philosophical and interpretive. Its success in the former will be less arguable than its attainment of the latter. The contribution to the history of Spanish letters consists in critically establishing the fact that the sources of Fray Luis de Le6n's moral and spiritual thought are Hebraic and that he can be seen to stand as one in a long line of Christian Hebraists, both scholastic and humanist. His philosophical views are cast in an Hebraic tradition, not in an Hellenic one as supposed by nearly every other commentator. I have stressed the presence of a living Hebrew culture in Spain after 1492, and I have suggested that this and the Jewish parentage of Fray Luis are very significant. I have also identified an intellectual debt Fray Luis owed to non-Jewish Orientalists such as Egidio da Viterbo and Girolamo Seripando. But, even they learned from exiled Spaniards. I want to present Fray Luis as a most characteristic thinker in the world of Baroque Spain. I think most will agree with the picture I have outlined. The more audacious aspect is my wish to show the importance of the Jewish heritage as found in the literary and philosophical production of this remarkable genius. It is, of course, my contention that today know ledge about Fray Luis and what he stood for is extraordinarily important."
The influence of millenarian thinking upon Cromwell's England is well-known. The cultural and intellectual conceptions of the role of millenarian ideas in the long' 18th century when, so the official' story goes, the religious sceptics and deists of Enlightened England effectively tarred such religious radicalism as enthusiasm' has been less well examined. This volume endeavors to revise this official' story and to trace the influence of millenarian ideas in the science, politics, and everyday life of England and America in the 17th and 18th centuries. |
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