What is a religion? How do we discern the boundaries between religions, or religious communities? When does Judaism become Judaism, Christianity become Christianity, Islam become Islam? Scholars have increasingly called into question the standard narratives created by the various orthodoxies, narratives of steadfastness and consistency, of long and courageous maintenance of true doctrine and right practice over the centuries, in the face of opposition (and at times persecution) at the hands of infidels or heretics. The 11 chapters in this book, Geneses: A Comparative Study of the Historiographies of the Rise of Christianity, Rabbinic Judaism and Islam, written by an international group of specialists the languages, religions, laws and cultures of early Judaism, Christianity and Islam, tackle these questions through a comparative study of these narratives: their formation over time, and their use today. They explore three key aspects of the field: (1) the construction (and scholarly deconstruction) of the narratives of triumph (and defeat) of religions, (2) how legal imperatives are constructed from religious narratives and sacred texts, and (3) contemporary ramifications of these issues. In doing so, they tap into the significant body of research over the last 30 years, which has shown the fluidity and malleability of these religious traditions in relation to each other and to more traditional "pagan" and Zoroastrian religions and philosophical traditions. This book represents an important contribution to, and a valuable resource for, the burgeoning field of comparative history of the Abrahamic religions.

Philosophy of Religion is marked by controversy over which philosophical accounts do justice to core religious beliefs. Many Wittgenstinian philosophers are accused by analytic philosophers of religion of distorting these beliefs. In Whose God? Which Tradition?, the accusers stand accused of the same by leading philosophers in the Thomist and Reformed traditions. Their criticisms alert us to the dangers of uncritical acceptance of dominant philosophical traditions, and to the need to do justice to the conceptual uniqueness of the reality of God. The dissenting voices breathe new life into the central issues concerning the nature of belief in God.

Focusing on the history of ideas, this book explores important questions concerning knowledge in relation to philosophy, science, ethics and Christian faith. Kirk contributes to the current debate about the intellectual basis and integrity of Western culture, exploring controversial issues concerning the notions of modernity and post-modernity. Repositioning the Christian faith as a valid dialogue partner with contemporary secular movements in philosophy and ethics, Kirk seeks to show that in 'post-Christian' Europe the Christian faith still possesses intellectual resources worthy to be reckoned with. This book's principal argument is that contemporary Western society faces a cultural crisis. It explores what appears to be an historical enigma, namely the question of why Western intellectual endeavours in philosophy and science seem to have abandoned the search for a source of knowledge able to draw together disparate pieces of information provided by different disciplines. Kirk draws conclusions, particularly in the area of ethical decision-making, from this apparent failure and invites readers to consider Christian theism afresh as a means for the renewal of culture and society.

Ludwig Wittgenstein's brief Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1922) is one of the most important philosophical works of the twentieth century, yet it offers little orientation for the reader. The first-time reader is left wondering what it could be about, and the scholar is left with little guidance for interpretation. In Tractatus in Context, James C. Klagge presents the vital background necessary for appreciating Wittgenstein's gnomic masterpiece. Tractatus in Context contains the early reactions to the Tractatus, including the initial reviews written in 1922-1924. And while we can't talk with Wittgenstein, we can do the next best thing-hear what he had to say about the Tractatus. Klagge thus presents what Wittgenstein thought about germane issues leading up to his writing the book, in discussions and correspondence with others about his ideas, and what he had to say about the Tractatus after it was written-in letters, lectures and conversations. It offers, you might say, Wittgenstein's own commentary on the book. Key Features: Illuminates what is at stake in the Tractatus, by providing the views of others that engaged Wittgenstein as he was writing it. Includes Wittgenstein's earlier thoughts on ideas in the book as recorded in his notebooks, letters, and conversations as well as his later, retrospective comments on those ideas. Draws on new or little-known sources, such as Wittgenstein's coded notebooks, Hermine's notes, Frege's letters, Hansel's diary, Ramsey's notes, and Skinner's dictations. Draws connections between the background context and specific passages in the Tractatus, using a proposition-by-proposition commentary.

This book explores the contribution of Gaudiya Vaisnava theology to polity and public engagement during the reign of Jaisingh II in the early eighteenth century in North India. The book analyses specialised treatises produced by the Gaudiya Vaisnavas which provide theological foundations to endorse and encourage responsible public conduct. This book will be of interest to scholars in the fields of South Asian Studies, Indology, Religious Studies, South Asian History and Hindu Studies.

As a contribution to cultural policy studies, this book offers a uniquely detailed and comprehensive account of the historical evolution of cultural policies and their contestation within a single democratic polity, while treating these developments comparatively against the backdrop of contemporaneous influences and developments internationally. It traces the climate of debate, policies and institutional arrangements arising from the state's regulation and administration of culture in Ireland from 1800 to 2010. It traces the influence of precedent and practice developed under British rule in the nineteenth century on government in the 26-county Free State established in 1922 (subsequently declared the Republic of Ireland in 1949). It demonstrates the enduring influence of the liberal principle of minimal intervention in cultural life on the approach of successive Irish governments to the formulation of cultural policy, right up to the 1970s. From 1973 onwards, however, the state began to take a more interventionist and welfarist approach to culture. This was marked by increasing professionalization of the arts and heritage, and a decline in state support for amateur and voluntary cultural bodies. That the state had a more expansive role to play in regulating and funding culture became a norm of cultural discourse.

This exciting Greenvill Collins biography is about seventeenth century navigation, focusing for the first time on mathematics practised at sea. This monograph argues the Restoration kings', Charles II and James II, promotion of cartography for both strategy and trade. It is aimed at the academic, cartographic and larger market of marine enthusiasts. Through shipwreck and Arctic marooning, and Dutch and Spanish charts, Collins evolved a Prime Meridian running through Charles's capital. After John Ogilby's successful Britannia, Charles set Collins surveying his kingdom's coasts, and James set John Adair surveying in Scotland. They triangulated at sea. Subsequently, Collins persuaded James to sustain his dead brother's ambition. This, the British coast's first survey took six years. After James's flight, and William III's invasion, Collins lead the royal yacht squadron for six years more, garnering funds to publish Great Britain's Coasting Pilot. The Admiralty and civic institutions subsidised what became his own pilot. Collins aided Royal Society members in their investigations, and his new guide remained vital to navigators through the century following. Charles's cartographic promotion bloomed the most spectacularly in the atlases of Ogilby, Collins and John Flamsteed for roads, harbours, and stars.

Is the appropriate form of human action explanation causal or rather teleological? While this is a central question in analytic philosophy of action, it also has implications for questions about the differences between methods of explanation in the sciences on the one hand and in the humanities and the social sciences on the other. Additionally, this question bears on the problem of the appropriate form of explanations of past human actions, and therefore it is prominently discussed by analytic philosophers of historiography. This volume brings together causalists and anti-causalists to address enduring philosophical questions at the heart of this debate, as well as their implications for the practice of historiography. Part I considers the quarrel between causalism and anti-causalism in recent developments in the philosophy of action. Part II presents papers by causalists and anti-causalists that are more narrowly focused on the philosophy of historiography.

Global Perspectives in Modern Italian Culture presents a series of unexplored case studies from the sixteenth to the twentieth century, each demonstrating how travellers, scientists, Catholic missionaries, scholars and diplomats coming from the Italian peninsula contributed to understandings of various global issues during the age of early globalization. It also examines how these individuals represented different parts of the world to an Italian audience, and how deeply Italian culture drew inspiration from the increasing knowledge of world 'Otherness'. The first part of the book focuses on the production of knowledge, drawing on texts written by philosophers, scientists, historians and numerous other first-hand eyewitnesses. The second part analyses the dissemination and popularization of knowledge by focussing on previously understudied published works and initiatives aimed at learned Italian readers and the general public. Written in a lively and engaging manner, this book will appeal to scholars and students of early modern and modern European history, as well as those interested in global history.

This book discusses the most comprehensive of Hegel's works: his long-neglected Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences in Outline. It contains original essays by internationally renowned and emerging voices in Hegel scholarship. Their contributions elucidate fundamental aspects of Hegel's encyclopedic system with an eye to its contemporary relevance. The book thus addresses system-level claims about Hegel's unique conceptions of philosophy, philosophical "science" and its method, dialectic, speculative thinking, and the way they relate to both Hegelian and contemporary notions of nature, history, religion, freedom, and cultural praxis.

Provides an accessible summary of where the field is at, perfect for researchers and upper level students of the history of knowledge. At the end of each chapter are suggestions for related and complementary chapters within the book, to ensure students can see how the examples related to one another and the comparison's made in the volume. The volume offers a broad inclusive view of knowledge practices and all the chapters offer a praxeological approach to their sources. Threatened Knowledge enables researchers and students to understand how actors in different historical periods and regions of the world describe the order in which they lived, how they defined an order worth preserving, and when a specific order lost its function the role the actors' self-conception took. The chapters cover a range of examples from Carolingian Europe and the British Commonwealth to single cities like Cairo or even share brokers' halls in America around 1900. Providing students with a useful range of example to draw upon but also the tools to conduct their own research into other centres of knowledge.

Seeking to bridge the gap between various approaches to the study of emotions, this volume aims at a multidisciplinary examination of connections between emotions and history and the ways in which these connections have manifested themselves in historiography, cultural, and literary studies. The book offers a selected range of insights into the idea of emotions, affects, and emotionality as driving forces and agents of change in history. The fifteen essays it comprises probe into the emotional motives and dispositions behind both historical phenomena and the ways they were narrated.

Early modern audiences, readerships, and viewerships were not homogenous. Differences in status, education, language, wealth, and experience (to name only a few variables) could influence how a group of people, or a particular person, received and made sense of sermons, public proclamations, dramatic and musical performances, images, objects, and spaces. The ways in which each of these were framed and executed could have a serious impact on their relevance and effectiveness. The chapters in this volume explore the ways in which authors, poets, artists, preachers, theologians, playwrights, and performers took account of and encoded pluriform potential audiences, readers, and viewers in their works, and how these varied parties encountered and responded to these works. The contributors here investigate these complex interactions through a variety of critical and methodological lenses.

This volume examines the contributions to International Law of individual members of the Advisory Committee of Jurists in the League of Nations, and the broader national and discursive legal traditions of which they were representative. It adopts a biographical approach that complements existing legal narratives. Pre-1914 visions of a liberal international order influenced the post-1919 world based on the rule of law in civilised nations. This volume focuses on leading legal personalities of this era. It discusses the scholarly work of the ACJ wise men, their biographical notes, and narrates their contribution as legal scholars and founding fathers of the sources of international law that culminated in their drafting of the statute of the Permanent Court of International Justice, the forerunner of the International Court of Justice. The book examines visions of world law in a liberal international order through social theory and constructivism, historical examination of key developments that influenced their career and their scholarly writings and international law as a science. The book will be a valuable reference for those working in the areas of International Law, Legal History, Political History and International Relations.

The book investigates modern Qur'an commentaries in South Asia and engages with how Muslim scholars have imagined and assessed their past intellectual heritage. The research is focused on British India from the time of the Mutiny of 1857 to the moment of the Partition of united India in 1947. Offering critical scrutiny of Muslim exegesis of the Qur'an in North India, the study especially focuses on the Qur'anic thought of Sayyid Ahmed Khan (d. 1989), Ashraf Ali Thanawi (d. 1943), and Hamid al-Din Farahi (d. 1930). The volume challenges widespread assumptions of an all-pervasive reform and revivalism underlying the academic study of Islam. Instead of looking for Muslim revivalism and reform as epistemological foundations, it stresses the study of modern Qur'an commentaries, in particular local and cosmopolitan contexts. Departing from the oft-repeated explanations of Muslim scholarship and modern Islam through the lens of traditionalism and modernism, it discovers how Muslim scholars viewed themselves in relation to the Islamic tradition, and how they imagined and assessed their past intellectual heritage. Studying the history of the interpretation of the Qur'an in the multiple contexts of nineteenth and early twentieth-century British India, the book will be of interest to readers of Qur'anic studies, modern Islam and South Asian studies.

Protestant Resistance in Counterreformation Austria examines Austrian Protestants who actively resisted the Habsburg Counterreformation in the early seventeenth century. While a determined few decided early on that only military means could combat the growing pressure to conform, many more did not reach that conclusion until they had been forced into exile. Since the climax of their activism coincided with the Swedish intervention in the Thirty Years' War, the study also analyzes contemporary Swedish policy and the resulting Austro-Swedish interrelationship. Thus, a history of state and religion in the early modern Habsburg Monarchy evolves into a prime example of histoire croisee, of historical experiences and traditions that transcend political borders. The book does not only explore the historical conflict itself, however, but also uses it as a case study on societal recollection. Austrian nation-building, which tenuously commenced in the interwar era but was fully implemented after the restoration of Austrian statehood in 1945, was anchored in a conservative ideological tradition with strong sympathies for the Habsburg legacy. This ideological perspective also influenced the assessment of the confessional period. The modern representation of early modern conflicts reveals the selectivity of historical memory.

Devastated by two decades of war and ravaged by the spread of the plague, large parts of Italy fell quickly into the hands of a group known to history as the Lombards. By the early 570s the Lombards were firmly established in Italy, which they ruled without ever fully unifying it. The events of the late sixth century shaped early medieval Italy. They also affected how Italian history was written: the Lombards were blamed for plunging the peninsula into the darkness of the Middle Ages, finally ending Roman civilization. But was it really a 'barbarian invasion' that created medieval Italy? What was the role of the imperial authorities and the papacy? In Warfare and the Making of Early Medieval Italy, Eduardo Fabbro brings a new take on the changes that shook Italy at the end of the sixth century. Moving past traditional narratives of barbarians and battles, the book re-evaluates the impact of war in creating early medieval Italy. Fabbro brings to the fore a complex picture that includes not only invading barbarians but also rebelling soldiers, disgruntled farmers, vexed commanders, and cunning adventurers trying to make the best of a bad situation. Through a complete reassessment of contemporary and later sources, this book rewrites the history of the first decades of Lombard rule and shows that warfare's impact went far beyond battles and invasions; it rewired the social and political links that bound the region.

1. This book traces the emergence of Indian English during national movement. 2. It is rich in archival material as it uses articles, letters and speeches of prominent Indians like Tagore, Gandhi, Raja Rammohun Roy. 3. The book will be of interest to departments of South Asian studies and Cultural Studies across UK and USA.

Provides an accessible summary of where the field is at, perfect for researchers and upper level students of the history of knowledge. At the end of each chapter are suggestions for related and complementary chapters within the book, to ensure students can see how the examples related to one another and the comparison's made in the volume. The volume offers a broad inclusive view of knowledge practices and all the chapters offer a praxeological approach to their sources. Threatened Knowledge enables researchers and students to understand how actors in different historical periods and regions of the world describe the order in which they lived, how they defined an order worth preserving, and when a specific order lost its function the role the actors' self-conception took. The chapters cover a range of examples from Carolingian Europe and the British Commonwealth to single cities like Cairo or even share brokers' halls in America around 1900. Providing students with a useful range of example to draw upon but also the tools to conduct their own research into other centres of knowledge.

Colonising New Zealand offers a radically new vision of the basis and process of Britain's colonisation of New Zealand. It commences by confronting the problems arising from subjective and ever-evolving moral judgements about colonisation and examines the possibility of understanding colonisation beyond the confines of any preoccupations with moral perspectives. It then investigates the motives behind Britain's imperial expansion, both in a global context and specifically in relation to New Zealand. The nature and reasons for this expansion are deciphered using the model of an organic imperial ecosystem, which involves examining the first cause of all colonisation and which provides a means of understanding why the disparate parts of the colonial system functioned in the ways that they did. Britain's imperial system did not bring itself into being, and so the notion of the Empire having emerged from a supra-system is assessed, which in turn leads to an exploration of the idea of equilibrium-achievement as the Prime Mover behind all colonisation-something that is borne out in New Zealand's experience from the late eighteenth century. This work changes profoundly the way New Zealand's colonisation is interpreted, and provides a framework for reassessing all forms of imperialism.

Darwin's evolutionary ideas have been of immense social and political significance, filtering into an amazing galaxy of ideologies and agendas. This book focuses upon Social Darwinism, analyzing the concept, exploring its social origins, showing how people metaphorically sat upon Darwin's « coat-tails to further their own campaigns, justifying everything from capitalism to socialism, war to peace, race and empire to Nazi-style eugenics. These reflective essays showcase the author's many years of Darwinian research and cover the period from 1859 to World War II (mainly in the British arena). Darwin's Coat-Tails also sheds light on current challenges, from « ethnic cleansing to genetic engineering.

With a broad, interdisciplinary focus and logically and clearly running through the issues involved in thinking about the future, this provides students with a clearly written, historically grounded textbook for future studies courses. Future studies has been around for a while, but, especially at the moment, never has it been so important - the volume engages with things that are on everyone's minds at the moment. The volume provides a different sweep of coverage to other future studies, being both broadly interdisciplinary whilst grounded in history, but also in covering a broader sweep of questions and topics than most other books on future studies and engaging wholeheartedly with the strategy of backcasting as a way of turning ideal futures into reality.

This book aims to demonstrate how scholars in recent times have been utilizing egodocuments from various angles and providing an opening for the multivocality of the sources to be fully appreciated. The first part of the book is concerned with the significance of egodocuments, both for the individual him/herself who creates such documents, and also for the other, who receives them. The author approaches the subject on the basis of his own personal experience, and goes on to discuss the importance of such documents for the academic world, emphasizing more general questions and issues within the fields of historiography, philosophy of history, microhistory, and memory studies. The second part of the book is based upon a photographic collection - an archive - that belonged to the author's grandfather, who over decades accumulated photographs of vagabonds and outsiders. This part seeks to explore what kind of knowledge can be applied when a single source - an archive, document, letter, illustration, etc. - is examined, and whether the knowledge derived may not be quite as good in its own context as in the broader perspective.

This book discusses the discipline standards of History in Australian universities in order to help historians understand the Threshold Learning Outcomes and to assist in their practical application. It is divided into two sections: The first offers a scholarly exploration of contemporary issues in history teaching, while the second section discusses each of the Threshold Learning Outcomes and provides real-world examples of quality pedagogical practice. Although the book focuses on the discipline of history in Australia, other subjects and other countries are facing the same dilemmas. As such, it includes chapters that address the international context and bring an international perspective to the engagement with discipline standards. The innovation and leadership of this scholarly community represents a new stage in the transformation and renewal of history teaching.

The historian Wolfgang Mommsen was one of the foremost experts on Max Weber as well as an insightful and accessible interpreter of his work. Mommsen's classic book, first published in 1974 under the title The Age of Bureaucracy, not only concisely explains the basic concepts underlying Weber's worldview, but also explores the historical, social, and intellectual contexts in which he operated, including Weber's development as an academic, his relationship to German nationalism, and his engagement with Marxism. Supplemented with a new foreword, a bibliography that includes recent studies, and a postscript by Volker Berghahn that surveys the most important debates on Weber's work since his death, this short volume serves as an excellent resource for scholars and students alike.