In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Ideas 61.1 (2000) 97-114 [Access article in PDF] Blackloism and Tradition: From Theological Certainty to Historiographical Doubt Beverley C. Southgate * Introduction "Pyrrho himself never advanced any Principle of Scepticism beyond this," complained John Tillotson at the height of the seventeenth-century "rule of faith" debates; 1 and John Sergeant, as Catholic champion and the object of his charge, must have noted the irony. (...) For Tillotson was not unreasonable in concluding that his adversary's theological arguments had the effect of increasing the very uncertainty which they were designed to combat. Sergeant's attempts to overcome scepticism in theology were actually destined to exacerbate the problem of scepticism in relation to historiography.John Sergeant (1623-1707) was an English secular priest and, more specifically, a member of that notorious faction of Catholics known as "Blackloists," followers of Thomas White (1593-1676), alias Blacklo. 2 White produced some forty works on theology, natural philosophy, and political theory; he was known as an eminent philosopher in his own day and has more recently been restored to wider interest following the publication of Hobbes's lengthy critique of his cosmological treatise De Mundo. Sergeant has remained best known for his advocacy of the Catholic position in the "rule of faith" debates, but he was also a prolific writer on philosophy and, as a late Aristotelian, took issue with such "modernists" as Descartes and Locke. 3 Sergeant was widely recognized as White's [End Page 97] intellectual disciple, and it will be convenient here to consider their thought together. 4 Both devoted much of their time and energy (in Sergeant's words) to "beating down scepticism" or, as White had earlier called it, the "contagion of Pyrrhonism"; and both would have been horrified to think that they had actually contributed to any extension of skeptical philosophy. 5Blackloist concerns with the refutation of skeptically induced uncertainty had obvious implications for their contributions to the "rule of faith" debates and to their attempted establishment of one single and certain ground of religious belief. During the latter half of the seventeenth century Protestants and Catholics expended a considerable amount of intellectual and emotional energy in advocating their respective routes to that level of religious certainty which would assure salvation. While the former expressed confidence in the reliability of the scriptures' literary record, the latter counter-claimed that they alone enjoyed a faith that was reliably grounded in an unbroken tradition deriving from Christ himself.Thomas White highlights these issues in his additions to the "corrected and enlarged" 1654 edition of William Rushworth's Dialogues, in which he laments the fragmenting effects of the Reformation. White argues that because they no longer enjoy "one rule among them all" Protestants resort to their various individual principles; and although all appeal ultimately to the authority of the Bible, they each have only their own "private conceit" by which to resolve any ambiguities in the scriptural record. The extraction of religious tenets then becomes effectively a matter of mere guesswork; the whole Bible might as well be replaced by the Koran. Something far more authoritative, White insists, is needed to overcome theological uncertainty--"this dangerous Cockatrice, Incertitude"; 6 and it is precisely such firmly based and wholly reliable authority that he and Sergeant strove to provide. [End Page 98]In this context, however, theology became intimately interrelated with historiography. Some of the difficulties attendant on the Protestant recourse to the Bible were no doubt specific to the Bible itself, but others related more generally to the validity of any historical record, and it is some of the wider historiographical implications of theological debate that I shall examine in this paper. By arguing against the skeptics and pragmatic Protestants while simultaneously insisting on their own variety of absolute theological certainty based on reliable historical tradition, the Blackloists actually contributed to the development of that form of historiographical uncertainty which culminated in what, by the end of the century, came to be known as "Historical Pyrrhonism." 7 The Scriptures: Linguistic and Literary Problems "For since the... (shrink)

One of the early propositions on the nature of Southeast Asia comes from George Coedes’ 1968 The Indianized states of Southeast Asia, which assumes that Southeast Asia and its identity construction resulted from the region’s passive acceptance of culture from India and China. Such is the case that that the cultural landscape of the region becomes a mere accumulation of external influences. Robert Redfield’s notion of “great and little traditions” that Southeast Asian historians used in examining and understanding Southeast Asian (...) identity and history influenced these ideas. Zeus Salazar’s 1988 The Malayan connection, challenges this framing of Southeast Asian history. -/- This study aims to evaluate Salazar’s historiographical contributions to Southeast Asian studies, especially in terms of his efforts to problematize and establish the pan-Malayan identity of insular Southeast Asia. This will be undertaken through a critical review of his works such as Kabihasnang Asyano: Isang pangkasaysayang introduksyon [Asian civilization: A historical introduction] (1990); The Malayan connection (1998); Ang Pilipinong banua/banwa sa mundong Melano-Polynesiano [The Philippines in the Melano-Polynesian world] (2006); and, Asya: Kasaysayan at kabihasnan [Asia: History and civilization] (2010), as well as the works of some scholars in Southeast Asian Studies who have been influenced by Salazar and his works. The research will also show that the nationalist historiography that Salazar advocates emphasizes and highlights the Southeast Asian region’s Austronesian roots as the basis of the region’s cultural identity. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: The Concept of “Schools” Main Schools of Historiography Towards a Theory of the History of Historiography Bibliography.

ABSTRACT While thinking about the notion of the “global” in the history of the history of science, this essay examines a related but equally basic concept: the idea of “Western science.” Tracing its rise in the nineteenth century, it shows how it developed as much outside the Western world as within it. Ironically, while the idea itself was crucial for the disciplinary formation of the history of science, the global history behind this story has not been much attended to. Drawing (...) on examples from nineteenth-century Egypt and China, the essay begins by looking at how international vectors of knowledge production (viz., missionaries and technocrats) created new global histories of science through the construction of novel genealogies and through a process of conceptual syncretism. Turning next to the work of early professional historians of science, it shows how Arabic and Chinese knowledge traditions were similarly reinterpreted in light of the modern sciences, now viewed as part of a diachronic and universalist teleology ending in “Western science.” It concludes by arguing that examining the global emergence of the idea of Western science in this way highlights key questions pertaining to the relation of the history of science to knowledge traditions across the world and the continuing search for global histories of science. (shrink)

The history of Pythagoreanism is littered with different and incompatible interpretations. This observation directs this book towards a fundamentally historiographical rather than philological approach, setting out to reconstruct the way in which the tradition established Pythagoreanism s image.".

Traditionally, the Scientific Revolution has been portrayed as an era in history when new developments in fields of ‘scientific’ thought eclipsed the long-held notions presented by religion and philosophy. Historical interpretations subscribing to this view have often presented the Scientific Revolution as a time when significant changes occurred in the way societies understood their world. These historical analyses have focused on a limited suite of ideas – the iconic figures of the Scientific Revolution, the intellectual, methodological and theoretical developments of (...) the era and the shift away from antiquated worldviews. Owing to the decidedly intellectual foci of these investigations, the Scientific Revolution, and the influential figures therein, are depicted as the impetus for modern thought and society as we know it today. However, in recent decades, historical studies of the Scientific Revolution have shifted away from investigations emphasizing the supposedly progressive nature of the era and have chosen to observe aspects of the historical period that are significantly more cultural in tone. For instance, aspects such as the economic impacts of intellectual developments, the self-fashioning practiced by figures during the period and the importance of cultivating various social relationships are observed in order to provide a richer, more socially contextualized presentation of the Scientific Revolution. This paper will compare two modes of historical investigation – Intellectual and Cultural Historical, examine the changes that have occurred in historical interpretations of the Scientific Revolution and illustrate the motivations that have guided these two distinct approaches to history. This historiographical analysis will show how portrayals of the Scientific Revolution have changed over time and developed from something decidedly intellectual in focus, into a much more nuanced, culturally focused form of scholarship. (shrink)

Traditionally, the Scientific Revolution has been portrayed as an era in history when new developments in fields of ‘scientific’ thought eclipsed the long-held notions presented by religion and philosophy. Historical interpretations subscribing to this view have often presented the Scientific Revolution as a time when significant changes occurred in the way societies understood their world. These historical analyses have focused on a limited suite of ideas – the iconic figures of the Scientific Revolution, the intellectual, methodological and theoretical developments of (...) the era and the shift away from antiquated worldviews. Owing to the decidedly intellectual foci of these investigations, the Scientific Revolution, and the influential figures therein, are depicted as the impetus for modern thought and society as we know it today. However, in recent decades, historical studies of the Scientific Revolution have shifted away from investigations emphasizing the supposedly progressive nature of the era and have chosen to observe aspects of the historical period that are significantly more cultural in tone. For instance, aspects such as the economic impacts of intellectual developments, the self-fashioning practiced by figures during the period and the importance of cultivating various social relationships are observed in order to provide a richer, more socially contextualized presentation of the Scientific Revolution. This paper will compare two modes of historical investigation – Intellectual and Cultural Historical, examine the changes that have occurred in historical interpretations of the Scientific Revolution and illustrate the motivations that have guided these two distinct approaches to history. This historiographical analysis will show how portrayals of the Scientific Revolution have changed over time and developed from something decidedly intellectual in focus, into a much more nuanced, culturally focused form of scholarship. (shrink)

The Crimea Conference is by all means an extremely complex historical event. Any attempt to estimate its role and significance without analyzing its ethical components would unavoidably result in unduly simplifying the historical reality of the time, as well as in forming erroneous assumptions that would necessarily be used in the analysis of the causes of Cold War. A thorough examination will show that as far as the ‘ethical’ issues are concerned, there are significant developments with regard to general methodology, (...) as well as its application to the sources. Generations of historians who have addressed the issue of Yalta Conference, although they have not been able to form a scientific, distinct ‘ethical’ tradition so far, have developed all the necessary prerequisites for its establishment. This is evident in the possibility of segmenting the issue in two parts on the one hand, and on the other in the availability of sufficient sources, structured databases, and selected outstanding works. Still, there are no studies about the Yalta Conference so far that address exclusively ethical issues concerning ‘good’ and ‘evil,’ ‘morality,’ ‘duty,’ and ‘honor.’ Although historiographical approaches are to a large extent dependent upon ethical viewpoints, in the case of Yalta agreements so far there have been no techniques available, so as to connect historical accounts with ideology, and historical facts with their philosophical background. In a sense, the situation is quite the same as it is with the study of prehistory: although there is an abundance of data and facts that can be primarily processed, there are no methodological guidelines, nor any devices to classify and explain them. This is also typical for any question raised about the ethics of the Yalta agreements in February 1945. (shrink)

From 1912, Alejandro Korn and José Ingenieros began to publish articles that then would be part of their historical works, respectively, Influencias filosóficas en la evolución nacional and La evolución de las ideas argentinas. Therefore, they started to generate some discussion in reference to sections that they knew of each other's work. Being the first major works from a developing philosophical field about the history of Argentine thought, their authors sought to create cultural traditions to affirm their own academic, cultural (...) and political positions. Thus, they based their positions about their academic situation through their interventions in the debate on the evaluation of the various features of the intellectual past of the country and national identity during the academic professionalization of historical studies, and actively participated in discussions on the function of culture and philosophy in a national project. Yet, besides, in order to address their history of ideas, the two most important teachers of the philosophical sphere around 1918 tested very different methodological approaches that worked under different conceptions of philosophical and historical practice and two different ways of thinking the reception and circulation of ideas from Europe. (shrink)

During the last two decades, a surge of historical revisionism has commanded considerable attention in both academia and the public sphere, as historians have linked their understandings of the past to salient problems and identity crises of the present. Increasingly, the histories of nations have been problematized and have become the object of commemorative battles. Historiographical disputes thus reveal no less about contemporary political sensibilities than they do about a nation's history. This article situates the proliferation of historical revisionism within (...) the context of ongoing negotiations regarding the meaning of the nation at the end of the twentieth century. Through a comparison of recent historians' disputes in Germany and Israel, I explore the relationship between revisionism and collective memory, and the ways in which both are reflective of and contribute to the reformation of national identification. While national identities are usually predicated on continuities with the past, new German and Israeli identities are being defined in opposition to the founding myths of their nation‐states. Both are continuously reassessing their pasts, negotiating the balance between a commitment to universal values and the persistence of particularistic traditions. To be sure, national pasts have been contested before, but until recently the primacy of the nation itself was not significantly challenged. I suggest understanding the ongoing phenomenon of national demystification in the context of changing state–society relations. States no longer enjoy the same hegemonic power over the means of collective commemoration. In contrast to the state‐supportive role of historians during the formative phase of nationalism, collective memory has become an increasingly contested terrain. In both countries, revisionists from the left and right self‐consciously struggle to provide historical narratives of their nation's past to suit their present political views of the future. (shrink)

The bulk of Henry's book is devoted to such a critical study. It has led him to a "singular disappointment" and to the conclusion that "we are not yet ready to interpret ancient histories, like the Hellenica". There is a general and a particular cause of the failure of nineteenth and twentieth century study of Greek historical writing. The general cause is insufficient attention to the peculiarity of Greek historiography as distinguished from its modern counterpart: the ancients did not study (...) history "for its own sake," since their approach was "esthetic". A moment's reflection on the historical origin of this meaning of "esthetic" would show the inadequacy of Henry's characterization of classical historiography. For the classical Greek, "history was a form of literature.... History is literature when an artist perceives the genius of an age and reveals it through the facts of history". This seems to be Henry's interpretation of a saying of Quintilian which he renders "History has a certain affinity to poetry". Granting for a moment that the three classical historians perceived the spirit of the ages which they described, was their primary intention to reveal those spirits? A glance at the openings of Herodotus' and Thucydides' works would show the impropriety of this suggestion. This is to say nothing of the fact that the suggestion could not be expressed in their language. However justified Henry's criticism of nineteenth and twentieth century students of classical Greek historiography may be, he shares with them the prejudice that "we know today" the meaning of historiography in general and of classical historiography in particular. (shrink)

Over the last decades the problem of the existence of Byzantine philosophy has been posed in terms of the determination of its status, its function, and its subject matter. To a certain extent, this approach to Byzantine philosophy has been motivated by the increasing disciplinary autonomy reached by the other branches of what is nowadays called «medieval philosophy». A series of significant scholarly achievements over the last twenty years have contributed to the development of more-or-less well defined scholarly fields of (...) research concerning the medieval Latin, Arabic, and Jewish philosophical traditions. In regard to Byzantine philosophy the situation is much more complicated. In the first chapter of his La philosophie médiévale, Alain de Libera devotes his first words to the retarded scholarly development of the study of Byzantine philosophy. He claims that Byzantine philosophy has been mainly ignored and misunderstood, and has not been deeply studied. However, from the second half of the twentieth century one can find relevant and extremely important attempts to establish not only the basic features and developments, but the very existence of Byzantine philosophy. In this Forschungsbericht I shall attempt to reconstruct the scholarly debate on this topic, testing the main interpretive attitudes against some concrete cases of thinkers who lived in the area of the Eastern Roman Empire and who are labelled by most modern historians as «Byzantine». (shrink)

This paper explores the Confucian veneration of the past and its commitment to transmitting the tradition of the sages. It does so by placing it in the context of the historical trajectory from the May Fourth attacks on Confucianism and its scientistic, iconoclastic approach to “saving China,” to similar approaches to China’s modernization in later decades, through the market reforms that launched China into global capitalism, to the revival of Confucianism in recent years. It reexamines the association of the (...) Pragmatism of John Dewey and Hu Shih with the scientistic iconoclasm of the May Fourth Movement and argues that a broader scrutiny of Dewey’s and Hu’s works, beyond the period when Dewey visited China, reveals a more balanced treatment of tradition, science, and modernization. Pragmatists believe in reconstructing, not destroying, traditions in their pursuit of growth for individuals and communities. Despite a tension between the progress-oriented historical consciousness that Dewey inherited from the Enlightenment and the historical consciousness underlying Chinese historiographical tradition , it is possible to reconcile the Pragmatic reconstruction of tradition with the Confucian veneration of the past. This paper argues for a Pragmatic Confucian approach to Chinese traditions that is selective in its transmission of the past and flexible enough in its “preservation” to allow for progressive change. (shrink)

In this book, a dozen distinguished scholars in the field of the history of philosophy and science investigate aspects of the commentary tradition on Aristotle's De generatione et corruptione, one of the least studied among Aristotle's treatises in natural philosophy. Many famous thinkers such as Johannes Philoponus, Albert the Great, Thomas Aquinas, John Buridan, Nicole Oresme, Francesco Piccolomini, Jacopo Zabarella, and Galileo Galilei wrote commentaries on it. The distinctive feature of the present book is that it approaches this commentary (...) tradition as a coherent whole, thereby ignoring the usual historiographical distinctions between the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, and the seventeenth century. Frans de Haas and Henk Kubbinga address the Greek commentary tradition on De generatione et corruptione. Simone van Riet's essay is devoted to the Latin version of Avicenna's third treatise of his Kitab al Shifa, which discusses Aristotle's De generatione et corruptione. James Otte traces the intricate history of the identification of the Latin translator of Aristotle's treatise as Burgundio of Pisa. The essay by John Murdoch explores the fortuna of atomistic arguments in the Latin commentary tradition. Jurgen Sarnowsky, Henk Braakhuis, and Stefano Caroti examine various themes in the commentaries that were produced by the so-called Buridan School, that is, John Buridan, Albert of Saxony, Nicholas Oresme, and Marsilius of Inghen. The article by Silvia Donati focuses on the influential commentary by the Expositor, Giles of Rome. The final essay, written by Anita Guerrini, tackles Robert Boyle's attitude in the Origin of Forms and Qualities toward such Aristotelian key concepts as forms, matter, qualities, and mixture. These essays are prefaced by a preliminary survey by Hans Thijssen of Aristotle's text, its Latin translations and its Greek, Arabic and Latin commentaries. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Rhetoric 33.3 (2000) 298-302 [Access article in PDF] Book Review Rhetoric Retold: Regendering the Tradition from Antiquity Through the Renaissance Rhetoric Retold: Regendering the Tradition from Antiquity Through the Renaissance. Cheryl Glenn. Carbondale and Edwardsville, IL: Southern Illinois UP, 1997. Pp. xii + 235. $19.95 paperback; $49.95 hardback. The past decade has produced a number of collections on women and rhetoric, women in rhetoric, and (...) feminist approaches to rhetoric. Reviewers of these collections have commended their contributions as pioneering works [End Page 298] in a new field while calling for book-length studies offering sustained appraisals of individual women figures and theoretical bases for approaching individual women and rhetorical issues, which must be approached differently if women and feminist issues are to be incorporated into the study of rhetoric. Ethos and audience, intention and identification, agonistic argumentation and collective narrative modes of argumentation--each of these takes on new shadings and nuances when women's practices are examined, and when various feminist theories are employed to assess those practices.Glenn's study is a welcome newcomer, a sustained analysis of rhetorical issues across periods, an analysis developed by spotlighting a series of women figures. Very deliberately, Glenn includes "heroic" figures such as Aspasia and Elizabeth I alongside their "lesser" sisters: the marginalized, until now unheard, and often uneducated women who developed rhetorics within severe restraints. The exposition illuminates a number of points in current feminist theory that are shaping rhetorical studies. Some may fault the selections in Glenn's study, and the inevitable omissions, and some may object that focusing on women's silence is yet another victim narrative. Careful readers, however, will find that the discussion of silence in women's rhetoric deftly reverses the traditional negative connotations: "Silence is perhaps the most undervalued and under-understood traditionally feminine rhetorical site" (175). Silence need not be read simply as "passivity. Silence may take many forms and serve many functions" (176), including "enlightened presence" (177).In "Cartographies of Silence" (The Dream of the Common Language, New York: Norton, 1978), Adrienne Rich writes, Silence can be a plan rigorously executed the blueprint to a life Do not confuse it with any kind of absence. (17) Rhetoric Retold begins and concludes by "mapping the silences" of women's presence in the history of rhetoric, and in the very conception of rhetoric. Like Rich, Glenn defines the subtle complexities of silence and absence: silence can indeed be a plan, rigorously executed. We should not confuse it with any kind of absence. Until recently, most histories of rhetoric have not given much attention to women as individual figures or as practitioners [End Page 299] of distinct rhetorical genres. Quite to the contrary, many histories have simply asserted, without proof or evidence, that women have always been forbidden to study or practice rhetoric. Strong assertions of absence belie the truth intimated by Democritus's rebuke: "A woman must not practice argument. This is dreadful. To be ruled by a woman is the ultimate outrage for a man" (Ancilla to the PreSocratic Philosophers, trans. Kathleen Freeman, Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1983, 103). Glenn's double starting point is the question, who left them out, and why? Their absence from our histories has been one among many sources of their silence. The historiographical discussion happily avoids simple charges of phallocentrism and misogyny and instead looks at how entire systems of culture, within different periods, constructed women's roles and voices. Deep background detail within each historical section provides a welcome context for thinking through complex questions of what is rhetorical among the many women's discourses presented for consideration.Although Glenn's study does not dwell on this point, some of the fault for the omission of women from histories of rhetoric, and evidence of the rigorous deliberateness of that omission, can be found in the robust maleness of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century classical philology, and the neoclassical educational systems it underwrote. The quip in Pope's "Epistle 2: To a Lady" of The Moral Essay, "Nothing so true as once you [Martha... (shrink)

Aristotelian philosophy is generally regarded as incompatible with the mathematical methods and principles that form the basis of modern science. This book offers an entirely new perspective on this presumed incompatibility. It surveys the tradition of the Oxford Calculators from its beginnings in the fourteenth century until Leibniz and the philosophy of the seventeenth century and explores how the Calculators' techniques of quantification expanded the conceptual and methodological limits of Aristotelianism. In the process, it examines a large number of (...) authors, some of them never studied in this context. Exploring the relationship between various late medieval disciplines, the book sheds new light on the problem of continuity vs. discontinuity between scholasticism and modern science. Beyond its historiographical purpose, this book also hopes to be a source of inspiration for present-day philosophers of science. Co-edited by Daniel A. Di Liscia and Edith D. Sylla with the collaboration of Paul Bakker. (shrink)

This paper offers personal reflections on the fashioning of the history of science in Europe. It presents the history of science as a discipline emerging in the twentieth century from an intellectual and political context of great complexity, and concludes with a plea for tolerance and pluralism in historiographical methods and approaches.

SummaryReferring to my previous publications on the European philosophy of science , this paper presents my views, as a historian of epistemology, concerning the scope of a certain programme of research into the development of the philosophy of science and reception of some of its conceptions, against limitations of Anglo‐Saxon historiographic perception. Calling for a revaluation of various marginalized conceptions I oppose the hitherto dominating interpretations of epistemological novelty of Popper's conception and present my own approaches to Gonseth, Bachelard, (...) Enriques, Brunschvicg and Piaget. I oppose also the predominant and false picture of the 1920s and 1930s in the European philosophy of science based on the exceptional authority and validity of the Vienna Circle climate. 1 apply the views of M. Foucault and J. Der‐rida to demonstrate the significance of studies on the cases from the margin of the history of epistemological evolution. The basic point is that some post‐neopositivistic achievements in epistemology were chronologically prior to the internal evolution of neopositivism under Popperian influence. (shrink)

The first Athenian intervention in Sicily is one of the most opaque episodes in Thucydides. The historian for once dispenses with a full record and confines himself explicitly to the major events of the campaign. What then emerges is a disconnected narrative of geographically separate actions, most of them trivial. There is no attempt to give a synoptic picture or explain the problems of strategy, and the lack of coordination has impressed many critics. The episode is remarkable for another reason. (...) For once we have that rarest of rare birds, an independent control source for Thucydides. Since 1930 there has been available a brief fragment of papyrus, usually ascribed to Philistus, which provides an extraordinarily detailed, if fragmentary, report of a portion of the campaign. The fragment has become a standard reference, and it is reported, not always accurately, in the more recent scholarship on the Peloponnesian War. But there has been little attempt to come to terms with the historiographical problem it poses. Not only does the fragment give a large amount of detail which has no counterpart in Thucydides, but its narrative, as it is usually interpreted, is formally inconsistent with Thucydides' chronology. The new fragment is most probably the work of a Sicilian historian, well acquainted with the events of 427/6, and it is – to put it mildly – disturbing to find a contradiction in what should have been an easily verifiable sequence of events. (shrink)

The historiographic tradition of the history of science that originated with Auguste Comte bears all the marks of narratives with roots in the Enlightenment, such as a view of religion as an underdeveloped stage in the ascending road in humanity's quest for a more mature understanding. This article explores the development of the peripheral branch of a tradition that developed in Argentina by the mid‐twentieth century with authors such as the Italians Aldo Mieli, José Babini, and the (...) Hungarian Desiderius Papp. It is argued that, contrary to the historiographic program of the conflict thesis developed in English‐speaking countries, those scholars who cultivated the kind of “positivist” history of science that thrived in continental Europe were inclined to see science as a social and epistemological replacement of a fossilized religious outlook. In the final section, I suggest a way to relate the more or less strong versions of the conflict thesis to different patterns of secularization. (shrink)

A long historiographical tradition has claimed that the famous Pietro Pomponazzi’s Tractatus de immortalitate animae had been inspired by Tommaso de Vio’s Commentary on De anima – whose basic thesis was that, according to the principles of Aristotelian philosophy, the human soul was mortal – even though Pomponazzi in his entire work never mentioned Caietanus as a model. Firstly, this article frames the status quaestionis focusing on affinities and divergences between the two books and on the possible relationship and (...) exchange between the two authors, especially on the topic of the Aristotelian psychology. Secondly, the present study shows what emerges from a cross-reading of the sources which includes the collection of the Opuscula published in 1519 by the Dominican friar Bartolomeo Spina, who explicitly accused Caietanus of having paved the way for the scandalous and anti-Christian Pomponazzi’s position. The important gain of this collation of texts is the discovery of an unseen moment of debate with Caietanus inside Pomponazzi’s Tractatus. (shrink)

Aristotle normally used historical notations to support his arguments. This is somewhat true for all the works of the corpus, but above all for Politics: the nature, objectives, and methodology of the investigations in this treatise present the strongest links with actual and concrete data, and therefore with historia. Obviously even the Aristotle of Politics is not a historian who wants to report known historiographical traditions; however, regardless of his intentions, there is no doubt that the work in question contains (...) precious ‘fragments’ of history which, in general, confirm or supplement our knowledge. There are, however, cases in which the Aristotelian exempla end up filling in the omissions and gaps of the available sources, such as the cursory reference to the nomos of the Aphytaians, which appears in the section of book 6 dedicated to the so-called agricultural democracy. (shrink)

SummaryHistorians of science have neglected early modern natural philosophers' varied attitudes to the history of philosophy, often preferring to use loose labels such as ‘Epicureanism’ to describe the survival of ancient doctrines. This is methodologically inappropriate: reifying such philosophical movements tells us little about the complex ways in which early modern natural philosophers approached the history of their own discipline. As this article shows, a central figure of early modern natural philosophy, Robert Boyle, invested great intellectual energy into his depiction (...) of the history of philosophy. Boyle's historical worldview was mediated through an array of textual traditions: classical, patristic, humanist and contemporary. Drawing extensively on his manuscript notes, this is examined for three topics. First, from his turn to natural philosophy in the late 1640s, Boyle combined a sceptical attitude towards philosophy's potential – stemming from humanist historicisations of the ‘speculative’ heritage of Greek philosophy – with a belief in natural philosophy's efficacy as a spiritual exercise, as performed by ancient ‘priests of nature’. Second, Boyle's attitude to the history of matter theory was far more complex than any simple comparison with ‘ancient atomism’ can convey. Unlike many of his contemporaries, Boyle held Epicurus to be a speculative and reductionist philosopher, leading him to posit a different lineage for a non-reductionist corpuscularianism which depended on exploitation of non-standard historiographical traditions. Appreciating this allows us to make an intervention in the ongoing debate about the relationship between corpuscularianism, chymistry and experiment in Boyle's philosophy. Third, Boyle's historicisation of supposedly anthropomorphic philosophies in his famous Free Enquiry exploited recent theological historiography, most importantly Samuel Parker's combination of the history of idolatry with the history of Greek philosophy, which itself relied on developments in continental sacred history. It was this historicisation, rather than any philosophical realities, which led to the positing of the mechanical philosophy as more compatible than Aristotelianism with Christian doctrine. (shrink)

This article explores in greater depth the historiographical traditions concerning Herennius Pontius, a Samnite wisdom-practitioner who is said by the Peripatetic Aristoxenus of Tarentum to have been an interlocutor of the philosophers Archytas of Tarentum and Plato of Athens. Specifically, it argues that extant speeches attributed to Herennius Pontius in the writings of Cassius Dio and Appian preserve a philosophy of “extreme proportional benefaction” among unequals. Greek theories of ethics among unequals such as those of Aristotle and Archytas of Tarentum, (...) which aim for moderation, can be distinguished from that attributed to Herennius Pontius, which is circumstantial and stipulates extreme responses to extremes. Romans, in particular Appius Claudius Caecus and Sulla, celebrate and espouse proverbial wisdom strikingly similar to the theory of “extreme proportional benefaction” associated with Herennius Pontius, and in contrast to Greek ethics of moderation. Such comparisons suggest that starting in the late fourth century BCE, Romans and Samnites may have held shared ideological principles, as defined against Greek cultural paradigms. (shrink)

Negli studi sul pensiero medievale la questione delle filosofie francescane si presenta come controversa a proposito della definizione di una essenza del pensiero francescano – in relazione alla figura di Francesco d’Assisi –, di temi di riflessione specifici e del rapporto con le tradizioni filosofiche precedenti.Si tratta di un francescanesimo controverso pure all’interno di una stessa tradizione storiografica, come quella Neoscolastica, in cui studiosi come Gilson, Vignaux e Boehner ne hanno sottolineato il carattere prevalentemente agostiniano o aristotelico.Partendo dalla consapevolezza della (...) problematicità della questione, il saggio si sofferma sui possibili caratteri comuni delle teorie della conoscenza in alcuni pensatori francescani tra XIII e XIV secolo, come Pietro Giovanni Olivi e Pietro Aureolo, a partire dai concetti di conversio, intentio e reflexio e dal loro rapporto con la tradizione agostiniana.Si delineano così teorie della conoscenza che privilegiano l’attività e l’immediatezza del conoscere, sia per la conoscenza diretta sia per quella riflessa.Infine, tali caratteri si possono cogliere pure in un autore non francescano ma secolare come Nicola di Autrecourt, la cui teoria della conoscenza ha fatto parlare di un internalismo vicino a quello delle correnti francescane del XIV secolo. In conclusione, se da una parte non si può ipostatizzare l’idea di caratteri comuni del pensiero francescano, dall’altra si può forse parlare di un comune universo discorsivo in cui la figura di Francesco d’Assisi mostra la propria portata filosofica nella storia. In the History of Medieval Philosophy’s studies, the question of Franciscan philosophies has been the subject of controversy concerning the definition of an essence of Franciscan thought, about the relationship with Francesco d’Assisi, of specific topics of reflection and relationship with the previous philosophical traditions.It is a controversial Franciscanism even within the same historiographical tradition, such as the Neo-Scholastic one, in which scholars such as Gilson, Vignaux and Boehner have emphasised its predominantly Augustinian or Aristotelian character.Starting from the awareness of the problematic nature of the issue, the essay focuses on the possible common peculiarities of the theories of knowledge in some Franciscan thinkers between the 13th and 14th centuries, such as Pietro Giovanni Olivi and Pietro Aureolo, starting from the concepts of conversio, intentio, reflexio and their relationship with the Augustinian tradition.Thus the theories of knowledge are delineated which privilege the activity and the immediacy of knowing, both for direct and reflected knowledge.Finally, these features can also be grasped in a non-Franciscan but secular author like Nicola di Autrecourt, whose theory of knowledge has made mention of a type of internalism close to that of the 14th century Franciscan movement. Therefore, in conclusion, while on the one hand the idea of common particularities of Franciscan thought can not be hypostatised, on the other hand we can perhaps speak of a common discursive universe in which the figure of Francesco d’Assisi shows his philosophical significance in history. (shrink)

Summary Historians of science have neglected early modern natural philosophers' varied attitudes to the history of philosophy, often preferring to use loose labels such as ?Epicureanism? to describe the survival of ancient doctrines. This is methodologically inappropriate: reifying such philosophical movements tells us little about the complex ways in which early modern natural philosophers approached the history of their own discipline. As this article shows, a central figure of early modern natural philosophy, Robert Boyle, invested great intellectual energy into his (...) depiction of the history of philosophy. Boyle's historical worldview was mediated through an array of textual traditions: classical, patristic, humanist and contemporary. Drawing extensively on his manuscript notes, this is examined for three topics. First, from his turn to natural philosophy in the late 1640s, Boyle combined a sceptical attitude towards philosophy's potential ? stemming from humanist historicisations of the ?speculative? heritage of Greek philosophy ? with a belief in natural philosophy's efficacy as a spiritual exercise, as performed by ancient ?priests of nature?. Second, Boyle's attitude to the history of matter theory was far more complex than any simple comparison with ?ancient atomism? can convey. Unlike many of his contemporaries, Boyle held Epicurus to be a speculative and reductionist philosopher, leading him to posit a different lineage for a non-reductionist corpuscularianism which depended on exploitation of non-standard historiographical traditions. Appreciating this allows us to make an intervention in the ongoing debate about the relationship between corpuscularianism, chymistry and experiment in Boyle's philosophy. Third, Boyle's historicisation of supposedly anthropomorphic philosophies in his famous Free Enquiry (1686) exploited recent theological historiography, most importantly Samuel Parker's combination of the history of idolatry with the history of Greek philosophy, which itself relied on developments in continental sacred history. It was this historicisation, rather than any philosophical realities, which led to the positing of the mechanical philosophy as more compatible than Aristotelianism with Christian doctrine. (shrink)

This volume, honoring the renowned historian of science, Allen G Debus, explores ideas of science - `experiences of nature' - from within a historiographical tradition that Debus has done much to define. As his work shows, the sciences do not develop exclusively as a result of a progressive and inexorable logic of discovery. A wide variety of extra-scientific factors, deriving from changing intellectual contexts and differing social millieus, play crucial roles in the overall development of scientific thought. These essays (...) represent case studies in a broad range of scientific settings - from sixteenth-century astronomy and medicine, through nineteenth-century biology and mathematics, to the social sciences in the twentieth-century - that show the impact of both social settings and the cross-fertilization of ideas on the formation of science. Aimed at a general audience interested in the history of science, this book closes with Debus's personal perspective on the development of the field. Audience: This book will appeal especially to historians of science, of chemistry, and of medicine. (shrink)

Back in vogue today is the tendency of Italian philosophy toward reflection on itself that has always characterized an important part of our historiographical tradition. The present essay firstly analyzes the various interpretative positions in respect to the legitimacy, the risks, and the benefits of such a discourse, which intends to distinguish the different traditions of thought by resorting to a criterion of territorial or national kind. Secondly, the essay examines diverse paradigms that identify – in “precursory genius”; in (...) ethical and civil vocation; and in “living thought” – the distinctive hallmark of the Italian philosophical tradition from the Renaissance to today. (shrink)

This paper argues for the combination of political and socio-economic analysis in the study of early medieval gift-giving, specifically in the context of the late Merovingian Church. Gift-giving in this period is often viewed through a historiographical tradition strongly influenced by anthropological scholarship, which rarely considers any socio-economic reasoning behind the act – particularly in the case of ecclesiastical institutions and actors. This paper associates itself with the recent and growing answer to this position, and particularly to Ian Wood’s (...) re-working of Appadurai and Appadurai Breckenridge’s “Temple Societies” theory. It studies the political, social, and economic context and repercussions of gift-giving in the Life of Saint Eligius, a seventh-century craftsman, member of the Merovingian court, and subsequently bishop of the see of Noyon, in North-Eastern Francia. The paper analyses the vita in a threefold way: Firstly, it looks at the connection between political patronage and gift-giving through the saint’s relationship to the Merovingian court. Secondly, it considers the potential socio-economic effects of gift-giving on the ecclesiastical institutions described throughout the text, and on the societies around them. Thirdly, it interprets these aspects in the light of the political expansion of the Merovingian Church, and of its institutions, in eastern Gaul. (shrink)

Often distinguished by their characteristic five-petalled rosette emblems, objects dedicated to the Rasūlid sultans of Yemen in Egypt or Syria have long been identified as a distinct corpus in histories of Islamic art. Whether treated singly or as a group, these objects have usually been positioned in the periphery of discussions about Mamlūk luxury arts or cited briefly as evidence of diplomatic relations between the Mamlūk and Rasūlid leadership. Perhaps reflecting a general marginalization of South Arabia in the historiographic (...) traditions of Islamic art scholarship, narratives centered on the imperial Mamlūk enterprise tend to overshadow both the Rasūlid context for these objects and the complexities of their global material histories. This essay explores these two themes together, drawing broadly on visual culture connected with the Rasūlid court to analyze a selection of case studies. It reviews art historical literature on the Rasūlid-Mamlūk corpus as reflected in European and North American scholarship, outlines the various modalities by which this material exchange is understood to have taken place, explores the setting for Rasūlid patronage and collection of such objects, and examines their material afterlives. (shrink)

The prediction defended in this paper is that over the next fifty years we will see a return of the ancient tradition of “universal history”; but this will be a new form of universal history that is global in its practice and scientific in its spirit and methods. Until the end of the nineteenth century, universal history of some kind seems to have been present in most historiographical traditions. Then it vanished as historians became disillusioned with the search for (...) grand historical narratives and began to focus instead on getting the details right through document-based research. Today, however, there are many signs of a return to universal history. This has been made possible, at least in part, by the detailed empirical research undertaken in the last century in many different fields, and also by the creation of new methods of absolute dating that do not rely on the presence of written documents. The last part of the paper explores some of the possible consequences for historical scholarship of a return to a new, scientific form of universal history. These may include a closer integration of historical scholarship with the more historically oriented of the sciences, including cosmology, geology, and biology. Finally, the paper raises the possibility that universal history may eventually be taught in high schools, where it will provide a powerful new way of integrating knowledge from the humanities and the sciences. (shrink)

Historians have often argued that from the mid‐sixteenth century onward Italian science began to decline. This development is often attributed to the actions of the so‐called Counter‐Reformation Church, which had grown increasingly intolerant of novel ideas. In this article, I argue that this interpretation of the history of science is derived from an Italian liberal historiographical tradition, which linked the history of Italian philosophy to the development of the modern Italian state. I suggest that although historians of science have (...) appropriated parts of this distinctive narrative to underpin their account of Italy's seventeenth‐century scientific decline, they have not always fully appreciated its complexity. In this article, I consider the work of two scholars, Francesco de Sanctis and Benedetto Croce. Both explicitly suggested that although the actions of the Church caused Italy to enter into a period of decline, they in fact argued that science represented one of the few areas in which Italian intellectual life actually continued to thrive. (shrink)

Jean Gagnier’s De vita, et rebus gestis Mohammedis was the first substantial biography of the Prophet Muhammad translated by a European author directly from an authentic Muslim source. Familiar to Edward Gibbon and Voltaire, Gagnier’s work significantly shaped European understandings of the origins of Islam well into the nineteenth century. Yet Gagnier’s scholarship has not been examined in any depth since it was closely read by his contemporaries. This article provides an analysis of Gagnier’s strategies and competencies as a translator (...) and reconstructs his attempt to exploit the Arabic manuscripts then available to an Oxford scholar. It argues that the case of Gagnier is a cautionary reminder that philological approaches to the study of the Muslim past did not necessarily occasion sympathy for Islam. Old prejudices continued to influence Gagnier’s decisions as a translator and were passed on in new forms to later readers. Moreover, aspects of the Muslim historiographical tradition discovered by Gagnier did not necessarily incline his readers to a more positive view of Islam. The increased accessibility of Islamic historical texts could just as easily serve the Christian polemicist as the Enlightened historian. (shrink)

In my research published last year, i.e. Homo homini deus. Per un'introduzione al pensiero giuridico di Francis Bacon, I have analytically presented the Aphorismi de Jure gentium maiore sive de fontibus justiciae et iuris and I have closely studied the relationship between the legal and political philosophy of the Lord Chancellor and the civil science of Thomas Hobbes1. In the present essay I will try to summarize some of the main reasons why I think that manuscript of Chatsworth House, discovered (...) to be Bacon's only in 1980, is so important. It clarifies, with its twenty aphorisms, some crucial principles of Bacon's civil philosophy that would probably remain otherwise shadowed. So, here I will take as an excellent example that concept of sovereignty which is presented in the Aphorismi. His famous silences - for which the Lord Chancellor has been often considered the worthy, English heir of Machiavelli: 'We're much beholden...'2, - will be better understood at the light of this 'new' text. However, there is not only this sort of silence that Baconian scholars have to face and to understand, also a historiographical tradition has been consolidated in the twentieth century that has almost forgotten Bacon's civil philosophy. Those Bacon's legal and political texts that have been still considered and analyzed by philosophical critique, have been generally misunderstood. So, in order to avoid as far as possible such a fate for the Aphorismi de Jure gentium maiore either, it is necessary to consider that historical context which, as we shall see, depends very much on separating Bacon as a political thinker from his younger contemporary, Thomas Hobbes. (shrink)

In the years since its twin publication in 2001 and 2003 , Textures of Time has attracted a great deal more attention outside the United States than in the American academy. This, we suggest, is because its ideas and approach are rather at odds with the dominant trends in the area of “postcolonial studies.” In this response to three critical essays that engage with the book—by Rama Mantena, Sheldon Pollock, and Christopher Chekuri—we begin by setting out our principal hypotheses as (...) well as the evidentiary structure of the book, which draws mostly on vernacular materials from South India in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The former includes the claim that South India between roughly 1600 and 1800 possessed considerable and diverse historiographical traditions, though these histories came couched in a variety of genres, rendering them difficult for the uninitiated to recognize at first; the latter requires us to develop the significance of the concepts of “texture” as well as of “subgeneric markers” that help distinguish texts with a historical intention from those that are nonhistorical but have the same generic location. Our response then goes on to discuss why theoretical or sastric texts in India do not themselves explicitly theorize the distinctions we make. Here, we posit a contrast between “embedded” and “explicated” concepts in the “emic” sphere, suggesting that “texture” belongs to the first category. We explicitly distinguish our views from the poststructuralist language adopted by Pollock in his critique of Textures, and the more predictable postcolonial vision of Chekuri. We once more emphasize the need to take the vernacular historiography seriously, and to refine our reading practices, rather than overly depending on normative materials in Sanskrit, or on a prefabricated theoretical schema that derives from a stylized view of the nature of the transformations produced by colonial rule. (shrink)