This chapter contains sections titled: Gardens and Enchantment Dumbarton Oaks: A Fusion of Nature and Art? Dumbarton Oaks as a Site of Enchantment: Crossings, Complexity, and Circuits Cultivating Enchantment Notes.

Built in between the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century in a mountainous region in Romania, the Peleş Castle and its gardens were conceived according to the mid sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries landscape design principles. Thus, the surrounding landscape, the park and gardens at the royal residence in Sinaia make up an overall image of a Mannerist landscape in which the Villa or, in this case, the castle, is integrated in a complex (...) allegorical, alchemical and political programme. To explore this chronologically incongruent design and to explore gardening principles perhaps invisible in plain sight for modern eyes, the following study aims to emphasize the presence of early modern Western European gardens in the design of the park and gardens at Peleş. This analysis will also reveal the various ways in which, by manipulating nature according to Late Renaissance and Mannerism principles, nature was staged to achieve political goals. (shrink)

The volume describes a virtual tour of the cities in which Franz Brentano and his pupils worked and lived, with a reconstruction of the intellectual climate of their time. After the Introduction, the intellectual life of Wurzburg, Munich, Vienna, Prag, Lvov, Warsaw, Cambridge, Florence and Milan is presented and analyzed. The papers collected in this volume propose several answers to the following question: to what do we refer when we speak of Central European philosophy?. Interpretations of Central European (...) philosophy have developed in at least two broad directions. An interpretation fashionable during the 1970s lumps specific philosophical achievements, especially those of Mach and Wittgenstein, characterized by research into and development of new languages, of new philosophical, scientific and artistic grammars. In this situation, literature was seen as the exploration of meanings moving towards frontiers in which reality and possibility, science and metaphor, meet and merge. On the other hands, the theme of a Central European philosophy, connected with but independent of literature, has recently been given more thorough development. The two outstanding figures to have emerged from this inquiry are those of Bernard Bolzano and Franz Brentano. With reference to Brentano in particular, it is almost as if the collapse of the Empire also erased awareness of the common origin of many diverse components of Central European philosophical and scientific thought. The Polish logical school, logical neopositivism, phenomenology, the Prague school of linguistics, analytic philosophy, Gestalt psychology, the Vienna economics school - as well as a number of individual thinkers - are all movements and groups connected in some manner with Brentano's work and teaching. Although in some respects these are movements still at the centre of interest, the overall effect, the pattern of their common and unifying aspects have been neglected if they have not entirely disappeared. It seems that the unity of this philosophical tradition was lost with the end of the geographical and political unity of the Danubian empire and with the events that accompanied its downfall. After 1918 the centres of that tradition - Vienna, Prague, Lvov, Graz - belonged to different states, and its rich network of exchanges, contacts and relationships was dismantled forever. However, there still remained something of its philosophical style in each individual school; traits which enable us to speak, as the Authors have done in this volume, of Central European philosophy.". (shrink)

This paper introduces an innovative curricular approach—the Health Humanities Portrait Approach —and its pedagogical tool—the Health Humanities Portrait. Both enable health professions learners to examine pressing social issues that shape, and are shaped by, experiences of health and illness. The Portrait Approach is grounded in a set of “critical portraiture” principles that foster humanities-driven analytical skills. The HHP’s architecture is distinctively framed around a pressing social theme and utilizes a first-person narrative and scholarship to explore how the dimensions of (...) the personal and the structural are mutually constituted. We argue that when creator-educators adopt the Portrait Approach and its critical portraiture principles to design and teach the HHP, they enable learners to become proficient in synthesizing and analyzing—with both depth and breadth—the human and social dimensions of patients’ lives. This inventive curricular intervention provides a needed contribution to health professions education in that it utilizes health humanities methodologies to elucidate the multiple aspects of health, illness, disability, and healthcare. (shrink)

In contemporary Chinese art the national traditions and modern trends of the art world are especially relevant. Since the 1980s, in the works of a number of authors, interest began to manifest itself in the techniques of silk work, which was characteristic of ancient and medieval painting on scrolls, which was later replaced by more accessible drawings on paper. At the present stage, such painting has reached its heyday and is highly appreciated in the art market. The most famous (...) masters engaged in silk painting are Mu Yilin and Dong Wenzheng. The analysis of their creations allows us to see how the artists discovered the expressive possibilities of this material, including its transparency, refraction, color and tone saturation. The object of attention is the Chinese tradition of painting on silk, and the subject is the features of its development at the beginning of the XXI century on the example of the work of famous artists and the options they take into account in the compositions of techniques, figurative structure and expressive means of the old masters. The purpose of the article is to identify the main themes and artistic means that modern artists use in their silk works, as well as the option of integrating an ethno-cultural component into their work. (shrink)

Few words in both everyday parlance and theoretical discourse have been as rhapsodically defended or as fervently resisted as "experience." Yet, to date, there have been no comprehensive studies of how the concept of experience has evolved over time and why so many thinkers in so many different traditions have been compelled to understand it. _Songs of Experience _is a remarkable history of Western ideas about the nature of human experience written by one of our best-known intellectual historians. With its (...) sweeping historical reach and lucid comparative analysis—qualities that have made Martin Jay's previous books so distinctive and so successful—_Songs of Experience _explores Western discourse from the sixteenth century to the present, asking why the concept of experience has been such a magnet for controversy. Resisting any single overarching narrative, Jay discovers themes and patterns that transcend individuals and particular schools of thought and illuminate the entire spectrum of intellectual history. As he explores the manifold contexts for understanding experience—epistemological, religious, aesthetic, political, and historical—Jay engages an exceptionally broad range of European and American traditions and thinkers from the American pragmatists and British Marxist humanists to the Frankfurt School and the French poststructuralists, and he delves into the thought of individual philosophers as well, including Montaigne, Bacon, Locke, Hume and Kant, Oakeshott, Collingwood, and Ankersmit. Provocative, engaging, erudite, this key work will be an essential source for anyone who joins the ongoing debate about the material, linguistic, cultural, and theoretical meaning of "experience" in modern cultures. (shrink)

Throughout the world, Eastern European critical theory is enjoying a moderate, yet exciting, resurgence. From its oppositional roots in praxis philosophy and critical sociology, this diffuse and dynamic tradition has expanded its field of concern to encompass, among other problems, the aporias of democracy, the Holocaust and legacies of totalitarianism, the vicissitudes of modern culture and the ethical imperatives of living after the grand narrative. In the process, Eastern European thought has come to figure as a (...) vital alternative to the dominant tendencies emanating from Frankfurt and Paris. This essay surveys and introduces a collection of papers delivered at The International Conference of Marxist Critical Theory in Eastern Europe held in Chengdu, P.R.C., in November 2018. It both highlights the thematic range of contemporary scholarship on Eastern European critical theory and signals potential directions in future research. (shrink)

This paper summarizes the evolution of analytic philosophy in Taiwan, examines its impact within and beyond academia, and discusses the future of the discipline. The roots of modern philosophy in Taiwan can be traced back to the Japanese colonial era, and analytic philosophy was introduced to the country in the late 1940s when many intellectuals in China moved to Taiwan. However, massive curbs were imposed on philosophy during Chiang Kai-shek’s dictatorship, and the discipline began to thrive again only after (...) Taiwan’s democratization in the late 1980s. Nonetheless, since its introduction in the colonial era, modern philosophy has made significant contributions in Taiwan, encouraging interdisciplinary engagements, advancing civic education, and promoting the spirit of democracy and political liberation. Philosophy has played a key role in Taiwan’s remarkable transformation from an island colonized for hundreds of years to a country that recognizes democracy, freedom, and human rights. The themes of anti-colonialism and anti-domination seen in the works of modern Taiwanese philosophers not only reflect the discipline’s political and historical underpinnings but also signal how Taiwanese philosophy can acquire a distinct identity, despite being influenced by many other philosophical traditions. While still at a nascent stage, Taiwanese philosophy has the potential to join forces with other philosophical traditions in advancing the vision of decolonizing philosophy. (shrink)

A compelling look at the problem of evil in modern thought, from the Inquisition to global terrorism Evil threatens human reason, for it challenges our hope that the world makes sense. For eighteenth-century Europeans, the Lisbon earthquake was manifest evil. Today we view evil as a matter of human cruelty, and Auschwitz as its extreme incarnation. Examining our understanding of evil from the Inquisition to contemporary terrorism, Susan Neiman explores who we have become in the three centuries that separate (...) us from the early Enlightenment. In the process, she rewrites the history of modern thought and points philosophy back to the questions that originally animated it. Whether expressed in theological or secular terms, evil poses a problem about the world's intelligibility. It confronts philosophy with fundamental questions: Can there be meaning in a world where innocents suffer? Can belief in divine power or human progress survive a cataloging of evil? Is evil profound or banal? Neiman argues that these questions impelled modern philosophy. Traditional philosophers from Leibniz to Hegel sought to defend the Creator of a world containing evil. Inevitably, their efforts—combined with those of more literary figures like Pope, Voltaire, and the Marquis de Sade—eroded belief in God's benevolence, power, and relevance, until Nietzsche claimed He had been murdered. They also yielded the distinction between natural and moral evil that we now take for granted. Neiman turns to consider philosophy's response to the Holocaust as a final moral evil, concluding that two basic stances run through modern thought. One, from Rousseau to Arendt, insists that morality demands we make evil intelligible. The other, from Voltaire to Adorno, insists that morality demands that we don't. Beautifully written and thoroughly engaging, this book tells the history of modern philosophy as an attempt to come to terms with evil. It reintroduces philosophy to anyone interested in questions of life and death, good and evil, suffering and sense. Featuring a substantial new afterword by Neiman that raises provocative questions about Hannah Arendt's take on Adolf Eichmann and the rationale behind the Hiroshima bombing, this Princeton Classics edition introduces a new generation of readers to this eloquent and thought-provoking meditation on good and evil, life and death, and suffering and sense. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:European Network of Buddhist-Christian StudiesJohn D'Arcy MayThe European Network of Buddhist-Christian Studies met at Samye Ling, Scotland, 16-19 May 2003. The theme of the meeting was "Buddhists, Christians, and the Doctrine of Creation."Samye Ling, founded in 1967 by Dr. Akong Tulku Rinpoche and now under the guidance of his brother, the Venerable Lama Yeshe Losal, is one of the oldest and largest Buddhist monasteries in Europe. (...) Ven. Yeshe, in welcoming conference participants, told how the monastery has both materially and spiritually reinvigorated what had become a depressed area around the town of Lockerbie in southwest Scotland. Despite the inclement weather, it was thus an appropriate venue for the fifth conference of the European Network of Buddhist-Christian Studies on the topic of creation. As Perry Schmidt-Leukel (Glasgow), who organized the conference, pointed out in his opening remarks, creation in view of ultimate redemption is the quintessentially Christian doctrine. Yet Buddhism certainly did not see samsara as the ultimate reality, and even if the origin of the world was ultimately an unanswerable question, Buddhism too was confronted by the problem of evil.Ernst Steinkellner (Vienna) opened the conference proper with an account of Buddhist critiques of Hindu doctrines of creation. The absolute Brahman was not a creator, but in the course of doctrinal evolution (the masculine Brahman becoming the post-Vedic Brahma) the world came to be seen as the work of a kind of demi-urge, leaving open the question of why. Buddhism, restricting itself to the realm of the finite, mocked Brahmin ideas of the cause of the world, but still had to account for the existence and nature of the world. By the time the Madhyamaka had developed theories of momentary creation, these had become part of the common logic of Buddhists and Hindus.This was followed by a presentation on contemporary Buddhist critiques of creation and creator doctrines by José Cabezón (Santa Barbara), who pointed out certain affinities between modern theories of many universes without beginning or end and traditional Buddhist ideas. Buddhism, he maintained, has an aversion to cosmological uniqueness, whether spatial, temporal, causal, or personal, but it does [End Page 237] regard the causal law of karman as ineluctable. Despite the critiques of Buddhist thinkers such as Gunapala Dharmasiri of Sri Lanka, who are under the misapprehension that Buddhism is on a par with science whereas Christianity is merely religion, this lays the basis for a metaphysics. The site of both suffering and liberation is the cocreativity of all beings. Buddhism is concerned not with being, but with consciousness.Eva Neumaier (Calgary) suggested that in fact Buddhism does have conceptions of creation, but in narrative form, represented in the cosmological structure of the world as the product of the Buddha's meditation rather than as a cosmogony. Creation is not ex nihilo, because nature predates any act of creation, yet the "emptiness" of shūnyatā is also the "swollenness" of fulfilled potential. The Buddha has been represented as the all-creating sovereign, and pure mind has been interpreted as the gender-neutral mother-father of all Buddhas, the "primordial basis." The "original enlightenment" objected to by Critical Buddhism enabled Buddhists to adapt pre-Buddhist ideas such as the Tao, even to the extent of tolerating animistic polytheism.If this presentation surprised some participants, it provided the perfect counterpart to the paper on Christian ideas of creation by John Keenan (Middlebury College). The Jewish and Christian conceptions of creation arise out of events in history, the exodus from Egypt being the originating metaphor. For Christians, liberation from the bondage of sin was the legacy of Israel's tribal warrior God. The Genesis accounts of creation are essentially liturgical, not cosmogonic. Creation is simply assumed as the evidence of divine transcendence; God is not a benevolent parent. The pagan critics who mocked the Jewish and Christian creation stories were just as misguided as the Buddhists who ridiculed the Vedic myths. God was eventually conceived as ipsum esse, the "to be" of things, a nonsubstantialist account that does not purport to answer the question "why." According to the logic of Buddhism, the complete enlightenment of all would mean the... (shrink)

The project from which this essay is drawn is a philosophical engagement with the tradition of anti-Hegelianism in modern European philosophy, a critique that I want to show amounts to an attack on Hegel's version of idealism and ultimately on philosophy as traditionally understood. Idealism, in this tradition, should not be understood as a claim about the mind-dependence of the world, or about a mind-imposed structure in experience, or as a so-called objective idealism, but first and (...) foremost as an objection to empiricism, the claim that all knowledge is or must be based on empirical experience. By contrast, idealism in Kant, Fichte... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Literary Method of Urban Design: Design Fictions Using FictionAlan Marshall (bio)For students of design the world over, there’s usually nowhere near enough time in the school year to build a prototype of each and every single innovative idea that pops into one’s head—let alone to test them all in the social world or the marketplace. To speedily explore as many innovations as possible, students are (...) sometimes encouraged to follow an alternative pathway, to create “design fiction.” Intended to exist only on paper or the screen, a “design fiction” is not really destined for the real world.1 As a learning technique, it allows for a significant degree of technical experimentation as well as the imagining of new social arrangements. Many design experts see this “free-for-all” method as rather annoying and untrustworthy—more art than science. Yet for the most creative students, it serves to liberate them from the various constraints of their discipline. My own peculiar process of “design fiction” is what I call the “Literary Method of Urban Design.” I will come to this method in a moment.Last year, I was invited by the Bauhaus Museum in Weimar, Germany, to contribute artworks for a special exhibition entitled “Ways to Utopia: Life Between Desire and Crisis” (running from April 1, 2023—January 29, 2024).2 [End Page 560] This exhibition is a celebration of the one-hundredth anniversary of the Bauhaus’s first architectural product: a modern suburban family home in the city of Weimar called the Haus Am Horn. Built in 1923 the Haus Am Horn ushered in the Bauhaus style, a streamlined functional elegance presented in clean, bright, hopeful hues.3 Beyond just style, though, the house was proffered up in utopian terms. Its Bauhaus creators suggested that such a home could be mass-produced on an industrial scale cheaply and efficiently to provide elegant living to every single family in Europe, be they rich or poor. In its first iteration, the Staatliches Bauhaus was a high-spirited, playful, future-oriented, and socially aware fine arts and architecture school that ran from 1919 to 1933 in Weimar, then Dessau, then Berlin. However, its liberalism and experimentation away from traditional teaching and practice invited scorn from conservatives and from the Nazi Party. The former took the Bauhaus school’s funding away; the latter shuttered it for good. Despite the closure of the building, the Bauhaus style transformed design across the world as former teachers and ex-students applied Bauhaus principles and approaches in new settings. The old Bauhaus school has since been resurrected, with the opening of Bauhaus Universität Weimar, and the Bauhaus Museum, with locations in Weimar and Dessau.A few years back, Skyhorse Publishers published a book of my own “design fictions” depicting real-world cities set far in the future, each presented in utopian terms.4 Because of this, the Bauhaus approached me to help them celebrate their centennial anniversary by displaying my utopian urban designs in their museum. However, to convey the centenary theme of the exhibition, they requested exactly 100 different artworks of 100 different urban utopias portraying 100 different real-world cities set 100 years in the future. At the time, I had only produced eighty such works over the preceding decade. However, since the exhibition was to include masterworks by Bauhaus design greats like George Muche and Alma Buscher, I did not want to fall short. To make the “century” in quick time, I pushed ahead by deploying my own peculiar “Literary Method of Urban Design.”5 This method comprises three steps:1. Select a city.2. Select a literary work.3. Design the future of the selected city, based upon the themes of the selected literary work.[End Page 561] Click for larger view View full resolutionFigure 1.Future London. By the author, inspired by More’s Utopia (1516).When I used this method for the first time with Thomas More’s Utopia (1516) as the literary base, a curator at the Museum of London was tickled enough to include it in an exhibition about the future of London.6Since then, the utopian spark has flowed through many of... (shrink)

In the broadest sense, this intellectual biography is designed to give insight into the reasons why Western values and institutions failed to take root in the Chinese environment. Three interrelated themes are treated by Professor Duiker: the evolution of the Chinese educational system from the beginning of the 20th century to World War II; the process by which a Chinese intellectual absorbed Western values and attitudes while retaining significant elements of his traditional Confucian world view; the goals of the humanist (...) movement in early republican China and the reasons for its failure. Ts'ai, as first Minister of Education under the 1912 republic, helped to formulate educational policies during an important stage of transition in modern China. Later, as chancellor of Peking University, he was a central figure in the tumultuous events of the May Fourth period. Having been educated traditionally to the doctoral level before studying at a European university, Ts'ai attempted to synthesize the humanist side of the Confucian tradition with the libertarian elements in Western culture. Ts'ai's synthesis was unique but ultimately unsuccessful. Penn State Study No. 41. (shrink)

In the broadest sense, this intellectual biography is designed to give insight into the reasons why Western values and institutions failed to take root in the Chinese environment. Three interrelated themes are treated by Professor Duiker: the evolution of the Chinese educational system from the beginning of the 20th century to World War II; the process by which a Chinese intellectual absorbed Western values and attitudes while retaining significant elements of his traditional Confucian world view; the goals of the humanist (...) movement in early republican China and the reasons for its failure. Ts'ai, as first Minister of Education under the 1912 republic, helped to formulate educational policies during an important stage of transition in modern China. Later, as chancellor of Peking University, he was a central figure in the tumultuous events of the May Fourth period. Having been educated traditionally to the doctoral level before studying at a European university, Ts'ai attempted to synthesize the humanist side of the Confucian tradition with the libertarian elements in Western culture. Ts'ai's synthesis was unique but ultimately unsuccessful. Penn State Study No. 41. (shrink)

Since at least the 1970s, the countryside of Western Europe has been the site of a myriad of “new” communal initiatives. Rural areas that were abandoned during the last century have witnessed the arrival of new inhabitants. These newcomers often flock to the mountains escaping urban lifestyles characterized by individualism, mass-oriented livelihoods, and isolation. Many of these individuals move to areas like the Catalan Pyrenees, where common property and communal institutions have had a strong historical presence. In embracing rural life, (...) these new inhabitants are looking for a more integrated social life in which the commons are, on the one hand, a form of collective private property, and, on the other, represent a more egalitarian way of life in which contributing to the collective effort is not only an efficient way of dealing with particularly harsh ecological conditions, but also an ideological statement that defines the community as something different: an alternative to urban capitalism. Two definitions of the commons are colliding in these mountains; two longstanding lines of political thought are converging and establishing a dialogue that is not always easy: (1) traditional ideologies of land ownership that defined common property over the centuries, not based on economic equality, but on private property and locally shared responsibility on the economic base of the community; and (2) utopian anti-capitalism that views the commons as an alternative mode of social organization and ownership based on egalitarianism. (shrink)

This inclusive, cross-cultural study rethinks the nexus between engineering, development, and culture. It offers diverse commentary from a range of disciplinary perspectives on how the philosophies of today’s cultural triumvirate—American, European and Chinese—are shaped and given nuance by the cross-fertilization of engineering and development. Scholars from the humanities and social sciences as well as engineers themselves reflect on key questions that arise in this relational context, such as how international development work affects the professional views, identities, practice and ethics (...) of engineers. The first volume to offer a systematic and collaborative study that cuts across continental boundaries, the book delineates the kinds of skills and competences that tomorrow’s engineering success stories will require, and analyzes fascinating aspects of the interplay between engineering and philosophy, such as how traditionally Chinese ways of thinking can influence modern engineering practice in the world’s most populous country. China’s problematic mix of engineering woes and wonders, from the high-profile crash on its high-profile rail network to its ‘bird’s nest’ Olympic stadium, adds to the urgency for reform, while Europe’s Enlightenment-informed legal frameworks are contrasted with Chinese mechanisms in their governance of the field of nanotechnology, a crucial element of future technical evolution. Fascinating and compelling in equal measure, this volume addresses one of the topics at the leading edge of humanity’s quest to survive, and to thrive.​. (shrink)

This article discusses the term erotology, which was applied to medieval Islamicate ‘ilm al-bah (the science of coitus), as well as other world traditions of sexual knowledge, by European sexologists of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, who contrasted it with their own forms of inquiry into sexual matters in the modern field of sexual science. It argues that the homogenisation and minimisation of all ancient and non-European forms of medical knowledge about sex, even one as (...) substantial as the ‘ilm al-bah tradition, supported a particular story about the origins of sexology's own emergence as a new and unprecedented biomedical and scientific way of knowing, characterised by an opposition assumed between sexuality and religion, by a view of sexual variations as perversions or pathologies, and by a view of Arabs and Muslims as sexually excessive. The article focusses on French, English, German, Austrian, and Italian sources of the 19th century that discussed the history of sexual medicine, relating these accounts to recent attempts to historicise sexology. It considers how forms of colonial hierarchy and exoticist views of non-European cultures impacted the dismissal of ‘ilm al-bah among European sexual scientists and how they may continue to exert an influence on forms of modern historical inquiry that are not attentive to scholarship on medieval Islamicate sexual medicine. (shrink)

"This book places important themes from the theology of Jonathan Edwards in the context of the Enlightenment. An intellectual history, it makes a bold case that Edwards was not primarily a provincial social figure nor an American literary figure, but a European philosophical figure whose context was the great international movement of modern thought."--Mark Valeri, Union Theological Seminary, Virginia "What most impresses me about this erudite and well-researched book is the deep contextualization of Edwards's philosophy of history within (...) the intellectual world of the Enlightenment. This is a very learned piece of scholarship, and several features set this study apart from other major accounts of Edwards."--Stephen J. Stein, Chancellor's Professor, Indiana University "A signal contribution in the ongoing rehabilitation of colonial America's greatest mind."--David W. Kling, "American Historical Review". (shrink)

In accordance with the established view that the new social movements since the late 1960s have always pursued an agenda of comprehensive societal change, the new wave of movement activism since the late 1990s has widely been interpreted as evidence of the emergence of a new global movement for a radically different society. A critique of the one-sided reliance in social movement research on traditional actor-centred approaches leads to a systems-centred conceptualization of late-modern society, and via the diagnosis of (...) its particular dilemmas, to the interpretation of contemporary social movements as a vital resource for the stabilization of the socioeconomic order of democratic consumer capitalism. As an addition to the existing social movement theories, the suggested approach contributes to a more complex understanding of non-conventional forms of political articulation and participation. (shrink)

This book argues that Western studies of East-Asian politics are generally flawed due to their adherence to the premise that liberal democracy is the best form of governance. The book rejects the three main schools of the Western interpretation of Oriental politics and instead examines the border-transcending powers of Confucianism that have, over more than twenty-two centuries, transformed the politics of East Asia. By circumventing the fundamental methodical and ethical assumptions of the Anglophone hegemonic discourse on the politics of the (...) non-Western world, it effectively presents an alternative to traditional Western interpretations of East Asian politics. Written in an erudite and engaging way this book will be a valuable resource for scholars and students of Asian studies, Asian politics and political philosophy. (shrink)

In the texts that presented the theoretical assumptions of the Parc de La Villette, Bernard Tschumi used a large number of terms that contradicted not only the traditional principles of composing architecture, but also negated the rules of social order and the foundations of Western metaphysics. Tschumi’s statements, which are a continuation of his leftist political fascinations from the May 1968 revolution, as well as his interest in the philosophy of French poststructuralism and his collaboration with Jacques Derrida, prove that (...) terms such as disruption, dissociation, disfunction, disjunctions and dispersion not only referred to architectural problems but also applied to political criticism and the deepest foundations of thinking itself. His collaboration with Derrida manifested itself primarily in the publication La Case Vide: La Villette, 1985, in which the architect’s design drawings and texts explaining his concepts related to the Park de La Villette were accompanied by an extensive essay by Derrida, which included theoretical problems taken up by Tschumi in a philosophical context. Architectural and philosophical issues were also combined during seven discussion meetings organised by Peter Eisenman, invited by Tschumi to collaborate on the design of the Parc de La Villette. Eisenman, who, like Tschumi, invited Derrida to participate in the design of the park and also led to the publication of Chora L Works: Jacques Derrida and Peter Eisenman, in which his ideas were confronted with Derrida’s philosophical text. In this case, Derrida’s essay was not a direct commentary on the architect’s concepts, but rather a reflection on the question of the chôra presented by Plato in Timaeus. During the discussion and in his essay, Derrida pointed out that the chôra is a component of the created world, yet it does not belong to it, but precedes it. The originality of the chôra is so radical that she also precedes all the factors of creating the world, including ideas and the Demiurge. Thus a thesis appeared in the metaphysics of the West that the chôra is a form of active abyss, in relation to which all beings are secondary, both those perfect (as ideas or God) and those created, such as the world, things, people or language. This leads to the conclusion that the chôra does not exist, because all existence is a derivative of the chôra. Nor could the chôra be described, since it is a form of developing a space that is preceded by a lack of space characteristic of the chôra. Derrida intended the chôra to be an instance with an exceptional degree of transcendentalism, an anti-metaphysical instance, but also an a-theological one. However, this attempt failed, both in the field of secular philosophy and in the field of theology. Derrida’s characteristics of the chôra to strengthen its transcendentalism and negation of metaphysics had to be expressed in a language that immediately produces new concepts and a new metaphysics that reproduces the categories of the beginning, the origin or the foundation known from earlier philosophical traditions. All forms of criticism of metaphysics are also inspired by negative, apophatic and mystical theology. The undermining of many concepts of permanent meaning and the introduction of new concepts of unstable meaning, characteristic of the philosophy of deconstruction, had many features of originality, but it was directed towards problems whose solutions repeat, with the use of new vocabulary, the findings known in culture since Democritus. Thus, if apophatic philosophy can be regarded as deconstruction avant la lettre, then deconstruction itself in its late versions began to take on the features of a new religion. The exchange of inspiration between theology and deconstruction was manifested in a series of scientific conferences and publications in which Derrida’s philosophical concepts were interpreted within the scope of religious thought. Theological threads began to be found in such concepts of deconstruction as différance or the chôra, while at the same time Derrida himself undertook in his philosophy to study problems such as the Other (L’Autre) or Impossible (Impossible), which belonged to newer theological traditions. As a consequence of the new problems, the deconstruction became closer to the features of a new religion. Philosophy, at least from Kant’s time, has tried to create a system that would take over from religion the tasks of setting moral and political goals. Similarly, Derrida has directed his interest towards the problems of democracy and ethics, which would enable their renewal. Attempts to create a new religion (cleared of old metaphors), a new community or a new democracy bring problems and threats which may be no less troublesome than the previous systems. All promises of freedom carry with them threats, the greater the more they strive for perfection. The renewal of existential orders, sometimes carried out by means of violent changes, is a certain repetitive feature of human cultures. Deep changes, however, do not protect against the return of both old gods and old demons. Tschumi and Derrida were shaped in their youth by the atmosphere of leftist rebellion against the moral and political limitations of ossified communities and the imperfections of democracy. The ethical theme distinguishes many of their works, including the Parc de La Villette. The opposition to the metaphysical traditions of philosophy and architecture contained in this park was prompted by specific political situations and resulted from bringing political issues to the level of philosophical considerations. Achievements made at the level of pure concepts were then subject to elevation, to a kind of sacralization, which made them religious concepts. The deconstruction reached for the stratus of the new religion especially when it found its followers and began to generate moral obligations. In the new situation, terms such as the chôra, l’autre or the Impossible were absolutized and in relation to them a cult and attitude of adoration emerged. The Parc de La Villtette then gained new post-secular meanings, which allow it to be assigned the function of a Temple of Otherness (L’Autre) and Impossible. (shrink)

The first 100 years of printing in Europe was a vibrant period full of innovation and adaptation. Continental printers controlled the production of Latin books, many of which were imported into England. English printers worked hard to create an audience for their editions and achieved,this by adopting specific design features from the Latin editions. Yet despite this connection, English printing is often studied in separation from European printing. This article studies the Golden Legend, a hagiographic text popular throughout (...) England and Europe, and shows that the two traditions were interrelated, especially in book design. On the continent, printers found themselves in a crowded marketplace and some adopted established designs to target a particular audience. In contrast, English printers were inspired by the design of continental books. Design was governed by the intended audience but not restricted to national demarcations. Not only was English printing integrated with European printing, it sustained a distinctive character while remaining part of the European tradition. (shrink)

The Cambridge History of Modern European Thought is an authoritative and comprehensive exploration of the themes, thinkers and movements that shaped our intellectual world in the late-eighteenth and nineteenth century. Representing both individual figures and the contexts within which they developed their ideas, each essay is written in a clear accessible style by leading scholars in the field and offers both originality and interpretive insight. This first volume surveys late eighteenth- and nineteenth-century European intellectual history, focusing on (...) the profound impact of the Enlightenment on European intellectual life. Spanning twenty chapters, it covers figures such as Kant, Hegel, Wollstonecraft, and Darwin, major political and intellectual movements such as Romanticism, Socialism, Liberalism and Feminism, and schools of thought such as Historicism, Philology, and Decadence. Renouncing a single 'master narrative' of European thought across the period, Warren Breckman and Peter E. Gordon establish a formidable new multi-faceted vision of European intellectual history for the global modern age. (shrink)

The Cambridge History of Modern European Thought is an authoritative and comprehensive exploration of the themes, thinkers and movements that shaped our intellectual world in the late-eighteenth and nineteenth century. Representing both individual figures and the contexts within which they developed their ideas, each essay is written in a clear accessible style by leading scholars in the field and offers both originality and interpretive insight. This second volume surveys twentieth-century European intellectual history, conceived as a crisis in (...) modernity. Comprised of twenty-one chapters, it focuses on figures such as Freud, Heidegger, Adorno and Arendt, surveys major schools of thought including Phenomenology, Existentialism, and Conservatism, and discusses critical movements such as Postcolonialism,, Structuralism, and Post-structuralism. Renouncing a single 'master narrative' of European thought across the period, Peter E. Gordon and Warren Breckman establish a formidable new multi-faceted vision of European intellectual history for the global modern age. (shrink)

The Cambridge History of Modern European Thought is an authoritative and comprehensive exploration of the themes, thinkers and movements that shaped our intellectual world from the late eighteenth century to the present. Representing both individual figures and the contexts within which they developed their ideas, this two-volume history is rich with original interpretive insight, and is written in a clear and accessible style by leading scholars in the field. Renouncing a single 'master narrative' of European thought across (...) the period, Breckman and Gordon establish a formidable new multi-faceted vision of European intellectual history for the global modern age. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:When an Arab Laughs in Toledo: Cervantes’s Interpellation of Early Modern Spanish OrientalismE. C. Graf (bio)My purpose has been to place in the plaza of our republic a game table which everyone can approach to entertain themselves without fear of being harmed by the rods; by which I mean without harm to spirit or body, because honest and agreeable exercises are always more likely to do good than (...) harm.—Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Prologue to Novelas ejemplares [my translation]We are engaged in a technical enterprise at the species scale.—Jacques Lacan, “L’agressivité en psychanalyse” [my translation]While I was all intent on watching him, he looked at me, and with his hands he spread his chest and said: “See how I split myself!”!—Dante Alighieri, Inferno 28.28–30 Click for larger view View full resolutionFigure 1.Sandro Botticelli, The Virgin and Child (c. 1490). Courtesy of the Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University; ©1999 President and Fellows of Harvard College. Click for larger view View full resolutionFigure 2.Salvador Dalí, Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee around a Pomegranate One Second Before Awakening (1941). Courtesy of Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid; ©1999 Artists' Rights Society (ARS), New York.For much of this century, Hispanists have labored in an effort to elevate Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra’s El ingenioso hidalgo don Quijote de la Mancha (1605, 1615) to the coveted status of the “first modern novel.” Today this kind of criticism may strike our postmodern sensibilities as a rather traditional enterprise, the kind more interested in establishing an elite hierarchy of literary tastes than in saying anything new about an author or text. For many, the study of literature is still an aesthetic beauty pageant in which “great books” like Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy (1767) or Marie de la Vergne de La Fayette’s La princesse de Clèves (1678) are paraded across the stage in a contest to seduce the Western intelligentsia. 1 The postmodern student of literature may not have much concern for this age-old territorial contest, but she might be interested to learn that the fallout from Hispanism’s quest for the “first modern novel” has involved so much attention to, indeed complication of, Don Quixote, that the book now resembles more a postmodern text than an early modern one. At the turn of the century, we have been left with what Jorge Luis Borges would recognize as an “aleph”: an infinite ideological labyrinth that reflects and/or cannibalizes all forms, thereby escaping all attempts [End Page 68] to describe it. 2 Whatever we currently mean by “Cervantes” (an author, a collection of texts, an ideological construction, and so forth) carries with it an impressive range of critical responses. Cervantes has been labeled converso (Castro, Canavaggio), Christian humanist (Castro, Bataillon, Forcione, Herrero, Vilanova), disillusioned secularist (Lukács, Cascardi), precapitalist (Johnson), anti-essentialist (Wilson), anti-Eusebian (Presberg), Menippean (Bakhtin), feminist (El Saffar, Rabin, Cruz), sadist (Nabokov), ethnocentric imperialist (Mariscal), medieval (Gorfkle), homophobic (Martín), non-organicist Aristotelian (Read), and either discursively or actually homosexual (Combet, Rossi, Smith, Arrabal). This list is nowhere near complete, but the reader will grasp the robust effects of the plurality of perspectives on Cervantes.Each of these interpretations is valid to varying degrees within various contexts, but at present I am interested in reading Cervantes as the author of a multicultural manifesto on behalf of the Moriscos of Southern Spain. 3 Within the contexts of French Marxist philosopher Louis Althusser and Palestinian postcolonial literary critic Edward Said, materialist, postcolonial, and multicultural critiques of various forms of power and their ideologies can be seen as the fundamental propositions of Cervantes’s Don Quixote. 4 Cervantes’s ultimate orientation may perhaps be inescapably Eurocentric, but his responses to the European experience of the rise and expansion of an ethnocentric militaristic nation state are relatively centrifugal when compared to the attitudes of many of his contemporaries.In surveying some of the antihegemonic details of Cervantes’s novel, I am also interested in dispelling the popular myth of Don Quixote. Especially in the English-speaking world, and particularly in the United States, Don Quixote remains captive to a... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Report on the Tenth European Network of Buddhist-Christian Studies Conference:History as a Challenge to Buddhism and ChristianityJohn O’Grady, Elizabeth J. Harris, and Jonathan A. SeitzThe Tenth Conference of the European Network of Buddhist-Christian Studies (ENBCS) brought together between sixty and seventy people at the Oude Abdij, Drongen, Belgium, between 27 June and 1 July 2013, to examine the theme “History as a Challenge to Buddhism and (...) Christianity.” It was a collaborative effort between the ENBCS and the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven. The 2011 ENBCS conference had focused on whether hope was a relevant concept for Buddhists and Christians. The choice of history as a theme complemented this. It also resonated with a research concern of both KU Leuven and the Network.Five key themes were chosen for examination: the traditional Christian and Buddhist conceptions of history; Jesus and the Buddha: fact and fiction; Buddhist and Christian historiography; dangerous memory in Christianity and Buddhism; and permitting historical consciousness in Buddhism and Christianity. Each was approached from a Buddhist and a Christian perspective. An opening lecture addressed the theme “Modern Historical Consciousness and the Challenge to Religion.” In addition, eighteen research papers on Buddhist-Christian relations were given in parallel sessions on Friday evening and Saturday morning. These covered topics as various as the writings of Edmund Pezet (Pierre Gillet), Paul Knitter’s understanding of Buddhist-Christian double belonging (Achim Riggert), Keiji Nishitani and the death of God (Jonatan Navarro Estrada), the encounter of Zen Buddhism and Christianity in the works of D. T. Suzuki (Mariusz Rucki), Buddhist-Christian encounters by Han Yong Woon (Seung Chul Kim), and “Liberating the Conflict from ‘History’ in Sri Lanka” (Jude Lal Fernando).Perry Schmidt-Leukel (Münster, Germany), in the opening lecture, discussed [End Page 189] seven challenges that modern historical consciousness was posing to religion: the challenge of falsification (when historical evidence, for example, showed some doctrines cherished by believers were not taught by the founder), the challenge of uncertainty or methodological doubt, the challenge of methodological naturalism (should a natural explanation be considered more probable than a supernatural one?), the challenge of the distance between past and present, the challenge of change (religions are not static), the challenge of demystification, and the challenge of relativity (the writing of history is perspectival, conditioned by context). He stressed that it would be a blessing to religion if these challenges were faced and, throughout the conference, encouraged other speakers to face them.The first theme was tackled by Mark Blum (Berkeley, USA) from a Buddhist perspective and Jan-Olav Henriksen (Norwegian School of Theology) from a Christian perspective. In a magisterial historical and geographical survey of the Buddhist tradition, Blum first noted that no one had unearthed a traditional notion of Buddhist history in the early texts. The theme of decline and reformation had been taken from Indian cosmology, but with a Buddhist twist and the conviction that it was pointless to talk about beginnings. And in the growth of the Mahāyāna tradition, a dehistoricization of the Buddha had occurred in the belief that the Buddha’s dharma-body was his only “real” body.Henriksen argued that Christian salvation history had its origin in the narrative of the Fall, an event for which there was no historical evidence, and developed into a history of God’s call (election) to all people that they should be brought together in community. It was a history that was linked with the divine logos, a force that Christian theology has seen as deeply interwoven into creation from the beginning of time and that was made human in Jesus.Terrence Merrigan (KU Leuven, Belgium), giving a Christian perspective on the second theme, distinguished three quests or attempts to reach the historical Jesus. The first, from 1774 to 1906, sought to uncover the Jesus that had been obscured by dogma. It imploded with the realization that separating “core” from “myth” was impossible, and conditioned a reactive “no-quest” in the first half of the twentieth century. A “new quest” arose in the 1950s, initiated by Käsemann’s reaction to the theologies of Barth and Bultmann. A further quest that appealed to archaeology and the... (shrink)

The theme of this issue of Ethical Perspectives is the French tradition in liberal thought, and the unique contribution that this tradition can make to debates in contemporary liberalism. It is inspired by a colloquium held at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven in December of 2008 entitled “In Search of a Lost Liberalism: Constant, Tocqueville, and the singularity of French Liberalism.” This colloquium was held in conjunction with the retirement of Leuven professor and former Dean of the Institute (...) of Philosophy, André Van de Putte, who found much inspiration in this tradition. A revised version of his valedictory lecture from the conference serves as the final contribution to this issue. Much contemporary liberal political philosophy is currently done in conversation with a line of liberal thinkers starting with John Locke, running through Immanuel Kant and John Stuart Mill, and culminating in the work of John Rawls and his followers. The reasons for the enormous appeal of this philosophical tradition are, among other things, the combination of the central role of the intuitively appealing value of individual liberty with a strong rationalistic, universalistic, and normative character. The thread running through most of these liberal theories is a commitment to what the French liberal Benjamin Constant referred to as “the liberty of the moderns,” that is, liberty in a negative sense, as a lack of interference in one’s activity from others and from government. This focus has expanded over time to include a richer body of civil, political, social, economic and cultural rights, for instance, in the work of liberal thinkers who have tried to integrate the insights of communitarian thought and discourse ethics in their work. However, the emphasis on individual liberty in the negative sense continues to be the normative and theoretical touchstone and default position for many contemporary liberal theories. The limitation of the canon of liberal thought to the aforementioned authors and themes deprives the contemporary debate of a rich source of ideas: the French liberal tradition. Montesquieu, considered to be the father of this tradition, provides a good example of how it can enrich current debates in liberal theory. Montesquieu’s work evinces a keen eye for the dynamics of power relations and the limitations of the power of the better rational argument. His insight that power can sometimes only be checked by an equal and opposing power, so that a system of separation and balance of powers is necessary in order to preserve liberty, is reflected in the foundations of most modern democracies. Montesquieu also argues that contingent environmental, historical, social and economic conditions play a dramatic role in determining what kind of government is appropriate for a particular society. On his view, ignoring these facts when framing a government can inadvertently end in despotism. Montesquieu’s observations challenge us to reexamine some of contemporary liberalism’s universalist and rationalist claims. Benjamin Constant is most famous for his distinction between two kinds of liberty: the liberty of the ancients and the liberty of the moderns. The ancient form of liberty manifested itself in the active political participation of citizens in the ancient republic. While this form of government and decision-making was suitable for small, homogeneous city-states, Constant argues that it is impracticable for large modern nation-states. Hence, the concept of modern liberty shifts to an emphasis on the rule of law and the non-interference of the state in private matters. This form of liberty is familiar to us from contemporary liberalism – and Constant cherishes this form of freedom as much as any liberal does today. However, his position is complex: he also argues that the liberty of the ancients should not be neglected. Active political participation is needed to ensure that the government is executing its duty of preserving the modern form of liberty by publicly pointing out violations. The contemporary relevance of Constant’s work is clear when we consider the alleged “democratic deficit” that plagues the EU and international institutions such as the UN, the IMF, and the World Bank. Not only does this democratic deficit threaten the modern form of liberty by placing decision-making processes out of sight of the people, it also threatens citizens’ sense of self-respect derived from self-governance. Constant’s argument for the necessity of combining the liberty of the ancients with that of the moderns provides a fruitful resource for confronting these contemporary issues. Tocqueville’s work on liberalism benefits from his opportunity to observe a society founded on liberal democratic principles – the United States of America – in action. In his Democracy in America, he examines the social consequences, both intended and unintended, of building a society on ‘the equality of conditions’, as he defines ‘democracy’. Tocqueville sees a tension between the democratic value of equality and the aristocratic value of the rule of the best. He observes that democratic societies do not necessarily choose the best leaders and instead promote mediocrity instead of virtue, talent, and excellence. Democracy also confronts citizens with the threat of ‘soft despotism’, where a government that preserves the outer signs of the liberty of the moderns nevertheless controls the behavior of its citizens in minute detail through a system of detailed rules ostensibly aimed at their welfare. This paternalism is an even more insidious threat to liberal values than the hard variety of despotism, since it is so difficult to detect and done in the name of liberal values themselves. Taking Tocqueville’s observations seriously would add complexity to attempts to theorize about the modern social-democratic welfare state. The contributions to this issue supplement and critique mainstream liberal thought and its relation to contemporary issues through a serious engagement with the French liberal tradition. Annelien De Dijn’s contribution discusses Bertrand de Jouvenel, a lesser-known 20th Century representative of the French political tradition she terms ‘aristocratic liberalism’. This tradition has its roots in the work of Montesquieu, and emphasizes the importance of intermediary bodies, most importantly the aristocracy, in providing a check to the top-down power of despotic state authorities and the bottom-up power of revolutionary leveling tendencies, both of which threaten liberty. De Dijn situates Jouvenel in this tradition, but then indicates an important difference between his thought and that of his predecessors: his most significant work, On Power, is not only on French history, but on European history. Pointing to the enthusiastic reception of this work in the Anglophone world, she suggests that the rise of totalitarianism in Europe gave the anti-totalitarian features of aristocratic liberalism a broader appeal. Valentino Lumowa’s paper concerns Constant’s classic text, The Liberty of the Ancients Compared with that of the Moderns. Lumowa argues that in order to understand Constant’s piece, we must be aware that its two parts were written under different historical circumstances and decipher the argumentative thrust inherent in the text. Following Stephen Holmes, he argues that to understand the shift Constant made in the second part of the text, we should read it within the context of the increasing influence of the ultra-Royalists in the legislature during the Bourbon Restoration. However, in contrast to Holmes, he contends that the spirit of both civic and individual freedom, which enlivens representative system, is the backbone of the text in its unity. Demin Duan’s essay investigates an apparent ambivalence between liberal and imperialist tendencies in the work of Alexis de Tocqueville, which has already drawn some attention from Tocquevillian scholars. These interpretations of Tocqueville and his writings on empire generally agree that Tocqueville stands in a recognized tradition of liberalism, which is characterized by respect for human rights, individual freedom and a sense of universal humanism. On this standard view, Tocqueville’s support of imperialism represents nothing but an unfortunate breach of his own otherwise consistent liberal thinking. Duan’s article questions this standard position. By questioning the assumption of Tocqueville’s liberalism in the first place, he tries to gauge the influence of both the old republican tradition and the new liberal perspective on his thinking. In conclusion, he argues that Tocqueville’s overall thought, especially his notion of freedom, is very much informed by an old republican tradition. His support of French imperialism could be better understood from this perspective rather than be rendered simply as a deviation from liberal norms. Pawel Marczewski’s contribution is an attempt to show that Tocqueville’s conception of liberty transcends the divisions between negative and positive aspects of freedom. He begins by juxtaposing this conception with the opposition drawn by Constant between liberty of the ancients and liberty of the moderns. While Tocqueville and Constant shared a concern for the preservation of individual rights, Tocqueville was much more reluctant to accept the modern loss of the communal dimension of liberty. He did not accept the view that jouissances privées, private pleasures, are the main compensation that the modern world has to offer for the lost ancient treasure of political participation. The essay then looks into the relevance of Tocqueville’s standpoint for current debates between liberal defenders of negative freedom and republican advocates of freedom as non-domination. Participants on both sides of the debate seem to be so devoted to showing that their particular approach provides the best guarantees against actual and possible threats to liberty that they overlook the fact that their definitions of freedom remain significantly similar. By arguing that ‘to be free is to be guided by one’s own will’, contemporary republicans, as well as their liberal counterparts, move along the lines drawn by Constant towards private pleasures. By questioning the inevitability of this turn, Tocqueville provides us with a valuable contribution to these discussions in contemporary political philosophy. Finally, André Van de Putte’s contribution, an adaptation of his emeritus speech that closed the conference on French Liberalism, appeals to Tocqueville in order to draw attention to the importance of intermediary, dialogical bodies in mitigating the implicit despotic tendencies of the democratic drive to equality. In Tocqueville’s view, the transition from the feudal corporate inequality to democratic individual equality was not a clean break. Rather, this transition is a continual process of democratization that is driven by a desire for equality, or egalité des conditions. This dissolution of distinctions of estate, class and status has the unintended consequence of concentrating the diffuse power of these entities into a centralized state, which is responsible for ensuring the equality of all under the law. This process leaves increasingly isolated and atomized individuals to face the power of a monolithic state in defense of their freedom, and moves toward a soft, paternalistic despotism. Constant’s freedom of the moderns is not sufficient to protect individuals from this centralized power. Democracy also requires the political freedom of the ancients. Van de Putte argues for a system in which atomized individuals organize themselves into intermediary bodies that, in a Montesquieuian balance of powers, can enter into dialogue with each other and the state on more equitable terms. Van de Putte’s contribution closes with a plea for a conception of democracy as a regime of dialogue. (shrink)

The article deals with the philosophical component of the legacy of theprominent early Middle Ages, the first encyclopedic Isidore of Seville (560-637).By analyzing the works of foreign medical scholars and writings of Isidore, the author spans the evolution of views on the legacy of the Seville Bishop. Particular importance is given to quotations from ancient literature in the writings of Isidore, the transformation of the meaning of the quotation, which was due to a change in the context, and often the (...) very text, the agreement of these quotation among themselves and the general conclusions of the author. The second book Differentials and the three books of Senencius of Isidore are defined as the original “theological works” that corresponded to the cultural and ideological demands of the European society of the early Middle Ages, formed the foundations of European education, the idea of the appointment of the royal (state) power.The presentation of the doctrine and related problems is carried out in the three books of Senentius, which contain a number of thematic and meaningful parallels with the second book Differentials. The genius of Senentius is reinterpreted by Isidore: this is not just a thematic selection of aphoristic statements; quotations from various works and Isidor’s own maxims are designed in a clear structure), which explains a certain position and “policy” of the author, a strictly defined set of interconnected concepts. In the three books of Senentia, dogmatic, ascetic themes, what is called the “political theology” are considered.Thus, the second book “Differentials” and the three books “Sentence”,marked by us as “theological works”, are expected to contain a wealth of material for historical and philosophical analysis and, above all, philosophical concepts perceived by Isidor through the inheritance of the Fathers of the Church. However, if he can be blamed in a certain way in the reception of philosophy, then a large number of quotations from ancient literature is not simply a reference to the works of predecessors. They represent the consistency of Isidor’s thoughts with his predecessors, as well as his own conclusions. Given that the Sevillian Bishop was extremely lucky and virtually all his works were preserved, it is not surprising that they caused such controversy in the scientific community of the Medievists and not only the Medievists. The analysis of works on revealing their philosophical component continues to this day and the “supporters” of Isidore-philosopher are becoming more and more. Evolution in a positive direction in foreign historiography regarding the value of the Isidor Sevillian heritage is the basis of its new research by representatives of all branches of science. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Chinese and Indian Ways of Thinking in Early Modern European Philosophy: The Reception and the Exclusion by Selusi AmbrogioCatherine König-Pralong (bio)Chinese and Indian Ways of Thinking in Early Modern European Philosophy: The Reception and the Exclusion. By Selusi Ambrogio. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2020. How Modern Historians of Philosophy Drew Their World MapsIn his latest book, Chinese and Indian Ways of Thinking in Early (...) Modern European Philosophy: The Reception and the Exclusion, Selusi Ambrogio presents an extensive survey of how Indian and Chinese traditions were conceived of and staged in modern European historiography. This study, which surpasses in detail and scope other works devoted to the same topic,1 reconstructs 150 years of philosophical historiography. Otto van Heurn's Barbaricae philosophiae antiquitatum libri duo (published in 1600) included for the first time contemporary and ancient Indian thinkers in the philosophical doxography; at the other end of the time span considered, Jacob Brucker's Historia critica philosophiae (1744) sanctioned the exclusion of Chinese and Indian thinkers by means of a detailed criticism of their pseudo-philosophies. Moreover, Ambrogio makes the choice to focus on the history of philosophy, unlike Étiemble, for example,2 who was interested in philosophy in a broad sense—academic and non-academic—as well as in travel accounts, the writings of the Jesuits, and those of their opponents, among other sources. According to Ambrogio, the histories of philosophy were more representative of "the common European understanding of these civilizations," since they "were not openly written for controversialist aims" (p. 2). Even though one may wonder whether defining philosophy ("what philosophy is and its role"—ibid.) and legitimizing its scholarly practice is a less political or less polemical undertaking than pamphlets, letters, and philosophical essays,3 it is probably true that philosophical historiography produced an effect of objectification or an appearance of neutrality.The author's main thesis is that the exclusion of all non-Greeks or non-Europeans from the history of philosophy does not date from the nineteenth century and Hegel, as is generally thought, but precisely from the moment when Indian and Chinese "civilizations" were considered by historians of philosophy and included in the philosophical historiography: from the beginning of the seventeenth century onwards (p. 3). Applying a segregationist model, modern historians of philosophy developed a dialectic of [End Page 203] identification—the author speaks of "reception"—and exclusion. They defined the European philosophical mind by demarcating it from other ways of thinking, which they situated in place and time on a civilizational world map. Encompassing the world from Europe produced in return processes of definition and situation. Philosophy was established in a territory and identified with a "culture" or "mind" that began to think itself in relation to the rest of the world under the name of Europe.4I will discuss Ambrogio's remarkable work in three moments. First, I will develop some particularly interesting conclusions drawn from the study; namely, they address periodization, the production of cultural categories, and the valorization of theory. I will then discuss the main thesis as well as some problematic issues, before concluding on the subject of a world absent from Ambrogio's book, the Near and Middle East.I. Logic of Time and Cultural TerritorializationAmbrogio's book is composed of three parts that address three successive historiographical models. First, the "perennialist universalism" (p. 57)—represented by, among others, Otto van Heurn, Thomas Burnet, Isaac Vossius, François Bernier, Georg Horn, and François de la Mothe le Vayer—included ancient India and then China in the "prisca theologia"; on the other hand, it described contemporary Indian and Chinese thinkers as "barbarian" philosophers. In this constellation, Buddhism began to function as the negative part of Oriental thought. According to the Jesuits, it had polluted and corrupted the original Chinese wisdom, often identified with Confucianism.The second model constructed an "Atheistic Asia," which was used either as a positive anthropological image (for example in Pierre Bayle), or as a negative foil for Lutheran philosophy and theology (for example in Johann Franz Buddeus). In the pages he dedicates to these endeavors, Ambrogio often moves away from philosophical doxography, represented by André-Fran... (shrink)

Carl Schmitt (1888-1985) appropriated the early modern tradition of political thought to his own juridical and political writings. By examining Schmitt's use of this tradition, it is possible to decipher the structure of his own political philosophy and better understand his polemic. This article therefore discusses the key sources and concepts that informed his understanding of the state and interstate relations. The main focus is on Schmitt's engagement with Hobbes, Bodin and Gentili. It becomes clear that Schmitt's (...) appropriation of their thought is selective and that his deliberate silence about certain aspects of Hobbes's or Gentili's theories in particular is almost as telling as his deliberate use of their arguments. (shrink)

Contrary to the expectations of several theorists belonging to the modernisation school, chieftaincy as a traditional institution survived various political changes throughout the 19th and 20th century in most African states. Nonetheless, their existence thereafter has varied in these states. Some states have lauded, recognised and employed chiefs for state development, while other states have blatantly ignored and designated the offices of chiefs as an obsolete governance institution that has outlived their usefulness. The variance in the disposition to chiefs is (...) identified as deeply rooted in a long-standing debate over the relationship between modernity and tradition. This study explores this debate, adopting the Ghanaian chieftaincy institution in its modern form as a case study. A synthesis of existing literature on the relevant concepts was developed and discussed in the development of the study. The study identified the major debate on tradition and modernity to be situated in a binary school, where one strand believes they can both exist together, and the other situates their argument in the need to abolish tradition completely from modern societies. For the Ghanaian setting, however, the chieftaincy institution is recognised and accorded its autonomy in the 1992 Constitution of Ghana. This has created a bifurcated state where constitutional law and customary law are implemented at the same time. Over the years, the interaction between both systems of governance has been seen mostly in land administration, local governance, and development. Chiefs as such are identified as playing extensive roles in state development and investment promotion through land administration, serving as gatekeepers between the central government and their subjects, promoting solidarity and employing their influence and expertise as a means for introducing sustainable development initiatives in their localities. However, conflicts and land mismanagement have been areas of contention, affecting their influence and relevance in recent times. The study recommends capacity building and further integration with the modern democratic Ghanaian institutions to improve the contribution of chiefs to the development of Ghana and other contexts where they exist. (shrink)

The article introduces the concept of mega-essay as an integrated format into literary circulation in the era of postmodernism. Its specificity is outlined in other forms of ensemble association of essay works: mega-essay as an integrated formation is a consolidated format, it differs from other forms of essay compilations with greater completeness, more thorough basis of design. It has a closed structure, because all its structural components are interconnected. They are closely related to the author's intention, outlined in the (...) preface or introduction, concluded on the basis of causal and associative principles. Based on the analyzed works of Ortega y Gasset, O. Zabuzhko’s «Notre Dame dʼUkraine», N. Zborovska’s «My Lesia Ukrainka», etc. conclusions are made about specific features of the mega-essays, in which the phenomenon chosen for comprehension is described in detail by incorporating internal and external contexts, authoritative references, other works, and if necessary, with the dominance of the essayistic method of presentation of opinions, related to the personal views of the author. Emphasis is placed on the affinity of ideas and selected essay formats of Ortega y Gasset and O. Zabuzhko, given their content and structural organization. Conclusions are made about the role and significance of essays of this format in postmodern European literature. (shrink)

This book is a history of modern European philosophy, focusing on the great philosophers of the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries, from Descartes through Nietzsche, all of whom develop comprehensive systems of thought. Such a history can be seen as telling a story (indeed, the very word "story" comes from the Latin word historia). It has been traditionally understood since ancient times that a good story has a beginning, an end, and a middle that reasonably moves us from (...) the beginning to its end. Although it may seem a bit artificial, we can think of the history of modern European philosophy as beginning in the 1620s, when Descartes was writing his Rules for the Direction of the Mind, and ending in 1900, with the death of Nietzsche. In some ways, the development from the former to the latter is a process of intellectual radicalization. Yet a focus that persists through this process is an emphasis on the individual thinker as the subject of experience, belief, knowledge, and action. (shrink)

By way of essays and a selection of primary sources in parallel text, Biography, Historiography, and Modes of Philosophizing provides an introduction to a vast, significant, but neglected corpus of early modern literature: collective biography. It focuses especially on the various related strands of political, philosophical, and intellectual and cultural biography as well as on the intersection between biography, historiography, and philosophy. Individual texts from the fifteenth to the eighteenth century are presented as examples of how the ancient collective (...) biographical tradition--as represented above all by Plutarch, Suetonius, Diogenes Laertius, and Jerome--was received and transformed in the Renaissance and beyond in accordance with the needs of humanism, religious controversy, politics, and the development of modern philosophy and science"--Provided by publisehr. (shrink)

The emphasis that the modernity gives to disengagement and beginning leads one to think that the modernity itself is in fact a culture that initiares crisis. Even if there is no initial crisis, it can be created through the ambivalent nature of modernity. Behind the concept of crisis lies the notion that history is a continuous process or movement that opens the door to nihilistic understanding which stems from the idea of contemporary life and thought alienation through the pessimistic meaning (...) of the word. There is a dialectical relationship between the ideas of modernity and progress, and the decadence, and the main theme of Nietzsche's philosophical career. Since the death of Hegel, who made the idea of crisis plausible, everything is nothing but a counter-movement not only in Germany, but also in Europe. The first of these counter-movements is romanticism with its objection to the mind which is liberated from the bonds of tradition. The main thesis of the present article is, between reactiveness of romanticism -on the surface- and the modernity; from one side romanticism's consuming modernity, which is its mirror image, while at the same time feeding from it and modernity's manipulating the ideas developed against it and monopolizing them thanks to its ambivalent nature. For this purpose, following an an anti-enlightenment thinker Nietzsche's, anti-romantic footsteps which at the same time feeds from the romantic heritage, an attempt will be made to analyze the relationship between modernity and romanticism. Another goal of this article is to allow a comparison of how the intellectual development in the West finds its response on the modernization process of our country by probing how the modernization experience of early period Islamist's who experienced this process in a feeling of "backwardness" and with a wounded consciousness and anxiety has led to a shallow romantic worldview. SummaryRomance and romanticism are the main topics of this article. Romanticism is a period, whereas romance is a spiritual attitude not limited to this period, therefore, even today it’s existence is felt. In other words, it is not specific to the Germans. This term is often used to correspond to certain aspects of European intellectual life in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, for instance between 1790 and 1850. In its extremely diverse definitions, the most "romantic" definition in our opinion, belongs to Novalis: “I'm romanticizing by giving a high meaning to ordinary things, a mysterious reputation to the ordinary, the honor of the unknown to the known, an infinite look to the finite.” The rejection of existing social reality, the experience of loss, the melancholic longing and the search for loss are the main components of the romantic motive. This study is based on the argument that there is a dialectical relation between romanticism and modernity, which is known as an opposing movement against enlightenment thought. The intellectual feature, which contains the opposite of modernity itself, makes this argument plausible. In addition, the view of modernity as a crisis culture due to the emphasis on disengament and beginnings offers us the possibility to establish a relationship between modernity, which accepts itself as decadence, and romance. Behind the concept of crisis lies the idea that history is a continuous process or movement opening the door to the nihilist understanding in which modern life and thought are alienated in a pessimistic sense. Thus, Allan Megill defines historicism as a prerequisite for nihilism. According to the author, Prophets of Extremity, if the history has no direction to be changed, maintained or lost when wandering in history, it also cannot have a "crisis". The suggestion of "God is dead" is the most concise expression of this crisis. In this crisis state of nihilism, it is a completely forlorn condition of living in the present. Today, which is in the absolute forlorn state; the savior declares his belief that he is devoid of all sorts of features, things that let us reconcile with the current situation of things. In the face of this situation, when people see that the present becomes completely forlorn, they move in two opposite directions with a desire to regenerate culturally: They either have to go back to the past or head for the future. However, every attempt to determine what the future or the past posess will require them to be real, belonging to the present. This will return us to the forlorn state. Nietzsche embraces both opposing sides, but does not attempts choose between them. This is the place where Nietzsche dictates that today is corrupt taking a radical attitude against romanticism fed by the notion of crisis. The fact that modernity has given up its critique of reason, which is revealed by its dialectic, had a great influence on Nietzsche's putting distance between himself and romantics. That is to say, in response to enlightened thought, although romantics speak of unity, apparently, they could not prevent emergence of emotion against mind, local against the universal, individual against social, in other words, the emergence of the second values, which they believed that these were belittled and despised by Enlightenment. Therefore, romantics seem like they could not save themselves from being caught in the web of dialectics in the account they entered that is based on the subject-object distinction in cartesian thought. It is because modernity acts with the consciousness that the life is established on the occurrence and decadence. Based on this, we can say that decadence is inevitable. This decadence (distortion) from the outside may be through movements developed against it, or experienced within itself (even if no one attempts to destroy it). Modernity, with the awareness that it cannot escape from the decadence, wants to arbitrate itself by turning this decadence in its favor by manipulating it. In other words, the modernity dramatizes the feeling of crisis considering itself decadence and the seemingly contradictory ideas of avant-garde and decadence become almost synonymous. It must be the reason why Nietzsche identifies modernity with decadence Modernity manages to put the decadence in its body at the center of attraction by producing self-opposing movements, monopolizing and manipulating. In short, both romanticism and avant-garde movements are the movements that are emerged not against modernity but from itself. Just like an apple worm, they both consume modernity and feed on it. They act as a mirror. Although they seem to criticize, as movements that have emerged from it, they allow the modernity to complete and correct the deficiencies. As a result of this, we can say that romantic critical movements are developed against the world and are shaped by modernity, beginning with the idea of enlightenment, and moved forward in the track of modernity.While romanticism developed in the West as opposed to modernity, in Ottoman-Turkish thought, it was seen as the rhetoric of retardation and regretting of backwardness from civilization. It is inevitable that the experience of modernization in a sense of backwardness, with a wounded consciousness and urgency, will open up space for romance. In our modernization adventure starting with Tanzimat, it is a fact that there has not been a drastic reckoning due to Enlightenment on an intellectual basis, industrialization on an economic basis, programs of revolutionary and nationalist formations on a political basis. Therefore, in Turkish thought, it is not possible to talk about a critical tradition developed against modern paradigm. The status of being audience to what was being experienced in Europe, resulting from superiority was transformed into grudge due to the defeats in the military field. Due to the decadence experienced in the present, inability to find the solution to the problems of its age, melancholic state of mind because of being stuck in the golden age experienced in the past, in the case of a preference, led to a romantic world view because of the appeal of its simplicity to imitate what was once lived in the past. Thus, it is very natural that the direction of Namık Kemal, the cult personality of Islamist-Turkish thought, is towards the past even when talking about progress and civilization. Seeing the 19th century Europe as a re-implementation of ideas and institutions that are actually Islamic, Namık Kemal, in our opinion, showed us a clear example of a typical Islamist romanticism and an example of occidentalist approach regarding that the West learned the civilization from Muslims. In fact, the exact equivalent of this approach displayed in Turkish cogito without even knowing that it is romantic, emerging in the personality of Namık Kemal and in the feeling of backwardness,with a hectic and injured consciousness, is kitschization. So much so that, the state of being kitsch also explains the current situation of Islamic geography which is far from creating a tradition for at least a century, and it clearly tells the usual romantic end. (shrink)

"Cheng" is a key term in Chinese culture. At the same time, it has been widely viewed as an "elusive," even "the most unintelligible term" by both Chinese and Western scholars, because of its various, sometimes even contradictory usages and definitions. This dissertation points out that cheng possesses a core meaning--consistency. It is shared by all the usages and definitions, and legitimizes their validity as the members of the cheng family. ;The idea of cheng evolves mainly through two traditions, the (...) traditions of influence and of reality. The first one emphasizes the impact of cheng on other people. It claims that cheng is the ultimate source from which comes a series of positive consequences. The second one treats cheng as essential attribute, or reality of a thing. It can explain why a thing exists as itself. Between the two traditions, cheng/influence is more prominent and complicated. ;The tradition of influence in turn divides into two sub-traditions, the sub-traditions of transformation and of change. One stresses that the sage with perfect cheng will effortlessly enlighten people, necessarily draw them to follow him. The goal of social transformation will be automatically realized in the above two-way process. The other emphasizes that cheng in a person's heart/mind can be made actively radiate out, impact on other people, and stimulate, inspire, and persuade them to do what the person treasures and wishes. The first one characterizes cheng in mainstream Confucianism, while the second is often found in various philosophers out of the mainstream. ;The work of Song Confucians signifies the summit of the evolution of the idea of cheng. They construct a system, with the notion of heaven, or the heavenly way as its foundation, and that of the transformation as its framework. In modern times, due to both theoretical rejections and practical challenges, the notion of heaven is decisively damaged. This results in the collapse of the system. The present task is not to rebuild the precious parts of the cheng tradition on the discredited heaven, but to rearrange them around the original core meaning. (shrink)

SummaryThe French Idea of History: Joseph de Maistre and His Heirs, 1794–1854 is a monograph by Carolina Armenteros describing the historical thought of Joseph de Maistre and recounting its posterity among French traditionalist, socialist and positivist thinkers. This article presents Armenteros's reflections on some of her book's themes and on the place they occupy in current scholarly debates. She notes that commentators today tend to assume politics' primacy over spirituality as a human motivator. A product of the de-spiritualisation of human (...) experience in late modernity, this view is associated with the polarisation of the concepts of tradition and Enlightenment, and with ideas of liberty and reason ill-adapted to interpreting Maistre's thought. Armenteros shows how her portrait of an anti-absolutist, empiricist and reasonable Maistre disappointed with kings and bent on resolving the problem of violence through spiritual means is the necessary consequence of investigating his historical and political thought in context. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Vanities of the Eye: Vision in Early Modern European CultureDallas G. Denery IIStuart Clark. Vanities of the Eye: Vision in Early Modern European Culture. Oxford-New York: Oxford University Press, 2007. Pp. xi + 415. Cloth, $75.00.A popular and pervasive historical narrative links the Renaissance development of linear perspective with Europe’s transition from a pre-modern to an early modern society. Erwin Panofsky gave (...) this narrative its definitive form early in the twentieth century and William Ivins boiled it down to a simple idea that served as the title of his most famous book. According to Ivins, single-point perspective, the artistic technique championed by Alberti and perfected in the paintings of Masaccio and Piero della Francesca, allowed for “the rationalization of sight.” In other words, it provided a mathematically and geometrically grounded method for accurately representing the external world. It is a powerful and seductive claim, one that has shaped generations of scholarly work. It is also, Stuart Clark contends in this important new book, patently wrong. Far from exhibiting a renewed or reinvigorated confidence in the accuracy and reliability of vision, sixteenth- and seventeenth-century philosophers, artists, theologians, and doctors worried that sight was susceptible, perhaps permanently so, to all sorts of debilitating derangements, displacements, and delusions.Rather than relate a history of progress, Clark offers a history of exhaustion, failure, and, ultimately, of rejection. Early modern intellectuals inherited a comprehensive theory of vision and cognition from their medieval predecessors known as perspectivist optics. This theory sought to secure the accuracy of human sense perception through regularized causal processes that linked things in the world with our various cognitive faculties. While some fourteenth-century intellectuals, most notably Nicolas of Autrecourt and Nicole Oresme, recognized structural deficiencies in this theory, their critiques were mostly ignored or treated as anomalies. Over the course of the next two and a half centuries, Clark argues, the challenges to this theory multiplied until it collapsed under their weight (20).Clark’s argument is straightforward and, as his evidence mounts, thoroughly convincing. Throughout each of the eight engrossing chapters that form the core of the book, Clark outlines a different threat, a different set of challenges that pointed out problems with the assumption that vision is trustworthy. The range and depth of those challenges are truly amazing. Doctors worried that imbalances in our humoral system, and especially in the black bile that causes melancholy, could render our visual perceptions dubious at best (ch. 2). Theologians, wary of the dangers of witchcraft and eager to prosecute its practitioners, obsessed over the cognitive threats that devils and demons posed to good Christians (ch. 4), while Protestant reformers relegated the entire tradition of Catholic miracles to the counterfeit illusions of the antichrist (ch. 5). For their part, artists believed that perspective undermined vision, depending as it does on the assumption that what we see is always relative, dependent upon our point of view (ch. 3).Clark structures much of his argument around George Hakewill’s 1608 book, The vanitie of the eye, an exposition on the natural, artificial, and demonic sources that forever render visual knowledge suspect. He could just as well have organized it around the opening pages of Descartes’s Meditations, and in many ways Clark’s book serves as a superb rumination on the sources of Descartes’s skeptical arguments. Unlike Etienne Gilson and, more recently, Richard Popkin, both of whom have done so much to open up the scholastic and early modern sources of Descartes’s skeptical thought experiments, Clark does not limit himself to philosophical lineages. Rather, he considers sources of visual skepticism that developed across an entire culture—in natural philosophy, medicine, art, religion, and literature (especially in Shakespeare’s Macbeth). Not only does the sheer volume and variety of such [End Page 103] sources help to explain Descartes’s urgent desire to overturn everything he had learned and begin again from the foundations, but it also contextualizes the specific arguments he employs. None of Descartes’s skeptical arguments were new and most were well known in the Middle Ages. What had changed over the intervening centuries, Clark contends, was how these arguments drew from... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Vanities of the Eye: Vision in Early Modern European CultureDallas G. Denery IIStuart Clark. Vanities of the Eye: Vision in Early Modern European Culture. Oxford-New York: Oxford University Press, 2007. Pp. xi + 415. Cloth, $75.00.A popular and pervasive historical narrative links the Renaissance development of linear perspective with Europe’s transition from a pre-modern to an early modern society. Erwin Panofsky gave (...) this narrative its definitive form early in the twentieth century and William Ivins boiled it down to a simple idea that served as the title of his most famous book. According to Ivins, single-point perspective, the artistic technique championed by Alberti and perfected in the paintings of Masaccio and Piero della Francesca, allowed for “the rationalization of sight.” In other words, it provided a mathematically and geometrically grounded method for accurately representing the external world. It is a powerful and seductive claim, one that has shaped generations of scholarly work. It is also, Stuart Clark contends in this important new book, patently wrong. Far from exhibiting a renewed or reinvigorated confidence in the accuracy and reliability of vision, sixteenth- and seventeenth-century philosophers, artists, theologians, and doctors worried that sight was susceptible, perhaps permanently so, to all sorts of debilitating derangements, displacements, and delusions.Rather than relate a history of progress, Clark offers a history of exhaustion, failure, and, ultimately, of rejection. Early modern intellectuals inherited a comprehensive theory of vision and cognition from their medieval predecessors known as perspectivist optics. This theory sought to secure the accuracy of human sense perception through regularized causal processes that linked things in the world with our various cognitive faculties. While some fourteenth-century intellectuals, most notably Nicolas of Autrecourt and Nicole Oresme, recognized structural deficiencies in this theory, their critiques were mostly ignored or treated as anomalies. Over the course of the next two and a half centuries, Clark argues, the challenges to this theory multiplied until it collapsed under their weight (20).Clark’s argument is straightforward and, as his evidence mounts, thoroughly convincing. Throughout each of the eight engrossing chapters that form the core of the book, Clark outlines a different threat, a different set of challenges that pointed out problems with the assumption that vision is trustworthy. The range and depth of those challenges are truly amazing. Doctors worried that imbalances in our humoral system, and especially in the black bile that causes melancholy, could render our visual perceptions dubious at best (ch. 2). Theologians, wary of the dangers of witchcraft and eager to prosecute its practitioners, obsessed over the cognitive threats that devils and demons posed to good Christians (ch. 4), while Protestant reformers relegated the entire tradition of Catholic miracles to the counterfeit illusions of the antichrist (ch. 5). For their part, artists believed that perspective undermined vision, depending as it does on the assumption that what we see is always relative, dependent upon our point of view (ch. 3).Clark structures much of his argument around George Hakewill’s 1608 book, The vanitie of the eye, an exposition on the natural, artificial, and demonic sources that forever render visual knowledge suspect. He could just as well have organized it around the opening pages of Descartes’s Meditations, and in many ways Clark’s book serves as a superb rumination on the sources of Descartes’s skeptical arguments. Unlike Etienne Gilson and, more recently, Richard Popkin, both of whom have done so much to open up the scholastic and early modern sources of Descartes’s skeptical thought experiments, Clark does not limit himself to philosophical lineages. Rather, he considers sources of visual skepticism that developed across an entire culture—in natural philosophy, medicine, art, religion, and literature (especially in Shakespeare’s Macbeth). Not only does the sheer volume and variety of such [End Page 103] sources help to explain Descartes’s urgent desire to overturn everything he had learned and begin again from the foundations, but it also contextualizes the specific arguments he employs. None of Descartes’s skeptical arguments were new and most were well known in the Middle Ages. What had changed over the intervening centuries, Clark contends, was how these arguments drew from... (shrink)

This collection of papers is from the Ninth European Conference on the Philosophy of Religion held at the University of Aarhus, Denmark in August 1992. The theme of the conference was theism and its modern alternatives. Why alternatives? There is no agreement on the answer to that question. Before outlining the nature of the disagreements, there is a need to distinguish theism, where it means some belief in God, and theism as a certain kind of philosophical response (...) to that belief. If theism is to be spoken of in both contexts, the following question arises -- is philosophical theism an adequate response to religious theism? (shrink)

In the final sessions of the first year of his seminar on The Beast & the Sovereign, Jacques Derrida takes up the question of modernity as the epoch of biopolitics. In a remarkable close reading, he critiques Michel Foucault’s and Giorgio Agamben’s reflections on the threshold of biopolitical modernity, both in terms of conceptual content and, especially in the latter’s case, style. He takes as a prominent example the revolutionary transformation from princely menagerie to public zoological garden, as well (...) as Carl Hagenbeck’s subsequent “revolution” in zoo design, which inaugurate, he suggests, not a new biopolitical apparatus of power/ knowledge, but only a different form of the same fundamental structure of .. (shrink)

This essay is meant to shed light on a discourse that spans centuries and includes different voices. To be aware of such trans-textual resonances can add a level of historical understanding to the reading of philosophical texts. Specifically, we intend to demonstrate how the notion of the ineffable Dao 道, prominently expressed in the Daodejing 道德經, informs a long discourse on incongruent names in distinction to a mainstream paradigm that demands congruity between names and what they designate. Thereby, we trace (...) the development of the idea of the ineffable Dao quite differently from modern mystical interpretations. We show how, in an early Chinese context, it first gives rise to a sociopolitical critique of the incongruity underlying socially constructed names in the Zhuangzi 莊子, then to a discourse on the incongruity between moral virtues and names in Xuanxue 玄學 philosophy, and eventually to Sengzhao’s 僧肇 claim that a perceived congruence of names with things does not entail actual congruence between names and reality. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Role of Scepticism in Modern Philosophy Reconsidered RICHARD H. POPKIN THE THEORY that the revival of ancient scepticism, and the application of its arguments to the controversies of the sixteenth century, played a vital role in the development of modern philosophy was first suggested by me almost forty years ago. A three-part article in the Review of Metaphysics entided "The Sceptical Crisis and the Rise of (...) Modern Philosophy" contained much of the theory.' What was added by the time of my History of Scepticism from Erasmus to Descartes (published in x96o,' but finished by 1958 ) was the importance of the sceptical arguments in the controversies of the Reformation and the CounterReformation, and the development of a religious scepticismmfideism--as a way of fending off criticism of basic religious beliefs.s One of the first reviews of my book was by Charles B. Schmitt,4 which he soon followed with his volume on Gianfrancesco Pico and then one on Cicero Scepticus.5 Before Charles Schmitt and I entered this arena, scepticism as a living philosophical view was hardly mentioned in histories of philosophy, which, by and large, saw modern philosophy as a rejection of Scholasticism, with nothing in between. One leaped from William of Ockham and Duns Scotus to Francis Bacon and Descartes, with perhaps a momentary nod to Montaigne as an amus- ' R. H. Popkin, "The ScepticalCrisisand the Riseof Modern Philosophy," Parts I, II, and III, ReviewofMetaphysics8 0953-54): 131--51,3O7--33,and 499-51o. First published in the University of Utrecht series of Texts and Studies in the History of Philosophy (Assen:Van Gorcum). sThis part of the story appeared independently in my article, "Scepticismand the CounterReformation in France," Archivfiir Reformatio~geschichte51 (a96o): 58-88. 4This appeared in Philosophyand PhenomenologicalResearch~3 (1963):455. 5His GianfrancescoPico dellaMirandola(I469-x533) and His Critiqueof Aristotleappeared in 1967, and CiceroScepticus:A Studyof theInfluenceof theAcademicain the Renaissancein 197~,both published in the International Archivesof the History of Ideas put out by Nijhoffin The Hague. [5ol] 502 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 3 1:4 OCTOBER 1993 ing figure who provided Bacon with his stylistic form and Descartes with the opening line for the Discourse on Method. There were practically no articles about or studies of scepticism as a philosophical attitude or activity in modern philosophy before we went to work. The American philosopher Roderick Chisholm had written an article on Sextus and modern empiricism, and that was about it.6 When I took my first course in the history of philosophy with John Herman Randall, I frankly could not make much out of Plato or Aristotle, but when we were assigned to read Sextus Empiricus, I found an author who made sense. Later in the course I was introduced to Hume, whom Randall hated, and I loved. In a course with Paul Oskar Kristeller a few years later, on Hellenistic philosophy, Sextus appeared as a serious figure. A couple of years after that, in a seminar with Charles Hendel on Hume, I wrote a paper on Sextus and Hume. I showed it to Kristeller, who said drily and carefully that it might be worth looking into whether Hume had read Sextus, and whether there was a prior tradition of scepticism in European philosophy. Thus was I set off on the quest. Schmitt and I not only offered a lot of evidence previously ignored or unknown about the recovery of sceptical texts and their use in the philosophical discussions of the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, but we also offered a new paradigm, a new way of conceiving what problems were being agitated, a new way of understanding the kinds of answers being given as ways of resolving the sceptical crisis. The reception of our theory indicated that it provided a more meaningful picture of the making of the modern mind than what had previously been proposed.7 What I should like to deal with now are three questions: Has our theory stood up over almost four decades? Has it had to be revised or amended? And does it need to be expanded (as I have been doing) to encompass another kind of scepticism, that directed against traditional religion from about... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Hume Studies Volume XXI, Number 2, November 1995, pp. 315-332 Robertson, Hume, and the Balance of Power FREDERICK G. WHELAN William Robertson, like his Scottish Enlightenment colleague David Hume, practiced a kind of philosophic history which, although it appears to consist mainly of narratives of political and military events, is also designed to teach moral and political lessons of general significance and utility. The principal theme of Hume's (...) History of England, for example, is the growth of legal and constitutional government in connection with the emergence of modern society; Hume's narrative implicitly justifies both such a government and the moderate politics on which it depends. A theme of comparable importance in Robertson's History of Charles V (1769) is the emergence of a balance of power and thence a relatively stable international system among European states in the early sixteenth century, when the policy of balance first clearly appeared. As he declares in his Preface: The political principles and maxims then established still continue to operate. The ideas concerning the balance of power, then introduced or rendered general, still influence the councils of nations. (R 307)1 Robertson both describes the relevant policy decisions (especially the alliance between the traditional enemies, England and France, to counter the threat posed by Charles Vs unprecedentedly large empire) and justifies such policies as reasonable and beneficial.2 Frederick G. Whelan is at the Political Science Department, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh PA 15260 USA. 316 Frederick G. Whelan In treating this theme, Robertson was taking up a topic that was of interest to Hume as well. Hume refers on a number of occasions to the sixteenth century balance of power in his History chapters on the reign of Henry VIII (1759),3 especially in the portion extending through the 1520s, and he treats the topic more systematically in his earlier essay "Of the Balance of Power" (1752).4 Hume like Robertson defends balance of power policies in general, and Hume certainly (Robertson probably) had a more particular reason for doing so: to justify contemporary British (Whig) foreign policy (and several wars), which since the reign of Louis XIV had aimed at maintaining a European counterbalance to France.5 Hume's and Robertson's favorable descriptions of the sixteenth century anti-Habsburg policy provide a useful background for defending the eighteenth century anti-Bourbon policy.6 Indeed, both Hume and Robertson probably exaggerated the prevalence of the balance of power, at least as a conscious policy, in the early sixteenth century; although they were no doubt correct in noting that something like the modern state system first began to take shape at that time, they seem to have projected the eighteenth century emphasis on balance backwards in time as a way of legitimizing it.7 Robertson sums up the fifty year period he covers by observing that the similar stage of development of the states of Europe at that time, together with the policy of balance, permitted the preservation of a fairly stable system of independent states that has lasted until the present: But the advantages possessed by one state were counterbalanced by circumstances favourable to others; and thus prevented any from attaining such superiority as might have been fatal to all. The nations of Europe in that age, as in the present, were like one great family.... There was not among them that wide diversity of character and of genius which, in almost every period of history, hath exalted the Europeans above the inhabitants of the other quarters of the globe, and seems to have destined the one to rule and the others to obey. (R 704) Hume's concern with contemporary policy, and with France, is more conspicuous: Europe has now, for above a century, remained on the defensive against the greatest force that ever, perhaps, was formed by the civil or political combination of mankind. And such is the influence of the maxim here treated of, that tho' that ambitious nation, in the five last general wars, have been victorious in four, and unsuccessful only in one, they have not much enlarged their dominions, nor acquired a total ascendant over EUROPE.... In the last three of these general Hume... (shrink)

Compiled by scholars at the court of Liu An, king of Huainan, in the second century B.C.E, _The Huainanzi_ is a tightly organized, sophisticated articulation of Western Han philosophy and statecraft. Outlining "all that a modern monarch needs to know," the text emphasizes rigorous self-cultivation and mental discipline, brilliantly synthesizing for readers past and present the full spectrum of early Chinese thought. _The Huainanzi_ locates the key to successful rule in a balance of broad knowledge, diligent application, and the (...) penetrating wisdom of a sage. It is a unique and creative synthesis of Daoist classics, such as the _Laozi_ and the _Zhuangzi_; works associated with the Confucian tradition, such as the _Changes_, the _Odes_, and the _Documents_; and a wide range of other foundational philosophical and literary texts from the _Mozi_ to the _Hanfeizi_. The product of twelve years of scholarship, this remarkable translation preserves _The Huainanzi_'s special rhetorical features, such as parallel prose and verse, and showcases a compositional technique that conveys the work's powerful philosophical appeal. This path-breaking volume will have a transformative impact on the field of early Chinese intellectual history and will be of great interest to scholars and students alike. (shrink)