scholarly journals Joseph Needham (1900–95)

1997 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 95-100 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mansel Davies
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
The West ◽  
The World ◽  
East And West ◽  
International Status

With the death of Joseph Needham on 24 March 1995 the world of learning lost one of the greatest scholars in this or any country, of this or any century. For more than thirty years Needham had been the greatest sinologist in the West, having previously achieved an international status as a research biochemist and as a historian. Intellectually a bridge-builder between science, religion and Marxist socialism, and supremely so between East and West, he has been called the Erasmus of the twentieth century. A sober assessment suggests that with the passage of time he will be recognized as a greater figure than the scholar from Rotterdam.

scholarly journals In Praise of Irrationality: Self, "East" and "West" in Greek Teachers' Speeches on National Day Commemorations

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lucianna Benincasa
Keyword(s):  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
Social Identity ◽  
Qualitative Study ◽  
The West ◽  
Learning And Teaching ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
Group Members ◽  
Social Creativity ◽  
East And West

In this qualitative study of school discourse on national day commemorations, focus is on the "social creativity strategies" through which group members can improve their social identity. Discourse analysis was carried out on thirty-nine teachers' speeches delivered in Greek schools between 1998 and 2004. The speakers scorn rationality and logic, stereotypically attributed to "the West" (a "West" which is perceived not to include Greece), as cold and not human. The Greeks' successful national struggles are presented instead as the result of irrationality. They claim irrationality to be the most human and thus the most valuable quality, which places Greece first in the world hierarchy. The results are further discussed in terms of their implications for learning and teaching in the classroom, as well as for policy and research.

The Old Rhetoric

2019 ◽  
pp. 27-68
Author(s):  
Anthony Ossa-Richardson
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Philosophical Analysis ◽  
Persuasive Communication ◽  
Western Thought ◽  
The West ◽  
The Third ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
The World ◽  
Persuasive Speech

This chapter discusses the Old Rhetoric, sketching the long persistence in the West—from Aristotle to the early twentieth century—of a ‘single meaning model’ of language, one that takes ambiguity for granted as an obstacle to persuasive speech and clear philosophical analysis. In Aristotle's works are the seeds of three closely related traditions of Western thought on ambiguity: the logicosemantic, the rhetorical, and the hermeneutic. The first seeks to eliminate ambiguity from philosophy because it hinders a clear analysis of the world. The second seeks to eliminate ambiguity from speech because it hinders the clear and persuasive communication of argument. The third, an extension of the second, seeks to resolve textual ambiguity because it hinders the reader's ability to grasp the writer's intention. The chapter then considers Aristotle's two types of verbal ambiguity: homonym and amphiboly. The solution to both—whether their presence in a discussion is accidental or deliberate—is what Aristotle calls diairesis or distinction, that is, the explicit clarification of the different meanings involved.

Homer: A relational mnemohistory

2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 274-286 ◽  
Author(s):  
Astrid Erll
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Twentieth Century Literature ◽  
Short Term ◽  
The West ◽  
Memory Culture ◽  
European Heritage ◽  
The World ◽  
Century Literature

This article proposes to extend the prevalent short-term and presentist frameworks of research on transcultural memory and to consider its dynamics across long-term relational mnemohistories. After more than two and a half millennia, “Homer” and the Homeric epics still resonate in memory cultures across the world. But they are often erroneously cast as “European heritage” or “foundations of the West.” This is the result of what I call a tenacious “Homeric genea-logic.” Highlighting three moments in the relational mnemohistory of Homer, this article shows, first, that already during their emergence in the archaic age, the Homeric epics were relational objects; second, how during the Middle Ages Homer could arrive in Petrarch’s Italy only as a product of relational remembering between the Roman and the Byzantine empires; and third, how twentieth-century literature (Joyce, Walcott) developed conscious modes of mnemonic relationality connecting diverse cultural memories. Relationality thus emerges as a key term for a reflexive memory culture today, a tool to overcome exclusive memory logics (“Homer as the heritage of Europe”) while enabling the articulation of meaningful long-term transcultural memories (“Homer as relational heritage in Europe”).

Spirituality of Society and Spiritual Economy

2021 ◽  
Vol 144 (2) ◽  
pp. 104-113
Author(s):  
Vladimir A. Morozov ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Evaluation Criteria ◽  
The West ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
East And West ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Religious Spirituality

The article examines the history of the formation of spirituality in the East and West and examines modern problems of spirituality in society. The compatibility of the values of the West and the East is studied and the composition of the key laws and principles of the main religions of the world in the life of society is integrated. The combination of secular and religious spirituality is studied. The basics and provisions of labor ethics in the countries of the East and West are considered, and the attitude of the main religions to labor, wealth, property, and the economy is compiled. The definition of spiritual economy is proposed, and evaluation criteria are given, as well as an introductory composition of its characteristics is formed.

Knowledge and Power in the Discourse of Modernity: The Campaigns against Popular Religion in Early Twentieth-Century China

1991 ◽  
Vol 50 (1) ◽  
pp. 67-83 ◽  
Author(s):  
Prasenjit Duara
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Popular Religion ◽  
Western World ◽  
Historical Understanding ◽  
The West ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
The World ◽  
Historical Transition ◽  
Modern Era

Ever since the enlightenment—the dawn of the modern era—historical understanding has been much concerned with the passage to modernity. In our present century, questions and dilemmas of the transition to modernity and the evaluation of “tradition” in the non-Western world have been central to the historical problematique the world over. I have chosen to analyze the modernist understanding of this historical transition in China not only among professional historians in the West, but among Chinese advocates of modernity. Specifically, I will examine the campaigns attacking popular religion during the first three decades of this century. As a movement advocating the establishment of a rational society, these campaigns offer a view of the understanding of this transition, not just in theory and historiography, but in practice.

scholarly journals Strategic Hypocrisy: The British Imperial Scripting of Tibet's Geopolitical Identity

2009 ◽  
Vol 68 (1) ◽  
pp. 227-252 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dibyesh Anand
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
The Political ◽  
British Imperialism ◽  
The West ◽  
Significant Aspect ◽  
Western Idea ◽  
The World ◽  
The Status ◽  
British Imperialist

The protests in and around Tibet in 2008 show that Tibet's status within China remains unsettled. The West is not an outsider to the Tibet question, which is defined primarily in terms of the debate over the status of Tibet vis-à-vis China. Tibet's modern geopolitical identity has been scripted by British imperialism. The changing dynamics of British imperial interests in India affected the emergence of Tibet as a (non)modern geopolitical entity. The most significant aspect of the British imperialist policy practiced in the first half of the twentieth century was the formula of “Chinese suzerainty/Tibetan autonomy.” This strategic hypocrisy, while nurturing an ambiguity in Tibet's status, culminated in the victory of a Western idea of sovereignty. It was China, not Tibet, that found the sovereignty talk most useful. The paper emphasizes the world-constructing role of contesting representations and challenges the divide between the political and the cultural, the imperial and the imaginative.

Marc B. Shapiro. Between the Yeshiva World and Modern Orthodoxy: The Life and Works of Rabbi Jehiel Jacob Weinberg, 1884–1966. London: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 1999. 283 pp.

AJS Review ◽  
2005 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 175-177
Author(s):  
Gershon Greenberg
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Historical Trauma ◽  
Orthodox Judaism ◽  
The Other ◽  
The West ◽  
Warsaw Ghetto ◽  
Secular Culture ◽  
The World

Jehiel Jacob Weinberg was, and remains, one of the outstanding figures of Modern Orthodoxy, along with David Zvi Hoffmann, Isaac Herzog, and Joseph B. Soloveitchik. Shapiro's exemplary biography marks the onset of a new stage in biographical scholarship about leading Orthodox personalities, moving beyond the hagiographies (which brought the figures to attention while affirming the Orthodox community) and the pioneer studies of Aharon Sorasky and Aharon Rakeffet-Rothkoff, and is a mandate for Judaic scholars to study the other greats (including the Hofets Hayim, Hayim Hirschensohn, Meir Shapiro of Lublin, Nathan Birnbaum, Hayim Ozer Grodzensky and Jakob Rosenheim). This book tells us what it takes to be a pathfinder in the world of twentieth-century Orthodox Judaism: the courage to carry a Hegelian-like dialectic about religious options to conclusion in a world of societal turmoil and historical trauma. As Weinberg moved from Slobodka to Pilwishki (Lithuania), to Giessen, Berlin, and then through the Warsaw ghetto, detention camp in Wülzburg, and finally to Montreux, he existentialized the struggle between the isolated talmudic culture of Eastern Europe and the Talmud cum secular culture of the West and its synthetic conclusion.

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