Edmund Burke's Idea of the Body Corporate: A Study in Imagery

1965 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 184-197 ◽  
Author(s):  
Walter D. Love
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
The Body ◽  
History Of Ideas ◽  
Personal Life ◽  
History Of ◽  
Ways Of Thinking

Burke is recognized as master of a language highly figurative, full of grace and telling images. But the imagery of nonfiction prose is not so much studied as the imagery of poetry, drama, and fiction. It should be. It reveals a great deal about a thinker. I have not studied Burke's imagery to spy on his personal life, conscious or subconscious, as some students of other writers do, nor have I tried to evaluate his style. I have used it as an oblique way of getting at the meaning of some of his concepts and I think it reveals something about his place in the history of ideas, making him a stalwart of eighteenth-century ways of thinking, instead of a harbinger of the nineteenth century.

scholarly journals pre-eighteenth-century traditions of revivalism: damascus in the thirteenth century

2005 ◽  
Vol 68 (2) ◽  
pp. 195-214 ◽  
Author(s):  
konrad hirschler
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Social History ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
History Of Ideas ◽  
Contemporary Society ◽  
Current State ◽  
History Of ◽  
State Of Affairs ◽  
Large Sections

this article examines whether it is possible to trace eighteenth- and nineteenth-century revivalist thought to earlier ‘medieval’ examples. the discussion is centred on the issue of ijtiha¯d/taqli¯d, which featured prominently in revivalist thought. taking the example of scholars in thirteenth-century damascus, it firstly compares the respective readings of ijtiha¯d/taqli¯d, by focusing on one individual, abu¯ sha¯ma (d. 1267). it secondly asks whether a scholar like abu¯ sha¯ma, who had adopted a reading similar to later revivalists, also took a critical and oppositional stand against large sections of his contemporary society, i.e. a revivalist posture. it is this article's main contention that the example of abu¯ sha¯ma shows the need to study in more detail possible revivalist traditions prior to the ‘grand’ movements. the combination of the history of ideas and social history might allow a deeper understanding of how and in what contexts calls for reform and opposition to the current state of affairs were expressed.

Domesticating Religious “Fanaticism” in Eighteenth-Century Germany

2018 ◽  
Vol 98 (1) ◽  
pp. 111-138
Author(s):  
Simon Grote
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Historical Perspective ◽  
History Of Ideas ◽  
Commercial Success ◽  
History Of ◽  
Stark Contrast ◽  
The University

Abstract The decline of “fanaticism” in eighteenth-century Germany, a myth propagated by self-proclaimed proponents of Enlightenment, continues to shape historians’ representations of the ascendancy of “religious” Enlightenment. To discredit this myth and suggest a means of replacing it, this essay departs from the conventional attention to university theology as a history of ideas and proposes adding a book-historical perspective. Its focus is the German Pietist theologian Joachim Lange (1670–1744). Condemned by critics as a “fanatic” by virtue of his alleged intellectual kinship with French Reformed theologian Pierre Poiret (1646–1719), Lange is best known today for his vehement and ultimately ineffectual opposition to Enlightenment’s theological standard-bearers at the University of Halle. But Lange’s kinship with Poiret was only partial, and the stark contrast between the careers of two of Lange’s textbooks reveals that although his theological star was falling by the 1730s, elements of Lange’s ostensibly outmoded theology continued to find an audience into the nineteenth century, through the enormous commercial success of his Latin grammar.

Corporate Environmentalism and the Boundaries of Sustainability

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Geoffrey Jones
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Entire Period ◽  
Temporal Context ◽  
Corporate Environmentalism ◽  
New Markets ◽  
Commercial Success ◽  
Green Business ◽  
History Of ◽  
Green Entrepreneurship ◽  
Ways Of Thinking

This chapter reviews the history of green entrepreneurship, arguing that green entrepreneurship was shaped by four different temporal contexts between the mid-nineteenth century and the present day. Although there were significant achievements over the entire period, it was only in the most recent era that green business achieved legitimacy and scale. Green entrepreneurs often had religious and ideological motivations, but they were shaped by their institutional and temporal context. They created new markets and categories through selling their ideas and products, and by imagining the meaning of sustainability. They faced hard challenges, which encouraged clustering which provided proximity advantages and higher trust levels. Combining profits and sustainability has always been difficult, and the spread of corporate environmentalism in recent decades has not helped. Although commercial success often eluded pioneers, by a willingness to think outside of traditional boxes, they have opened up new ways of thinking about sustainability.

Schopenhauer’s Pessimism in Context

2020 ◽  
pp. 283-298
Author(s):  
Mark Migotti
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Necessary Condition ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Human Flourishing ◽  
History Of ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Early Eighteenth Century

In this chapter, the author attempts to establish what is philosophically living and what is philosophically dead in Schopenhauer’s pessimism. Against the background of the intriguing the history of the terms “optimism” and “pessimism”—in debates about Leibniz’s theodicy in the early eighteenth century and the popularity of Schopenhauer in the late nineteenth century, respectively—the author points up the distinction between affirming life, which all living beings do naturally, and subscribing to philosophical optimism (or pessimism), which is possible only for reflective beings like us. Next, the author notes the significance of Schopenhauer’s claim that optimism is a necessary condition of theism and explains its bearing on his pessimistic argument for the moral unacceptability of suicide. The chapter concludes that Schopenhauer’s case for pessimism is not conclusive, but instructive; his dim view of the prospects for leading a truly rewarding, worthwhile human life draws vivid attention to important questions about how and to what degree an atheistic world can nevertheless be conducive to human flourishing.

scholarly journals ‘Constitutions selection’: Darwin, race and medicine

BJHS Themes ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 1-19
Author(s):  
Suman Seth
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Charles Darwin ◽  
Skin Colour ◽  
Race Science ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
History Of ◽  
History Of Race ◽  
Descent Of Man

Abstract In the course of his discussion of the origin of variations in skin colour among humans in the Descent of Man, Charles Darwin suggested that darker skin might be correlated with immunity to certain diseases. To make that suggestion, he drew upon a claim that seemed self-evidently correct in 1871, although it had seemed almost certainly incorrect in the late eighteenth century: that immunity to disease could be understood as a hereditary racial trait. This paper aims to show how fundamental was the idea of ‘constitutions selection’, as Darwin would call it, for his thinking about human races, tracking his (ultimately unsuccessful) attempts to find proof of its operation over a period of more than thirty years. At the same time and more broadly, following Darwin's conceptual resources on this question helps explicate relationships between conceptions of disease and conceptions of race in the nineteenth century. That period saw the birth of a modern, fixist, biologically determinist racism, which increasingly manifested itself in medical writings. The reverse was also true: medicine was a crucial site in which race was forged. The history of what has been called ‘race-science’, it is argued, cannot and should not be written independent of the history of ‘race-medicine’.

scholarly journals The Materiality of English Suicide Letters, c. 1700 – c. 1850

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-28
Author(s):  
Ella Sbaraini
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Emotional Distress ◽  
History Of Emotions ◽  
Social Lives ◽  
Writing Practices ◽  
The Poor ◽  
The Press ◽  
History Of ◽  
Insight Into

Abstract Scholars have explored eighteenth-century suicide letters from a literary perspective, examining issues of performativity and reception. However, it is fruitful to see these letters as material as well as textual objects, which were utterly embedded in people's social lives. Using thirty manuscript letters, in conjunction with other sources, this article explores the contexts in which suicide letters were written and left for others. It looks at how authors used space and other materials to convey meaning, and argues that these letters were epistolary documents usually meant for specific, known persons, rather than the press. Generally written by members of the ‘lower orders’, these letters also provide insight into the emotional writing practices of the poor, and their experiences of emotional distress. Overall, this article proposes that these neglected documents should be used to investigate the emotional and material contexts for eighteenth- and nineteenth-century suicide. It also argues that, at a time when the history of emotions has reached considerable prominence, historians must be more attentive to the experiences of the suicidal.

Geopolitics of Comparison: World Literature Avant la Lettre

2021 ◽  
Vol 73 (3) ◽  
pp. 255-269
Author(s):  
Waïl S. Hassan
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Comparative Literature ◽  
World Literature ◽  
Medieval Period ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
History Of

Abstract According to a well-known narrative, the concept of Weltliteratur and its academic correlative, the discipline of comparative literature, originated in Germany and France in the early nineteenth century, influenced by the spread of scientism and nationalism. But there is another genesis story that begins in the late eighteenth century in Spain and Italy, countries with histories entangled with the Arab presence in Europe during the medieval period. Emphasizing the role of Arabic in the formation of European literatures, Juan Andrés wrote the first comparative history of “all literature,” before the concepts of Weltliteratur and comparative literature gained currency. The divergence of the two genesis stories is the result of competing geopolitical interests, which determine which literatures enter into the sphere of comparison, on what terms, within which paradigms, and under what ideological and discursive conditions.

How violent was eighteenth-century Ireland?

1997 ◽  
Vol 30 (119) ◽  
pp. 377-392 ◽  
Author(s):  
Neal Garnham
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Everyday Life ◽  
Recent Book ◽  
Ethnic Conflicts ◽  
Popular Protest ◽  
Ancient Regime ◽  
History Of ◽  
Typical Part ◽  
The Law

In his recent book dealing with the history of duelling in Ireland, James Kelly comes to the conclusion that eighteenth-century Ireland was essentially ‘a violent society’, peopled at least in part ‘by wilful men who put their individual reputations above their lives, their families, their religion, and the law’. Such comments seem to continue a well-established tradition of interpretation that goes back to the nineteenth century. However, this image of a society in which violence was endemic, and conflict a feature of everyday life, has not gone unquestioned by historians. For example, Thomas Bartlett and Sean Connolly have instead noted the relatively controlled nature of popular protest, the early disappearance of banditry, and the reliance, until the very end of the century, on local enforcement of the law, as possible indications that Ireland may not have been as disorderly a society as has been suggested. These differing interpretations have, in turn, an obvious relevance to the wider debate on how eighteenth-century Ireland should be perceived: as a society irreconcilably and uniquely divided by religious and ethnic conflicts, or as a more or less typical part of the European ancient régime.

Turning Vanity Fair into The Cœlestial City: England’s Legal Narratives of the Body Politic from Bunyan to Thackeray

Pólemos ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 123-145
Author(s):  
Matteo Nicolini
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Strong Influence ◽  
Body Politic ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Political ◽  
Constitutional History ◽  
Vanity Fair ◽  
Legal Narratives ◽  
English Constitutional History

Abstract The article addresses the different narratives that characterize English constitutional history. It first examines the mainstream narrative, i. e., the retrospective reading of the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century constitutional events dispensed by jurists and politicians in an attempt to pack the Establishment Constitution. It then focuses on the alternative legal narratives about the Constitution elaborated during the Civil War and the Restoration. Among them, it ascertains John Bunyan’s impact on the Establishment Constitution. Bunyan was a member of the New Model Army, a radical, and a Puritan who ended up in prison. Despite this background, he exerted a strong influence on Victorian society and on Thackeray’s representation of the body politic. As a consequence, Bunyan entered the political discourse in the first half of the nineteenth century when politicians started to reform English representative institutions, and therefore became part of the Establishment Constitution.

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