Commercial Society and Christian Virtue: The Mandeville-Law Dispute

1989 ◽  
Vol 51 (4) ◽  
pp. 581-610 ◽  
Author(s):  
Russell Nieli
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Economic Status ◽  
Commercial Society ◽  
Moral Virtues ◽  
The Common ◽  
Early Eighteenth Century ◽  
Human Desire ◽  
Bernard Mandeville ◽  
Material Progress

From earliest apostolic and patristic times, Christian writers have generally been suspicious of the common human desire to improve one's economic status. In Britain, however, by the end of the seventeenth century, this suspicion had all but vanished as most Christians began to accommodate themselves to the exigencies of an increasingly dynamic commercial society. This article takes up the early eighteenth-century controversy over the compatibility of traditional Christian moral virtues with the demands of economic and material progress as reflected in the writings of the two most important antagonists in the controversy, Bernard Mandeville and William Law. Although both Mandeville and Law spoke the language of Christian rigorism and perfectionism, and proclaimed attachment to the full austerity of the Christian Gospels, Mandeville, it is explained, was really a hedonist in disguise who feigned attachment to traditional Christian and Stoic ascetic principles merely to be able to discredit those principles. Law, it is explained, was a man of uncommon piety and devoutness who was shocked by the increasing secularism and materialism of his age, and who sought to recall his contemporaries to a life of true Christian holiness. The article concludes with an evaluation of the relative merits of the positions of each of the two thinkers.

Common Law Constitutionalism

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
William E. Nelson
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Common Law ◽  
Legal Profession ◽  
Legal Institutions ◽  
Law System ◽  
The Common ◽  
Common Law System

This chapter shows how common law pleading, the use of common law vocabulary, and substantive common law rules lay at the foundation of every colony’s law by the middle of the eighteenth century. There is some explanation of how this common law system functioned in practice. The chapter then discusses why colonials looked upon the common law as a repository of liberty. It also discusses in detail the development of the legal profession individually in each of the thirteen colonies. Finally, the chapter ends with a discussion of the role of legislation. It shows that, although legislation had played an important role in the development of law and legal institutions in the seventeenth century, eighteenth-century Americans were suspicious of legislation, with the result that the output of pre-Revolutionary legislatures was minimal.

The Musical Topic of the Mass in B Minor

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel R. Melamed
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Church Music ◽  
Sacred Music ◽  
The Other ◽  
Entire Spectrum ◽  
Giovanni Pierluigi Da Palestrina ◽  
Early Eighteenth Century

If there is a fundamental musical subject of Johann Sebastian Bach’s Mass in B Minor, a compositional problem the work explores, it is the tension between two styles cultivated in church music of Bach’s time. One style was modern and drew on up-to-date music such as the instrumental concerto and the opera aria. The other was old-fashioned and fundamentally vocal, borrowing and adapting the style of Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, his sixteenth-century contemporaries, and his seventeenth-century imitators. The movements that make up Bach’s Mass can be read as exploring the entire spectrum of possibilities offered by these two styles (the modern and the antique), ranging from movements purely in one or the other to a dazzling variety of ways of combining the two. The work illustrates a fundamental opposition in early-eighteenth-century sacred music that Bach confronts and explores in the Mass.

Nordic retirement contracts and the economic situation of widows

2006 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
pp. 383-418 ◽  
Author(s):  
BEATRICE MORING
Keyword(s):  
Quality Of Life ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Economic Status ◽  
Economic Situation ◽  
Standard Of Living ◽  
The Family ◽  
Early Eighteenth Century ◽  
The Right

The aim of this article is to explore the economic status and the quality of life of widows in the Nordic past, based on the evidence contained in retirement contracts. Analysis of these contracts also shows the ways in which, and when, land and the authority invested in the headship of the household were transferred between generations in the Nordic countryside. After the early eighteenth century, retirement contracts became more detailed but these should be viewed not as a sign of tension between the retirees and their successors but as a family insurance strategy designed to protect the interests of younger siblings of the heir and his or her old parents, particularly if there was a danger of the property being acquired by a non-relative. Both the retirement contracts made by couples and those made by a widow alone generally guaranteed them an adequate standard of living in retirement. Widows were assured of an adequately heated room of their own, more generous provision of food than was available to many families, clothing and the right to continue to work, for example at spinning and milking, but to be excused heavy labour. However, when the land was to be retained by the family, in many cases there was no intention of establishing a separate household.

Gratitude in the Early Eighteenth Century

2020 ◽  
pp. 77-105
Author(s):  
Ashraf H. A. Rushdy
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Self Interest ◽  
Early Eighteenth Century

This chapter explores the writings of four philosophers who were either directly or implicitly responding to the philosophers of the seventeenth century discussed in the previous chapter. The chapter looks at two philosophers who seem to adopt parts of the Hobbesian worldview—Pufendorf and Mandeville—and two who explicitly contest it: Shaftesbury and Butler. The primary questions they ask involve human motivations—whether they can be altruistic or must be acts of self-interest or self-love.

The Authority of the Administration

2020 ◽  
pp. 45-66
Author(s):  
Janet McLean
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Common Law ◽  
Radical Change ◽  
Public Trust ◽  
Administrative Law ◽  
Legitimate Authority ◽  
The Common ◽  
Theoretical Foundations

The authority claims of the administration have undergone radical change with consequences for the shape and content of administrative law. In the seventeenth century, authority was claimed in office, as a means to limit the imposition of the King’s will and to secure the independence of officials, especially the judges. In the eighteenth century, virtue, property, and independence became the basis for office, and the common law sought to enhance such authority through notions of public trust. After the nineteenth-century transition to more centralised and bureaucratic hierarchy, democracy became the new source of authority for the administration, reinforced by the ultra vires doctrine. In each era, the authority claims of the administration have been reflected in the frameworks for judicial supervision. In this way the common law has simultaneously constituted and controlled authority. In the present day we are in the process of rethinking whence administrators derive their legitimate authority and the theoretical foundations of judicial review. Beginning with the authority claims of the administration and framing a juridical response which reflects and tests such claims would be a good place to start.

City of Women, City of God

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brianna Leavitt-Alcántara
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Religious Experience ◽  
Spiritual Renewal ◽  
Religious Orders ◽  
City Of God ◽  
Early Eighteenth Century ◽  
Demographic Shifts

Chapter 1 examines the hagiography of local holy woman Anna Guerra de Jesús who migrated to Guatemala’s capital in the late seventeenth century. While the early modern Catholic ideal of feminine piety prized enclosure, obedience, and virginity, Anna was neither nun nor virgin, but rather a poor abandoned wife and mother. And although Church decrees clearly required actively religious laywomen to live in cloistered communities, Anna became an independent beata (laywoman who took informal vows) and Jesuit tertiary. This chapter explores Anna’s lived religious experience as a poor migrant and abandoned wife and mother, her engagement with female mysticism and devotional networks, and her alliances with powerful priests and religious orders. It also places Anna’s story within the context of late seventeenth and early eighteenth-century Santiago de Guatemala, particularly urban demographic shifts and social tensions, as well as movements for spiritual renewal and enthusiastic lay female piety.

Whom Do We Trust to Translate? An Early Eighteenth-Century Muslim Translation of the Gospels into Persian

2018 ◽  
Vol 69 (2) ◽  
pp. 199-213
Author(s):  
Kenneth J. Thomas
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Native Speaker ◽  
Christian Community ◽  
Muslim Scholar ◽  
Early Eighteenth Century ◽  
Key Terms ◽  
Base Text

Seventeenth-century Muslim scholar Khatun Abadi, commissioned by his shah, was the first native speaker to translate the Gospels into Persian. The goal was an accurate rendition, accompanied by notes intended to address contradictions and false claims of Christians. The translation was completed in 1703 but first published in 1995, in Iran. Understanding translation to be an act of interpretation, this study asks if we can trust a translation made by someone who does not accept the interpretation of the community that calls the text scripture. Based on analysis of translator notes, translation deviations from its Arabic base text, and the choice of key terms, the study concludes that the translator maintained the text’s integrity with few exceptions but that his notes are problematic from the perspective of the Christian community. Lessons are suggested for Christian translators who work with persons of other faiths or prepare renditions to be used by them.

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