scholarly journals The Rhetoric of Hobbes's Translation of Thucydides

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-24
Author(s):  
Chris Campbell
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Political Order ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Affective States ◽  
Law Of Nature ◽  
Modern Project ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Self Interest ◽  
History Of ◽  
Right Reason

Abstract In several key passages in Thomas Hobbes's understudied translation of Thucydides's History of the Peloponnesian War, Hobbes's Pericles directs audiences to distrust rhetoric in favor of calculative self-interest, inward-focused affective states, and an epistemic reliance on sovereignty. Hobbes's own intervention via his translation of Thucydides involves similar rhetorical moves. By directing readers to learn from Thucydides, Hobbes conceals his own rhetorical appeals in favor of sovereignty while portraying rhetoric undermining sovereignty as manipulative, self-serving, and representative of the entire category of “rhetoric.” Hobbes's double redescription of rhetoric is an important starting point for an early modern project: appeals that justify a desired political order are characterized as “right reason,” “the law of nature,” or “enlightenment,” while rhetoric constituting solidarities or publics outside the desired order is condemned. Hobbes's contribution to this project theorizes rhetoric as a barrier to individual calculations of interest, placing a novel constraint on political life.

The Power of Words. Political and Theological Science in Thomas Hobbes

2013 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 34-64
Author(s):  
Giovanni Fiaschi
Keyword(s):  
Political Theology ◽  
Thomas Hobbes ◽  
Political Order ◽  
Law Of Nature ◽  
Binding Force ◽  
Political Rationality ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Unique Material ◽  
History Of ◽  
Power Of Words

Far from being only an insincere homage to the spirit of his time, Hobbes’s concern for theology is a consequence of his political individualism. Irrespective of God’s real existence, in order to answer the ‘Foole’ and to assure legitimation and obedience to Leviathan, calculating reason is not enough, as individual faith in God and in the binding force of His law of nature is required. In Leviathan II, chapter XXXI, the correspondence between the earthly king, i.e. the mortal god, and the immortal God proves to be the starting point for a new political theology, conceived as a practical science for the needed order of peace in this unique, material world. The divine image of sovereignty, embodied by Almighty God, is the beginning and the end of an immanent, sacred history of salvation that resembles a utopian tale, not in an attempt to oppose or overturn the present political order, but to solve the problems of modern political rationality by means of theological imagination.

Dignity

2017 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Immanuel Kant ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Social Rank ◽  
Radical Change ◽  
Christian Doctrine ◽  
Greek Thought ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
History Of ◽  
Locus Classicus

The concept of dignity typically brings to mind an idea of moral status that supposedly belongs to all humans equally, and which serves as the basis of human rights. But this moralized meaning of dignity is historically very young. Until the mid-nineteenth century, dignity suggested an idea about merit: it connoted elevated social rank, of the sort that marked nobility or ecclesiastic preferment. What explains this radical change in meaning? And before this change, did anything like the moralized concept of dignity exist, that is, before it was named by the term “dignity”? If so, exactly how old is the moralized concept of dignity? In this volume, leading scholars across a range of disciplines attempt to answer these questions by clarifying the presently murky history of “dignity,” from classical Greek thought through the Middle Ages and Enlightenment to the present day. In the process, four platitudes about the history of human dignity are undermined: (1) the Roman notion of dignitas is not the ancient starting point of our modern moralized notion; (2) neither the medieval Christian doctrine of imago Dei nor the renaissance speech of Pico della Mirandola, Oration on the Dignity of Man, was a genuine locus classicus of dignity discussion; (3) Immanuel Kant is not the early modern proprietor of the concept; (4) the universalization of the concept of dignity in the postmodern world (ca. 1800–present) is not the result of its constitutional indoctrination by the “wise forefathers” of liberal states like America or France.

Spatial Orders in Maya Civic Plans

2002 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 201-215 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wendy Ashmore ◽  
Jeremy A. Sabloff
Keyword(s):  
Life History ◽  
Spatial Organization ◽  
Political Order ◽  
Political Life ◽  
The Political ◽  
Ancient Maya ◽  
Spatial Order ◽  
Spatial Expression ◽  
History Of ◽  
Civic Center

Ancient civic centers materialize ideas of proper spatial organization, among the Maya as in other societies. We argue that the position and arrangement of ancient Maya buildings and arenas emphatically express statements about cosmology and political order. At the same time, the clarity of original spatial expression is often blurred in the sites we observe archaeologically. Factors responsible for such blurring include multiple other influences on planning and spatial order, prominently the political life history of a civic center. Specifically, we argue here that centers with relatively short and simple political histories are relatively easy to interpret spatially. Those with longer development, but relatively little upheaval, manifest more elaborate but relatively robust and internally consistent plans. Sites with longer and more turbulent political histories, however, materialize a more complex cumulative mix of strategies and plausibly, therefore, of varying planning principles invoked by sequent ancient builders. We examine evidence for these assertions by reference to civic layouts at Copán, Xunantunich, Sayil, Seibal, and Tikal.

A twelfth-century view of the historical church: Orderic Vitalis

1997 ◽  
Vol 33 ◽  
pp. 115-134 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marjorie Chibnall
Keyword(s):  
Subject Matter ◽  
Religious History ◽  
Political Life ◽  
The Political ◽  
Historical Writing ◽  
Ecclesiastical History ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
History Of ◽  
To Come ◽  
Written Sources

When Eusebius set out to write an Ecclesiastical History he claimed to be ‘the first to undertake this present project and to attempt, as it were, to travel along a lonely and untrodden path’. The claim was justified: there had been little room for religious history, even the history of pagan religions, in the works of classical historians and their imitators. Following the rules laid down by Thucydides, they concentrated on the political life of the present and its military consequences; they preferred oral to written sources, provided the historian had either been present at the scene of action or had heard reports from eyewitnesses. Both in method and in content Eusebius was an innovator. Since his starting point was ‘the beginning of the dispensation of Jesus’ he was entirely dependent on written sources for more than three hundred years; and, innovating still more, he introduced documents such as letters and imperial edicts into his narrative. Far from being political and military, his subject matter was primarily the history of the apostles, the succession of bishops, the persecutions of Christians, and the views of heretics. He was widening the scope of historical writing and using the techniques previously employed in the biographies of philosophers. It is not surprising that, once his work had been translated into Latin and extended by Rufinus and Jerome, it became the starting point for writers on ecclesiastical history for generations to come.

scholarly journals The New Institutionalism: Organizational Factors in Political Life

1983 ◽  
Vol 78 (3) ◽  
pp. 734-749 ◽  
Author(s):  
James G. March ◽  
Johan P. Olsen
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
New Institutionalism ◽  
Organizational Factors ◽  
Political Order ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Theoretical Research ◽  
Allocation Of Resources ◽  
Symbolic Action ◽  
Self Interest

Contemporary theories of politics tend to portray politics as a reflection of society, political phenomena as the aggregate consequences of individual behavior, action as the result of choices based on calculated self-interest, history as efficient in reaching unique and appropriate outcomes, and decision making and the allocation of resources as the central foci of political life. Some recent theoretical thought in political science, however, blends elements of these theoretical styles into an older concern with institutions. This new institutionalism emphasizes the relative autonomy of political institutions, possibilities for inefficiency in history, and the importance of symbolic action to an understanding of politics. Such ideas have a reasonable empirical basis, but they are not characterized by powerful theoretical forms. Some directions for theoretical research may, however, be identified in institutionalist conceptions of political order.

Aḥmad Yasavī and the Ismāʿīlīs of Badakhshān: Towards a New Social History of Sufi-Shīʿī Relations in Central Asia

2020 ◽  
Vol 63 (5-6) ◽  
pp. 643-681
Author(s):  
Daniel Beben
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Central Asia ◽  
Social History ◽  
Social Engagement ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Muslim Communities ◽  
The Impact

Abstract This article examines how a text attributed to the renowned Central Asian Sufi figure Aḥmad Yasavī came to be found within a manuscript produced within the Ismāʿīlī Shīʿī community of the Shughnān district of the Badakhshān region of Central Asia. The adoption of this text into an Ismāʿīlī codex suggests an exchange between two disparate Islamic religious traditions in Central Asia between which there has hitherto been little evidence of contact. Previous scholarship on Ismāʿīlī-Sufi relations has focused predominately on the literary and intellectual engagement between these traditions, while the history of persecution experienced by the Ismāʿīlīs at the hands of Sunnī Muslims has largely overshadowed discussions of the social relationship between the Ismāʿīlīs and other Muslim communities in Central Asia. I demonstrate that this textual exchange provides evidence for a previously unstudied social engagement between Ismāʿīlī and Sunnī communities in Central Asia that was facilitated by the rise of the Khanate of Khoqand in the 18th century. The mountainous territory of Shughnān, where the manuscript under consideration originated, has been typically represented in scholarship as isolated prior to the onset of colonial interest in the region in the late 19th century. Building upon recent research on the impact of early modern globalization on Central Asia, I demonstrate that even this remote region was significantly affected by the intensification of globalizing processes in the century preceding the Russian conquest. Accordingly, I take this textual exchange as a starting point for a broader re-evaluation of the Ismāʿīlī-Sufi relationship in Central Asia and of the social ‘connectivity’ of the Ismāʿīlīs and the Badakhshān region within early modern Eurasia.

The Law of Nature as the Moral Law

1988 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 26-44 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bernard Gert
Keyword(s):  
Laws Of Nature ◽  
Moral Law ◽  
Moral Virtues ◽  
Law Of Nature ◽  
Self Interest ◽  
The Law ◽  
Right Reason ◽  
Long Term Preservation

AbstractAlthough Hobbes talks about the laws of nature as prescribing the virtues, it is easier to think of them as proscribing the vices. The nine vices that are proscribed by the laws of nature are injustice, ingratitude, greed or inhumanity, vindictiveness (Hobbes does not name the vice corresponding to mercy, this is my attempt to provide one.), cruelty, incivility or contumely, pride, arrogance, and unfairness (I take this to be the vice corresponding to equity). The corresponding virtues that are prescribed by the laws of nature are justice, gratitude, humanity or complaisance, mercy, (Hobbes does not give, and I do not know what would count as, the virtue corresponding to his account of cruelty), civility, humility, (Hobbes uses this as one of the names for the virtue corresponding to the vice of arrogance, but I am using it as the opposite of pride.), modesty, and equity. The difficulty of coming up with names for some of the virtues, and even for some of the vices, shows that they are not all among the most common moral virtues and vices. Nonetheless, as described by Hobbes, they are genuine moral virtues and vices, traits of character such that all impartial rational persons would favor everyone having the virtues and no one having the vices. All of these virtues are such that they benefit everyone impartially by promoting peace, and are not primarily of benefit to the person having them. This is what makes them moral virtues and distinguishes them from the personal virtues of courage, prudence, and temperance. (See H, XIII, 9) The laws of nature are the dictates "of right reason, conversant about those things which are either to be done or omitted for the constant preservation of life and members, as much as in us lies." (C, II, 1; see also L, XIV, 3) But the law of nature "dictating peace, for a means of the conservation of men in multitudes;" (L, XV, 34; see also C, III, 32) is also the moral law because "in the means to peace, [it] commands also good manners, or the practice of virtue; and therefore it is called moral." (C, III, 31; see also L, XV, 40) Hobbes correctly sees both that peace benefits all persons impartially and that impartiality is essential to morality. His account of the moral virtues correctly makes them traits of character that would be favored by all impartial persons. His argument for the rationality of these moral virtues is that one's self-interest, which for Hobbes is primarily one's long-term preservation, is enhanced by having these virtues. There is no incompatibility between morality and self-interest as long as what is in one's own self-interest is equally in the interest of everyone else. Hobbes sees this point quite clearly and it is at the heart of his justification of the moral virtues.

Grotius in the Science of Law

1925 ◽  
Vol 19 (4) ◽  
pp. 685-688 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roscoe Pound
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Turning Point ◽  
Roman Law ◽  
Modern History ◽  
Law Of Nature ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Theories Of Justice ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Almost All

It has been customary to take Grotius's book for the starting point of one of the best marked eras in the history of jurisprudence. Any account of the development of theories of justice is likely to begin the modern history of the subject with Grotius, and to put as a classical epoch a period designated as “from Grotius to Kant.” Any account of theories of law is likely to set off a period from the revived study of Roman law in the Italian universities of the twelfth century to Grotius, and another from Grotius to the breaking up of the eighteenth century law-of-nature school. In almost all accounts of the history of the science of law, Grotius stands as marking a turning point.

scholarly journals ‘Getting’ the Pox: Reflections by an Historian on How to Write the History of Early Modern Disease

2016 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 53 ◽  
Author(s):  
Claudia Stein
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Current Knowledge ◽  
History Writing ◽  
Methodological Choices ◽  
Knowledge And Beliefs ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
History Of Disease ◽  
History Of ◽  
Current Return ◽  
Medical Semiotics

<div>This article reflects upon the recent return to linear history writing in medical history. It takes as its starting point a critique of the current return to constructivist ideas, suggesting the use of other methodological choices and interpretations to the surviving archival and textural sources of the sixteenth century pox. My investigation analyses the diagnostic act as an effort to bring together a study of medical semiotics. Medical semiotics considers how signs speak through the physical body, coached within a particular epistemology. There are no hidden meanings behind the visible sign or symptom - it is tranparent to the calculative and authoritative gaze and language of the doctor. It concerns how diseases came into being, the relationships they have constituted, the power they have secured and the actual knowledge/power they have eclipsed or are eclipsing. From such a perspective, “getting the pox” is not a bad thing. A methodological turn to medical semiotics reminds us that the history of disease should be an inquiry both into the grounds of our current knowledge and beliefs about disease and how they inspire our writing, as well as the analytical categories that establish their inevitability.</div>

Introduction

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-12
Author(s):  
Raf Van Rooy
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Linguistic Diversity ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
History Of Ideas ◽  
Pivotal Role ◽  
West Germanic ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
History Of ◽  
Western Scholarship ◽  
First Time

‘A language is a dialect with an army and navy.’ This witticism, associated with Max Weinreich, constitutes the starting point of both the entire book and this first chapter. The distinction between language and dialect implicit in the witticism, the chapter argues, is not a self-evident and timeless given, as is widely assumed, but has had a complex history. In this history, the early modern period played a pivotal role, as linguistic diversity was problematized for the first time during this era. Earlier and later developments cannot, however, be overlooked. The chapter also outlines the focus on Western scholarship, with a slight West-Germanic tilt, as well as the main approach and structure of the book. Presented as a history of ideas, it falls into five parts, which coincide with the main episodes in the history of the conceptual pair. Finally, this chapter briefly surveys the contents of all subsequent chapters.

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