The Ending of Eunapius’ History

Antichthon ◽  
1980 ◽  
Vol 14 ◽  
pp. 170-176 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. C. Blockley
Keyword(s):  
The Political ◽  
Ammianus Marcellinus ◽  
John Chrysostom ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Common ◽  
Military Activity ◽  
Coherent Picture

When in A.D. 378 Ammianus Marcellinus fails us we have for the rest of the century and, indeed, for the whole history of the Theodosian house in the East a considerable amount of varied documentation. But, lacking ‘an accurate and faithful guide’ like Ammianus, for a coherent picture of the political and military activity of the period we must have recourse to the inferior and derivative New History of Zosimus, partisan ecclesiastical histories, and late and skimpy chronicles. In these circumstances the fragments of the History of Eunapius, preserved mostly in the Excerpta of Constantine Porphyrogenitus, but also in some notices of the Suda, have considerable value. For, despite Eunapius’ clear inferiority to Ammianus as an historian, he was a contemporary of the events which he described. The fragments have been underused, which is probably due to the common, though not wholly accurate, opinion that Zosimus, being nothing more than a slavish copier of Eunapius, faithfully preserves what his source wrote. Yet (ignoring the problem of the degree of Zosimus’ dependence) he greatly condensed his source, and thus there is much in the Eunapian survivals that is not in the New History. The final fragments (80-88), to which I wish to address myself, are especially important because much of their material corresponds to a lacuna in Zosimus’ text, and the ecclesiastical historians,who make some use of Eunapius, appear to have deserted him here, probably because they found his version of events, especially those involving John Chrysostom, unpalatable.

scholarly journals The “Slavic-Russian Nation” in the Historical Literature of Ukraine and Russia from the 1600s to the mid-1700s

Slovene ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 417-447
Author(s):  
Petr S. Stefanovich
Keyword(s):  
18Th Century ◽  
17Th Century ◽  
The Political ◽  
Russian History ◽  
Slavonic Language ◽  
Imperial Identity ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Church ◽  
Century Literature

The article analyzes the history of the concept of a “Slavic-Russian nation”. The concept was first used by Zacharia Kopystenskij in 1624, but its wide occurrence starts in 1674, when Synopsis, the first printed history of Russia, was published in Kiev. In the book, “Slavic-Russian nation” refers to an ancient Slavic people, which preceded the “Russian nation” (“rossiyskiy narod”) of the time in which the book was written. Uniting “Slavs” and “Russians” (“rossy”) into one “Slavic-Russian nation”, the author of Synopsis followed the idea which was proposed but not specifically defined by M. Stryjkovskij in his Chronicle (1582) and, later, by the Kievan intellectuals of the 1620s–30s. The construction of Synopsis was to prove that “Russians” (“rossy”) were united by both the common Slavic origin and the Church Slavonic language used by the Orthodox Slavic peoples. According to Synopsis, they were also supposed to be united by the Muscovite tsar’s authority and the Orthodox religion. The whole conception made Synopsis very popular in Russia in the late 17th century and later. Earlier in the 17th-century literature of the Muscovite State, some authors also proposed ethno-genetic constructions based on Stryjkovskij’s Chronicle and other Renaissance historiography. Independently from the Kievan literature, the word “Slavic-Russian” was invented (first appearance in the Legend about Sloven and Rus, 1630s). Both the Kievan and Muscovite constructions of a mythical “Slavic-Russian nation” aimed at making an “imagined” ethno-cultural nation. They contributed to forming a new Russian imperial identity in the Petrine epoch. However, the concept of a “Slavic-Russian nation” was not in demand in the political discourse of the Petrine Empire. It was sporadically used in the historical works of the 18th century (largely due to the influence of Synopsis), but played no significant role in the proposed interpretations of Russian history.

The Birth of Democracy

1957 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 48-61
Author(s):  
Christopher Dawson
Keyword(s):  
Modern World ◽  
The Political ◽  
Market Place ◽  
Modern Democracy ◽  
Common People ◽  
Considerable Difficulty ◽  
Democratic Movement ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Revolution

The origins of modern democracy are so closely bound up with the history of liberalism that it is a matter of considerable difficulty to disentangle them and to distinguish their distinctive contributions to the common political tradition of modern Western culture. For this question also involves that of the relation between the three revolutions, the English, the American, and the French, which transformed the Europe of the ancien régime, with its absolute monarchies and state churches, into the modern world. Now all these three revolutions were liberal revolutions and all of them were political expressions of the movement of the European enlightenment in its successive phases. But this movement was not originally a democratic one and it was only in the second half of the eighteenth century that the democratic ideal was clearly formulated. On the continent of Europe the revolution of ideas preceded the political and economic revolutions by half a century, and the revolution of ideas was not in any sense of the word a democratic movement; it was the work of a small minority of men of letters who looked to the nobles and the princes of Europe rather than to the common people, and whose ideal of government was a benevolent and enlightened absolutism, like that of Frederick the Great or the Empress Catherine of Russia. There was an immense gulf between the ideas of Voltaire and Turgot, of Diderot and D'Alembert, and the opinions of the average man. The liberalism of the philosophers was a hothouse growth which could not be easily acclimatized to the open air of the fields and the market place.

scholarly journals Secular Formatting of the Sacred

2019 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 164-182
Author(s):  
Marius Timmann Mjaaland
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Continuous Process ◽  
The Political ◽  
Axial Age ◽  
Universal Human Rights ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Common ◽  
Forms Of Violence ◽  
Genealogy Of Morals ◽  
The Ideal

Abstract Whereas Samuel Moyn has argued that human rights represent the last utopia, sociologist Hans Joas suggests that the modern history of human rights represents a critical alternative to the common theory of secularization understood as disenchantment (Weber). In Joas’s reading, the political and social emphasis on human rights contributes to a sacralization of the person, not only understood as utopia, but also as societal ideal. Following Durkheim, Joas understands the sacred within the society as the continuous process of refashioning the ideal society within the real society. Although acknowledging Joas’s critique of Weber, the author is more critical of his idealization of universal human rights and his affirmative genealogy of this ideal running back to the so-called Axial Age. Mjaaland argues that the normative and formative functions of human rights are better served by a suspicious genealogy of morals, taking also the problematic aspects of human rights policy into account, including its dependence on new forms of violence and cruelty. He concludes that a more modest and pragmatic understanding of human rights may therefore strengthen rather than weaken their authority and future influence.

EUROCENTRISM AS A SOURCE OF YURIY KOSACH’S OUTLOOK

2019 ◽  
pp. 297-303
Author(s):  
Rostyslav Radyshevsky
Keyword(s):  
The Political ◽  
Information Warfare ◽  
Main Attention ◽  
Louis Xiv ◽  
Historical Figures ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Common ◽  
Political Ground ◽  
State Existence

The article «Eurocentrism as the source of Y. Kosach’s outlook» investigates the problem of Occident and Ori- ent in Y. Kosach’s literary-critical legacy. The concepts of «Europe» and «West» in the writer’s apprehension are considered in details. The conceptualization of epochs and historical figures in the context of culture, politics and history is traced. The main attention is paid to the problem of the affinity of Ukrainian and Western European cultures, the basis of which is the common feature – the synthesis of experiment and tradition, what matches Ukrainian nation as a European nation with the millennial state past. The problem of eternal connection of Ukraine with the West’s tradition is seen as the main axis around which Kosach concentrated all other problems. At the same time, attention is also focused on the unifying features of the Ukrainian writ- ers’ style, which Kosach distinguishes for analysis, meaning not the «form of content», but the «style of content». Similarly, in the close connection with the problem of the occidentality of Ukrainian culture, the problem of the «Ukrainian mission of the defense of Western Civilization» and the painful problems connected not only with Ukrainian history but also with the Ukrainian character, the Ukrainian way of thinking are considered. The author emphasizes that as a result of a poetic research, the artist created the myth-poetic conception of Ukrainian state existence, imagining Ukraine as «Imperium Ucrainum», «Third Rome», convinced that empires do not die, continuing to live in myths, capturing the thoughts of contemporaries, becoming a ground on which the former might and glory of the state are reviving. Аccording to Kosach, just writers perform the function of development and dissemination of national myths in society – repeatedly in the history of mankind the works of literature played the role of a vector of direction of public tastes. Thus, «Aeneid» by Virgil became the cornerstone of the imperial ideological concept by Octavian Augustus, and «An- dromaque» by Racine led the political ground for the legitimate rule of Louis XIV from the rulers of Troy. Much attention is paid to Kosach’s criticism of «Polish mythology» by A. Mickiewicz and H. Sienkievicz; dependence between «Polish mythology» and creation of own Kosach’s mythology is established in the literary essay «On the guard of the nation». The article emphasizes the relevance and far-sightedness of Y. Kosach’s views through the conception of such an old-new concept as «information warfare».

A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE

2010 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 437-457 ◽  
Author(s):  
SHRUTI KAPILA
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
The Political ◽  
Bhagavad Gita ◽  
Common Assumption ◽  
Political Subject ◽  
Political Modernity ◽  
History Of ◽  
History Of Violence ◽  
The Common ◽  
Bhagavad Gītā

This essay revises the common assumption that non-violence has been central to political modernity in India. The “extremist” nationalist B. G. Tilak, through a foundational philosophical reinterpretation of the Bhagavad Gita, created a modern theology of the Indian “political”. Tilak did so by directly confronting the question of the possibility of the “event” of war and the ethics of the conversion of kinsmen into enemies. Writing in the aftermath of the Swadeshi movement and from a prison cell in Rangoon, Tilak interpreted action as sacrificial duty that created a vocabulary of violence in which killing was naturalized. Violence, whether conceptual or otherwise, was not directed towards the “outsider” but was of meaning only when directed against the intimate. Unlike the distinction between friend and foe that has been taken as central to the understanding of the political in the twentieth century, it was instead the fraternal–enmity issue that framed the modern political in India. Tilak foregrounded the idea of a de-historicized political subject, whose existence was entirely dependent upon the event of violence itself. This helps to explain both the unprecedented violence that accompanied freedom and partition in 1947 and also the fact that it has remained unmemorialized to the present day.

scholarly journals Język prawno-administracyjny okresu dwudziestolecia międzywojennego.

2020 ◽  
Vol 2020 (6/2020(775)) ◽  
pp. 34-48
Author(s):  
Ewa Malinowska
Keyword(s):  
Interwar Period ◽  
Common Good ◽  
Political System ◽  
The Political ◽  
Parliamentary Democracy ◽  
Half Century ◽  
History Of ◽  
Polish Language ◽  
Principal Value ◽  
The Common

The object of this sketch is the legal and administrative Polish language of the interwar period, that is the time of the Second Polish Republic. Regaining the statehood after one and a half century of the Partitions marked signifi cant transformations in the history of the nation and the society, the return of the Polish language to offi ces, the gradual standardisation of the language of administration, unifi cation and codifi cation of law. The political system of the Second Polish Republic evolved. The system of parliamentary democracy, adopted in 1919 and established in the March Constitution, transformed gradually, in particular after the May Coup in 1926, into the authoritarian system. The principal value in the March Constitution is the nation, which was bestowed with power. In the April Constitution, the principal value is the state as the common good of all citizens. There were not enough Poles with a good background among administrative offi cers. A major role in preparing templates of documents was played by lawyers, who gave consideration also to language aspects.

scholarly journals A Man, Who Never Stopped Dreaming of Humane India: Swami Agnivesh

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 74-83
Author(s):  
Venkat Rao Pulla ◽  
Bharath Bhushan Mamidi
Keyword(s):  
Social Activism ◽  
Scale Up ◽  
The Political ◽  
Contemporary History ◽  
Negative Consequences ◽  
Social Activists ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Government ◽  
Definition Of

We share two observations based on what we have seen in India. First, that the hegemonic politics in India ushered in institutional and structural inequalities in their wake and second, that the political leadership continued to be aspirational irrespective of ideologies desiring to scale up in the hierarchy of global economic and political power. These two observations pertain to the contemporary history of five decades of development in India. As a result of the above two observations, we make a further two observations that for the Aām Aādmi (the common man), the political parties that sit in the government and their respective ideologies do not matter. And for the state and the political elites, the negative consequences such as marginalisation, exclusion and desperation of the common folks that emanate from the models chosen for development do not matter.   It is in such contexts, social activists argue for a legitimate space for the vying intersects of poverty, caste, class, occupations, habitats amidst such motivated globalisation. They also continue to raise difficult conversations around patriarchy, religious hierarchy, bonded labour, and the girl child.  One such social activist that was concerned about all the above issues was Swami Agnivesh.  He was not antigovernment, anti-democracy, anti-institutional, anti-hierarchy, anti-religious. He sought to restore a new and deeper meaning of freedom (democracy), a new meaning of hierarchy, social care, and even a new definition of spirituality that is social. He was a man who never stopped dreaming of humanising India. In this article, we reminisce about our association with Swami Agnivesh and attempt to espouse his thought based on our hearing, reading, and reflection.    Briefly, we present his life, achievements, and social activism, and more importantly, we attempt to interpret his conception of social spirituality and the ‘power of love’.

scholarly journals Mass Mobilization in Indian Politics: A Case Study of Non-Cooperation Movement

2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 13-25
Author(s):  
Farooq Ahmad Dar ◽  
Muhammad Sajid Khan ◽  
Muhammad Abrar Zahoor
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
South Asia ◽  
Political Agenda ◽  
The Political ◽  
Mass Mobilization ◽  
Indian Politics ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Masses

Mass-Mobilization is one of the key ingredients for not only launching a movement but also for spreading any political agenda. The involvement of the masses always plays an important role in a process of bringing change anywhere and at any time. The history of South Asia, however, witnessed that in the struggle against the colonial rulers, to begin with, started by the elite alone. Politics was considered as the domain of a selected few and the common men were considered as ignorant and perhaps irrelevant and thus were kept at a distance. It was only after the beginning of the twentieth century and especially after the entrance of Gandhi on the political screen that the masses gained importance and were directly involved in political affairs. They not only became part of the Non-Cooperation Movement but also played an important role in spreading the movement all across India. In this paper, an attempt has been made to highlight Gandhi’s efforts to mobilize Indian masses during the Non-Cooperation Movement and its impact on the future politics of the region. The paper also discusses in detail different groups of society that actively participated in the process of mass-mobilization.

The Non-Reading Reader: European Hebrew Literature at the Turn of the 20th Century

Zutot ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 112-124
Author(s):  
Lilach Nethanel
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Religious Practice ◽  
National Literature ◽  
The Political ◽  
Hebrew Literature ◽  
Reading Practices ◽  
Hebrew Language ◽  
Modern Hebrew ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Common

Abstract European Hebrew literature presents a challenge to the study of early-twentieth-century national literature. By the end of the nineteenth century, the reading of modern Hebrew in Europe was neither part of a religious practice, nor did it merely satisfy a purely aesthetic inclination. It mainly functioned as an ideological means used by a minority of Jews to support the linguistic-national Jewish revival. However, some fundamental contradictions put into question the actual influence of this literature on the political sphere. This article asks a series of questions about this period in the history of Hebrew readership: How did the non-spoken Hebrew language come to produce popular Hebrew writings? How did this literature engage the common Jewish reader? In this article I propose a new consideration of Hebrew reading practices. I argue for the inclusion of the non-reading readers as important contributors to the constitution of the Jewish literary nation.

SANUSIYYA BROTHERHOOD Sufi and Scholar on the Desert Edge. By KNUT S. VIKØR. London: Hurst, 1995. Pp. 310. £37.50 (ISBN 1-85065-218-X).

1997 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
pp. 123-177
Author(s):  
KATHERINE BENNISON
Keyword(s):  
Recent Work ◽  
Main Topic ◽  
The Political ◽  
Common Belief ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
History Of ◽  
Crucial Information ◽  
The Common ◽  
Intellectual Environment ◽  
Stated Purpose

Knut S. Vikør's Sufi and Scholar on the Desert Edge is first and foremost a study of the founder of the Sanusiyya religious brotherhood, Muhammad b. ‘Ali al-Sanusi. It is a welcome addition to the existing literature on the Sanusiyya. Vikør's stated purpose is to locate al-Sanusi in his own religious and intellectual environment in order to separate the history of al-Sanusi and the order he founded from the Sanusiyya's later reputation as a highly politicised and anti-colonial institution. Like another recent work on the Sanusiyya, Jean-Louis Triaud's La légende noire de la Sanusiya, Sufi and Scholar seeks to explode certain myths about the early Sanusiyya, in this case the common belief that al-Sanusi was highly politicised and came into conflict with the political authorities in Fes, Mecca, Cairo and eventually Libya. In the intellectual sphere, Vikør also re-evaluates assumptions that al-Sanusi was dedicated to the jihad, and can be described as a neo-sufi and Islamic revivalist. The main source for the book is al-Sanusi's own writings, a rather neglected source which obviously provide crucial information on the book's main topic, al-Sanusi's personal religious and political outlook, a few surviving letters and then a wide range of contemporary and later European and Arabic sources.

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