The Roots of Divergence? Some Comments on Japan in the ‘Axial Age’, 1750–1850

Itinerario ◽  
2000 ◽  
Vol 24 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 75-88
Author(s):  
Janet Hunter

Much of the recent work on the economic and social history of Tokugawa Japan (1600–1867) has been driven by a desire to identify what T.C. Smith has called ‘native sources ofJapanese industrialisation’. From the Marxist-influenced historians in the 1920s who sought to explain the pre-industrial roots of the structure of production in interwar Japan, through to contem-poraryJapanese historians' studies of the pattern of Japanese development, a major part of the agenda has been to identify how Japan had got to where it was, in other words, what was the secret of its twentieth century successes and weaknesses. It is not possible to explore the situation of Japan's economy in the century 1750–1850 without benefit of this hindsight, without being aware that while Japan's situation may have been in many ways analogous to that of China and Europe in the mid-eighteenth century, its economic fortunes were by the latter part of the nineteenth century experiencing their own ‘great divergence’ from those of China, India and the other countries of Asia and the near East. To search for the antecedents of this divergence is for economic historians of Japan a parallel exercise o t any search for the sources of the European ‘miracle’. While a focus on the period 1750–1850 as an era of European/Asian divergence means, therefore, that we must highlight the situation inJapan during that century, it must also be accepted that in the case of Japan any comparison with other countries or regions may also suggest the causes of Japan's own divergence some fifty to a hundred years later.

2005 ◽  
Vol 68 (2) ◽  
pp. 195-214 ◽  
Author(s):  
konrad hirschler

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.


PMLA ◽  
1960 ◽  
Vol 75 (5) ◽  
pp. 577-582
Author(s):  
Harry Modean Campbell

In his discerning book entitled Emerson's Angle of Vision, Sherman Paul has pointed out two fundamental ways in which Whitehead, in spite of some obvious differences, is like Emerson. Both Emerson and Whitehead, says Paul, exalted the moral, ethical, and imaginative science of the seventeenth century over the analytical rationalism of the eighteenth century, and, as a logical consequence of this emphasis, both condemned Lockean sensationalism in the same way. Following Professor Paul's suggestion, the purpose of this study is to explore in some detail the basic views of Emerson and Whitehead about religion—man's relation to Nature and God. The remarkable similarities between the views of Emerson and those of Whitehead on this subject may not indicate much, if any, indebtedness of the twentieth-century philosopher to his nineteenth-century predecessor, but if these parallels are extensive and important enough, they may well indicate that Whitehead's total achievement in the philosophy of religion is like that of Emerson—that, religiously, Whitehead may be said to be a kind of twentieth-century Emerson, in one important way, as may appear, more of a transcendentalist than Emerson. Indeed, though the obscurity of his style will prevent him from being as popular as his predecessor, Whitehead's influence as a leader in the religious revolt against the “philosophy of logical analysis” and the other philosophies that make ours an “age of analysis” may in time be as great as that of Emerson in the similar romantic-transcendentalist revolt against the analytical rationalism of the age of “Enlightenment.” More of this later, but first let us examine the evidence.


1959 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 261-284 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. E. S. Hayward

The survival of a concept is generally only secured at the price of an intellectual odyssey in the course of which it is transformed out of all recognition. The nineteenth century fortunes of the idea of solidarity exemplify this axiom only too strictly. It became the victim of a multiplicity of ingenious puns and metaphors as well as outright malicious distortions that rendered a simple, technical word, drawn from the sphere of jurisprudence, at once emotive and obscure, influential and diffuse. As the eminent and caustic critic of the twentieth century, Julien Benda, formulated this vital problem of the fate of concepts, “pour l'historien des idées des hommes, la réalité ce n'est point ce qu'ont été les idées dans l'esprit de ceux qui les ont inventées, mais ce qu'elles ont été dans l'esprit de ceux qui les ont trahies… car il est clair qu'une doctrine se propage d'autant plus largement qu'elle est apte à satisfaire un plus grand nombre de sentiments divers.” This pessimistic view has been all too frequently verified in human history.


Author(s):  
Gavin Flood

On the one hand, we have the development of science from the seventeenth to nineteenth century, while on the other, we have a focus on life in philosophy at the dawn of the nineteenth century. Here, life is understood in terms of nature as a dynamic process linked to impulse or drive. Partly stemming from a mystical discourse in the seventeenth century, the concern for life comes to be disseminated through the history of both Romantic poetry and Romantic philosophy. This vitalist spirit can be traced through to the twentieth century. Life itself comes to be articulated through a mystical theological discourse that ends in Romantic poetry and through a philosophical discourse that ends in phenomenology.


Semiotica ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 2016 (211) ◽  
pp. 45-57
Author(s):  
Mohamed Bernoussi

AbstractMy interest in culinary dates back to approximately fifteen years ago when I collaborated with [Béatrice Fink 1999. The cultural topography of food. Special issue, Eighteenth century life 23(2)] on a special issue of Eighteenth Century Life on food topography. I proposed then a study on the reactions of an English physician to Moroccan food, mainly couscous and tea. I continued working on other studies, and I realized how much a semiotics of food could serve the history of mentalities and private lives. While doing my research, I discovered the works of Jean Louis Flandrin 1986. La distinction par le goût. In Roger Chartier (ed.), Histoire de la vie privée de la Renaissance aux Lumières, vol. 3, 267–309. Paris: Seuil and Flandrin 1992. Chronique de Platine: Pour une gastronomie historique. Paris: Odile Jacob), who had contributed to the same volume directed by Fink and also represented a great inspiration for me. I felt that I was concerned with the study of the relation with the Other, with culture shock or encounter through travelers’ reactions to the food or the culinary, the prepared dish, and the consumed product in ceremonies or in private occasions. While thinking about these points, I asked myself the following questions: in which way does the reaction to food reveal the attitude of the traveler, his prejudices on the culture, the society, the food or the dish in question? In which way would reaction to food reveal his culture? This article explores these and other related issues.


Author(s):  
Meredith L. Goldsmith

Chapter 8 responds to two prevailing arguments about the fiction of Jessie Fauset—the one labeling her work retrograde, the other regarding it as subtly subversive—by viewing the writer’s work as part of a history of long nineteenth-century representation. Countering the dominant perception of the Harlem Renaissance as a break from the past—a view that has shunted Fauset’s work to the sidelines—the essay argues that Fauset’s work explores the legacy of late-nineteenth-century US culture in the emergent modernity of the early twentieth century. Excavating the literary, cultural, and scientific tropes of feminine representation that burst from the pages of Fauset’s fiction, the essay identifies a recent literary past that informs Fauset’s constructions of her modern urban heroines.


1961 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. 54-66 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ralph G. Allen

The career of Philip James de Loutherbourg, the Alsatian scene designer, assumes considerable importance in a history of the English theatre. More than anyone else, De Loutherbourg was responsible for freeing stage spectacle from the rigidities of the conventional wing and border system, thus preparing the way for Capon, Planché, Stanfield and the other great romantic designers of the nineteenth century.


1964 ◽  
Vol 38 (3) ◽  
pp. 346-353 ◽  
Author(s):  
George V. Taylor

It has been widely held that the traveling salesman was a product of the railroad era. In the following paper, Professor Taylor shows that, at least in France, the commis voyageur played a role as early as the second half of the eighteenth century. These findings, important as they are for the history of marketing, pose new questions: Was France ahead of other countries in developing this form of sales organization? If France really led, did the other countries follow suit under French influence? Is it perhaps telling, for instance, that in Germany until late in the nineteenth century the Reisende was still called by its French name?


2002 ◽  
Vol 96 (3) ◽  
pp. 642-643
Author(s):  
Robert W. T. Martin

Rogan Kersh's ambitious and well-researched book traces the history of the concept of American national “union” from the middle of the eighteenth century to the end of the nineteenth century, when the concept lost the peculiar force it had had and fell out of use (more or less replaced by such concepts as “nation,” “country,” and, especially, “America”). The analysis demonstrates how the concept of national union has been used in exclusive as well as inclusive ways. The subject is an important one, especially to an America united by terrorist threats. And it is a topic made more conspicuous in the last decade by our ongoing discourse over multiculturalism. So the concept of national union is perhaps less obscure and more relevant than Kersh suggests (p. 3). Connections to the recent work of Rogers Smith (Civic Ideals, 1997) are also apparent. Still, the term itself has been out of favor for about a century now, so Kersh's study is a welcome effort to get us thinking about a relatively novel topic.


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