FORUM: THE IDEA OF SUSTAINABILITY INTRODUCTION

2011 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 147-151 ◽  
Author(s):  
EMMA ROTHSCHILD
Keyword(s):  
Environmental History ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
History Of Thought ◽  
Ayn Rand ◽  
Universal History ◽  
Early Colonial ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Universe

The encounter of environmental history and intellectual history is a union of two insidiously oceanic inquiries. “Oceanic” in the sense of limitlessness, or oneness with the universe. “All history is the history of thought”, and the history of thought is in modern intellectual history a universal investigation, of advertisements for sofas and Ayn Rand and adoption laws in early colonial Bihar. But all history is also the history of space, and of the environment that surrounds the sofas and the laws. It is apparent, now, that “history occurs in space as well as time”. Environmental history is everywhere as well as nowhere. It is a new universal understanding, which subverts even the historians' own anxieties about universalization: a “negative universal history”.

Luther's Word on Man's Will: A Case Study in Comparative Intellectual History

1984 ◽  
Vol 20 (4) ◽  
pp. 657-667
Author(s):  
Mark Migotti
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual History ◽  
Martin Luther ◽  
Historical Analysis ◽  
History Of Thought ◽  
Thematic Unity ◽  
History Of ◽  
Way Of Thinking ◽  
Single Set

It is commonplace to observe that the history of thought reveals certain recurring patterns whose mode of expression changes according to context. It is equally apparent that to chart the salient characteristics of an influential way of thinking – to give concrete, clearly defined shape to the usually tangled fundamental impulses informing a cast of mind – is a complex, difficult task which calls for attention from (at least) the historian, the psychologist, the philosopher and, in the case of religious figures and movements, the theologian alike. With regard to the manner of thinking embodied in the theological doctrines of Martin Luther such a task is fraught with more than the usual number of pitfalls. In the first place, following recent Luther scholarship, we must be wary of assuming that the great Reformer held fast to a single set of theological opinions throughout his long career. We shall not, therefore, attempt to reach conclusions applicable to Luther's thought as a whole, but rather shall focus exclusively on a number of key early expositions of the Theologia Crucis. Here, between about 1514 and 1520, we find, according to our argument, enough thematic unity to warrant the search for underlying principles. A second, less easily disposed of difficulty is the lack of a working consensus as to how and with what aims in mind one should even begin an historical analysis of Luther's texts. For example, to the believer who regards Luther's basic tenets as in a straightforward sense divinely inspired, the attempt to extract from his writings the ingredients of a certain thoroughly human way of thinking will seem doomed to inadequacy from the start. Likewise, for different reasons, many of today's.

MODERNISMS ENDLESS: IRONIES OF THE AMERICAN MID-CENTURY

2013 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 207-219
Author(s):  
DANIEL WICKBERG
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
Lionel Trilling ◽  
Modern Culture ◽  
Ayn Rand ◽  
Mass Society ◽  
History Of ◽  
Critical Problems ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
American Intellectual History

Mid-twentieth century American intellectual history is in the midst of a boom; a younger generation of historians, now half a century distant from the era, and less inclined than their immediate forerunners to be committed to a vision of the 1960s as a critical turning point in modern culture, is reshaping what has been an underdeveloped field. Recent studies of thinkers such as C. Wright Mills, Ayn Rand, Lionel Trilling, and Whitaker Chambers, and subjects such as postcapitalist social thought and pollsters in mass society, to name a few, have regenerated interest in an arena that had once been dominated by studies of the New York Intellectuals and Richard Pells's useful summaries and evaluations of prominent intellectuals of the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s. The newer intellectual history of this period appears to be premised on several ideas: that the so-called “liberal consensus” of the era was an ideological product of liberalism itself, rather than an adequate description of the contours of thought; that thinking in terms of clear and sharp distinctions between right and left doesn't help us understand the ways in which ideas, sensibilities, and intellectual commitments were configured at mid-century; that there is a great deal more continuity in social, political, and cultural thought than an image of the 1960s as cultural watershed would allow; and that the mid-century decades are, in the most profound sense, the first years of our own time, with all the characteristic epistemic, moral, and critical problems that have characterized thought and culture in the world in which contemporary Americans live. What the Progressive Era was for mid-century historians and intellectuals such as Richard Hofstadter and Henry May, the mid-century, and particularly the early Cold War era of the late 1940s and 1950s, is, for the historian of today, the root of the destabilizing conundrums of modernity, particularly the puzzle of the role of critical intellect in a mass-mediated environment of socialized knowledge, feeling, and being.

ANXIETIES OF DISTANCE: CODIF ICATION IN EARLY COLONIAL BENGAL

2007 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 7-23 ◽  
Author(s):  
JON E. WILSON
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Political Culture ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Continuous Flow ◽  
Indian Society ◽  
Property Law ◽  
Early Colonial ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
History Of

Historians of political thought tend to emphasize the continuous flow and transmission of concepts from one generation to the next, and from one place to another. Historians of Indian ideas suggest that India was governed with concepts imported from Europe. This article argues instead that the sense of rupture that British officials experienced, from both the intellectual history of Britain and Indian society, played a significant role in forming colonial political culture. It examines the practice of “Hindu” property law in late eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Bengal. It suggests that the attempt to textualize and codify law in the 1810s and 1820s emerged from British doubts about their ability to construct viable forms of rule on the basis of existing intellectual and institutional traditions. The abstract and seemingly “utilitarian” tone of colonial political discourse was a practical response to British anxieties about their distance from Indian society. It was not a result of the “influence” of a particular school of British thinkers.

Accumulation, wealth and belief in Asante history: I. To the close of the nineteenth century

Africa ◽  
1983 ◽  
Vol 53 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-43 ◽  
Author(s):  
T. C. McCaskie
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
Detailed Examination ◽  
West African ◽  
Making Sense ◽  
Early Colonial ◽  
History Of ◽  
Research Findings ◽  
The Republic ◽  
Opening Paragraph

Opening ParagraphThe present article is intended as the first of two contributions to the economic and social– but above all to the intellectual– history of the West African forest kingdom of Asante or Ashanti (now located in the Republic of Ghana). Both papers will attempt to pull together and to situate in a ‘mentalist’ framework a number of recent and confessedly disparate research findings concerning a cluster of concepts, ideas and beliefs that, merely for the sake of brevity at this point, I will assign simply to the embracing ‘neutral’ rubric of general transformations in the ideology (or ideologies) of wealth. The first article will be concerned with developments in Asante society up to the close of the nineteenth century (defined here interpretatively rather than in strictly chronological terms); its successor will concentrate on a highly detailed examination of a sequence of crucially telling events in the early colonial period, and upon selected developments thereafter in the twentieth century. The articles are designed and intended to be read sequentially; the first, it is hoped, will assist in making sense of the significantly denser context (and more detailed content) of the second.

Current Methodological Problems of the Research of N. Berdyaev’s Heritage

2021 ◽  
pp. 123-129
Author(s):  
Ilia I. Pavlov ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual History ◽  
Religious Philosophy ◽  
History Of Thought ◽  
Philosophical School ◽  
Complex Approach ◽  
History Of ◽  
Methodological Problems ◽  
Institutional Church ◽  
Methodological Considerations ◽  
Relationship Of

The article works out the methodology of intellectual history applicable to the complex approach to the philosophy of N. Berdyaev. The current discussions on Berdyaev’s heritage consider Berdyaev’s work in the context of the world history of thought. Nevertheless, there is no consensus not only on the question of which philosophical school Berdyaev belongs to, but even on the problem of attributing Berdyaev’s figure to certain discipline. Thus, a comprehensive methodology of intellectual history, based on the ideas of the Cambridge school (Q. Skinner) and secularization theories, is relevant to tackle this task. The ap­proach developed by the author aims to consider the texts of the philosopher as real actions carried out in a particular social and political context to make a valuable impact on it. In contrast to the political texts traditionally considered in Cambridge approach, in the case of studying religious philosophy this metho­dology should also consider the relationship of philosophical discursive practices with religious discourse, religious practices and institutional church relations regulating them. The application of these methodological considerations to the research of Berdyaev’s philosophy demonstrates prospects of study the influ­ence of political and religious discussions at the beginning of the 20th century on the formation of the late doctrine of the philosopher

ACROSS THE GREAT DIVIDE: FREE MARKETS FROM RIGHT TO LEFT

2014 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 253-265 ◽  
Author(s):  
JENNIFER BURNS
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
Free Market ◽  
Free Markets ◽  
John Maynard Keynes ◽  
Cultural Ideals ◽  
History Of ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
Late Twentieth Century ◽  
The Universe

“One book is a book, two books is a trend,” goes an old adage in publishing. And what of three books? The 2012 publication of Angus Burgin's The Great Persuasion: Reinventing Free Markets since the Depression and Daniel Stedman Jones's Masters of the Universe: Hayek, Friedman, and the Birth of Neoliberal Politics, together with the 2011 publication of Nicholas Wapshott's Keynes Hayek: The Clash That Defined Modern Economics, suggests that the intellectual history of conservatism is not merely a trend, but an interest that is here to stay. At least the study of free markets, that is, for the books under consideration here focus more on conservative economic ideas than on religious or cultural ideals, capturing the intellectual history of free markets in the twentieth century through the Mont Pelerin Society, transatlantic policy, and the debate between John Maynard Keynes and Friedrich Hayek. While remarkably similar in subject and source, these are three different books, distinguished from each other in interpretation, execution, and focus. All three, however, display a similar temperament, assessing conservative ideas in an evenhanded if not overtly sympathetic tone suggesting that scholars have finally found a shared register through which to consider the most controversial and politically consequential ideas of the late twentieth century. They also converge upon a perhaps surprising synthesis, positioning free-market thought not only at the interstices of America and Europe, but between and across left and right, conservative and liberal.

scholarly journals MAINTAINING (ENVIRONMENTAL) CAPITAL INTACT

2011 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 193-212 ◽  
Author(s):  
EMMA ROTHSCHILD
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Policy ◽  
Environmental Economic ◽  
Environmental History ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
Government Agencies ◽  
Very Old ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Future ◽  
History Of ◽  
Environmental Capital

The idea of sustainability is an odd composite of imagination and accounting. Environmental history is a permissive historical subdiscipline, and this essay is about the environmental–economic–intellectual history of an environmental idea, sustainability, which is historical in the sense that it is very old, and historical, too, in the sense that it is an idea about history, or about imagining the future in relation to the past. One of the oddities of the last several decades is that these old ideas have been transformed into the most celebrated of all the dicta of environmental policy, or an aspiration of UN commissions, “strategy consultancies”, and very large government agencies (“sustainability is our ‘true north.’”)

Conclusion

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Randall
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
Fine Arts ◽  
James Madison ◽  
Modern Conception ◽  
Political World ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
History Of ◽  
Constitutional Thought

The changed conception of conversation that emerged by c.1700 was about to expand its scope enormously – to the broad culture of Enlightenment Europe, to the fine arts, to philosophy and into the broad political world, both via the conception of public opinion and via the constitutional thought of James Madison (1751–1836). In the Enlightenment, the early modern conception of conversation would expand into a whole wing of Enlightenment thought. The intellectual history of the heirs of Cicero and Petrarch would become the practice of millions and the constitutional architecture of a great republic....

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