David Hume's Account of Luxury

2005 ◽  
Vol 27 (3) ◽  
pp. 231-250 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew S. Cunningham
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Historical Development ◽  
David Hume ◽  
The State ◽  
Traditional View ◽  
Strong Case ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Political Responses

Scholarly discussions of the eighteenth-century luxury controversy invariably acknowledge the important role of David Hume, usually identifying him as one of the first to have made a strong case against the traditional view that luxury is morally corrupt and inimical to the survival of the state. But, having said this, they tend to treat Hume rather summarily, often focusing exclusively on the 1752 essay “Of Refinement in the Arts” and generally agreeing with one leading commentator that “Hume's arguments are straightforward, and can be dealt with briefly.” On closer examination, however, it appears that Hume's treatment of luxury was more complex in its historical development, and more subtle in its final form, than some have supposed. The first part of the following discussion considers the historical progression of Hume's thinking while the second consists in an analysis of “Refinement,” with particular attention to an important but overlooked distinction between the appropriate moral and political responses to luxury.

Slavery and Ransom

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Will Smiley
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
Young Men ◽  
Individual Characteristics ◽  
The State ◽  
Customary Law ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
The Law

This chapter explores captives’ fates after their capture, all along the Ottoman land and maritime frontiers, arguing that this was largely determined by individuals’ value for ransom or sale. First this was a matter of localized customary law; then it became a matter of inter-imperial rules, the “Law of Ransom.” The chapter discusses the nature of slavery in the Ottoman Empire, emphasizing the role of elite households, and the varying prices for captives based on their individual characteristics. It shows that the Ottoman state participated in ransoming, buying, exploiting, and sometimes selling both female and male captives. The state particularly needed young men to row on its galleys, but this changed in the late eighteenth century as the fleet moved from oars to sails. The chapter then turns to ransom, showing that a captive’s ability to be ransomed, and value, depended on a variety of individualized factors.

scholarly journals Afterlives of the Republic of Letters: Learned Journals and Scholarly Community in the Early Nineteenth Century

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 82-116
Author(s):  
Floris Solleveld
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
The State ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Republic Of Letters ◽  
Scholarly Community ◽  
The Republic ◽  
Changing Role

Abstract What happened to the Republic of Letters? Its history seems to stop at the end of the eighteenth century. And yet, in the nineteenth century, there still existed a community gathered in scholarly societies, maintaining a transnational correspondence network and filling learned journals. The term indeed becomes less frequent, but does not go entirely out of use. This article traces the afterlives of the Republic of Letters in the early nineteenth century. Specifically, it investigates texts that attempt to (re)define the Republic of Letters or a cognate, the wider diffusion of the term, and the changing role of learned journals in that period. While most attempts to reinvent the Republic of Letters failed miserably, they indicate a diagnosis of the state of learning and the position of scholars in a period of transition, and in doing so they contradict an ‘unpolitical’ conception of the Republic of Letters.

There is no such thing as society: beyond individualism and statism in international security studies

1993 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 159-175 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin Shaw
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
International Security ◽  
The State ◽  
Security Studies ◽  
Traditional View ◽  
International Studies ◽  
Sociological Perspective ◽  
Actor Model ◽  
Conceptual Issue

This article offers a sociological perspective on a major conceptual issue in international relations, the question of ‘security’, and it raises major issues to do with the role of sociological concepts in international studies. For some years now, the work of sociological writers such as Skocpol, Giddens and Mann1 has attracted some interest in international studies. International theorists such as Linklater and Halliday have seen their work as offering a theoretical advance both on realism and on Marxist alternatives. At the same time, these developments have involved the paradox that, as one critic puts it, ‘current sociological theories of the state are increasingly approaching a more traditional view of the state—the state as actor model—precisely at a time when the theory of international relations is getting away from this idea and taking a more sociological form.

scholarly journals PRESENTING WOMEN IN POST-INDEPENDENCE HISTORIOGRAPHY: BUILDING THE CHARACTER OF STATE DEFENSE THROUGH THE HISTORY

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 125
Author(s):  
Ayu Wulandari
Keyword(s):  
Health Sector ◽  
The State ◽  
Historical Narrative ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Historical Awareness ◽  
History Of ◽  
Younger Generation ◽  
Role Of Women ◽  
State Defense

<p>This paper discusses the importance of historical narrative in an effort to grow the character of the defense of the country. This is motivated by the problem of mindset about defending the country, that defending the country is the duty of the Indonesian National Army and Police, and defending the country is only appropriate for men. In this issue, historical studies play an important role in deconstructing people's mindsets. Therefore, this paper offers a solution to build the character of state defense, namely through efforts to present women in post-independence historiography. This paper aims to encourage the dismantling of the exclusion of women's roles in post-independence historiography, because in reality, Indonesian women are involved in the defense of the state after 1945. The results of the research in this paper show that after Indonesia's independence, many women had a role important in politics, the arts, to the health sector. By introducing a narrative about how important the role of women in the history of post-independence, the younger generation will have an awareness that defending the country can also be done by women. Thus, presenting women in post-independence historiography will greatly help the Indonesian people to grow the character of state defense.</p><strong>Keywords:</strong> Exclusion, Historical Awareness, Historiography, State Defense, Women.

Adam Smith’s Political Theory of Opinion

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Sagar
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
David Hume ◽  
The State ◽  
Human Psychology ◽  
Central Factor ◽  
Correct Understanding ◽  
Insight Into ◽  
Secular Politics

This chapter examines Adam Smith's political theory of opinion in relation to the contributions of David Hume and, to a lesser extent, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, regarding sociability and the state. More specifically, it explores how Smith's development of Hume's alternative theoretic framework of opinion led him to construct a theory of regime forms that was deeply historically inflected, even as he also ultimately admitted that philosophy is incapable of finally resolving the tensions and predicaments generated by purely secular politics. The chapter first considers Smith's notion of utility as the central factor in explaining human sociability before discussing his insight into the correct understanding of the role of utility in human psychology, which carried extensive implications for politics. It then analyzes Smith's rejection of Montesquieu's classification of monarchies and republics and his account of how opinion generated authority. It also describes Smith's views on sovereignty and the limits of philosophy.

Civil society

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jean L. Cohen
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Civil Society ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Critical Force ◽  
The State ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Political Community ◽  
Formal Economy ◽  
Role Of The State

In modern social and political philosophy civil society has come to refer to a sphere of human activity and a set of institutions outside state or government. It embraces families, churches, voluntary associations and social movements. The contrast between civil society and state was first drawn by eighteenth-century liberals for the purpose of attacking absolutism. Originally the term civil society (in Aristotelian Greek, politike koinonia) referred to a political community of equal citizens who participate in ruling and being ruled. In the twentieth century the separation of philosophy from social sciences, and the greatly expanded role of the state in economic and social life, have seemed to deprive the concept of both its intellectual home and its critical force. Yet, approaching the end of the century, the discourse of civil society is now enormously influential. What explains the concept’s revival? Does it have any application in societies that are not constitutional democracies? From a normative point of view, what distinguishes civil society from both the state and the formal economy?

A Cultural History of Memory in the Eighteenth Century

2020 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
Collective Identity ◽  
Age Of Revolution ◽  
Arts And Sciences ◽  
The Arts ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Aesthetic

The Cultural History of Memory in the Eighteenth Century places in sharp relief the contrast between inspiring ideas that heralded an auspicious future and immemorial traditions that cherished a vanishing past. Waxing large during that era was the European Enlightenment, with its projects for reform and optimistic forecasts about the prospect of making a better world. Heritage was reframed, as martyrs for the cause of religious liberty and heroes for the promotion of the arts and sciences were enshrined in a new pantheon. They served as icons marking a pathway toward a presumed destiny, amid high hopes that reason would triumph over superstition to guide the course of human affairs. Such sentiments gave reformers a new sense of collective identity as an imagined community acting in the name of progress. Against this backdrop, this volume addresses a variety of themes in memory’s multi-faceted domain, among them mnemonic schemes in the transition from theist to scientific cosmologies; memory remodeled in the making of print culture; memory’s newfound resources for introspection; politics reimagined for the modern age; the nature of tradition reconceived; the aesthetics of nostalgia for an aristocracy clinging to a tenuous identity; the lure of far-away places; trauma in an age of revolution; and the emerging divide between history and collective memory. Along the way, contributors address such topics as the idea of nation in early modern politics; the aesthetic vision of Hubert Robert in his garden landscapes; the transforming effects of the interaction between mind and its mnemonic satellites in print media; Shakespeare remembered and commemorated; the role of memory in the redesign of historiography; the mediation of high and popular culture through literature; soul-searching in female autobiography; and commemorative practices during the French Revolution.

Conclusion

2019 ◽  
pp. 204-220
Author(s):  
Igor Fedyukin
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
The State ◽  
Personal Projects

The Conclusion sets the broader context for the key episodes of innovation driven by projectors that have been the subjects of the preceding chapters. It explores the role of diverse enterprisers in the evolution of schools in Russia in the second half of the eighteenth century and later. These enterprisers included numerous private teachers, who dominated the educational landscape in Russia well into the nineteenth century, and diverse officials who promoted their personal projects from within the emerging educational bureaucracy. Contrary to the pervasive myth that the “state” has always been and still is the only player in education in Russia, similar dynamics, to some extent, are observed also in the twentieth century and today.

The Hanoi Reprint of the Precious Scroll of Incense Mountain (1772) and the Printing of Buddhist Works in Northern Vietnam at the End of the Eighteenth Century

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-33
Author(s):  
Tô Lan Nguyễn ◽  
Rostislav Berezkin
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
The State ◽  
Historical Background ◽  
Ruling Elite ◽  
Northern Vietnam ◽  
Official Ideology ◽  
Buddhist Scripture ◽  
Woodblock Printing

Abstract The Precious Scroll of Incense Mountain is a popular Buddhist narrative in prosimetric form that was transmitted to Vietnam from China and reprinted in Hanoi with imperial sanction in 1772. The historical background of the Hanoi reprint demonstrates that this text had much higher status in Vietnam than in China. In Vietnam it was regarded as an authoritative Buddhist scripture. The case of the reprint of the Precious Scroll of Incense Mountain reveals the role of Buddhist monasteries as centers of woodblock printing in Vietnam, which still remains understudied in current research. The growth of printing of Buddhist works, which enjoyed the support of the court and officials in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, testifies to the popularity of Buddhism among the ruling elite during the Later Lê dynasty, when Confucianism was proclaimed the official ideology of the state.

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