Aristotle

Classics ◽  
2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carlo Natali ◽  
Gaia Bagnati

Aristotle (384–322 bce) was a younger disciple and colleague of Plato. They are the two most famous and important ancient philosophers, and Aristotle is the only Platonic disciple whose works have been transmitted to us. The relationship between the two thinkers is complex: they share some basic ideas but the disciple is a strong critic of some aspects of his master’s thought, a fact not unusual in the relationships between master and disciple. He agrees with Plato on a rejection of materialism in favor of the idea that our world is the result of a formal structure that can be formulated in rational and scientific definitions. On the other hand, he thinks that sensible moving entities contain in themselves their forms and because of that they can be the object of scientific knowledge, i.e., a universal and deductible knowledge and not only of a true unstable opinion as Plato maintained. They also are the real substances. From this basic difference many oppositions between Aristotle and his master derive. In the history of philosophy Aristotle suffered a complex destiny, different from Plato’s continuous success. In some periods he was neglected, for instance in the Hellenistic period and from the 18th century until the main part of 19th century. In other periods he achieved great fame, for instance in later Antiquity, in the Middle Ages from the 13th century, and also in our own time. The authors would like to thank warmly Professor Iain MacPherson for revising their far-from-perfect English.

2017 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 9-22
Author(s):  
Marek Maciejewski

The origin of universities reaches the period of Ancient Greece when philosophy (sophists, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, stoics and others) – the “Queen of sciences”, and the first institutions of higher education (among others, Plato’s Academy, Cassiodorus’ Vivarium, gymnasia) came into existence. Even before the new era, schools having the nature of universities existed also beyond European borders, including those in China and India. In the early Middle Ages, those types of schools functioned in Northern Africa and in the Near East (Baghdad, Cairo, Constantinople, cities of Southern Spain). The first university in the full meaning of the word was founded at the end of the 11th century in Bologna. It was based on a two-tiered education cycle. Following its creation, soon new universities – at first – in Italy, then (in the 12th and 13th century) in other European cities – were established. The author of the article describes their modes of operation, the methods of conducting research and organizing students’ education, the existing student traditions and customs. From the very beginning of the universities’ existence the study of law was part of their curricula, based primarily on the teaching of Roman law and – with time – the canon law. The rise of universities can be dated from the end of the Middle Ages and the beginning of modernity. In the 17th and 18th century they underwent a crisis which was successfully overcome at the end of the 19th century and throughout the following one.


2015 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 7-19
Author(s):  
István Fried

Abstract If the changes of the “discourse networks” (Aufschreibesysteme) from 1800 to 1900 model the relations pertaining to the personality, to the cultural determinedness of technology and personality as well as to their interconnections (Kittler 1995), especially having in view the literary mise en scène, it applies all the more to travelling - setting out on a journey, heading towards a destination, pilgrimage and/or wandering as well as the relationship between transport technology and personality. The changes taking place in “transport” are partly of technological, partly (in close connection with the former) indicative of individual and collective claims. The diplomatic, religious, commercial and educational journeys essentially belong to the continuous processes of European centuries; however, the appearance of the railway starts a new era at least to the same extent as the car and the airplane in the twentieth century. The journeys becoming systematic and perhaps most tightly connected to pilgrimages from the Middle Ages on assured the “transfer” of ideas, attitudes and cultural materials in the widest sense; the journeys and personal encounters (of course, taking place, in part, through correspondence) of the more cultured layers mainly, are to be highly appreciated from the viewpoint of the history of mentalities and society.


Author(s):  
D. Pittaluga ◽  
A. Di Rocco ◽  
C. Casagrande ◽  
S. Guerinoni ◽  
G. Pellegri

Abstract. Centuries-old earthen masonry presenting various stages of degradation, earthen walls that have been restored several times: these are the archeological phases of the city walls of Mascarell, on the Spanish Mediterranean coast. Founded in the first half of the 13th century, this town is the only complex in Castellon Province that preserves all its ancient walls, which were built entirely by means of the brick-faced rammed-earth technique (clay with bricks and lime). This article reports the first results of a research project conducted on the multiple information available on these artifacts: bibliographic, archival and iconographic sources and the results of direct material analysis, stratigraphic analysis and archeological analysis. The situation is complex, as these walls have undergone a long sequence of transformations, including interventions carried out since the 18th century and multiple restorations in the period 1942–2015. The research developed and refined architecture archeology tools in order to analyze the rammed-earth techniques adopted during restoration work (similar but not identical to the historical technique), to characterize the materials used in restoration, to evaluate their resistance to degradation over the years, to define a sort of ‘critical evolutionary line’ of rammed-earth restoration, and to conduct a cross-sectional study of this building technique from the Middle Ages to the present. Finally, we drafted some guidelines for future interventions for conservation and enhancement.


2020 ◽  
Vol 2020(41) (3) ◽  
pp. 25-36
Author(s):  
Stanisław T. Zarzycki

This article synthetically deals with the relationship between theology and Christian spirituality. In the history of this relationship three periods are distinguished: 1. Original unity covering biblical times, patristics and medieval monastic theology; 2. Separation at the end of scholasticism (13th century), when theology, under the influence of philosophy, became too rationalistic, abstract and detached from life and as such persisted until the 20th century; 3. Reconciliation and gradual restoration and strengthening of unity and cooperation between theology and spirituality (theology of spirituality), starting from biblical and theological renewal before the Second Vatican Council until today. The full realization of this unity takes place in the lives of the Saints.


Author(s):  
John Marenbon

This chapter investigates Augustine's role in addressing the Problem of Paganism. After the Sack of Rome in 410 CE, Augustine set out to produce his most ambitious work, a Christian rethinking, not just of the history of Rome, but of the relationship between God and the course of human history. Written in the safety of North Africa, the City of God (CG), begun probably in 412 but not finished until about fourteen years later, is both an intellectual masterpiece and a foundational book for the Problem of Paganism. Although the problem has somewhat different contours for him from those it would take on in the Middle Ages, in the City of God and other works Augustine looks closely at three of the main strands of the problem — wisdom, salvation, and virtue — and takes positions which set the agenda for almost all subsequent discussion.


Author(s):  
Monika Kamińska

The parish churches in Igołomia and Wawrzeńczyce were founded in the Middle Ages. Their current appearance is the result of centuries of change. Wawrzeńczyce was an ecclesial property – first of Wrocław Premonstratens, and then, until the end of the 18th century, of Kraków bishops. The Church of St. Mary Magdalene was funded by the Bishop Iwo Odrowąż. In 1393 it was visited by the royal couple Jadwiga of Poland and Władysław Jagiełło. In the 17th century the temple suffered from the Swedish Invasion, and then a fire. The church was also damaged during World War I in 1914. The current furnishing of the church was created to a large extent after World War II. Igołomia was once partly owned by the Benedictines of Tyniec, and partly belonged to the Collegiate Church of St. Florian in Kleparz in Kraków. The first mention of the parish church of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary comes from the first quarter of the fourteenth century. In 1384, a brick church was erected in place of a wooden one. The history of the Igołomia church is known only from the second half of the 18th century, as it was renovated and enlarged in 1869. The destruction after World War I initiated interior renovation work, continuing until the 1920s.


Author(s):  
Doron Swade

The principles on which all modern computing machines are based were enunciated more than a hundred years ago by a Cambridge mathematician named Charles Babbage.’ So declared Vivian Bowden—in charge of sales of the Ferranti Mark I computer— in 1953.1 This chapter is about historical origins. It identifies core ideas in Turing’s work on computing, embodied in the realisation of the modern computer. These ideas are traced back to their emergence in the 19th century where they are explicit in the work of Babbage and Ada Lovelace. Mechanical process, algorithms, computation as systematic method, and the relationship between halting and solvability are part of an unexpected congruence between the pre-history of electronic computing and the modern age. The chapter concludes with a consideration of whether Turing was aware of these origins and, if so, the extent—if any—to which he may have been influenced by them. Computing is widely seen as a gift of the modern age. The huge growth in computing coincided with, and was fuelled by, developments in electronics, a phenomenon decidedly of our own times. Alan Turing’s earliest work on automatic computation coincided with the dawn of the electronic age, the late 1930s, and his name is an inseparable part of the narrative of the pioneering era of automatic computing that unfolded. Identifying computing with the electronic age has had the effect of eradicating pre-history. It is as though the modern era with its rampant achievements stands alone and separate from the computational devices and aids that pre-date it. In the 18th century lex continui in natura proclaimed that nature had no discontinuities, and we tend to view historical causation in the same way. Discontinuities in history are uncomfortable: they offend against gradualism, or at least against the idea of the irreducible interconnectedness of events. The central assertion of this chapter is that core ideas evidenced in modern computing, ideas with which Turing is closely associated, emerged explicitly in the 19th century, a hundred years earlier than is commonly credited.


Author(s):  
Norman Etherington

Christianity came very early to Africa, as attested by the Gospels. The agencies by which it spread across North Africa and into the Kingdom of Aksum remain largely unknown. Even after the rise of Islam cut communications between sub-Saharan Africa and the churches of Rome and Constantinople, it survived in the eastern Sudan kingdom of Nubia until the 15th century and never died in Ethiopia. The documentary history of organized missions begins with the Roman Catholic monastic orders founded in the 13th century. Their evangelical work in Africa was closely bound up with Portuguese colonialism, which both helped and hindered their operations. Organized European Protestant missions date from the 18th-century evangelical awakening and were much less creatures of states. Africa was a particular object of attention for Evangelicals opposed to slavery and the slave trade. Paradoxically this gave an impetus to colonizing ventures aimed at undercutting the moral and economic foundations of slavery in Africa. Disease proved to be a deadly obstacle to European- and American-born missionaries in tropical Africa, thus spurring projects for enrolling local agents who had acquired childhood immunity. Southern Africa below the Zambezi River attracted missionaries from many parts of Europe and North America because of the absence of the most fearsome diseases. However the turbulent politics of the region complicated their work by restricting their access to organized African kingdoms and chieftaincies. The prevalent mission model until the late 19th century was a station under the direction of a single European family whose religious and educational endeavors were directed at a small number of African residents. Catholic missions acquired new energy following the French Revolution, the old Portuguese system of partnership with the state was displaced by enthusiasm for independent operations under the authority of the Pope in Rome. Several new missionary orders were founded with a particular focus on Africa. Mission publications of the 19th and 20th centuries can convey a misleading impression that the key agents in the spread of African Christianity were foreign-born white males. Not only does this neglect the work of women as wives and teachers, but it diverts attention from the Africans who were everywhere the dominant force in the spread of modern Christianity. By the turn of the 20th century, evangelism had escaped the bounds of mission stations driven by African initiative and the appearance of so-called “faith missions” based on a model of itinerant preaching. African prophets and independent evangelists developed new forms of Christianity. Once dismissed as heretical or syncretic, they gradually came to be recognized as legitimate variants of the sort that have always accompanied the acculturation of religion in new environments. Decolonization caught most foreign mission operations unawares and required major changes, most notably in the recruitment of African clergy to the upper echelons of church hierarchies. By the late 20th century Africans emerged as an independent force in Christian missions, sending agents to other continents.


Author(s):  
Yanna Yannakakis

“Power of Attorney in Oaxaca, Mexico: Native People, Legal Culture, and Social Networks” is an ongoing digital research project that constructs a geography of indigenous legal culture through digital maps and visualizations. The Power of Attorney website analyzes relationships among people, places, and courts that were created by the granting of power attorney, a notarial procedure common across the Spanish empire. The primary actors in this story are indigenous individuals, communities, and coalitions of communities in the diocese of Oaxaca, Mexico, and the legal agents who represented them, some of whom were untitled indigenous scribes, and others, titled lawyers and legal agents of Spanish descent. The relationship between indigenous litigants and their legal agents created social networks and flows of knowledge and power at a variety of scales, some local and some transatlantic, whose dimensions changed over time. The pilot for the project focuses on the district of Villa Alta, Oaxaca, during the 18th century. “Power of Attorney in Oaxaca, Mexico: Native People, Legal Culture, and Social Networks” is an ongoing digital research project that constructs a geography of indigenous legal culture through digital maps and visualizations. The Power of Attorney (https://www.powerofattorneynative.com/) website analyzes relationships among people, places, and courts that were created by the granting of power attorney, a notarial procedure common across the Spanish empire. The primary actors in this story are indigenous individuals, communities, and coalitions of communities in the diocese of Oaxaca, Mexico, and the legal agents who represented them, some of whom were untitled indigenous scribes, and others, titled lawyers and legal agents of Spanish descent. The relationship between indigenous litigants and their legal agents created social networks and flows of knowledge and power at a variety of scales, some local and some transatlantic, whose dimensions changed over time. The pilot for the project focuses on the district of Villa Alta, Oaxaca, during the 18th century. The multiscalar narrative of the Power of Attorney project speaks to multiple audiences, and the digital multimedia format allows visitors to further tailor their interactions with information. The site operates on many levels. It provides maps and visualizations based on original research, data culled from primary sources that can be used as a research tool, historical and geographical background information, information about how to read letters of attorney, and microhistorical narratives of power of attorney relationships. For undergraduates learning about the relationship between Spanish administration and pueblos de indios, the maps and visualizations provide an at-a-glance overview of the spatial and social connections among Indian towns, ecclesiastical and viceregal courts, and the court of the king in Madrid from the perspective of an indigenous region rather than a top-down perspective. Graduate students and scholars interested in the production of notarial records in native jurisdictions, social history and ethnohistorical methodology and the relationship between local and transatlantic processes can explore the maps, visualizations, and data in greater detail. An educated general audience interested in the history of Oaxaca’s native peoples can find a general introduction to the region, its history and geography, and the long-standing relationship between Mexico’s native people and the law.


1978 ◽  
Vol 14 ◽  
pp. 3-26
Author(s):  
Charles R. Bowlus

The relationship between military and social organization has long been a topic of major concern and debate among scholars specializing in the history of the European middle ages. It is a topic of importance, for, as we who live in the modern world are aware, the ways in which any government organizes its people for warfare have many implications that go well beyond the strategy of a particular campaign or the tactics employed at a decisive battle. The rudimentary nature of the economies and governments in medieval Europe probably made the relationship between military and social organization more direct and, hence, more obvious than it is today. Peasants may have been illiterate, but they were cognizant of their obligation to serve in local levies and to provide food, fodder, and transport facilities for armies on campaign. Magnates who kept a retinue with them at all times and who garrisoned private fortresses were dependent on surpluses produced by the peasantry for the maintenance of these forces.


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