Conclusion

Author(s):  
Daniel Pioske

Chapter 5 concludes this investigation by returning to the question of epistemology. What comes to light through the previous studies, it is argued, is that the stories told by the biblical scribes were rooted in not one type of memory but multiple instantiations of it that would have often worked simultaneously to shape the material transmitted to them over time. The conclusions reached through this investigation would thus urge caution when likening biblical storytelling with a form of history, or at least an understanding of history that has been practiced and developed during the modern period. What these considerations also indicate is that drawing on the referential claims of biblical narrative for historical reconstructive pursuits requires some sensitivity toward these ancient narratives’ specific epistemic underpinnings.

Anticorruption in History is the first major collection of case studies on how past societies and polities, in and beyond Europe, defined legitimate power in terms of fighting corruption and designed specific mechanisms to pursue that agenda. It is a timely book: corruption is widely seen today as a major problem, undermining trust in government, financial institutions, economic efficiency, the principle of equality before the law and human wellbeing in general. Corruption, in short, is a major hurdle on the “path to Denmark”—a feted blueprint for stable and successful statebuilding. The resonance of this view explains why efforts to promote anticorruption policies have proliferated in recent years. But while the subjects of corruption and anticorruption have captured the attention of politicians, scholars, NGOs and the global media, scant attention has been paid to the link between corruption and the change of anticorruption policies over time and place. Such a historical approach could help explain major moments of change in the past as well as reasons for the success and failure of specific anticorruption policies and their relation to a country’s image (of itself or as construed from outside) as being more or less corrupt. It is precisely this scholarly lacuna that the present volume intends to begin to fill. A wide range of historical contexts are addressed, ranging from the ancient to the modern period, with specific insights for policy makers offered throughout.


2020 ◽  
Vol 40 (2) ◽  
pp. 101-126
Author(s):  
Reinier Leushuis

Abstract One of the unique homiletic challenges of the Erasmian paraphrase is the transmission of faith in divine matters from the page to the reader’s mind. By which form of imitation is the acquisition of faith by the disciples and their communities not only cognitively understood by, but also imitated in the reader’s mind? Constituting what can be called a poetics of Erasmus’ paraphrastic writing, questions of literary imitation and transmission are exemplified in his enrichment of the sensorial and emotional aspects of the biblical narrative. This essay examines instances where the biblical text highlights the disciples’ witnessing of Jesus both in earthly life and as a risen but living presence. Such instances lead to paraphrastic developments that exemplify reader-oriented imitation by instrumentalizing the senses, in particular hearing and touch, to steer the reader’s inner affective response, and thus to facilitate the acquisition of faith. Although sight is not neglected, I argue that in this process hearing and feeling (both as touch and emotion) are poetically and homiletically privileged to lodge the holy Word in the innermost affective sanctuary of a community of readers and listeners over time who, unlike the witnessing disciples, can no longer see, hear, and touch Christ.


Author(s):  
Benedict S. Robinson

“The Accidents of the Soul” asks which disciplines were seen to provide a knowledge of the passions in the early modern period, and how that map of the disciplines changed over time. It opens by noting the relatively minor position the passions held in a received philosophical “science of the soul,” itself divided between physics and metaphysics. As “accidents of the soul”—that is, contingent qualitative alterations in the soul—the passions lay at the margins of philosophical knowledge: they were seen as subject to too much particularity and contingency to belong to what one author called “certaine science.” They belonged instead to the “low” sciences, the practical sciences, fields that study human actions and that therefore were seen to produce a merely probable knowledge of particulars: fields like rhetoric, politics, poetics, ethics. The passions also belonged to medicine insofar as diagnostic medicine was understood as an art: in medicine, “accidents” are symptoms and the phrase “accidents of the soul” belongs to medical discourse insofar as it takes account of the particularities of the passions as part of a regimen of health. The chapter situates the seventeenth-century treatises on the passions in relation to various kinds of discourse on the passions all seen as promoting forms of probable knowledge on the model of medical diagnostics: physiology and “characterology,” most notably. It ends with a reading of Shakespeare’s Othello as a text that probes the limits—and the dangers—of this probable knowledge of the passions.


2000 ◽  
Vol 59 (4) ◽  
pp. 889-926 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bryna Goodman

Semicolonialism, as jürgen osterhammel noted, is a label that has been generally applied to China “without much regard for its potential theoretical implications” (Osterhammel 1986, 296). The partial character of semicolonialism—as incomplete colonialism—poses the question of what difference it made that throughout the modern period China never in fact became a subject nation, but retained sovereignty over nearly all of its territory and was recognized as a sovereign nation by international law. The writings of twentieth-century Chinese nationalists and a recent profusion of theorizing about colonialism and “colonial modernity” in China, by emphasizing colonialism (Barlow 1997), have perhaps obscured rather than clarified the answer to this question. Moreover, semicolonialism in China, as a gradual accretion of phenomena associated with imperialism, varied substantially over time. Its significance for understanding nineteenth-century China, when the foreign presence within China was still quite limited, remains unclear. Several decades of research on imperialism in Shanghai have produced much debate, but no clear mapping of“where, when, howand to whateffectdidwhichextraneous forces impinge” on Chinese life (Osterhammel 1986, 295).


2007 ◽  
Vol 37 ◽  
pp. 147-175 ◽  
Author(s):  
Miri Shefer Mossensohn

AbstractOttoman society and its medical system of the early modern period and the nineteenth-century demonstrate the marriage of medicine and power. I present the view from the imperial center and focus on the aims and wishes of the Ottoman elite and imperial authorities in İstanbul as they were embodied in state activities, such as formal decrees and policies meant to be implemented all over the empire. For the Ottoman elite, medicine was always a significant imperial tool, but it was neither the only tool of control, nor the most important one. The extent to which the Ottoman elite used medicine in its social policies changed over time. A comparison between the Ottoman use and distribution of health and food from the early modern period until the nineteenth century illustrates this point. It was especially during the nineteenth century that medicine was intentionally-and successfully-implemented as a mechanism of control in the Ottoman Empire.


2018 ◽  
pp. 159-169
Author(s):  
Nara Maria De Paula Tinoco

Resumo: Neste trabalho, discutiremos a importância do conceito de nobreza para um grupo em particular: os magistrados. Diferente dos demais oficiais régios, devido à formação em Direito, eles se destacavam por exercerem e interpretarem as Leis, bem como por representarem a face mais visível dos Monarcas: a Justiça. Os magistrados formavam um grupo mais alargado e heterogêneo em suas obrigações e interesses pessoais: os letrados, que influenciaram todo o período moderno português. Ao longo do tempo, surgiu a indispensabilidade de situarmos o conceito de nobreza e suas subdivisões para construirmos o perfil, as carreiras, as hierarquias e as estratégias/estratagemas destes indivíduos e dos demais grupos constituintes da administração portuguesa e de suas conquistas.Abstract: In this work we will discuss the importance of the concept of nobility for a particular group, the magistrates. Unlike the other royal officials due to the formation in Law, they stood out from the other groups for exercising and interpreting the laws and for representing the most visible face of the Monarchs, Justice. The magistrates were participants of a larger and heterogeneous group in their obligations and personal interests, that is, of the literate ones and that they influenced all the Portuguese modern period. Over time, the indispensability of placing the concept of nobility and its subdivisions in order to construct the profile, the careers, the hierarchies and strategies / stratagems of these individuals and the other constituent groups of the Portuguese administration and its conquests arose.


2017 ◽  
Vol 85 ◽  
pp. 171-204 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lucy Donkin

Rome's man-made mounds occupy a position between built antiquities and natural features. In the Middle Ages and early modern period, particular attention was paid to Monte Testaccio, the Mausoleum of Augustus, and the related ‘mons omnis terra’. Debate focused on the origins and composition of the mounds, thought to contain either earth brought to Rome as symbolic tribute, pottery used to hold monetary tribute, or pottery produced locally. Developing over time in different genres of writing on the city, these interpretations were also employed in works on historical, religious and geological themes. The importation of material, expressive of relations between Rome and the wider world in antiquity, was used to draw positive and negative comparisons with present-day rulers and the papacy, and to associate Rome with Babylon. The growth of the mounds and the presence of ceramics were invoked in discussions of the formation of mountains and montane fossils. If the mounds' ambiguities facilitated their incorporation into other debates, the terms in which they are discussed reflect ongoing engagement with literature on the city. The reception of these monuments thus offers a distinctive perspective on the significance of Rome to connections between spheres of knowledge in this period.


2018 ◽  
Vol 44 (1) ◽  
pp. 66-77 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Bessel

The argument put forward by Steven Pinker that violence has been in decline and that “we have been getting kinder and gentler” rests to a considerable degree upon data concerning violent events, in particular homicide and deaths on the battlefield. In discussing such data for the modern period, this article questions their reliability and, in particular, their comparability over time. Pinker’s argument may be stronger with respect to a growing public sensitivity toward many forms of violence, not least sexual violence, for which there is considerable evidence. However, the relationship between changing public sensibilities and changing levels of actual violent acts remains difficult to determine.


2021 ◽  
Vol 62 (1 (245)) ◽  
pp. 25-40
Author(s):  
Aleksandra Skrzypietz

Public and Private Religiosity and Piety of the Queen Marie Casimire d’Arquien Sobieska In the early modern period, queens were obliged to participate in religious ceremonies and outwardly display their piety through charity. Marie Casimire de la Grange d’Arquien Sobieska met these duties when she was consort of the King John III Sobieski, and later, as a widow residing in Rome. Yet, her prayers were not limited to outward gestures of religiosity at official ceremonies. From her numerous letters, we can learn about her personal piety. In her letters written to Jakub, her eldest son, and his wife, the queen mother often refers to God’s Providence, and expresses her deep devotion and faith in God’s grace and protection. For Queen Marie Casimire, God was the source of comfort in difficult moments. While her outward religiosity is a reflection of the age in which she lived, the queen’s personal faith developed over time and appears to have been deep and sincere.


2021 ◽  
Vol 51 (4) ◽  
pp. 609-621
Author(s):  
Alon Confino

A proper understanding of a nation’s identity over time requires tracing how a modern sense of belonging can derive from the symbolic reservoir of society and how cultural symbols can change their meaning in history. This research agenda becomes significantly more challenging when it involves a national group’s experience across hundreds of years from the early modern period to the present. Such is the task of Smith’s Germany: A Nation and Its Time in its attempt to tell the story of nation and nationalism in Germany from 1500 to 2000.


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