Introduction

2018 ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
Lindsay Kaplan
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual History ◽  
Christian Theology ◽  
Racial Identities ◽  
Modern Racism ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Creation ◽  
The Many ◽  
History Of Race

This intellectual history focuses on racism: discriminatory concepts and practices that produce, accompany, or follow the (fictive) idea of race. The author identifies inferiority as a primary category of analysis, arguing that the creation of a hierarchy in which one group represents itself as superior to another constitutes a necessary element of racism. Attending to the tropes of subordinating differentiation helps trace racism’s history in drawing a line from medieval forms to contemporary white supremacism. The figural concept of cursed Jewish slavery developed in medieval Christian theology serves to construct racial inferiority. The introduction stresses the importance of theology in the history of race: the many studies of medieval discourses that articulate racial identities for Jews and Muslims do not focus on the theological texts from which these constructions emerge. Medieval Christian theology creates a status of hereditary inferiority, a concept that continues to shape modern racism.

Vernacular Capitalism and Intellectual History in a Gujarati Account of China, 1860–68

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-26
Author(s):  
Michael O'Sullivan
Keyword(s):  
South China Sea ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
Southern China ◽  
Western Indian Ocean ◽  
Port Cities ◽  
Late Qing ◽  
Modern Capitalism ◽  
Late Qing China ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Many

This article examines one of the earliest Gujarati travelogues concerning China, written by Damodar Ishwardas—a Hindu resident of Bombay and a clerk for a Sunni Khoja commercial firm—and published in Bombay in 1868. Based on a three-year trip to the port cities of southern China, Ishwardas's text runs close to 400 pages and was patronized by a prominent stratum of Bombay's Gujarati-speaking commercial and bureaucratic elite. The primary intervention in this article is to analyze Ishwardas's account as a neglected relic of vernacular capitalism and vernacular intellectual history. Furthermore, the text presents an opportunity to reexamine the history of the Indian intellectual and mercantile engagement with late Qing China, especially before anticolonial nationalism and pan-Asianism supplied new paradigms for Indian writing on East Asia beginning around 1900. It further points to the many unstudied Indian materials that have yet to be integrated into the study of modern capitalism in the regions from the South China Sea to the western Indian Ocean.

A Vertiginous Experience: Historical Ethics and Practice in the Age of Trump

2021 ◽  
Vol 46 (3) ◽  
pp. 894-901
Author(s):  
Simon Middleton
Keyword(s):  
Close Reading ◽  
History Of ◽  
Historical Methodology ◽  
The Creation ◽  
History Of Race

AbstractThis essay considers Christopher Tomlins’ thoughts—as expressed in his In the Matter of Nat Turner: A Speculative History—on historical ethics and practice in the context of recent and ongoing controversies concerning the history of race and slavery in the American past. Tomlins endeavors to recover as much as he can relating to Nat Turner and his mentalité at the time of the infamous 1831 rebellion. He also promises a self-conscious engagement with the creation of history as an intellectual practice, and invites readers to reflect on their standpoint in the histories they create. For Tomlins this practice means a close reading of Turner’s “confession” through the work of social theorists, an approach that will likely prove controversial for some readers. For those who stay with him, however, Tomlins provides a bravura demonstration of historical methodology with implications for current debates and divisions within the wider field.

Siddiq Hasan Khan (1832-90) and the Creation of a Muslim Cosmopolitanism in the 19th century

2011 ◽  
Vol 54 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-38 ◽  
Author(s):  
Seema Alavi
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual History ◽  
19Th Century ◽  
Spatial Connectivity ◽  
History Of ◽  
Temporal Moment ◽  
The Creation ◽  
The 19Th Century

AbstractThe essay highlights the role of one individual, Nawab Siddiq Hasan Khan (1832-90), in writing the cultural and intellectual history of imperialisms. It brings his biography, journeys and intellectual forays together to show how he used the temporal moment of the mid 19th century ‘age of revolts’, and the spatial connectivity offered by British and Ottoman imperialisms and re-configured them to his own particular interests. Locating Siddiq Hasan in the connected histories of the British and Ottoman Empires, it views his in-house cosmopolitanism as a form of public conduct that was shaped by Islamic learning that cultivated urbane civility as Muslim universalist virtuous conduct. This was a form of cosmopolitanism enabled by imperial networks, informed by pre-colonial webs of interaction between India and West Asia, and deeply rooted in the scriptures.

The “Masters” in the Shiji

T oung Pao ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 101 (4-5) ◽  
pp. 335-362 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin Kern
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual History ◽  
Life Experiences ◽  
Personal Life ◽  
Warring States ◽  
Chinese Thought ◽  
Selective Approach ◽  
Sima Qian ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Creation

The intellectual history of the ancient philosophical “Masters” depends to a large extent on accounts in early historiography, most importantly Sima Qian’s Shiji which provides a range of longer and shorter biographies of Warring States thinkers. Yet the ways in which personal life experiences, ideas, and the creation of texts are interwoven in these accounts are diverse and uneven and do not add up to a reliable guide to early Chinese thought and its protagonists. In its selective approach to different thinkers, the Shiji under-represents significant parts of the textual heritage while developing several distinctive models of authorship, from anonymous compilations of textual repertoires to the experience of personal hardship and political frustration as the precondition for turning into a writer.
L’histoire intellectuelle des “maîtres” de la philosophie chinoise ancienne dépend pour une large part de ce qui est dit d’eux dans l’historiographie ancienne, tout particulièrement le Shiji de Sima Qian, qui offre une série de biographies plus ou moins étendues de penseurs de l’époque des Royaumes Combattants. Cependant leur vie, leurs idées et les conditions de création de leurs textes se combinent dans ces biographies de façon très inégale, si bien que l’ensemble ne saurait être considéré comme l’équivalent d’un guide de la pensée chinoise ancienne et de ses auteurs sur lequel on pourrait s’appuyer en toute confiance. Dans sa façon d’approcher sélectivement les différents penseurs, le Shiji tend à sous-représenter des secteurs significatifs de l’héritage textuel; en même temps il développe plusieurs modèles distinctifs de rapport entre texte et auteur, depuis la compilation anonyme de répertoires textuels jusqu’à l’expérience du malheur et à la frustration politique posées comme conditions pour devenir écrivain.


scholarly journals IMPERIAL AND SOVIET DIMENSIONS OF THE UKRAINIAN NATIONAL ISSUE IN O. LOTOTSKY’S JOURNALISM

2021 ◽  
pp. 43-59
Author(s):  
Galina Mykhailenko
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual History ◽  
Social Activity ◽  
Russian Empire ◽  
The State ◽  
Soviet Period ◽  
Independent State ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Creation ◽  
The Russian Empire ◽  
National Issue

This paper aims at studying O. Lototsky’s journalistic works during the revolutions of 1905-1907, 1917-1921 and the emigration of 1920-1930. The main focus is on the analysis of the position of Ukrainian lands in the imperial era and the Soviet period, as well as the vision of key problems and political prospects proposed in the articles of O. Lototsky. The research methodology is based on the principles of historicism and objectivity. Both general scientific and special-historical methods are used in the study, namely: historical and comparative, problematic, research tools of the history of ideas (intellectual history) and biographistics. The scientific novelty of the research is determined by its focus on the analysis of the content of Lototsky’s journalistic works in the context of opportunities to solve the Ukrainian national issue in the conditions of the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union. Conclusions. O. Lototsky’s creative legacy contains a significant amount of journalistic material. Their topics are diverse: from reviews of the economic situation of Ukrainian lands to the analysis of the state of educational institutions in the Russian Empire and the problems of the clergy. Considerable attention in these materials is devoted to the Ukrainian national issue. Due to O. Lototsky’s active social activity from 1906 to 1917, the topics of his essays frequently intertwined with the problems in which he was directly involved (for example, the status of the Ukrainian language and the abolition of bans on its use). The position of the Ukrainian lands as part of the Russian Empire and other states in the specified period was of his particular concern. During the emigrant era, the publicist continued to express his vision of the situation of Ukrainian territories within the USSR. The leading idea expressed in most of O. Lototsky’s materials of that period was that the state policy of both the Russian Empire and the USSR did not provide for the creation of an independent Ukrainian state, let alone support for Ukrainian culture. Given the historical experiences of the Ukrainian lands, O. Lototsky in the 1920s and 1930s was an active supporter of the creation of an independent state. O. Lototsky’s diverse creative legacy, his active social and political activities leave many more aspects for further elaboration, analysis, and determination of the significance of his heritage in the intellectual history of Ukraine and the Ukrainian movement.

Philosophy before the Greeks

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marc Van De Mieroop
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual History ◽  
First Century ◽  
Alternative Methods ◽  
Coherent System ◽  
Near Eastern ◽  
History Of ◽  
First Millennium ◽  
Written Word ◽  
The Many ◽  
Eastern Traditions

There is a growing recognition that philosophy isn’t unique to the West, that it didn’t begin only with the classical Greeks, and that Greek philosophy was influenced by Near Eastern traditions. Yet even today there is a widespread assumption that what came before the Greeks was “before philosophy.” This book presents a groundbreaking argument that, for three millennia before the Greeks, one Near Eastern people had a rich and sophisticated tradition of philosophy fully worthy of the name. In the first century BC, the Greek historian Diodorus of Sicily praised the Babylonians for their devotion to philosophy. Showing the justice of Diodorus’s comment, this is the first book to argue that there were Babylonian philosophers and that they studied knowledge systematically using a coherent system of logic rooted in the practices of cuneiform script. The book uncovers Babylonian approaches to knowledge in three areas: the study of language, which in its analysis of the written word formed the basis of all logic; the art of divination, which interpreted communications between gods and humans; and the rules of law, which confirmed that royal justice was founded on truth. The result is an innovative intellectual history of the ancient Near Eastern world during the many centuries in which Babylonian philosophers inspired scholars throughout the region—until the first millennium BC, when the breakdown of this cosmopolitan system enabled others, including the Greeks, to develop alternative methods of philosophical reasoning.

Syncretism and Christian Tradition

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ross Kane
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual History ◽  
Holy Spirit ◽  
Religious Studies ◽  
Christian Theology ◽  
Cultural Continuity ◽  
Divine Revelation ◽  
Christian Tradition ◽  
The Holy Spirit ◽  
History Of ◽  
Material History

Studying the history of syncretism’s use indicates wider interpretative problems in religious studies and theology regarding race and revelation. It also indicates the importance of seeing “tradition” as adaptive and amalgamating rather than static. In theology and religious studies alike, discourses of syncretism are positioned within racialized perceptions which construct a center and periphery based upon white European knowledge. In Christian theology more specifically, syncretism’s use also shows ways that theologians try to protect the category of divine revelation from human interference, leading to interpretative problems that sidestep material history. The book makes this case through an intellectual history of the word syncretism, tracking its changing associations and especially its pejorative turn in Christianity in the early twentieth century. After diagnosing challenges related to syncretism, the book makes two constructive arguments. First, it defends the concept of “tradition”—for religious studies and theology alike—as a means of understanding cultural continuity amid the perpetual flux of syncretism. Second, in Christian theology specifically, it offers a constructive response to syncretism drawing from theologians Jean-Marc Éla and Rowan Williams. The Holy Spirit, through tradition, builds knowledge of the divine Logos across history often by way of contested religious mixtures with culture. The book concludes by examining positive examples of syncretism in Christianity like the incorporation of ancestor reverencing.

scholarly journals Newspapers as Sources for African History

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emma Hunter
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual History ◽  
Political History ◽  
African History ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Creation

Newspapers have become increasingly important as a source for African history, and the range of historical questions newspapers have been employed to address has expanded dramatically. Newspapers are not only sources for political history, they also have much to teach us about the social, cultural, and intellectual history of Africa. They were spaces of literary and textual experimentation. They also played an important role in the creation of new identities. It is essential, however, that we approach newspapers critically as sources and think carefully about their limitations, as well as the opportunities they present to the historian.

The Word from a Walrus: Five Decades of the History of Education Society

2010 ◽  
Vol 50 (4) ◽  
pp. 429-459 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wayne J. Urban
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual History ◽  
History Of Education ◽  
Institutional History ◽  
Education Society ◽  
Education Organization ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Intellectual Movements ◽  
Intellectual Movement

This essay is an attempt at an institutional history of the History of Education Society (HES), from its inception in 1960 to the present day. As an institutional history, a genre with which I am generally, and not altogether favorably associated, it is not an intellectual history. Thus, many of the intellectual currents and cross-currents, as well as the History of Education Quarterly (HEQ), the journal of the HES in which these intellectual movements were featured, are slighted in this presentation. I deal extensively with one intellectual movement within the field, the Bernard Bailyn-Lawrence Cremin critique of the field as too institutional and intellectually narrow, because it was so intimately involved with the creation of the HES, and the attendant de-emphasis, if not rejection, of the institutional history of education that was dominant in the pre-HES history of education organization. I hope that what follows will be interesting enough to my listeners and readers to explain to them the reasons for my choices.

scholarly journals Unit-Ideas Unleashed: A Reinterpretation and Reassessment of Lovejovian Methodology in the History of Ideas

2012 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 195-217 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carl Knight
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual History ◽  
Alternative Interpretation ◽  
History Of Ideas ◽  
Central Concept ◽  
Familial Resemblance ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Creation ◽  
The Way

Abstract This article argues for an unconventional interpretation of Arthur O. Lovejoy’s distinctive approach to method in the history of ideas. It is maintained that the value of the central concept of the ‘unit-idea’ has been misunderstood by friends and foes alike. The commonality of unit-ideas at different times and places is often defined in terms of familial resemblance. But such an approach must necessarily define unit-ideas as being something other than the smallest conceptual unit. It is therefore in tension with Lovejoy’s methodological prescription and, more importantly, disregards a potentially important aspect of intellectual history – the smaller conceptual units themselves. In response to this, an alternative interpretation of unit-ideas as ‘elemental’ – as the smallest identifiable conceptual components – is put forward. Unlike the familial resemblance approach, the elemental approach can provide a plausible explanation for changes in ideas. These are construed as being either the creation of new unit-ideas, the disappearance of existing ones, or alterations in the groups of unit-ideas that compose idea-complexes. The focus on the movement of unit-ideas and idea-complexes through history can also be sensitive to contextual issues, carefully distinguishing the different meanings that single words may have, in much the way that both Lovejoy and his influential critic Quentin Skinner suggest.

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