After Certainty

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Pasnau
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Human Nature ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
New Science ◽  
Initial Expectation ◽  
The World ◽  
Explanatory Depth ◽  
Looking Back ◽  
The Middle Ages

No part of philosophy is as disconnected from its history as is epistemology. After Certainty offers a reconstruction of that history as the story of an epistemic ideal first formulated by Plato and Aristotle, later developed throughout the Middle Ages, and then dramatically reformulated in the seventeenth century. In watching these debates unfold over the centuries, we come to understand why epistemology has traditionally been embedded within a much wider sphere of concerns about human nature and the reality of the world we live in. We also come to see why epistemology has become today a much narrower and specialized field, concerned with the conditions under which it is true to say, in English, that someone knows something. Looking back to earlier days, this study makes its way through the various and changing ideals of inquiry that have been pursued over the centuries, from the expectations of certainty and explanatory depth to the rising concern over evidence and precision, as famously manifested in the new science. At both the sensory and the intellectual levels, the initial expectation of infallibility is seen to give way to mere subjective indubitability, and in the end it is unclear whether anything remains of the epistemic ideals that philosophy has long pursued. All we may ultimately be left with is hope.

Attitudes of Seventeenth-Century France Toward the Middle Ages.

1946 ◽  
Vol 61 (7) ◽  
pp. 484
Author(s):  
H. Carrington Lancaster ◽  
Nathan Edelman
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
The Middle Ages

Clothing and Female Reclusion in The Life of Mary of Egypt and The Life of Christina of Markyate

2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 17-31
Author(s):  
Anna McKay
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Feminist Scholarship ◽  
Literary Representation ◽  
The Past ◽  
The World ◽  
Holy Women ◽  
Experiences Of Women ◽  
Mary Of Egypt ◽  
The Middle Ages

Over the past two decades, medieval feminist scholarship has increasingly turned to the literary representation of textiles as a means of exploring the oftensilenced experiences of women in the Middle Ages. This article uses fabric as a lens through which to consider the world of the female recluse, exploring the ways in which clothing operates as a tether to patriarchal, secular values in Paul the Deacon’s eighthcentury Life of Mary of Egypt and the twelfth-century Life of Christina of Markyate. In rejecting worldly garb as recluses, these holy women seek out and achieve lives of spiritual autonomy and independence.

Mandelstam: The Realm of Unexpectedness

2021 ◽  
Vol 64 (2) ◽  
pp. 62-83
Author(s):  
Svetlana S. Neretina
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Speech Act ◽  
Classical Antiquity ◽  
Logical Framework ◽  
Creation Process ◽  
The Real ◽  
Logical Construction ◽  
The World ◽  
The Creation ◽  
The Middle Ages

In the essay “Conversation about Dante,” Mandelstam described logic, which he defined as the “realm of unexpectedness,” which is unlike any everyday logical construction. Based on the analysis of Mandelstam’s text, it is assumed that we are talking about a tropology that arose in the Middle Ages, the principles of which can be derived from studies of St. Augustine’s treatise De Dialectica and Petrus Сomestor’s Historia Scholastica. It is this triple commonwealth (Augustine – Comestor – Dante, read by Mandelstam) that creates the multilayered logical framework of the work. Augustine created a completely different dialectic than in classical antiquity. Augustine considers dialectics as an art of discussion and describes the real steps that contribute to the emergence of speech, which corresponds to Mandelstam’s concept of conversation. According to Augustine, at the basis of any speech, is a trope-turn. In the article, attention is drawn to the sound nature of creation process. This logic, used in explaining the creation of the world according to the logos/word (tropology), assumes that, at the basis of the speech act, there is no the word as a unit of speech, but the sound itself – the sound, which was considered initially equivocal (ambiguous). In the process of pronounciation, the sound could turn into its opposite and could change the meaning of speech if the context has been changed. Dante expressed the meaning of tropology in practice. Mandelstam wrote that he had chosen Dante for the conversation (between poet and poet) “because he is the greatest and indisputable master of reversible and reversing poetic substance.” Mandelstam saw Dante as the Descartes of metaphor.

On the Psychology of the Crusades

1906 ◽  
Vol 52 (219) ◽  
pp. 745-755
Author(s):  
William W. Ireland
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Human Mind ◽  
The World ◽  
Common Nature ◽  
The Middle Ages

Although the world will never again see anything like the great crusades of the middle ages, these events may be traced to causes which, though now of less force, still influence the human mind, appealing to the simplest and deepest cravings of our common nature.

Protestant Rivalry — Metaphysics and Rhetoric in Germany c. 1590–1620

1990 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
pp. 24-43 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kristian Jensen
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Modern Times ◽  
Early Modern Times ◽  
The Middle Ages

One of the most remarkable changes to take place at German Protestant universities during the last decade of the sixteenth century and the first twenty years of the seventeenth century was the return of metaphysics after more than halfa century of absence. University metaphysics has acquired a reputation for sterile aridity which was strengthened rather than diminished by its survival in early modern times, when such disciplines are supposed deservedly to have vanished with the end of the Middle Ages. Nevertheless, this survival has attracted some attention this century. For a long urne it was assumed that German Protestants needed a metaphysical defence against the intellectual vigour of the Jesuits. Lewalter has shown, however, that this was not the case.

scholarly journals Michel Seress’ Integumentum, or Why Ecology Lies (Also) Beyond Arguments

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 58-82
Author(s):  
Alexandru Matei ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Ecological Theory ◽  
Sacred Texts ◽  
Michel Serres ◽  
The World ◽  
The Middle Ages

During the Middle Ages, integumentum was a term widely used by “intellectuals” (Le Goff) in order to unfold the function of allegory: there is no story whose signification does not echo the sacred texts, and every sacred truth needs a story to bring it to life. Integumentum was a way to make this echo explicit: a sort of “poetical coat hiding a moral or philosophical truth” (John of Garland). We want to suggest that, while no one uses integumentum anymore in order to designate the rhetoric of modern and contemporary theoretical discourse, it is in ecological theory that we may rediscover its afterlives. Hence, integumentum is not only a form of telling truths, but a form of memory, as well. In this respect, Michel Serres may be considered the first “ecological” thinker, as he avoids abstract metalanguages as much as possible, relying instead on fictions and characters in his attempt to describe the world afresh. If integumentum resurfaces as the proper way of “ecologizing,” instead of modernizing (Latour), we would like to uncover, in Michel Serres’ works, the dialectic of subjects and objects.

scholarly journals Vernacular Translation as Enarratio Poetarum: Cædmon's “Hymn of Creation”

2014 ◽  
Vol 26 (31) ◽  
pp. 230-238
Author(s):  
Greta Kaušikaitė ◽  
Tatyana Solomonik-Pankrašova
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Latin Literature ◽  
Human Language ◽  
Work Of Art ◽  
Constituent Part ◽  
The World ◽  
The Gift ◽  
Book Of Genesis ◽  
The Middle Ages

In the Middle Ages, interpreter was thought to be a poet, skilled in the art of composition; and an exegete, able to turn the enigmatic mode of the Scriptures into the human language. Medieval translation appertained to a hermeneutical performance, with the ‘modus inveniendi’ as its constituent part. This article aims at revealing the enigmatic mode of medieval translation in Cædmon’s ‘Hymn of Creation’. Cædmon, an unenlightened cowherd, miraculously acquired the gift to recite a Christian Song, which rendered the world ‘as a Dive work of Art’. Cædmon is re–creating the original texts by imposing his ‘enarratio poetarum’ upon the Story of Creation as manifest in the ‘Book of Genesis’, the Latin ‘Vulgate’. The novelty of the research lies in deciphering the ‘enarratio poetarum’ in Cædmon’s ‘Hymn of Creation’ as a transformation from rhetorical poetics to hermeneutics, from the ‘modus inveniendi’ to the ‘modus interpretandi’, so that the Cædmonian ‘artes poetriae’ becomes inseparable from exegesis. Most previous research1 focused on the poetic vocabulary, viz., the fusion of heroic Germanic idiom and Christian lore in the context of Anglo–Latin literature. Cædmon rendered the thirty one line of Genesis, the Act of Creation, into the nine–line ‘Hymn of Creation’, which embraces not only the Act of Creation, but adores the Creator by giving Him a variety of poetic names. By re–creating the text of the Scriptures Cædmon is becoming the ‘fidus interpres’ in the sense of faithful exegete.

The Japanese Village in the Seventeenth Century

1952 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-20
Author(s):  
Thomas C. Smith
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
The Body ◽  
Social Classes ◽  
Vital Function ◽  
The West ◽  
Social Body ◽  
The Social ◽  
Physical Barriers ◽  
The Middle Ages

As in the Middle Ages in the West, so in Tokugawa Japan (1600–1868) men were fond of explaining the hierarchical society in which they lived by comparing it to an organism. Social classes, Confucian scholars said, were like parts of the body: each had a vital function to perform, but their functions were essentially different and unequal in value. In this scheme the peasants were second in importance only to the ruling military class. Just as the samurai officials were the brains that guided other organs, so the peasants were the feet that held the social body erect. They were the “basis of the country,” the valued producers whose labor sustained all else. But, as a class, they tended innately to backsliding and extravagance. Left alone they would consume more than their share of the social income, ape the manners and tastes of their betters, and even encroach upon the functions of other classes to the perilous neglect of their own. Only the lash of necessity and the sharp eye of the official could hold them to their disagreeable role. They had to be bound to the land; social distinctions had to be thrown up around them like so many physical barriers; and, to remove all temptation to indolence and luxury, they had to be left only enough of what they produced to let them continue producing.

Stages of the formation of the Islamic concept of international law in the medieval and modern time

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marina Okladnaya ◽  
Olena Hurenko
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Significant Influence ◽  
Main Body ◽  
Traditional Values ◽  
Legal Norms ◽  
The World ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Middle Ages

Problem setting. Islamic international law is a set of Islamic norms and customs that govern the relationship of Muslim States and Muslims with non-Muslim States, as well as with Muslim individuals within and outside the world of Islam. Islam has come a long and difficult way from the emergence of religion in modern ideology. It is considered one of the leading religions of the world and has a significant influence on a large number of people and states, so it is advisable to study one of the outstanding stages of the formation of the Islamic system in the field of international law, namely the Middle Ages and find out its connection with modernity. Analysis of recent researches and publications. The Islamic science of international law is in the process of development, during which its representatives try to combine the traditional values of Islam with the basic principles of modern international law. Among the scientists who made a significant contribution to the study of the Islamic concept of international law, its historical development and the modern situation, one can distinguish such as A. Butkevich, L. Sukiyainen, Al-Shaybani, Muhammad ibn al-Hasan, V. Knapp, M. Sana, Sardar Ali S., Hilmli M. Zavati, A. Merezhko, B. Feldman and others. Target of research. Study of the Islamic concept of international law, analysis and comparison of content, significance of Islamic international law in the Middle Ages and modern times. Article’s main body. The article is devoted to the main stages of the formation of one of the most important systems of international law – Islamic, which is a collection of unique traditional values, legal norms and customs of Islam. The stages of development in the Middle Ages and the connection with modernity were investigated, the main features in the Middle Ages were determined. Conclusions and prospects for the development. Islamic international law is a set of Islamic norms and customs that govern the relationship of Muslim States and Muslims with non-Muslim States, as well as with Muslim individuals within and outside the world of Islam. Islam has come a long and difficult way from the emergence of religion in modern ideology. It is considered one of the leading religions of the world and has a significant influence on a large number of people and states, so it is advisable to study one of the outstanding stages of the formation of the Islamic system in the field of international law, namely the Middle Ages and find out its connection with modernity.

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