How Did Spinoza Declare War on Theology and Theologians?

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Israel
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Science And Religion ◽  
The Political ◽  
Critical Approach ◽  
Early Modern History ◽  
Authorial Intention ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Reason And Faith ◽  
State Of Affairs ◽  
Supernatural Agency

Israel argues that Spinoza’s biblical criticism revolutionized the discipline by combining a historical-critical approach with a philosophical demonstration. It eradicated supernatural agency and miracles from the historical process. Spinoza’s new hermeneutics scrupulously distinguished authorial intention from truth of fact. Taken together with his philosophical naturalism, this challenged the essential reconcilability of reason and faith, of science and religion, which was to become the groundwork of the edifice of the Enlightenment erected by Locke, Newton, Leibniz, and Wolff. Thus Spinozism undermined the claim that theology, science, and philosophy form a single harmonious whole. Standard accounts of the Enlightenment and early modern history fail to grasp the full scope of Spinoza’s critique of religion. Ironically, Spinozism became the intellectual origin of a revolutionary consciousness that threatened the political and religious state of affairs because it was publicized and reinforced by apologetic eighteenth-century observers, who excoriated Spinoza’s legacy.

scholarly journals Defining 'Movement' in Global History: The Early Modern Iberian World in a Global Frame (16th-18th centuries)

2017 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 90-97
Author(s):  
Desiree Arbo ◽  
Desiree Arbo
Keyword(s):  
United Kingdom ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Spanish America ◽  
Global Perspective ◽  
Global History ◽  
Early Modern History ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
The University

On 9 June 2017, scholars from a range of disciplines across the United Kingdom and Spain met at the University of Warwick to discuss the ways in which taking a global perspective can enrich research on early modern Iberia and colonial Spanish America. Coming at a time when Spanish exceptionalism is being increasingly challenged but the Americas are still being side-lined in the writing of global history, the presenters addressed gaps in current historiography and challenged Eurocentric narratives of early modern history which have predominated since the Enlightenment. The final roundtable called for definition in the language of movement in global history and concluded that we need to rethink global history as a project that began in the sixteenth century with conceptions of an Iberian or Catholic globe, an orbe hispano.

scholarly journals Els orígens de l’Estudi General de Girona: uns començaments que es faran esperar

2020 ◽  
Vol 15 ◽  
pp. 165
Author(s):  
Xavier Torres
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Key Words ◽  
The Political ◽  
General View ◽  
Early Modern History ◽  
Secular Evolution ◽  
The Moment ◽  
Political Economic ◽  
The City

Resum: Els orígens i la trajectòria mateixa de l’Estudi General de Girona (1446-1717) són força mal coneguts encara, sobretot per unes mancances documentals que semblen de mal solucionar a curt i potser a llarg termini. En aquestes pàgines s’ofereix, doncs, una síntesi de l’evolució del vell Estudi gironí, tot remarcant el seus inicis més aviat tardans, a la segona meitat del segle xvi, és a dir, un segle després de l’obtenció del pertinent privilegi reial. Aquesta lenta arrencada de la universitat gironina es pot explicar per les vicissituds polítiques, econòmiques i religioses tant del període com de la ciutat de Girona. Paraules clau: Universitat, Girona, Època moderna, Estudis superiors Abstract: The origins and the secular evolution of the Estudi General de Girona are not yet well known because of a notorious lack of sources. Such a problem does not seem to have an easy solution in the short and even long term. Therefore, only a general view can be offered at the moment. Such a survey remarks the laborious beginnings of the old Girona university, a century after the perceptive royal permission was given. Besides, the long way of the Estudi is related to the political, economic and religious events of the period, as well as the city. Key words: University, Girona, Early Modern History, University studies

scholarly journals Early Modern Views on Language and Languages (ca. 1450–1800)

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Toon Van Hal
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Linguistic Diversity ◽  
Language Education ◽  
The Political ◽  
Central Theme ◽  
Port Royal ◽  
Missionary Zeal ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Modern Process ◽  
Philosophical Debates

The Early Modern interest taken in language was intense and versatile. In this period, language education gradually no longer centered solely on Latin. The linguistic scope widened considerably, partly as a result of scholarly curiosity, although religious and missionary zeal, commercial considerations, and political motives were also of decisive significance. Statesmen discovered the political power of standardized vernaculars in the typically Early Modern process of state formation. The widening of the linguistic horizon was, first and foremost, reflected in a steadily increasing production of grammars and dictionaries, along with pocket textbooks, conversational manuals, and spelling treatises. One strategy of coping with the stunning linguistic diversity consisted of first collecting data on as many languages as possible and then tracing elements that were common to all or to certain groups of languages. Language comparison was not limited to historical and genealogical endeavors, as scholars started also to compare a number of languages in terms of their alleged vices and qualities. Another way of dealing with the flood of linguistic data consisted of focusing on what the different languages had in common, which led to the development of general grammars, of which the 17th-century Port-Royal grammar is the most well-known. During the Enlightenment, the nature of language and its cognitive merits or vices became also a central theme in philosophical debates in which major thinkers were actively engaged.

Enlightenment

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Munck
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
Social Structures ◽  
The Political ◽  
Modern State ◽  
Ancien Regime ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Ancien Régime ◽  
The French Revolution

The Enlightenment, as a historical term, is intimately linked to the Ancien Régime: both describe historical constructs that once seemed more French than European, at least in origin, and although the term “Ancien Régime” acquired its meaning only in retrospect (from the perspective of 1790), both were originally used by historians to denote something which had come to an end by 1789. The Enlightenment was the intellectually innovative and emancipatory process which, depending on the definition of the Ancien Régime itself, either modernized the political and social structures of the early modern state, or helped to undermine it and to precipitate the upheaval of the French Revolution.

Conclusions

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Regina Grafe
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Historical Sociology ◽  
The Political ◽  
Cultural Relations ◽  
Modern History ◽  
Early Modern History ◽  
Political Debates ◽  
Nation States ◽  
Political Economic

This concluding chapter shows how it is impossible to ignore that the political, economic, social, linguistic, and cultural relations between center and periphery are to this day the single most important issue in Spain while they hardly appear in the political debates. The real issue is that important parts of the political economy and historical sociology that are used to trace the emergence of early modern European nation-states and nationally integrated markets becomes questionable in light of Spanish early modern history. The first casualty is the lopsided focus of political economy on the predatory state. The unfinished construction site of the creation of the Spanish early modern nation and market was that the state never became autonomous enough.

An Ottoman variation on the state of siege: The invention of theidare-i örfiyyeduring the first constitutional period

2016 ◽  
Vol 55 ◽  
pp. 5-28 ◽  
Author(s):  
Noémi Lévy-Aksu
Keyword(s):  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
The State ◽  
Legal Order ◽  
The Political ◽  
Legal Tradition ◽  
Critical Approach ◽  
Legal Texts ◽  
Archival Documents ◽  
State Of Affairs ◽  
Definition Of

AbstractThis paper focuses on a little-known aspect of the first constitutional period in the Ottoman Empire: the introduction ofidare-i örfiyye(an equivalent of the state of siege) into the Ottoman legal system. With a name rooted in the Ottoman legal tradition and a definition clearly inspired by the nineteenth-century French “état de siège,” theidare-i örfiyyewas a case of legal hybridization that combined the Ottoman political and legal tradition with transnational (or transimperial) legal circulation. This paper seeks to understand how and why different legal references were combined in order to make it possible, under exceptional circumstances, to suspend the ordinary legal order. At the same time, it analyzes the first application of theidare-i örfiyye, which occurred during the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–1878, to show how local and diplomatic reactions to this exceptional state of affairs were crucial for the further definition of the notion. Through a critical approach to legal texts and archival documents, the article discusses how various legal sources, the political context of the early Hamidian reign, and local experiences all shaped the notion ofidare-i örfiyye, soon transforming it into a tool of government for exceptional and (more frequently) non-exceptional times.

scholarly journals A Radical Historian's Pursuit of Rural History: The Political Career and Contribution of Reverend Dr. John Charles Cox, c. 1844 to 1919

Rural History ◽  
2008 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 81-103 ◽  
Author(s):  
ELIZABETH T. HURREN
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Public Service ◽  
Rural Life ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Rights ◽  
Early Modern History ◽  
Political Career ◽  
Rural History ◽  
History Of ◽  
Rural England

AbstractHow to Write the History of a Parish (1905) by John Charles Cox is a famous early modern history of the parish-state. Yet its author had an eclectic and radical political career in Midlands' life long before he became famous as an historian of English rural life. Today, Cox's radical activities are in fact an important historical prism. His neglected career demonstrates how a strong personality could bring about genuine political change in agricultural life. Cox always focused on the need to fight for the socio-economic and political rights of the labouring poor. At the same time, he was committed to historical research and record collecting, especially that of the vestry in which the poor found a voice. In so doing, he personifies how the boundaries between private interest and public service, the domestic and the political, were sometimes navigated with personal intensity in rural England during the later nineteenth century.

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