Contexts

2020 ◽  
pp. 22-29
Author(s):  
Michael Moriarty
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Religious Thought ◽  
Social Milieu ◽  
New Science ◽  
Port Royal

This chapter gives a brief account of Pascal’s life and of the scientific and religious contexts of his work. It discusses his social milieu, with its characteristic ethos, and points to the importance of the civil war known as the Fronde for his thinking about politics. It describes his scientific formation and his rejection of Aristotelian orthodoxy in favour of the new science propounded by Descartes. Pascal’s religious thought was deeply influenced by the Augustinian theology of Cornelius Jansenius, the development of which is placed in its historical context and the key tenets of which are summarized here. A brief history is given of the Jansenist movement in France, centred on the nunnery at Port-Royal and on the community that grew around it.

Hobbes's Political Philosophy

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
A.P. Martinich
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Laws Of Nature ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Prima Facie ◽  
Literal Meaning ◽  
Christian Doctrine ◽  
New Science ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Apparent Conflict

Hobbes’s Political Philosophy: Interpretation and Interpretations extends a position first explained in The Two Gods of Leviathan (1992). Hobbes presented what he believed would be a science of politics, a set of timeless truths grounded in definitions. In chapters on the laws of nature, authorization and representation, sovereignty by acquisition, and others, the author explains this science of politics. In addition to the timeless science, Hobbes had two timebound projects: (1) to eliminate the apparent conflict between the new science of Copernicus and Galileo and traditional Christian doctrine, and (2) to show that Christianity, correctly understood, is not politically destabilizing. The strategy for accomplishing (1) was to distinguish science from religion and to understand Christianity as essentially belief in the literal meaning of the Bible. The strategy for accomplishing (2) was to appeal to biblical teachings such as “Servants, obey your masters,” and “All authority comes from God.” Criticisms of the author’s interpretations are the occasion for (a) fleshing out Hobbes’s historical context and (b) describing the nature of interpretation in dialogue with opposing interpretations by scholars such as Jeffrey Collins, Edwin Curley, John Deigh, and Quentin Skinner. Interpretation is updating one’s network of beliefs in order to re-establish an equilibrium upset by a text. Interpretations may be judged according to prima facie properties of good interpretations such as completeness, consistency, simplicity, generality, palpability, and defensibility.

THE DAWN OF OTTOMAN POPULAR POLITICAL ECONOMY: THE TURKISH TRANSLATIONS OF OTTO HÜBNER’S DER KLEINE VOLKSWIRTH

2019 ◽  
Vol 41 (03) ◽  
pp. 351-367
Author(s):  
Deniz T. Kilinçoğlu
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Exceptional Case ◽  
Economic Literature ◽  
New Science ◽  
State Administration ◽  
The Masses ◽  
And Behavior ◽  
Comparative Examination

Otto Hübner’s (1818–1877) international bestseller introduction to political economy, Der kleine Volkswirth, appeared in Turkish in 1869 in two different editions. Two Ottoman officials translated the book into Turkish with different linguistic styles and pedagogical objectives. Beyond being an exceptional case in Ottoman-Turkish economic literature in this respect, the Hübner translations heralded the dawn of popular political economy in the Ottoman Empire. Economic literature before 1869 consisted of works written exclusively for the elite to introduce this new science as an instrument of state administration. Starting with the Hübner translations, we observe the burgeoning of a popular economic literature in the empire aiming at changing the economic mentality and behavior of the masses. This study is a comparative examination of the two Ottoman-Turkish translations of Der kleine Volkswirth in historical context.

TESTING BOUNDARIES: DIVINATION AND PROPHECY IN LUCAN

2015 ◽  
Vol 62 (2) ◽  
pp. 177-188
Author(s):  
Federico Santangelo
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Master Narrative ◽  
Intellectual Culture

Lucan's Bellum Ciuile dates from the Neronian period and is strongly rooted in that historical context, but, as is well known, it offers plenty of food for thought to the student of late Republican religion and intellectual culture. The reading of the Civil War that it puts forward has major implications for our understanding of the ancient interpretations of that period. This is fully in keeping with the ambitions of Lucan himself, who set out to impose his work as a pervasive master-narrative of the late Republican age. The aim of this article is to pursue a narrow but important and often under-explored angle, and to assess the role of divination, especially of the prophetic kind, in the poem.

FROM REVOLUTIONARIES TO MUSLIMS: LIMINAL BECOMINGS ACROSS PALESTINIAN GENERATIONS IN DENMARK

2016 ◽  
Vol 48 (1) ◽  
pp. 67-86 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anja Kublitz
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Lebanese Civil War ◽  
Generational Changes ◽  
Secular Politics ◽  
The Revolution

AbstractExploring generational changes and continuities among Palestinian families in Denmark, this article investigates why the children of thefidāᵓīn(fighters) and many of thefidāᵓīnthemselves have turned their backs on secular politics and embraced Islam. The Palestinians who arrived in Denmark from Lebanon in the wake of the Lebanese Civil War were members of the Palestinian Liberation Organization and were known as the generation of the revolution (jīl al-thawra). Extending Karl Mannheim's approach to generations, I argue that in order to explain the transition among Palestinians in Denmark from revolutionaries to Muslims we can rely on neither genealogy nor historical context alone, but need to pay equal attention to the structural continuities that crosscut generations. I suggest that rather than conceive of revolutionaries and Muslims as oppositions, we should think of them as substitutions, as liminal becomings that are actualized across historical generations.

THE LIMITS OF POSSIBILITY IN ENGLAND'S LONG REFORMATION

2010 ◽  
Vol 53 (4) ◽  
pp. 1049-1070
Author(s):  
LUCY BATES
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
English Reformation ◽  
Central Theme ◽  
Continuity And Change ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
The Status ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship

ABSTRACTInterpretations that solely emphasize either continuity or controversy are found wanting. Historians still question how the English became Protestant, what sort of Protestants they were, and why a civil war dominated by religion occurred over a hundred years after the initial Reformation crisis. They utilize many approaches: from above and below, and with fresh perspectives, from within and without. Yet the precise nature of the relationship of the Reformation, the civil war, the interregnum and the Restoration settlement remains controversial. This review of recent Reformation historiography largely validates the current consensus of a balance of continuity and change, pressure for further reform and begrudging conformity. Yet ultimately it argues that continuity must form the foundation for any interpretation of the Reformation, for controversial or dramatic alterations to the status quo only made sense to contemporaries in the context of what had come before. Challenging ideas, like challenging individuals, did not exist in a vacuum devoid of historical context. The practical limits of possibility, constrained largely by the established norms and procedures, shaped the course of English Reformation. As such, practicality seems a unifying and central theme for current and future investigations of England's long Reformation.

scholarly journals THREE LIVES OF NIKOLAY AGAFONOV: TRANSFORMATION OF IDENTITY IN THE AGE OF WAR AND REVOLUTION

2020 ◽  
Vol 69 (4) ◽  
pp. 109-117
Author(s):  
Alexander I. Kazankov ◽  
◽  
Oleg L. Lejbovich ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Life Story ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Transformation Process ◽  
Collective Farm ◽  
Social Democrat ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Farm System ◽  
The Relationship

The article reconstructs N. P. Agafonov’s life story. It aims at determining the relationship between the individual and the social in a person’s biographical trajectory, analyzing ego-transformation process in a specific historical context. The research methodology involves the use of autobiographical narrative, formed in the process of investigative actions, carried out by the organs of OGPU–NKVD in 1929 and 1937. N. P. Agafonov’s fate is of special interest for historians because during a third of a century he changed his identity three times: at the beginning of the century N. P. Agafonov realized himself as a social democrat, an active participant of the revolutionary underground in St. Petersburg and Perm in 1905–1907. After its defeat, he chose a musical and dramatic career. During the Civil War, he got a haircut as a monk. In the pre-Soviet era, Agafonov behaves like a conformist, whose inner evolution is congenial to the changes taking place in the social circle of democratic youth. The turbulent nature of the events of the Civil War does not allow him to make an artistically reasonable and socially conditioned choice. During the Soviet regime he denounced the collective farm system as a hieromonk, called on parishioners to be strong in faith and expressed hope for the return of the good old times, for which he was subjected to repression by the punitive authorities.

scholarly journals Book Review: The Gilded Age and Progressive Era: A Historical Exploration of Literature

2016 ◽  
Vol 56 (1) ◽  
pp. 59
Author(s):  
Jennifer A. Bartlett
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Progressive Era ◽  
Gilded Age ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Chicano Movement ◽  
Jazz Age ◽  
Literary Works ◽  
Time Period ◽  
Civil War Era

One of the latest volumes in ABC-CLIO/Greenwood’s “Historical Explorations of Literature” series, The Gilded Age and Progressive Era is a useful and interesting introduction to framing key literary works of this time period in their historical context. Each volume in the series presents a discussion of four or five representative works of a historical era, such as the Harlem Renaissance, the Chicano Movement, the Jazz Age, and the Civil War Era.

English Roots and French Connections: The English Benedictine Nuns in Paris

2013 ◽  
Vol 31 (4) ◽  
pp. 535-547 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. T. Rhodes
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Community Life ◽  
Port Royal

Political and economic circumstances in Europe and the Civil War (1642–1660) in England so reduced the funds of the English Benedictine nuns of Cambrai that they were unable to provide for the community. Against sound advice they went ahead with a filiation in Paris in 1651. Thanks to the contacts of Dame Clementia Cary and their chaplain, Dom Serenus Cressy, community life began in rented accommodation in 1652. They moved six times before being enabled to purchase their own property in 1664. This was made possible by the messieurs of Port Royal with whom the community continued to have close ties, although they never seem to have been tainted with Jansenism. Novices were always recruited from England and their dowries and associated gifts and bequests were essential, but the survival of several account books reveals the extent and variety of the support the community enjoyed in Paris.

The Search for the Absolute

Janus Head ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 85-96
Author(s):  
Owen Anderson ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Alternative Pathway ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Analytic Philosophy ◽  
Rudolf Carnap ◽  
New Science ◽  
The Absolute ◽  
Answering Questions

Contemporary Analytic Philosophy finds itself within a historical context, answering questions that have been handed to it by earlier philosophers. Specifically contemporary Analytic Philosophy finds itself responding to the Idealists of the nineteenth century in the hope of justifying the "new science" that seems to give us so many practical benefits. In doing this, questions arise as to how contemporary Analytic Philosophy will answer the problems that Idealists struggled with. In thefollowing, a brief overview of the Idealist enterprise will be contrasted with two contemporary Analytic Philosophers, namely Rudolf Carnap and W.V. Quine, in order to understand how the latter two deal with the philosophical problems handed to them by their tradition. Specifically, the question of universals and their relation to the absolute, and the assumption behind this concerning intuition are going to be investigated. This article will argue that the Idealist tradition raised important questions that Carnap and Quine were not able to answer. It will critique Carnap and Quine as failing to find the universal required for thought and propose an alternative pathway to finding the solution.

Interrelated and Correlated

2019 ◽  
pp. 227-244
Author(s):  
Steven J. Osterlind
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Standard Deviation ◽  
Philosophy Of Science ◽  
Contingency Table ◽  
Goodness Of Fit ◽  
Industrial Revolution ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Scientific Research ◽  
State's Rights ◽  
Tremendous Impact

This chapter describes quantifying events in America and their historical context. The cotton gin is invented and has tremendous impact on the country, bringing sentiments of taxation and slavery to the fore, for state’s rights. Events leading to the American Civil War are described, as are other circumstances leading to the Industrial Revolution, first in England and then moving to America. Karl Pearson is introduced with description of his The Grammar of Science, as well as his approach to scholarship as first defining a philosophy of science, which has dominated much of scientific research from the time of the book’s publication to today. Pearson’s invention of the coefficient of correlation is described, and his other contributions to statistics are mentioned: standard deviation, skewness, kurtosis, and goodness of fit, as well as his formal introduction of the contingency table.

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