Introduction

Author(s):  
Floris Verhaart

This chapter introduces the debate on classical learning, as well as some of the key players in these debates, such as Jean Le Clerc (1657–1736), Pieter Burman (1668–1741), Richard Bentley (1662–1742), and Charles Rollin (1661–1741), against the background of the culture wars of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. The opposing approaches to Latin and Greek texts are discussed. On the one hand, we find a more text-critically oriented focus that was associated by contemporaries with scholars either operating in the United Provinces or in close contact with Dutch peers. The other approach was associated with French scholars and focused on the historical and moral content of texts. This opposition is helpful in understanding the culture wars at the turn of the eighteenth century as it guards us from simplifying the Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns to a straightforward clash between ‘old’ and ‘new’.

Author(s):  
Anh Q. Tran

The Introduction gives the background of the significance of translating and study of the text Errors of the Three Religions. The history of the development of Confucianism, Buddhism, and Daoism in Vietnam from their beginning until the eighteenth century is narrated. Particular attention is given to the different manners in which the Three Religions were taken up by nobles and literati, on the one hand, and commoners, on the other. The chapter also presents the pragmatic approach to religion taken by the Vietnamese, which was in part responsible for the receptivity of the Vietnamese to Christianity. The significance of the discovery of Errors and its impact on Vietnamese studies are also discussed.


Kant-Studien ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 112 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-22
Author(s):  
Laura Follesa

Abstract Kant’s Dreams of a Spirit-Seer (1766) did not provide the sole perspective through which Emanuel Swedenborg’s work was known in Germany in the eighteenth century. Before Kant, another German philosopher was interested in Swedenborg from a completely different perspective: Christian Wolff. On the one hand, this paper analyzes the meaning of Wolff’s anonymous reviews of Swedenborg’s early writings published in Acta Eruditorum, the authorship of which was only recently discovered, in order to show Swedenborg’s intertwinement with German scholars during the 1720s. On the other, I juxtapose Kant’s and Wolff’s evaluations of Swedenborg’s work at the origins of their different attitudes towards fundamental problems such as the nature of the soul and immortality.


2009 ◽  
Vol 19 ◽  
pp. 117-138 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. J. W. Evans

ABSTRACTIn the vibrant current debate about European empires and their ideologies, one basic dichotomy still tends to be overlooked: that between, on the one hand, the plurality of modern empires of colonisation, commerce and settlement; and, on the other, the traditional claim to single and undividedimperiumso long embodied in the Roman Empire and its successor, the Holy Roman Empire, or (First) Reich. This paper examines the tensions between the two, as manifested in the theory and practice of Habsburg imperial rule. The Habsburgs, emperors of the Reich almost continuously through its last centuries, sought to build their own power-base within and beyond it. The first half of the paper examines how by the eighteenth century their ‘Monarchy’, subsisting alongside the Reich, dealt with the associated legacy of empire. After the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806 the Habsburgs could pursue a free-standing Austrian ‘imperialism’, but it rested on an uneasy combination of old and new elements and was correspondingly vulnerable to challenge from abroad and censure at home. The second half of the article charts this aspect of Habsburg government through an age of international imperialism and its contribution to the collapse of the Dual Monarchy in 1918.


PMLA ◽  
1959 ◽  
Vol 74 (4-Part1) ◽  
pp. 356-364
Author(s):  
Virgil W. Topazio

With the emergence of philosophy in the nineteenth century as a separate discipline which stressed primarily questions insoluble by empirical or formal methods, Voltaire's reputation as a philosopher has gone into gradual eclipse. It has become unfashionable and degrading for philosophers to concern themselves with the practical aspects of philosophical enquiry. In eighteenth-century France, on the other hand, the identification of philosophy with science, which by twentieth-century standards had vitiated philosophical thought, produced the “philosophes” or natural philosophers who were on the whole more interested in human progress than in the progress of the human mind. And Voltaire was by popular consent the leader of this “philosophe” group, the one who had unquestionably contributed the most in the struggle to make man a happier and freer member of society. Yet, ironically, despite a lifelong effort in behalf of humanity, Voltaire's reputation as a destructive thinker has steadily grown even as the critics have pejoratively classified him as a “practical” rather than a “real” philosopher. Typical of this criticism of Voltaire is Macaulay's statement: “Voltaire could not build: he could only pull down: he was the very Vitruvius of ruin. He has bequeathed to us not a single doctrine to be called by his name, not a single addition to the stock of our positive knowledge.”


2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 383-400
Author(s):  
Jolanta Mędelska

The author analysed the language of the first Polish translation of the eighteenth-century poem “Metai” [The Seasons] by Kristijonas Donelaitis, a Lithuanian Lutheran pastor. The translation was made in 1933 by a socialist activist and close associate of Józef Piłsudski, Kazimierz Pietkiewicz. The analysis showed that the language of the translation is peculiar. On the one hand, this peculiarity consists in refraining from archaizing the translation and the use of elements that are close to the translator’s style of social-political journalism (e.g., dorobkiewicz [vulgarian], feministka [feminist]), on the other hand, the presence at all levels of language of peculiarities characteristic for Kresy Polish language in both its territorial variations. These are generally old features of common Polish, the retention of which in the eastern areas of the Polish Rzeczpospolita was supported by the influence of substrate languages, later also Russian, or by borrowing. This layer was natural in the language of the translator, born in Ukraine, who spent part of his life in Vilnius, some in exile in Russia. This is the colourful linguistic heritage of the former Republic of Poland.


PMLA ◽  
1966 ◽  
Vol 81 (5) ◽  
pp. 381-388
Author(s):  
William Park

But the Discovery [of when to laugh and when to cry] was reserved for this Age, and there are two Authors now living in this Metropolis, who have found out the Art, and both brother Biographers, the one of Tom Jones, and the other of Clarissa.author of Charlotte SummersRather than discuss the differences which separate Fielding and Richardson, I propose to survey the common ground which they share with each other and with other novelists of the 1740's and 50's. In other words I am suggesting that these two masters, their contemporaries, and followers have made use of the same materials and that as a result the English novels of the mid-eighteenth century may be regarded as a distinct historic version of a general type of literature. Most readers, it seems to me, do not make this distinction. They either think that the novel is always the same, or they believe that one particular group of novels, such as those written in the early twentieth century, is the form itself. In my opinion, however, we should think of the novel as we do of the drama. No one kind of drama, such as Elizabethan comedy or Restoration comedy, is the drama itself; instead, each is a particular manifestation of the general type. Each kind bears some relationship to the others, but at the same time each has its own identity, which we usually call its conventions. By conventions I mean not only stock characters, situations, and themes, but also notions and assumptions about the novel, human nature, society, and the cosmos itself. If we compare one kind of novel to another without first considering the conventions of each, we are likely to make the same mistake that Thomas Rymer did when he blamed Shakespeare for not conforming to the canons of classical French drama.


2016 ◽  
Vol 61 (S24) ◽  
pp. 93-114 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rossana Barragán Romano

AbstractLabour relations in the silver mines of Potosí are almost synonymous with the mita, a system of unfree work that lasted from the end of the sixteenth century until the beginning of the nineteenth century. However, behind this continuity there were important changes, but also other forms of work, both free and self-employed. The analysis here is focused on how the “polity” contributed to shape labour relations, especially from the end of the seventeenth century and throughout the eighteenth century. This article scrutinizes the labour policies of the Spanish monarchy on the one hand, which favoured certain economic sectors and regions to ensure revenue, and on the other the initiatives both of mine entrepreneurs and workers – unfree, free, and self-employed – who all contributed to changing the system of labour.


2018 ◽  
Vol 49 ◽  
pp. 1-14
Author(s):  
Franz A. J. Szabo

In his great 1848 historical drama,Ein Bruderzwist im Hause Habsburg, the Austrian playwright Franz Grillparzer has Emperor Matthias utter the words that have often been applied to understanding the whole history of the Habsburg monarchy:Das ist der Fluch von unserm edeln Haus:Auf halben Wegen und zu halber TatMit halben Mitteln zauderhaft zu streben.[That is the curse of our noble house:Striving hesitatingly on half waysto half action with half means.]True as those sentiments may be of many periods in the history of the monarchy, the one period of which it cannotbe said is the second half of eighteenth century. The age of Maria Theresa, Joseph II, and Leopold II was perhaps the greatest era of consistent and committed reform in the four-hundred-year history of the monarchy. What I want to address in this article are some aspects of the dynamic of this reform era, and this falls into two categories. On the one hand, there is the broad energizing or motive force behind the larger development, and on the other, there are the ideas or assumptions that lay behind the policies adopted. As might be evident from the subtitle of my article, I propose to look primarily at the second of these categories. I do so because I think while Habsburg historiography has reached considerable consensus on the first, it has not looked enough on the second as an explanatory hermeneutic.


2014 ◽  
Vol 45 ◽  
pp. 115-133 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christine Ottner

During the nineteenth century, history developed into an independent discipline with important cultural and intellectual functions in both the academic world, as well as in society at large. Specific circumstances contributed to the rise in importance of this discipline: On the one hand, the emergence of an educated bourgeoisie and rising nationalist movements influenced the study of history; whereas on the other hand, public demands for assurances of continuity, as well as conservative efforts for restoration, also played an important role in history's growth in importance. Historicism, which began to establish itself in late-eighteenth-century Germany, had its forerunners in research approaches that grew out of the late Enlightenment. Concepts of cultural science [Kulturwissenschaft] developed by scholars of the late Enlightenment paved the way for the rise of the historical discipline during the first half of the nineteenth century.


2020 ◽  
Vol 2020 (46) ◽  
pp. 40-54
Author(s):  
Siegfried Zielinski

In this article, the author examines the contrasting worldviews of specific philosophers, architects, and physicists in an attempt to identify a position that would represent a viable alternative to the concept of universalization. In the history of civilization, he asserts, almost all wars have been of a territorial nature. Territories tend toward uniformity and universalization. He contrasts this worldview with reflections on oceanic thinking, which perceives bodies of water such as the Mediterranean as mediators between continents as well as between opposing worldviews, connecting and dividing at the same time. The sea, however, does not connect in order to homogenize but rather creates distance as an important prerequisite for true communication, thus linking multiplicity in all its variety as a viable alternative to universalism. The author moves on to scrutinize the cosmopolitan attitude as a paradox that on the one hand is oriented to the particular individual and on the other hand to an imaginary world community, that is, the universal. Taking this notion further to consider today’s world that is saturated with the imaginary and symbolic power of the Internet, the author proposes that cosmopolitanism could be understood as an adequate expression for the technologically advanced world community by its capability to strike a balance between the individual and the world as a whole, on one side, and synthetic identity generated by culture and technology, on the other. Nevertheless, deviating from all of these worldviews, the author concludes with a short reflection, inspired by two films, on an alternative to cosmopolitanism that he calls cosmoethics, which employs ethics as the guiding principle of thought and action and commits to a practice that stays in close contact not only with real but also with diverse realities.


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