Montaigne

Author(s):  
Zachary Sayre Schiffman

This article shows how Montaigne’s Essays can clarify the problem of historical periodization by demonstrating the differences between early modern, modern, and postmodern sensibilities. These terms have arisen in the wake of disputes over Jacob Burckhardt’s interpretation of the Renaissance, offering the appearance of a more value-free alternative to his period scheme. An examination of the Essays, however, reveals that these terms are not mere chronological markers but embody crucial, normative differences. In contrast to the modern sensibility that perceives selfhood as the product of historical and cultural context, Montaigne regarded it as reflected in, rather than shaped by, his context. This early modern tendency engendered in him a form of radical relativism akin to that of postmodernism, a form of relativism that appeals to twenty-first-century readers and that can provide a new orientation in a complex world.

Author(s):  
Emily Thomas

This Conclusion draws the study to a close, and recounts its developmental theses. The first thesis is that the complexity of positions on time (and space) defended in early modern thought is hugely under-appreciated. An enormous variety of positions were defended during this period, going far beyond the well-known absolutism–relationism debate. The second thesis is that during this period three distinct kinds of absolutism can be found in British philosophy: Morean, Gassendist, and Newtonian. The chapter concludes with a few notes on the impact of absolutism within and beyond philosophy: on twenty-first-century metaphysics of time; and on art, geology, and philosophical theology.


Author(s):  
Marcus Plested

The reception of Aquinas in the twentieth century must be understood in the context of the experience of political instability, exile, and Communist oppression that affected, in one way or another, virtually all the theology of the period. In this century, the anti-Westernism of the Russian Slavophiles reaches something of a peak, with Aquinas routinely held up as an archetypal representative of a theological tradition quite foreign to that of the Orthodox Church. That said, there are a number of examples of a more nuanced and less polemical approach to Aquinas that serve to provide hope for a less confrontational (if still duly critical) engagement with Aquinas within Orthodox theology in the twenty-first century. Such an engagement would, in fact, be not unlike that widely found in the Byzantine and early modern periods.


Author(s):  
Ulrike Strasser

The conclusion summarizes the main findings of this book’s exploration of the transgenerational and transregional Jesuit chain of influence in the early modern world. It stresses the simultaneously mimetic and individualistic manifestations of missionary masculinity and the role of media in reproducing it. While Jesuit masculinity left traces on societies around the world, the men and women whom the missionaries believed to have converted in turn also reformed European Catholicism. An epilogue takes the story to today’s US-controlled Guam where Chamorro Catholicism provides a site for anti-imperial critique and identity-formation, reflecting a process that began with the events narrated in this book. Notably, twenty-first-century Chamorro death customs still show vestiges of early modern matrilineal traditions and indigenous women’s agency.


2017 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
pp. 42-53
Author(s):  
Ariadna Ciążela

The aim of the paper is to describe and analyze the activities of Helen Ukpabio, a Nigerian preacher, who operates in the Akwa Ibom state. She combines elements of Christianity with African traditions in order to induce the fear of witches in people. Her activities bring forth massive expulsions of the accused of witchcraft children from their homes and villages. The Nigerian’s actions have met with a protest of the humanitarian organizations defending human rights. The article attempts to analyze the phenomenon in the social and cultural context, as well as to reflect on it from the perspective of universal humanistic values.


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