J. G. A. Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emily Nacol
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
American Revolution ◽  
Political Discourses ◽  
History Of ◽  
Anglo American ◽  
History Of Political Economy ◽  
History Of Finance ◽  
Scholarly Attention

In The Machiavellian Moment, J. G. A. Pocock shows how Niccolò Machiavelli and other Florentine political thinkers adapted Aristotelian and Polybian insights to create a paradigm of republican political thought that was sensitive to the problem of stabilizing civic virtue against inevitable political decay in time. This republican paradigm, he famously insists, traveled to eighteenth-century Anglo-American contexts via the work of James Harrington and helped political thinkers make sense of two seemingly disparate events—the rise of finance in Britain and the American Revolution—in civic republican terms. Pocock’s insistence that The Machiavellian Moment is a work of history does not negate its contributions to political theory. First, it is a significant text for political theorists who attend to the role of language and discourse in political thinking, although the Pocockian approach bears limitations worth acknowledging. Second, Pocock’s work is critical to the republican revival in contemporary political theory, because he centers and defends Florentine and Anglo-American republicanisms as political discourses worthy of scholarly attention. Lastly, The Machiavellian Moment appears, in hindsight, as a foundational text for scholarship in the history of political economy, particularly the pre-history of finance and credit.

A Loyalist Who Loved His Country too Much: Thomas Hutchinson, Historian of Colonial Massachusetts

2017 ◽  
Vol 90 (3) ◽  
pp. 344-384
Author(s):  
Liam Riordan
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
American Revolution ◽  
American Culture ◽  
History Of The Book ◽  
Massachusetts Bay ◽  
British Atlantic ◽  
Colonial Society ◽  
History Of ◽  
Anglo American ◽  
British Atlantic World

A history of the book approach to Thomas Hutchinson's History of Massachusetts Bay (published 1764-1828) recovers his commitment to preserve facts and his place in eighteenth-century historiography. Hutchinson's vilification by patriots still obscures our understanding of his loyalism. The article reassesses late colonial society, the American Revolution, and Anglo-American culture in the British Atlantic World.

Tom Jones

2008 ◽  
Author(s):  
Henry Fielding
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Fourth Edition ◽  
Tom Jones ◽  
History Of

Fielding's comic masterpiece of 1749 was immediately attacked as `A motley history of bastardism, fornication, and adultery'. Indeed, his populous novel overflows with a marvellous assortment of prudes, whores, libertines, bumpkins, misanthropes, hypocrites, scoundrels, virgins, and all too fallible humanitarians. At the centre of one of the most ingenious plots in English fiction stands a hero whose actions were, in 1749, as shocking as they are funny today. Expelled from Mr Allworthy's country estate for his wild temper and sexual conquests, the good-hearted foundling Tom Jones loses his money, joins the army, and pursues his beloved across Britain to London, where he becomes a kept lover and confronts the possibility of incest. Tom Jones is rightly regarded as Fielding's greatest work, and one of the first and most influential of English novels. This carefully modernized edition is based on Fielding's emended fourth edition text and offers the most thorough notes, maps, and bibliography. The introduction uses the latest scholarship to examine how Tom Jones exemplifies the role of the novel in the emerging eighteenth-century public sphere.

The Role of the Representative: Some Empirical Observations on the Theory of Edmund Burke

1959 ◽  
Vol 53 (3) ◽  
pp. 742-756 ◽  
Author(s):  
Heinz Eulau ◽  
John C. Wahlke ◽  
William Buchanan ◽  
Leroy C. Ferguson
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Empirical Research ◽  
Body Politic ◽  
Whole Body ◽  
Edmund Burke ◽  
Political Systems ◽  
General Consensus ◽  
History Of

The problem of representation is central to all discussions of the functions of legislatures or the behavior of legislators. For it is commonly taken for granted that, in democratic political systems, legislatures are both legitimate and authoritative decision-making institutions, and that it is their representative character which makes them authoritative and legitimate. Through the process of representation, presumably, legislatures are empowered to act for the whole body politic and are legitimized. And because, by virtue of representation, they participate in legislation, the represented accept legislative decisions as authoritative. But agreement about the meaning of the term “representation” hardly goes beyond a general consensus regarding the context within which it is appropriately used. The history of political theory is studded with definitions of representation, usually embedded in ideological assumptions and postulates which cannot serve the uses of empirical research without conceptual clarification.

Geopolitics of Comparison: World Literature Avant la Lettre

2021 ◽  
Vol 73 (3) ◽  
pp. 255-269
Author(s):  
Waïl S. Hassan
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Comparative Literature ◽  
World Literature ◽  
Medieval Period ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
History Of

Abstract According to a well-known narrative, the concept of Weltliteratur and its academic correlative, the discipline of comparative literature, originated in Germany and France in the early nineteenth century, influenced by the spread of scientism and nationalism. But there is another genesis story that begins in the late eighteenth century in Spain and Italy, countries with histories entangled with the Arab presence in Europe during the medieval period. Emphasizing the role of Arabic in the formation of European literatures, Juan Andrés wrote the first comparative history of “all literature,” before the concepts of Weltliteratur and comparative literature gained currency. The divergence of the two genesis stories is the result of competing geopolitical interests, which determine which literatures enter into the sphere of comparison, on what terms, within which paradigms, and under what ideological and discursive conditions.

A ‘milky mass’ and ‘uniform material’: white marble in eighteenth-century French discourses on sculpture and geology

2021 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 215-225
Author(s):  
Marthe Kretzschmar
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Grain Size ◽  
Denis Diderot ◽  
Art Theory ◽  
White Marble ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
The Earth ◽  
History Of ◽  
Interdisciplinary Network

Knowledge of the materiality of stone during the Enlightenment expanded following the exploration of mineralogical structure, to alter ideas about taxonomy and challenge the role of rocks in the history of the earth. Close studies of the material of marble sculpture generated expertise on grain size, surface varieties and stone deposits. This mode of reception became intertwined with contemporary controversies about the age of the earth. This article focuses on both French sculpture and geological discourses of the eighteenth century to reveal an international and interdisciplinary network centring on protagonists such as Denis Diderot, Paul-Henri Thiry d’Holbach and Étienne-Maurice Falconet; through these figures, debates can be connected concerning both geology and art theory. Within these contexts, the article discusses the translation processes between these artistic and geological interests.

Negligence

2019 ◽  
pp. 427-450
Author(s):  
John Baker
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
General Principle ◽  
Duty Of Care ◽  
Reasonable Care ◽  
History Of

This chapter traces the history of negligence in tort. The role of fault in the action of trespass vi et armis is somewhat speculative, since the relevant facts were hidden from courts by the plea of Not Guilty. But the concept of inevitable accident seems to be predicated on negligence. Negligence is more visible in actions on the case, though the earliest examples were contractual in essence. The first signs of a distinct tort of negligence, where there was no contract or custom imposing liability, appear in the seventeenth century, and in the next century there emerges a general principle that everyone must take reasonable care not to injure his neighbour. The duty of care was gradually enlarged between the eighteenth century and the present, especially with the removal of obstacles connected with the principle volenti non fit injuria and with the old notion that trespass would not lie for words.

TIM EPKENHANS, Die iranische Moderne im Exil: Bibliographie der Zeitschrift Kave, Berlin 1916–1922, Islamwissenschaftliche Quellen und Texte aus deutschen Bibliotheken (Berlin: Klaus Schwarz, 2000). Pp. 216.

2002 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 149-150
Author(s):  
Kamran Arjomand
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual History ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Doctoral Dissertation ◽  
Early 20Th Century ◽  
Academic Interest ◽  
Intellectual Community ◽  
History Of ◽  
Scholarly Attention

Intellectual history of modernism in Iran has proved to be a subject of lively academic interest. The role of Iranian exiles in late 19th and early 20th century, in particular, has drawn considerable scholarly attention. In recent years, the Iranian press in exile has also become a focus of academic scrutiny. In Germany, Anja Pistor-Hatam has studied the Iranian intellectual community in Istanbul around the newspaper Akhtar (Nachrichtenblatt, Informationsbörse und Diskussionsforum: Ahtar-e Estānbūl (1876–1896)—Anstöße zur frühen persischen Moderne [Münster, 1999]) and Keivandokht Ghahari's doctoral dissertation is concerned with ideas of nationalism and modernism among Iranian intellectuals in Berlin as reflected in the journals Kâveh, Iranshahr, and Ayandeh (Nationalismus und Modernismus in Iran in der Periode zwischen dem Zerfall der Qāğāren-Dynastie und der Machtfestigung Reżā Schah [Berlin, 2001]). In this context, the bibliography of Kâveh is thus a welcomed contribution.

The Conditions in Jewish Society in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the Middle Decades of the Eighteenth Century

1996 ◽  
pp. 45-50
Author(s):  
Gershon David Hundert
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Social History ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Generational Conflict ◽  
East European ◽  
Explanatory Factors ◽  
Jewish Society ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of

This chapter investigates the conditions in Jewish society in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth in the middle decades of the eighteenth century. The place of hasidism in the religious history of the eighteenth century ought to be reconsidered not only in light of the questions about the schismatic groups in the Orthodox Church raised by Ysander, but also in light of the general revivalist currents in western Europe. The social historian cannot explain hasidism, which belongs to the context of the development of the east European religious mentality in the eighteenth century. Social history does, however, point to some significant questions that ought to be explored further. One of these is the role of youth and generational conflict in the beginnings of the movement, and not only in its beginnings. A realistic recovery of the situation of the Polish-Lithuanian Jewry in the eighteenth century shows that neither the economic nor the security conditions were such as to warrant their use as causal or explanatory factors in the rise and reception of hasidism.

The Poles as an Integrating and Disintegrating Factor

1967 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 287-313 ◽  
Author(s):  
Henryk Wereszycki
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Political Life ◽  
The Political ◽  
Habsburg Monarchy ◽  
Political Transformations ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of

The question of whether the Poles were an integrating or a disintegrating factor within the Habsburg monarchy has yet to be fully studied by Polish historians. Up to now they have concerned themselves mainly with the part played by the Austrian empire in the history of the Polish nation after the eighteenth century partitions and have overlooked the role of the Poles in the Austrian empire. They have concentrated their attention on the fate of the territories of the historic Polish state which fell under Habsburg rule and have studied the social, cultural, and political transformations which affected Galicia during the century and a half of Austrian domination. Polish historians have even studied the contributions made by former Habsburg subjects to the reconstruction of the Polish state after the dissolution of the monarchy, but they have rarely discussed the part which the Poles took in the political life of the multinational empire.

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