Faith and Reason

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Russell Re Manning
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Final Section ◽  
Composite Model ◽  
Turn Of The Century ◽  
The Self ◽  
Century Model ◽  
Faith And Reason ◽  
Clear Cut ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Late Eighteenth

This chapter sets out the late eighteenth-century background to the emergence of ‘faith and reason’ as a composite pair, framed by the apparent Kantian disjunction between faith and reason. The author shows first that Kant’s denial of knowledge is far from a clear-cut statement of an either/or contrast of faith and reason, and, second, that it is the characteristically Kantian gesture of ‘making room’ that sets the agenda. The second section traces the relation of faith and reason as a dyadic pair in Schleiermacher, Hegel, Kierkegaard, and Nietzsche. A final section considers the legacy of the nineteenth-century model, notably the extent to which it provided the groundwork for the self-perception of the generation who came of age at the turn of the century that theirs was a time of crisis in which the composite model of ‘faith and reason’ split open into the distinctively twentieth-century model of ‘faith or reason’.

scholarly journals Johann Georg Zimmermann’s Therapeutics of Solitude in the German Enlightenment

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 259-278
Author(s):  
Andreas Rydberg
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
The Self ◽  
Passive State ◽  
Rural Life ◽  
German Enlightenment ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
State Of Rest ◽  
Unique Individual

Abstract This essay charts the German eighteenth-century physician and writer Johann Georg Zimmermann’s monumental work on solitude. The essay draws on but also challenges recent historiography on two counts. First, it situates Zimmermann’s discourse on solitude in the context of the early modern cultura animi tradition, in which philosophy provided a cure for a soul perceived as diseased and perturbed by passion and desire. Placed in this context, solitude comes into view not primarily as a passive state of rest and tranquillity connected to the rural life, but as active, therapeutic and exercise-oriented work on the self. Second, it argues that Zimmermann also shaped his discourse in relation to the increasingly radical late eighteenth-century exploration of subjectivity and selfhood, an exploration that reflects the emergence of the modern conception of the unique individual and autonomous self.

The Romanesca as a Spiritual Sign in the Operas of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven

2020 ◽  
pp. 163-192
Author(s):  
Olga Sánchez-Kisielewska
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Final Section ◽  
Musical Structure ◽  
Spiritual Dimension ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter explores the role of a musical pattern, the Romanesca schema, as a signifier of spiritual meanings in opera. It addresses the relationship between the Romanesca and the hymn topic and argues that the schema, semantically empty in its origins, acquired in the late eighteenth century connotations of ceremony, solemnity, alterity, and even transcendence. Several vignettes from operas by Haydn and Mozart illustrate how composers deployed the pattern in scenes depicting worship, prayers, and ritual actions. Beethoven’s Fidelio occupies the final section, a case study that shows the Romanesca interacting with other elements of the musical structure for expressive purposes. The chapter provides a novel interpretation of certain moments of the opera, suggesting that Beethoven relied on the sacred implications of the Romanesca—arguably available to historical listeners—to intensify the spiritual dimension of the drama.

Theorizing Adaptation

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kamilla Elliott
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Final Section ◽  
Adaptation Studies ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Relationship

Asking why adaptation has been seen as more problematic to theorize than other humanities subjects, and why it has been more theoretically problematic in the humanities than in the sciences and social sciences, Theorizing Adaptation seeks to both explicate and redress “the problem of theorizing adaptation” through a metacritical history of theorizing adaptation from the late sixteenth century to the present, a metatheoretical theory of the relationship between theorization and adaptation in the humanities, and analysis of and experimentation with the rhetoric of theorizing adaptation. Adaptation was not always the bad theoretical object that it increasingly became from the late eighteenth century: in earlier centuries, adaptation was celebrated and valued as a means of aesthetic and cultural progress. Tracing the falling fortunes of adaptation under humanities theorization, the history nevertheless locates dissenting voices valorizing adaptation in every period. Adaptation studies can learn from history not only how to theorize adaptation more positively, but also to consider “the problem of theorization” for adaptation. The metatheoretical section finds that theorization and adaptation are rival, overlapping, inimical processes, each seeking to remake culture—and each other—in their images. It is not simply the case that adaptation has to adapt to theorization: rather, theorization needs to adapt to and through adaptation. The final section attends to the rhetoric of theorizing adaptation, analyzing how tiny pieces of rhetoric have constructed adaptation’s relationship to theorization, and turning to figurative rhetoric, or figuration, as a third process that can mediate between adaptation and theorization and refigure their relationship.

"The Stranger Within Thee": Concepts of the Self in Late-Eighteenth-Century Literature.

1983 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 189
Author(s):  
John Sitter ◽  
Stephen D. Cox ◽  
Frederick Garber ◽  
Arnold Weinstein
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
The Self ◽  
Eighteenth Century Literature ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
The Stranger ◽  
Century Literature

scholarly journals Catherine II: Uniform Dresses and Regional Uniforms

Costume ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 53 (2) ◽  
pp. 207-230
Author(s):  
Victoria Ivleva
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Final Section ◽  
Civil Service ◽  
Civil Servants ◽  
Coup D'etat ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
Cross Dressing

Soon after the coup d’état of 1762, which brought Catherine II, also known as Catherine the Great, to power, Vigilius Erichsen painted the equestrian portrait of the Empress in the Life Guards’ uniform. Catherine wore this uniform during the coup that dethroned her husband, Peter III. This article analyses this episode of cross-dressing in the context of Catherine's legitimation narrative. It further examines the uniform dresses that she wore for various regimental occasions. The dresses combined elements of traditional Russian garments and European fashion. The final section of the article studies the regional uniforms that Catherine II introduced for nobles, civil servants and their wives as part of her regional reforms after Pugachev's rebellion (1773–1775). I discuss these uniforms in the context of a revival of interest in the regions and local civil service, and in the context of national and transnational processes in Europe in the late eighteenth century.

Beethoven & Freedom

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel K L Chua
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
The Self ◽  
Time And Space ◽  
The Core ◽  
Relevant Today ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
Core Value ◽  
The Aesthetic

Beethoven’s music is often associated with freedom. Chua explores the nature of this relationship through an investigation of the philosophical context of Beethoven’s reception and hermeneutic readings of key works. Freedom is arguably the core value of modernity since late eighteenth-century; Beethoven’s music engages with its aspirations and dilemmas, providing a sonic ‘lens’ that enables us to focus on the aesthetic, philosophical, and theological ramifications of its claims of progress and autonomy and the formation of the self and its values. Taking his bearings from Adorno’s fragmentary reflections on Beethoven, Chua charts a journey from the heroic freedom associated with the Eroica Symphony to a freedom of vulnerability that opens itself to ‘otherness’. Chua’s analysis of the music demonstrates how various forms of freedom are embodied in the way time and space are manipulated in Beethoven’s works, providing an experience of a concept that Kant had famously declared inaccessible to sense. Beethoven’s music, then, does not simply mirror freedom; it is a philosophical and poetic engagement with the idea that is as relevant today as it was in the aftermath of the French Revolution.

Sensitive limit

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mechthild Fend
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
Human Body ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Self ◽  
Distinctive Features ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
French Art ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
Definition Of

This chapter focuses on the significance of skin in neoclassical art and aesthetics. The most distinctive features of neoclassicism - an emphasis on the contour and a preference for more finished surfaces - are understood as elements crucial for the visual formation and understanding of the human body, its surface and borderlines. The culture of neoclassicism, extending well beyond the realm of art and art discourse, was generally characterised by a heightened concern with the shaping of the body and the safeguarding of its boundaries. Skin as the body's physical demarcation, was increasingly perceived not merely as an envelope and organ, but as the boundary of the self. The chapter considers the new attention to skin and contour in late eighteenth-century French art discourse, in particular in Watelet's and Levesque's Dictionnaire des beaux-arts. It equally looks at the discussion of membranes and the definition of skin as ‘sensitive limit‘ in the works of anatomist Xavier Bichat and analyses a set of portraits by Jacques-Louis David painted in the aftermath of the French Revolution.

‘Isaiah's Call to England': Doubts about Prophecy in Nineteenth-Century Britain

2016 ◽  
Vol 52 ◽  
pp. 381-397
Author(s):  
Gareth Atkins
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Final Section ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
Maritime Empire

Prophetic thought in nineteenth-century Britain has often been presented as divided between those mostly evangelical constituencies who ‘believed' in its literal fulfilment in the past, present or future and those who ‘doubted' such interpretations. This essay seeks to question that division by tracking the uses of one set of prophetic passages, those concerning the ‘Ships of Tarshish’ mentioned in Isaiah 60: 9 and elsewhere. It examines their appropriation from the late eighteenth century onwards by those seeking prophetic-providential justification for the British maritime empire. Next it shows how such such ideas fuelled missionary expansion in the years after 1815, suggesting that by mid-century that there was a growing spectrum of ways in which such passages were used by religious commentators. The final section shows how biblical critics seeking to bolster the integrity of the Bible as a text reconstructed the geographical and economic settings for these passages, establishing their historical veracity as they did so but in the process undermining their supernaturally predictive status. Thus one way of bolstering ‘faith’ – the study of prophetic fulfilments – was rendered doubtful by another. By the end of our period Tyre and Tarshish retained much of their homiletic punch as metaphors for the sin brought by trade and luxury, but those who saw them as literal proxies for Britain were in the minority.

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