Theosis in Early Twentieth-Century Russian Religious Thought

2020 ◽  
pp. 239-254
Author(s):  
Ruth Coates
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Religious Thought ◽  
Late Imperial ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
The One ◽  
Russian Religious Thought ◽  
Vladimir Solov'ev ◽  
Entire Economy

The chapter argues that the Greek patristic doctrine of theosis (‘becoming god’ or ‘making god’) was a dominant theme of late imperial Russian religious thought, in which it served as a response to the acutely felt anticipation of the imminent collapse of the Russian political and social order. Theosis is defined as a metaphor for salvation that emphasizes the process, as much as the goal, of assimilation to God, and which can be viewed as a narrative encompassing the entire economy of salvation as well as a doctrine narrowly conceived. It is argued that lay Russian religious thinkers accessed the concept of theosis through diverse channels that included the patristic translation project and related scholarship of Russia’s Theological Academies, the still vital tradition of spiritual eldership and the pathway to personal transfiguration by the divine energies set out in the Dobrotoliubie, and the philosophy of divine humanity of the nineteenth-century religious philosopher Vladimir Solov’ev. Three seminal early twentieth-century treatments of theosis are analysed: Sergei Bulgakov’s Philosophy of Economy (1912), Nikolai Berdyaev’s Meaning of Creativity (1916), and Pavel Florensky’s The Pillar and Ground of the Truth (1914). These reveal the ‘modernist’ approach typical of the period, that is, engagement of theosis in dialogue with diverse intellectual contexts including German metaphysical idealism (Bulgakov), Symbolism and the theosophy of Jakob Böhme (Berdyaev), on the one hand, and, in the case of Florensky, engagement of the formal experimentalism of modernism in the service of a defence of Orthodox mystical asceticism.

Deification in the Long Nineteenth Century

2019 ◽  
pp. 55-81
Author(s):  
Ruth Coates
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Political Culture ◽  
Institutions Of Higher Education ◽  
Religious Thought ◽  
History Of ◽  
Cultural Expressions ◽  
Russian Religious Thought ◽  
The Church

Chapter 2 sets out the history of the reception of deification in Russia in the long nineteenth century, drawing attention to the breadth and diversity of the theme’s manifestation, and pointing to the connections with inter-revolutionary religious thought. It examines how deification is understood variously in the spheres of monasticism, Orthodox institutions of higher education, and political culture. It identifies the novelist Fedor Dostoevsky and the philosopher Vladimir Soloviev as the most influential elite cultural expressions of the idea of deification, and the primary conduits through which Western European philosophical expressions of deification reach early twentieth-century Russian religious thought. Inspired by the anthropotheism of Feuerbach, and Stirner’s response to this, Dostoevsky brings to the fore the problem of illegitimate self-apotheosis, whilst Soloviev, in his philosophy of divine humanity, bequeaths deification to his successors both as this is understood by the church and in its iteration in German metaphysical idealism.

Introduction

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-26
Author(s):  
Ken Hirschkop
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Social Division ◽  
The Third ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century Europe

Chapter 1 focuses on the distinctiveness of the ‘linguistic turns’ of early twentieth-century Europe, differentiating them from nineteenth-century work on language and insisting on the need to think of these multiple turns as a whole, as a constellation across Europe. That there is such a constellation, demanding our attention, is the first of the book’s three organizing claims. The second is that language draws such a crowd because crowds have become a problem: in the linguistic turns of the early twentieth century, language is a metonym for problems of social order and social division, democracy and consent, nationality and difference. Hence the third claim: that the distinguishing feature of these linguistic turns is a commitment to some version of ‘language as such’, a force or structure within language that can provide the vitality, the order, the lucidity, or some combination of these, necessary to cure language of its present ills.

Administering wealth: the concept of “economy” and the epistemic foundations of nationalism in late-imperial China (late-nineteenth–early-twentieth century)

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-22
Author(s):  
Pablo A. Blitstein
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Political Economy ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Qing Empire ◽  
Late Imperial China ◽  
Late Imperial ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
The Social ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
The One

Abstract In this paper, I will focus on the emergence and uses of political economy in late-nineteenth–early-twentieth century China. I will discuss how the concept of “economy” came to be conceived as an autonomous sphere of human life, with its own rules and its own order, and how the production of “wealth” was conceptually divorced from ethics, politics, and administration. For this purpose, I will focus on a group which played a key role in reshaping the social and political discourse of the empire: a group of nationalist reformers who wanted to transform the Qing empire into a constitutional monarchy. I will explore how these reformers brought together two different sets of traditions – the Chinese imperial traditions of literati statecraft on the one hand, and mostly British, French, and German traditions of political economy on the other – and how they used them to naturalize a particular idea of what the “Chinese nation” was and should be.

The fighting Nuer: primary sources and the origins of a stereotype

Africa ◽  
1981 ◽  
Vol 51 (1) ◽  
pp. 508-527 ◽  
Author(s):  
Douglas H. Johnson
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Primary Sources ◽  
Colonial Administration ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Structural Relations ◽  
The One ◽  
Intractable Problem

IntroductionIn the one hundred and forty years that the Nuer have been known to small audiences outside the Sudan they have almost invariably been presented as truculent and aggressive warriors. They appeared in the nineteenth century exploration literature as archetypical ‘savages’: naked, stubborn and warlike men who were compared to monkeys, to the monkeys' advantage (Baker 1867:60). In the early twentieth century they were thought to be an intractable problem that impeded the peaceful establishment and efficient running of a new colonial administration. In Sir Edward Evans-Pritchard's monographs Nuer feuds and raiding are described as central to the structural relations between Nuer sections and between the Nuer and their neighbours.

Socialism and the Flow of  Time in Modernity

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julian Wright
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Philosophy Of History ◽  
Historical Writing ◽  
Doctoral Thesis ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Flow Of Time

This chapter asks wider questions about the flow of time as it was explored in this historical writing. It focuses on Jaurès’ philosophy of history, initially through a brief discussion of his doctoral thesis and the essay entitled ‘Le bilan social du XIXème siècle’ that he provided at the end of the Histoire socialiste, then through the work of three of his collaborators, Gabriel Deville, Eugène Fournière, and Georges Renard. One of the most important challenges for socialists in the early twentieth century was to understand the damage and division caused by revolution, while not losing the transformative mission of their socialism. With these elements established, the chapter returns to Jaurès, and in particular the long study of nineteenth-century society in chapter 10 of L’Armée nouvelle. Jaurès advanced an original vision of the nineteenth century and its meaning for the socialist present.

Firearms and Princely Power in Ethiopia in the Nineteenth Century

1972 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 609-630 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. A. Caulk
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
New Technology ◽  
Turn Of The Century ◽  
Imperial Authority ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
National Leadership ◽  
Local Leaders

Several centuries after firearms had been introduced, they were still of little importance in Ethiopia, where cavalry continued to dominate warfare until the second half of the nineteenth century. Nevertheless, they were much sought after by local leaders ambitious to secure their autonomy or to grasp supreme authority. The first of these warlords to make himself emperor, Tēwodros (1855–68), owed nothing to firearms. However, his successors, Yohannis IV (1872–89) and Minīlik (d. 1913), did. Both excelled in their mastery of the new technology and acquired large quantities of quick-firing weapons. By the last quarter of the nineteenth century, possession of firearms — principally the breech loading rifle — had become a precondition for successfully contending for national leadership. Yet the wider revolution associated (as in Egypt) with the establishment of a European-style army did not follow. Nor was rearmament restricted to the following of the emperor. Despite the revival of imperial authority effected by Yohannis and Minīlik, rifles and even machine-guns were widely enough spread at the turn of the century to reinforce the fragmentation of power long characteristic of the Ethiopian state. Into the early twentieth century, it remained uncertain if the peculiar advantages of the capital in the import of arms would be made to serve centralization.

Vitalistic Discourses of Violin Pedagogy in the Early Twentieth Century

2014 ◽  
Vol 38 (2) ◽  
pp. 169-190
Author(s):  
Stefan Knapik
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Historical Evidence ◽  
Final Word ◽  
Collaborative Activity ◽  
Violin Pedagogy ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Scientific Approach ◽  
Joseph Joachim ◽  
Violin Playing

Abstract The pedagogical treatise is generally understood to be a manual of singing or instrumental techniques that is largely practical in approach, yet a critique of violin tutor books dating from the early twentieth century, especially those written by the renowned violinists Joseph Joachim (writing in conjunction with Andreas Moser), Leopold Auer, and Carl Flesch, reveals an extensive engagement with a range of wider ideologies. In a bid to trump the supposedly deadening effects of both a historicism resulting from the availability of earlier treatises, as well as the overly scientific approach taken by contemporaneous treatises, these violinist-authors embrace metaphysical ideals of mind or vitality, and the result is a model of violin playing founded on the concept of “singing tone,” an idea developed out of nineteenth-century notions of song/melody as embodying a vital essence. As did Wagner, in his 1869 essay Über das Dirigiren, writers play with the idea that theoretical and performative categories, such as tempo, phrasing, dynamics, vibrato, and types of bow stroke, both conflict with each other and find a deeper unity in a subjectivist ideal of tone. The approach of these texts is not explorative, however, so much as a rather defensive championing of the idea of mind or vitality: ideologies of self, health, and nationalism ultimately prevail over an engagement with historical evidence in Moser's discussion of ornaments, and Auer's intolerance of any mitigating influence that might qualify the artist's final word on aesthetic matters is reminiscent of a reductive, Nietzschean ideal of vitality. Nevertheless, writers struggle to reconcile it with the messier realities of performing, as an embodied and collaborative activity, and subsequently what speaks louder in their texts are anxieties over affronts to notions of self, expressed using pathological notions common to the era. Whereas at times writers encourage students of the violin to share in their lauding of vitalistic ideals, more often than not they try to impose disciplinary measures as a means of inculcating them.

American Legal Thought in Transatlantic Context, 1870-1914

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
David M. Rabban
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
First Generation ◽  
The United States ◽  
Recent Book ◽  
Historical School ◽  
Legal Thought ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Sociological Jurisprudence

Most American legal scholars have described their nineteenth-century predecessors as deductive formalists. In my recent book, Law’s History : American Legal Thought and the Transatlantic Turn to History, I demonstrate instead that the first generation of professional legal scholars in the United States, who wrote during the last three decades of the nineteenth century, viewed law as a historically based inductive science. They constituted a distinctive historical school of American jurisprudence that was superseded by the development of sociological jurisprudence in the early twentieth century. This article focuses on the transatlantic context, involving connections between European and American scholars, in which the historical school of American jurisprudence emerged, flourished, and eventually declined.

Nineteenth-Century and Early Twentieth-Century Post-Kantian Philosophy

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Franks
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Natural Science ◽  
Philosophical Tradition ◽  
Historical Inquiry ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Individual Agency ◽  
New Methods ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Kantian Philosophy

This article examines three moments of the post-Kantian philosophical tradition in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries: Kantianism, Post-Kantian Idealism, and Neo-Kantianism. It elucidates the distinctive methods of a tradition that has never entirely disappeared and is now acknowledged once again as the source of contemporary insights. It outlines two problematics—naturalist scepticism and historicist nihilism—threatening the possibility of metaphysics. The first concerns sceptical worries about reason, emerging from attempts to extend the methods of natural science to the study of human beings. Kant’s project of a critical and transcendental analysis of reason, with its distinctive methods, should be considered a response. The second arises from the development of new methods of historical inquiry, seeming to undermine the very possibility of individual agency. Also considered are Kant’s successors’ revisions of the critical and transcendental analysis of reason, undertaken to overcome challenges confronting the original versions of Kant’s methods.

scholarly journals Iphigénie à Paris: Positioning Gluck Historically in Early Twentieth-Century France

2012 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-15
Author(s):  
William Gibbons
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Music History ◽  
Critical Reception ◽  
Unusual Event ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Vincent D'indy

In December 1907, Gluck's opera Iphigénie en Aulide was produced in Paris at the Opéra-Comique, the last of his major operas to be revived in France. The ensuing critical reception pitted Vincent d'Indy, who harshly criticized the production, against its director, Albert Carré; d'Indy further responded by conducting the overture to Iphigénie only a few weeks later as a musical corrective to the performance at the Opéra-Comique. This unusual event highlights the historiographie problem Gluck presented to early twentieth-century critics in France: did his music look backwards to the tragédies lyriques of Lully and Rameau, or did it prefigure the Wagnerian music-dramas of the nineteenth century? The 1907 Opéra-Comique production of Iphigénie and its aftermath encapsulate the struggle to incorporate Gluck into newly developing and often competing narratives of music history.

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