Displacement of Manuscripts, Printing Revolution and Rediscovering Islamic Classics

2021 ◽  
Vol 28 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 253-275
Author(s):  
Mehraj Din
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual History ◽  
Review Essay ◽  
Arab World ◽  
Muslim World ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
History Of ◽  
Comprehensive Introduction ◽  
Historical Trajectory ◽  
Intellectual Legacy

Abstract Taking as the starting point, Ahmed El-Shamsy’s new book Rediscovering the Islamic Classics is a comprehensive introduction to trace the historical trajectory of Islamic intellectual legacy. In this engaging yet pleasantly thought-out book El Shamsy intends to offer a fresh conversation on the massive loss of manuscripts, role of colonialism and its role in strengthening the Orientalist enterprise in Muslim World including the drain of manuscripts into Europe. Bringing to light the agents and events of the Islamic print revolution, this work is also an absorbing examination of the central role printing and its advocates played in the intellectual history of the modern Arab world. This review essay offers a contextual perspective and a detailed rationale behind the loss of manuscripts and unpacks some of the important debates behind the decline and restoration of Islam’s intellectual legacy.

Idleness and Freedom in Michel de Montaigne’s “Essays”

2019 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 189-202
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual History ◽  
Ancient Rome ◽  
Spiritual Quest ◽  
Guiding Principle ◽  
Sextus Empiricus ◽  
History Of ◽  
Self Knowledge ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
The Relationship

The article advances a hypothesis about the composition of Michel de Montaigne’s Essays. Specialists in the intellectual history of the Renaissance have long considered the relationship among Montaigne’s thematically heterogeneous thoughts, which unfold unpredictably and often seen to contradict each other. The waywardness of those reflections over the years was a way for Montaigne to construct a self-portrait. Spontaneity of thought is the essence of the person depicted and an experimental literary technique that was unprecedented in its time and has still not been surpassed. Montaigne often writes about freedom of reflection and regards it as an extremely important topic. There have been many attempts to interpret the haphazardness of the Essays as the guiding principle in their composition. According to one such interpretation, the spontaneous digressions and readiness to take up very different philosophical notions is a form of of varietas and distinguo, which Montaigne understood in the context of Renaissance philosophy. Another interpretation argues that the Essays employ the rhetorical techniques of Renaissance legal commentary. A third opinion regards the Essays as an example of sprezzatura, a calculated negligence that calls attention to the aesthetic character of Montaigne’s writing. The author of the article argues for a different interpretation that is based on the concept of idleness to which Montaigne assigned great significance. He had a keen appreciation of the role of otium in the culture of ancient Rome and regarded leisure as an inner spiritual quest for self-knowledge. According to Montaigne, idleness permits self-directedness, and it is an ideal form in which to practice the freedom of thought that brings about consistency in writing, living and reality, in all of which Montaigne finds one general property - complete inconstancy. Socratic self-knowledge, a skepticism derived from Pyrrho of Elis and Sextus Empiricus, and a rejection of the conventions of traditional rhetoric that was similar to Seneca’s critique of it were all brought to bear on the concept of idleness and made Montaigne’s intellectual and literary experimentation in the Essays possible.

scholarly journals Caliphatism in the period of decline and collapse of the Ottoman Empire

2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 327-337
Author(s):  
Svetlana A Kirillina ◽  
Alexandra L Safronova ◽  
Vladimir V Orlov
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
South Asia ◽  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
Muslim World ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Historical Role ◽  
Muhammad Rashid Rida ◽  
Political Actions

The article analyses the historical role of the movement for defenсe of the Caliphate, which emerged in various regions of the Muslim world as a response to weakening and fall of the Ottoman Empire. The authors also focus on the social and political discussions of the 1920s - 1930s about the destiny of Muslim unity and the role of the future Caliphate. The article also deals with the transformation of conceptions of the Caliphate in the works of eminent ideologists and politicians of the Muslim world - Jamal al-Din al-Afghani, Abd al-Rahman al-Kawakibi, Muhammad Rashid Rida and Abul Kalam Azad. The authors give an overview of the history of Caliphatist congresses and conferences of 1920s - 1930s. The aims and tasks of the Caliphatist movement among the Muslims of South Asia are also under study. The article examines the reaction of the South Asian princely elites to the weakening of the Ottoman state and explores the interrelation between pro-Ottoman sentiments of Caliphatists and the radicalization of anti-colonial struggle of Indian Muslims. A special attention is given to the role of leaders of Indian Caliphatists in preparation of the antiBritish uprisings in North-Western Hindustan. The authors also examine common and specifi c features of views and political actions of advocates and supporters of the Caliphate in the Middle East and in the Islamic communities of South Asia. The analysis of the source data reveales several patterns of reaction of Muslims in the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia to the repudiation of the Caliphate by the Republican Turkey.

scholarly journals Authorial Self and Modernity as Reflected in Diaries and Memoirs. Three 19th-Century Hungarian Case Studies

2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 85-97
Author(s):  
Béla Mester
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual History ◽  
Social Role ◽  
Public Intellectual ◽  
Self Reflection ◽  
Individual Character ◽  
History Of ◽  
New Type ◽  
The Moment ◽  
The One

Abstract The role of the diaries and memoirs in the process of the conscious self-reflection and their contribution to the emergence of modern individual personalities are well-known facts of the intellectual history. The present paper intends to analyze a special form of the creation of modern individual character; it is the self-creation of the writer as a conscious personality, often with a clearly formulated opinion about her/his own social role. There will be offered several examples from the 19th-century history of the Hungarian intelligentsia. This period is more or less identical with the modernization of the “cultural industry” in Hungary, dominated by the periodicals with their deadlines, fixed lengths of the articles, and professional editing houses on the one hand and the cultural nation building on the other. Concerning the possible social and cultural role of the intelligentsia, it is the moment of the birth of a new type, so-called public intellectual. I will focus on three written sources, a diary of a Calvinist student of theology, Péter (Litkei) Tóth, the memoirs of an influential public intellectual, Gusztáv Szontagh, and a belletristic printed diary of a young intellectual, János Asbóth.

scholarly journals The tale of the fungi of two gardens: non-lichenised fungi of the Botanic Gardens in Glasgow

2019 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 57-63
Author(s):  
R. Watling
Keyword(s):  
City Council ◽  
Complete List ◽  
Botanic Gardens ◽  
Short Account ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
History Of ◽  
Made In ◽  
Present Site

A brief history of the early days of mycology in Scotland is given to act as a starting point from which to view the fungal records made in the gardens at Sandyford and Kelvinside. The former was vacated in 1842 and the garden transferred to the present site at Kelvinside under the authority of the Glasgow City Council. The role of J.F. Klotzsch in generating the earliest records is emphasised and the compilation of fungal records, mainly of macrofungi, until the present day is discussed. A short account of the microfungi is given. A complete list of the fungi recorded from the two gardens is provided.

“All Beneficial Knowledge is Revealed”:

2014 ◽  
Vol 21 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 49-80 ◽  
Author(s):  
Justin Stearns
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual History ◽  
Legal Status ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Natural Sciences ◽  
Formative Period ◽  
Muslim World ◽  
Initial Development ◽  
Intellectual Traditions ◽  
History Of ◽  
Intellectual Context

The intellectual history of the Muslim world during the post-formative period is poorly understood compared to the centuries in which the initial development of the principal Islamic intellectual traditions occurred. This article examines the legal status of the natural sciences in the thought of the Moroccan scholar al-Ḥasan al-Yūsī (d. 1102/1691) and his contemporaries, both in terms of the categorization of knowledge and in terms of developments in conceptions of causality in post-formative Ashʿarī theology. In the latter respect, al-Yūsī’s writings on causality are compared to those of his contemporary in Damascus, ʿAbd al-Ghanī al-Nābulusī, with attention to the broader historiographic perils in comparing intellectual developments in the Early Modern period to those occurring in Europe. By placing al-Yūsī’s views in intellectual context, I seek to demonstrate how a more productive history of the natural sciences in the post-formative Muslim world might be written.


Planning on the Potomac: A Review Essay on Jason E. Taylor’s Deconstructing the Monolith: The Microeconomics of the National Industrial Recovery Act

2021 ◽  
Vol 59 (1) ◽  
pp. 244-264
Author(s):  
Joshua K. Hausman
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual History ◽  
Great Depression ◽  
Review Essay ◽  
Working Hours ◽  
Fair Competition ◽  
The Great Depression ◽  
Econometric Evidence ◽  
History Of ◽  
Recovery Act

Taylor (2019) details heterogeneity in the effects of the National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA) across industries and across time. Through first the President’s Reemployment Act (PRA) and then industry-specific “codes of fair competition,” the NIRA raised wages and restricted working hours. In some—but far from all—cases industries also used a NIRA code to collude, raising prices and restricting output. The effect of the NIRA peaked in fall 1933 and winter 1934; thereafter, compliance declined. I review the intellectual history of the NIRA, the implementation of the PRA and the NIRA codes, and Taylor’s econometric evidence on their effects. I end with a discussion of the implications of Taylor’s book for understanding the effect of the NIRA on US recovery from the Great Depression. (JEL D72, G01, H50, N32, N42)

More Lessons to Learn: Thomas Piketty’s Capital and Ideology and Alternative Archives of Social Experience

2021 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 125-146
Author(s):  
Andreas Langenohl
Keyword(s):  
Economic History ◽  
International Political Economy ◽  
Democratic Governance ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
History Of ◽  
The One ◽  
Historical Trajectory ◽  
Political Economic ◽  
Alternative Archives

Abstract Thomas Piketty’s Capital and Ideology has been written with the intention to offer lessons from the historical trajectory of economic redistribution in societies the world over. Thereby, the book suggests learning from the political-economic history of ‘social-democratic’ policies and societal arrangements. While the data presented speak to the plausibility of looking at social democracy, as understood by Piketty, as an archive for learning about the effects of redistribution mechanisms, I argue that the book, or future interventions might profit from integrating alternative archives. On the one hand, its current line of argumentation tends to underestimate the significance of power relations in the international political economy that continued after formal decolonization, and thus form the flip side of social democracy’s success in Europe and North America. On the other hand, the role of the polity might be imagined in a different and more empowering way, not just-as in Piketty-as an elite-liberal democratic governance institution; for instance, it would be interesting to explore the archive of the French solidaristes movement more deeply than Piketty does, as well as much more recent interventions in economic anthropology that deal with ‘economic citizenship’ in the Global South.

Santa y Andrés: A dossier

2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 377-382
Author(s):  
Dunja Fehimović ◽  
Ruth Goldberg
Keyword(s):  
Subject Matter ◽  
Film Industry ◽  
Cuban Revolution ◽  
Original Essays ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Online Archive ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Cuban Cinema

Carlos Lechuga’s film Santa y Andrés (2016) has enjoyed worldwide acclaim as an intimate, dramatic portrayal of the unlikely friendship that develops in rural Cuba between Andrés, a gay dissident writer, and Santa, the militant citizen who has been sent to surveil him. Declared to be extreme and/or inaccurate in its historical depictions, the film was censored in Cuba and was the subject of intense controversy and public polemics surrounding its release in 2016. Debates about the film’s subject matter and its censorship extend ongoing disagreement over the role of art within the Cuban Revolution, and the changing nature of the Cuban film industry itself. This dossier brings together new scholarship on Santa y Andrés and is linked to an online archive of some of the original essays that have been written about the film by Cuban critics and filmmakers since 2016. The aim of this project is to create a starting point for researchers who wish to investigate Santa y Andrés, evaluating the film both for its contentious initial reception, and in terms of its enduring contribution to the history of Cuban cinema.

Part VI Actors, Ch.40 Epistemic Communities

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Haas Peter M
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
Environmental Law ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Epistemic Community ◽  
Epistemic Communities ◽  
Causal Beliefs ◽  
International Environmental Law ◽  
History Of

This chapter begins with a definition and intellectual history of epistemic communities. ‘Epistemic communities’ is a concept developed by ‘soft’ constructivist scholars of international relations concerned with agency. Soft constructivists in general focus on the role of various types of norms, principled beliefs, causal beliefs, and discourses in establishing roles and rules in international relations: that is, determining the identities, interests, and practices that shape the identification of actors in international relations. The chapter then applies this definition to the study of international environmental law and discusses whether or not international lawyers constitute an epistemic community. It concludes with a discussion of some of the recent challenges to the influence of epistemic communities in world politics more broadly, and thus the future of international environmental law.

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