scholarly journals The Thinking Fetus: Descartes at the Brink of Psychoanalysis

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 234-258
Author(s):  
Cecilia Sjöholm
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Object Relations ◽  
Emotional Life ◽  
Maternal Body ◽  
History Of Emotions ◽  
History Of ◽  
Psychoanalytic Theories ◽  
The Way

Abstract Descartes’s philosophy of the passions is central for an understanding of seventeenth-century ideas of affects and emotions and for the history of emotions overall. But does it have bearing today? In this article, I argue that Descartes raises the question of how the infantile relation to the maternal body influences the emotional life of the adult, a question that is still relevant for psychoanalysis and neuropsychology. In the philosophical scholarship on Descartes, the passages which pertain to the infant, or the fetus, and its alleged ‘confused thought’, are often quoted to demonstrate the challenges to dualism that are inherent in his own writings. However, I argue that these discussions point also to the complexity of the development of affects and emotions. In my reading, I show that Descartes’s ideas of the passions can be seen as precursory to psychoanalytic theories of object relations. This opens the way for a new trajectory of research involving fantasy, instincts and repression in the Cartesian analysis of emotions and affects.

The history of a “primary source”: The making of Tûghî's chronicle on the regicide of Osman II

2009 ◽  
Vol 72 (1) ◽  
pp. 41-62
Author(s):  
Baki Tezcan
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Primary Source ◽  
Collective Responsibility ◽  
Careful Examination ◽  
Political Sophistication ◽  
History Of ◽  
Initial Attitude ◽  
Historical Developments ◽  
The Military ◽  
The Way

AbstractA short chronicle by a former janissary called Tûghî on the regicide of the Ottoman Sultan Osman II in 1622 had a definitive impact on seventeenth-century Ottoman historiography in terms of the way in which this regicide was recounted. This study examines the formation of Tûghî's chronicle and shows how within the course of the year following the regicide, Tûghî's initial attitude, which recognized the collective responsibility of the military caste (kul) in the murder of Osman, evolved into a claim of their innocence. The chronicle of Tûghî is extant in successive editions of his own. A careful examination of these editions makes it possible to follow the evolution of Tûghî's narrative on the regicide in response to the historical developments in its immediate aftermath and thus witness both the evolution of a “primary source” and the gradual political sophistication of a janissary.

HOW THE STOICS BECAME ATHEISTS

2006 ◽  
Vol 49 (2) ◽  
pp. 387-402 ◽  
Author(s):  
CHRISTOPHER BROOKE
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
History Of Philosophy ◽  
Critical History ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
History Of ◽  
Ralph Cudworth ◽  
The Way

In the middle of the seventeenth century, scholarship on ancient Stoicism generally understood it to be a form of theism. By the middle of the eighteenth century, Stoicism was widely (though not universally) reckoned a variety of atheism, both by its critics and by those more favourably disposed to its claims. This article describes this transition, the catalyst for which was the controversy surrounding Spinoza's philosophy, and which was shaped above all by contemporary transformations in the historiography of philosophy. Particular attention is paid to the roles in this story played by Thomas Gataker, Ralph Cudworth, J. F. Buddeus, Jean Barbeyrac, and J. L. Mosheim, whose contributions collectively helped to shape the way in which Stoicism was presented in two of the leading reference works of the Enlightenment, J. J. Brucker's Critical History of Philosophy and the Encyclopédie of Diderot and d'Alembert.

Dear John

2022 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan L. Carruthers
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Popular Music ◽  
Romantic Love ◽  
Armed Forces ◽  
Letter Writing ◽  
World War ◽  
Emotional Life ◽  
Personal Experiences ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Way

Are 'Dear John' letters lethal weapons in the hands of men at war? Many US officers, servicemen, veterans, and civilians would say yes. Drawing on personal letters, oral histories, and psychiatric reports, as well as popular music and movies, Susan L. Carruthers shows how the armed forces and civilian society have attempted to weaponize romantic love in pursuit of martial ends, from World War II to today. Yet efforts to discipline feeling have frequently failed. And women have often borne the blame. This sweeping history of emotional life in wartime explores the interplay between letter-writing and storytelling, breakups and breakdowns, and between imploded intimacy and boosted camaraderie. Incorporating vivid personal experiences in lively and engaging prose – variously tragic, comic, and everything in between – this compelling study will change the way we think about wartime relationships.

Islamicated China: China’s Participation in the Islamicate Book Culture during the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries

2016 ◽  
Vol 4 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 36-60 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dror Weil
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Intellectual Engagement ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
New Form ◽  
Insight Into ◽  
The Way ◽  
Book Culture

By the seventeenth century, Arabo-Persian scholarship in China had adopted elements from Muslim and Chinese book cultures and synthesized them into a new form of scholarship, attested by the hundreds of Arabo-Persian manuscripts extant in repositories in China and around the world and the hundred of copies of printed Chinese works on Islamic themes. This article surveys the history of Chinese participation in Muslim book culture, beginning with a review of the history and general features of texts, in terms of their language and period of composition. The second part of the article provides a more nuanced analysis of texts that circulated in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries throughout China, on the study of Arabo-Persian languages. These linguistic aids and primers of Arabic and Persian highlight the way in which these texts were read and interpreted, in turn, providing meaningful insight into the foundation of China’s intellectual engagement with the Islamicate world.

scholarly journals Beyond universalism/social constructivism debate in the history of emotions: The case of acedia

2019 ◽  
Vol 62 (4) ◽  
pp. 5-15
Author(s):  
Ljiljana Radenovic
Keyword(s):  
Social Constructivism ◽  
Emotional Experience ◽  
Ordinary People ◽  
History Of Emotions ◽  
Socially Constructed ◽  
Desert Fathers ◽  
Biology I ◽  
History Of ◽  
Font Color ◽  
The Way

Peter Toohey (2011) argues that the feeling of acedia, initially described by the Desert Fathers, is a romanticized version of the simple boredom felt by ordinary people. For Toohey, acedia is not real, but manufactured, i.e. a socially constructed emotion, unlike regular boredom which is universally felt. This distinction indicates that Toohey sides with universalist approach to emotions, which helps him avoid relativism of social constructivism in the history of emotions. However, by claiming that acedia is manufactured emotion Toohey is in danger to negate the reality of an emotional experience that many individuals seemed to have had. The goal of this paper is to outline the way we can overcome the shortcomings of Toohey?s approach to acedia. For this purpose, I argue, along with Griffiths (1997), that all our emotions have their roots in both culture and biology. I also argue that a job of a historian of emotions is to engage in the phenomenology of emotions of our predecessors. <br><br><font color="red"><b> This article has been corrected. Link to the correction <u><a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.2298/THEO2003169E">10.2298/THEO2003169E</a><u></b></font>

The Church of Ireland: a critical bibliography, 1536–1992 Part II: 1603–41

1993 ◽  
Vol 28 (112) ◽  
pp. 352-358
Author(s):  
Alan Ford
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
Protestant Church ◽  
Church Of Ireland ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Creation ◽  
The Church ◽  
The Way

There is a marked difference between the history of the Church of Ireland in the sixteenth century and in the early seventeenth century. The historian of the early Reformation in Ireland has to deal with shifting religious divides and, in the Church of Ireland, with a complex and ambiguous religious entity, established but not necessarily Protestant, culturally unsure, politically weak, and theologically unselfconscious. By contrast, the first part of the seventeenth century is marked by the creation of a distinct Protestant church, clearly distinguished in structural, racial, theological and political terms from its Roman Catholic counterpart. The history of the Church of Ireland in the first four decades of the seventeenth century is therefore primarily about the creation of this church and the way in which its new structures and exclusive identity were shaped.

Through Other Eyes: Changing Attitudes to the Decoration and Interpretation of an English Country House, Speke Hall, Liverpool

2020 ◽  
Vol 169 (1) ◽  
pp. 17-37
Author(s):  
Anthony Tibbles
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Public Ownership ◽  
Country House ◽  
The Public ◽  
History Of ◽  
Changing Attitudes ◽  
The Way

The manner in which historic houses have been maintained and regarded has varied over the centuries and has been subject to the attitudes and lifestyles of their owners. Acquisition by the National Trust or other heritage organisations is often regarded as bringing an end to this process and effectively ‘freezing’ the appearance of the house. Since it was completed in the early seventeenth century, the way in which Speke Hall, near Liverpool, has been treated and lived in by its owners has altered regularly according to fashion and taste, at times cherished, at other times neglected. However, even in the decades since the National Trust accepted the house in 1943, there have been different approaches to the house’s presentation to the public. This article examines the changing attitudes to Speke Hall over four centuries and suggests that the period of public ownership should be seen as another phase in the history of the house.

Contexts (I)

2020 ◽  
pp. 59-94
Author(s):  
John Scholar
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
David Hume ◽  
John Locke ◽  
William James ◽  
History Of ◽  
Franz Brentano ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Way

Chapter 2 begins the book’s intellectual history of the impression from the seventeenth century to the twentieth (which continues in Chapter 3). These contexts come from two movements, empiricism and aestheticism. Chapter 2 explores empiricist contexts, arguing that James’s impression owes much to empiricist philosophy (John Locke, David Hume), and nineteenth-century empiricist psychology (James Mill, J. S. Mill, Franz Brentano, Ernst Mach, William James). By tracking the word ‘impression’, we can see that Locke and Hume’s stress on first-hand observation, and on thought as a kind of perception, are contexts for James’s conception of the imaginative but observant novelist, for the epistemological demands he makes on his readers, and for the way he represents his characters’ consciousnesses, especially in recognition scenes. Nineteenth-century empiricists’ divergence as to the agency of the subject in consciousness is reflected in James’s characters whose impressions by turns assault them from the exterior, or are partly fictions of their own making.

The Manuscripts of the Vargas-Granvelle Correspondence, 1551–2

1960 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 219-224
Author(s):  
H. O. Evennett
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Freedom Of Speech ◽  
Council Of Trent ◽  
Critical Attitude ◽  
Chief Minister ◽  
Legal Adviser ◽  
The Future ◽  
History Of ◽  
Second Period ◽  
The Way

Ever since the final years of the seventeenth century one of the most important sources for the history of the second period of the Council of Trent—still the least well documented of the three—has been the correspondence of Francisco Vargas, Pedro Malvenda, Manrique de Lara, bishop of Orense and other Spaniards at the Council, with the emperor Charles V's chief minister Antoine Perrenot, bishop of Arras, the future cardinal Granvelle. Vargas was one of the most distinguished Spanish lawyers and diplomatists of his day, combining a hatred of Protestantism with a highly critical attitude towards the Papacy. He attended the Council in 1551–2 as legal adviser to Charles's three ambassadors, of whom the chief was Don Francisco de Toledo, and being a procurator fiscal was usually referred to as ‘the fiscal’. Malvenda was a theologian of eminence sent by the emperor. Vargas, Malvenda and the bishop of Orense kept up a correspondence with Granvelle which was not shown to Toledo. The letters of all three correspondents were highly critical—to put it at its lowest—of the way in which the Council was conducted by the Papal Legate presiding, cardinal Marcello Crescentius. The legate is represented as a narrow-minded and intransigent ecclesiastic, a puppet of Rome, infuriating everyone with whom he had to deal by blocking all attempts at serious reform, denying freedom of speech to the bishops, sabotaging the attendance of German protestant representatives and attempting to insert into the doctrinal decrees passages containing inflated concepts of papal supremacy over bishops and councils.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document