scholarly journals Eliza Haywood’s Love in Excess: Women, the Enlightenment, and the Trap of Reason

2020 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 38-47
Author(s):  
Bárbara Pérez Curiel
Keyword(s):  
Upper Class ◽  
Double Standards ◽  
Critical Writing ◽  
The Core ◽  
The Enlightenment

This paper examines the contribution of Eliza Haywood’s first work of amatory fiction, Love in Excess; or the Fatal Enquiry, to the tradition of women’s critical writing that have questioned the hidden exclusions at the core of the European Enlightenment. Love in Excess addresses the dichotomy of reason versus emotion and the paradoxical expectations it imposed upon upper-class women during the European Enlightenment. Haywood’s exploration challenges this binary construction by showing the mutual interdependence of reason and passion, and by exposing the double standards on the basis of which women’s and men’s desires were regulated.

The Erotic Family: Structures and Narratives of Milk Kinship in Premodern Japanese Tales

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-19
Author(s):  
Sachi Schmidt-Hori
Keyword(s):  
Connective Tissue ◽  
Indirect Method ◽  
Tenth Century ◽  
Upper Class ◽  
Power Structures ◽  
Family Structures ◽  
Affective Labor ◽  
The Core ◽  
Premodern Japan ◽  
Wet Nurse

This essay proposes that “milk kinship,” which upper-class individuals in premodern Japan formed with their milk kin—a menoto (wet nurse) and a menotogo (foster sibling)—occupies the core of an institutionalized erotic fosterage. In this “menoto system,” the surrogate mother's lactating body and erotic-affective labor became the connective tissue to bind two interclass families, creating a symbiosis that fortified the existing sociopolitical power structures. Around the tenth century, many vernacular tales started to feature menoto characters. While a typical menoto is the protagonist's homely, asexual, motherly confidante, her derivative construct—the menotogo of the protagonist—is often cast in an erotic light. In the four texts examined in this essay, menotogo valorize their erotic agencies to benefit their charges through sexual-affective labor or through an indirect method. The latter entails the formation of a “love square” in which two menotogo become lovers and then help their respective charges do the same.

Benedict de Spinoza’s Virtue

2021 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 107-122
Author(s):  
Columbus N. Ogbujah ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Core Values ◽  
Ethical Relativism ◽  
Ethical Egoism ◽  
Absolute Truth ◽  
The Core ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Seminal Roots

Benedict de Spinoza (1632–1677) was about the most radical of the early modern philosophers who developed a unique metaphysics that inspired an intriguing moral philosophy, fusing insights from ancient Stoicism, Cartesian metaphysics, Hobbes and medieval Jewish rationalism. While helping to ground the Enlightenment, Spinoza’s thoughts, against the intellectual mood of the time, divorced transcendence from divinity, equating God with nature. His extremely naturalistic views of reality constructed an ethical structure that links the control of human passion to virtue and happiness. By denying objective significance to things aside from human desires and beliefs, he is considered an anti-realist; and by endorsing a vision of reality according to which everyone ought to seek their own advantage, he is branded ethical egoist. This essay identified the varying influences of Spinoza’s moral anti-realism and ethical egoism on post-modernist thinkers who decried the “naïve faith” in objective and absolute truth, but rather propagated perspective relativity of reality. It recognized that modern valorization of ethical relativism, which in certain respects, detracts from the core values of the Enlightenment, has its seminal roots in his works.

scholarly journals Ortadoğu’nun Sonlandırılamayan Sorunu: Hatemi’den Ruhani’ye İran’ın Nükleer Enerji Siyaseti / The Unresolved Problem of the Middle East: Iran’s Nuclear Energy Policy from Khatami to Rouhani

2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 416
Author(s):  
Hüseyin Işıksal ◽  
Ghadir Golkarian
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Energy Policy ◽  
Nuclear Energy ◽  
Energy Policies ◽  
Nuclear Program ◽  
Double Standards ◽  
The Core ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Nuclear Energy Policy ◽  
Nuclear Crisis

<p><strong>Abstract</strong></p><p>This article examines Iran’s nuclear energy policy, which is one of the most important issues in the Middle East. In addition to the work written on this subject, it aims to contribute to the literature in terms of the nuclear energy policies of the three Iranian leaders during the nuclear crisis period, namely Mohammad Khatami, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and Hassan Rouhani. In this respect, the article initially explains why Iran’s nuclear energy policy is important. Then, in order to emphasize the double standards that stand at the core of the subject, the background of the Iranian nuclear program and the reasons behind the Iranian energy policy after the 1979 Islamic Revolution are examined. As the destination point of these discussions, the periods under Khatami, Ahmadinejad, and Rouhani are examined in order to reveal the differences and similarities between the nuclear energy policies of the Iranian leaders.</p><p><strong>Öz</strong></p><p>Bu makale, Ortadoğu’daki en önemli sorunlardan biri olan İran’ın nükleer enerji siyasetini incelemektedir. Bu konuda yazılan çalışmalara ek olarak, nükleer kriz döneminin üç lideri, Muhammet Hatemi, Mahmut Ahmedinejat ve Hasan Ruhani’nin nükleer enerji siyasetinin analizi ile ilgili literatürün geliştirilmesi amaçlanmaktadır. Bu doğrultuda makale öncelikle İran’ın nükleer enerji siyasetinin neden önemli olduğunu ortaya koymuştur. Daha sonra konunun özünde olan çifte standart vurgusunu öne çıkarmak için İran nükleer programının temeli ve 1979 İslam Devrimi sonrası İran enerji siyaseti ve nükleer enerji kapasitesi geliştirme nedenleri irdelenmiştir. Bu tartışmaların varış noktası olarak son bölümde Hatemi, Ahmedinejat ve Ruhani dönemleri ayrı ayrı incelenmiş ve nükleer enerji siyasetleri arasındaki fark ve benzerlikler ortaya konulmuştur.</p>

Why History?

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Donald Bloxham
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
Early Christianity ◽  
Classical Antiquity ◽  
The Core ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
The Way

What is the point of history? Why has the study of the past been so important for so long? Why History? A History contemplates two and a half thousand years of historianship to establish how very different thinkers in diverse contexts have conceived their activities, and to illustrate the purposes that their historical investigations have served. At the core of this work, whether it is addressing Herodotus, medieval religious exegesis, or twentieth-century cultural history, is the way that the present has been conceived to relate to the past. Alongside many changes in technique and philosophy, Donald Bloxham’s book reveals striking long-term continuities in justifications for the discipline. The volume has chapters on classical antiquity, early Christianity, the medieval world, the period spanning the Renaissance and the Reformation, the era of the Enlightenment, the nineteenth and early twentieth century, and developments down to the present. It concludes with a meditation on the point of history today.

Foucault

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vincenzo Ferrone
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Immanuel Kant ◽  
Michel Foucault ◽  
Western World ◽  
The Core ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Core Identity ◽  
The Right

This chapter examines how Michel Foucault reformulated the philosophical issue of the Enlightenment by moving from a deliberate rereading of the Hegelian Centaur to an advocacy of the “death of man”—the extinction of a rational platform of knowledge along the lines developed by Immanuel Kant and the Enlightenment at the end of the eighteenth century. It considers Foucault's genealogical historiography, a new and original tool for the analysis of history, and his arguments against the idea of a necessary and defining connection between knowledge and virtue, which had been the core identity of the Enlightenment, the link between power and knowledge, and the rise of disciplinary violence in the history of the Western world. Finally, it explores Foucault's view that “critique is the movement by which the subject gives himself the right to question truth on its exercise of power, and to question power on its discourses of truth.”

Discording Enlightenment on China

2021 ◽  
Vol 31 (3) ◽  
pp. 157-177
Author(s):  
Selusi Ambrogio ◽  
Keyword(s):  
18Th Century ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Natural Phenomenon ◽  
Intercultural Dialogue ◽  
The Political ◽  
Western Education ◽  
The Core ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Points Of View ◽  
Pierre Bayle

It is usually acknowledged that the core contribution of the Enlightenment is primarily twofold: the first being the introduction of reason and science as judgmental principles, and the second being the belief in the future progress of humankind as a shared destiny for humanity. This ‘modern’ reason—an exclusively human prerogative among creatures—could be applied to create a better society from the political, civil, educational, scientific, and religious points of view. What is usually less known is that for most of the Enlightenment thinkers, this philosophical and cultural step was the prerogative of European or Western-educated thinkers, which implied a gradual exclusion of extra-European civilizations from human progress as a natural phenomenon. Thus, with the exception of a few French libertines, the creation of a better society was due to reason and critical thinking absent in other civilizations, who could, at most, inherit this ‘rational power’ from Western education. This exclusion, which is usually attributed to the violence of the colonialist period, is already implied in the arguments of several Enlightenment thinkers. Our investigation will follow three steps: an exposition of the three Western historical paradigms in which Eastern civilizations were inserted between the 17th and 18th century; a comparison between the attitude toward China and Buddhism of two very distant philosophers of the Enlightenment—i.e. Pierre Bayle (1647–1706) and Johann Jacob Brucker (1696–1770)—and a brief reflection on the Enlightenment from an ‘external/exotic’ point of view that will suggest the necessity of a ‘new skeptical Enlightenment’ for inducing actual intercultural dialogue.

Being and Freedom

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Skorupski
Keyword(s):  
French Revolution ◽  
John Stuart Mill ◽  
Radical Democracy ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Core ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Politics And Religion ◽  
Late Modern ◽  
The French Revolution

Being and Freedom is an account of ethics in Europe from the French Revolution: a phase of philosophical ethics whose influence ran far beyond philosophy, eventually dominating politics and religion in the West. Developments came from France, Germany, and Britain. This book is currently the only study that treats them together as a Europe-wide phenomenon. The first chapter covers the philosophical conflict at the heart of the French Revolution, between the individualism of the Enlightenment and two very different forms of holistic ethics: the old regime’s ethic of service and the radical-democracy of the Rousseauian left. Responses analysing modern freedom and democracy came from a series of French liberal thinkers. In Germany the reaction was to two revolutions seen as inaugurating modernity—the political revolution in France and the philosophical revolution of Kant. Here the fate of religion was critical; with it the metaphysics of being and freedom. The story is traced from Kant to Hegel’s idealist version of ethical holism. In Britain, Enlightenment naturalism remained the prevailing framework. It took different forms: ‘common sense’ and the theory of the sentiments in Scotland, utilitarianism in England. From these elements came a synthesis of European themes by John Stuart Mill—comparable in range but opposed to that of Hegel. This period’s ethical ideas remain the core of late modern ethics and the contested ground on which ethical disagreements take place today. The final chapter is a retrospective and assessment.

Selections before elections: Double standards in implementing election registration procedures in Russia?

2015 ◽  
Vol 48 (1) ◽  
pp. 61-70 ◽  
Author(s):  
Håvard Bækken
Keyword(s):  
The Political ◽  
Political Affiliation ◽  
Political Opposition ◽  
Considerable Part ◽  
Double Standards ◽  
The Core ◽  
The Law ◽  
Legal Mechanism

For a considerable part of the political opposition in Russia, elections have been something to be watched from the sidelines. While opposition candidates are formally blocked for legal-administrative reasons, they have repeatedly claimed that registration refusals are politically motivated and that election committees apply the law differently depending on the candidates’ political affiliation. By analyzing the perceptions of double standards as well as actual enforcement practice and structural incentives, this article identifies the core mechanics of this quasi-legal mechanism of political pre-election filtering in Russian elections.

All’s Fair? The Foreclosure Crisis and Middle-Class Black (In)Stability

2012 ◽  
Vol 56 (11) ◽  
pp. 1565-1580 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karyn Lacy
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
The United States ◽  
Black Middle Class ◽  
Upper Class ◽  
Differential Impact ◽  
Lower Middle Class ◽  
The Core ◽  
Foreclosure Crisis ◽  
Middle Class Blacks

Is the protracted foreclosure crisis eroding the Black middle class? Foreclosure rates in the United States have reached an all-time high. Blacks have been hit especially hard by this crisis. I focus here on intraclass distinctions within the Black middle class precisely because scholars and journalists so often fail to distinguish between the experiences of the Black lower middle class and those of middle and upper-class Blacks, leaving the unintended impression that middle-class Blacks all have the same odds of losing their home. I argue that conventional explanations of the foreclosure crisis as a racialized event should be amended to account for the differential impact of the crisis on three distinct groups of middle-class Blacks: the lower middle class, the core middle class, and the upper or elite middle class.

scholarly journals Research on Wang Xiaobo’s Humanitarian Enlightenment

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. p79
Author(s):  
Zhixiu Lu
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
New Culture Movement ◽  
The Core ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
The New Culture Movement

In the 20th century of China, The enlightenment spirit was obviously active twice, once in the May 4th, 1919 when the New Culture Movement happen, and once in the 1980s. The core of the spirit of enlightenment is a kind of humanitarianism, which emphasizes rationality and freedom. And the core of Wang Xiaobo’s spiritual exactly is consistent with Humanitarian enlightenment, so the discussion of Wang Xiaobo’s ideological value can be summarized from the perspective of Humanitarian enlightenment: advocating science and rationality, advocating freedom and human rights, and the pursuit the true interest in life.

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