Intellectual Change in Early Eighteenth-Century Tokugawa Confucianism

1975 ◽  
Vol 34 (4) ◽  
pp. 931-944 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tetsuo Najita
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
Good Reason ◽  
The Other ◽  
Modern History ◽  
Modern Culture ◽  
Intellectual Engagement ◽  
Important Impact ◽  
Confucian Thought ◽  
History Of

When teaching Tokugawa intellectual history, I consistently encounter a question that is at once deceptively simple yet so difficult to respond to in a convincing and substantial way. Why do Japanese historians argue that Confucianism had an important impact on Tokugawa society, when geographical, political, and ethical realities in Japan were so vastly different from those in China? There is, of course, good reason to be perplexed, I reply, and offer a generalization or two. Tokugawa society clearly was not “Sinified” as is sometimes implied; but, on the other hand, the imprint of Confucianism on Tokugawa thought and culture was undeniably deep. Although the picture is sometimes overdrawn, Japanese historians constantly refer to Confucianism as the “rationalizing” force that transformed Japan from a religious and ascetic culture to a bureaucratic and secular one. The same historians continue to debate the intellectual merit of Tokugawa Confucianism in Japan's modern culture, for while the precise ramifications are still controversial, there is little doubt as to the depth of the Tokugawa intellectual engagement with Confucian thought and of the profound legacy of that engagement for the modern history of Japan. Unfortunately, these generalizations, although helpful, do not add up to convincing historical instruction, a realization that has invariably left me searching for more cogent lines of interpretation and more detailed characterizations of Tokugawa thought.

Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anh Q. Tran
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
The Other ◽  
Pragmatic Approach ◽  
History Of ◽  
The One ◽  
Vietnamese Studies

The Introduction gives the background of the significance of translating and study of the text Errors of the Three Religions. The history of the development of Confucianism, Buddhism, and Daoism in Vietnam from their beginning until the eighteenth century is narrated. Particular attention is given to the different manners in which the Three Religions were taken up by nobles and literati, on the one hand, and commoners, on the other. The chapter also presents the pragmatic approach to religion taken by the Vietnamese, which was in part responsible for the receptivity of the Vietnamese to Christianity. The significance of the discovery of Errors and its impact on Vietnamese studies are also discussed.

Landino and Maximus of Tyre

1960 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 289-294
Author(s):  
Eugene M. Waith
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual History ◽  
The Other ◽  
Highest Good ◽  
The Third ◽  
History Of ◽  
Allegorical Interpretation ◽  
Contemplative Life ◽  
Maximus Of Tyre

The Disputationes Camaldulenses of Cristoforo Landino constitute an important document. Composed in the manner of Ciceronian dialogues, they present us with a group of speakers famous in the history of Florentine thought: among others, Lorenzo de’ Medici, Alberti, and Ficino of the ‘Platonic Academy’ at Careggi to which Landino belonged; Alamanno Rinuccini, the Acciaiuoli, and Marco Parenti of the other ‘academy', presided over by Argyropoulos. The first dialogue deals with the relative merits of the active and contemplative life, the second with the problem of the highest good—two topics dear to the Renaissance. The third and fourth give an allegorical interpretation of the Aeneid. It would be hard to find personages or themes more central to quattrocento intellectual history. Inevitably one looks to the Disputationes for the light they throw on these Florentine scholars and on their interests.

Cameralism, Josephinism, and Enlightenment: The Dynamic of Reform in the Habsburg Monarchy, 1740–92

2018 ◽  
Vol 49 ◽  
pp. 1-14
Author(s):  
Franz A. J. Szabo
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
The Other ◽  
Habsburg Monarchy ◽  
Historical Drama ◽  
Reform Era ◽  
History Of ◽  
The One ◽  
Joseph Ii ◽  
Franz Grillparzer ◽  
Do So

In his great 1848 historical drama,Ein Bruderzwist im Hause Habsburg, the Austrian playwright Franz Grillparzer has Emperor Matthias utter the words that have often been applied to understanding the whole history of the Habsburg monarchy:Das ist der Fluch von unserm edeln Haus:Auf halben Wegen und zu halber TatMit halben Mitteln zauderhaft zu streben.[That is the curse of our noble house:Striving hesitatingly on half waysto half action with half means.]True as those sentiments may be of many periods in the history of the monarchy, the one period of which it cannotbe said is the second half of eighteenth century. The age of Maria Theresa, Joseph II, and Leopold II was perhaps the greatest era of consistent and committed reform in the four-hundred-year history of the monarchy. What I want to address in this article are some aspects of the dynamic of this reform era, and this falls into two categories. On the one hand, there is the broad energizing or motive force behind the larger development, and on the other, there are the ideas or assumptions that lay behind the policies adopted. As might be evident from the subtitle of my article, I propose to look primarily at the second of these categories. I do so because I think while Habsburg historiography has reached considerable consensus on the first, it has not looked enough on the second as an explanatory hermeneutic.

Projecting the Enlightenment

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Wokler ◽  
Christopher Brooke
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
Intellectual Tradition ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Enlightenment Project ◽  
History Of

This chapter retraces Alasdair MacIntyre's own construal of the Enlightenment Project's trajectory in order to show how his interpretation of an intellectual tradition depends above all on his assessment of its impact. It argues that MacIntyre's Enlightenment Project is largely unreconstructed, unredeemed, and undiminished in its failure, even after substantial embellishment. His three principal works comprise an extraordinary indictment of the theoretical and practical legacy of eighteenth-century philosophy. His account projects the Enlightenment's implications and influence as they stem from its aims. He holds it to blame for some of the most sinister aspects of a morally vacuous civilization, cursed by the malediction of unlicenced Reason. His intellectual history of the period forms one of the mainsprings of his own philosophy.

Epilogue

2017 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Black Intellectuals ◽  
Untimely Death ◽  
Intellectual Engagement ◽  
Publication History ◽  
Black Intellectual ◽  
History Of ◽  
Cogent Argument ◽  
The Creation

This concluding chapter likewise contains a eulogy from the other editors of this book, as well as a commentary on the publication history of Barrett's posthumous manuscript. Through discussing the aims of compiling Barrett's work into a “clear, cogent argument” and the emotional forces that had shaped the creation of this volume, the chapter turns to the effects of a lack of closure for Barrett's untimely death. It briefly details the circumstances thereof, while also noting a disturbing trend of several other murders of prominent gay black intellectuals in recent years. The chapter ends on an uplifting note, however, as it closes with some hopeful remarks from the editors on continuing with Barrett's legacy to a tradition of black intellectual engagement.

Islam without Europe

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ahmad S. Dallal
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
Muslim World ◽  
Religious Knowledge ◽  
Islamic Thought ◽  
European Colonization ◽  
History Of ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The Ganges

Replete with a cast of giants in Islamic thought and philosophy, Ahmad S. Dallal’s pathbreaking intellectual history of the eighteenth-century Muslim world challenges stale views of this period as one of decline, stagnation, and the engendering of a widespread fundamentalism. Far from being moribund, Dallal argues, the eighteenth century--prior to systematic European encounters--was one of the most fertile eras in Islamic thought. Across vast Islamic territories, Dallal charts in rich detail not only how intellectuals rethought and reorganized religious knowledge but also the reception and impact of their ideas. From the banks of the Ganges to the shores of the Atlantic, commoners and elites alike embraced the appeals of Muslim thinkers who, while preserving classical styles of learning, advocated for general participation by Muslims in the definition of Islam. Dallal also uncovers the regional origins of most reform projects, showing how ideologies were forged in particular sociopolitical contexts. Reformists’ ventures were in large part successful--up until the beginnings of European colonization of the Muslim world. By the nineteenth century, the encounter with Europe changed Islamic discursive culture in significant ways into one that was largely articulated in reaction to the radical challenges of colonialism.

THE INTELLECTUAL MIGRATION AND THE “OTHER WEIMAR”

2015 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 597-606
Author(s):  
NOAH B. STROTE
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Other ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
Weimar Germany ◽  
Jewish Heritage ◽  
The Us ◽  
History Of

These two books bring fresh eyes and much-needed energy to the study of the intellectual migration from Weimar Germany to the United States. Research on the scholars, writers, and artists forced to flee Europe because of their Jewish heritage or left-wing politics was once a cottage industry, but interest in this topic has waned in recent years. During the height of fascination with the émigrés, bookstores brimmed with panoramic works such as H. Stuart Hughes's The Sea Change: The Migration of Social Thought, 1930–1965 (1975), Lewis Coser's Refugee Scholars in America: Their Impact and Their Experiences (1984), and Martin Jay's Permanent Exiles: Essays on the Intellectual Migration from Germany to America (1985). Now, while historians still write monographs about émigré intellectuals, their focus is often narrowed to biographies of individual thinkers. Refreshingly, with Emily Levine's and Udi Greenberg's new publications we are asked to step back and recapture a broader view of their legacy. The displacement of a significant part of Germany's renowned intelligentsia to the US in the mid-twentieth century remains one of the major events in the intellectual history of both countries.

Ideology Hunting: The Case of James Harrington

1959 ◽  
Vol 53 (3) ◽  
pp. 662-692 ◽  
Author(s):  
Judith N. Shklar
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
Good Deal ◽  
English Civil War ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Past ◽  
Political Ideas ◽  
Political Theories ◽  
History Of

It is well known that each age writes history anew to serve its own purposes and that the history of political ideas is no exception to this rule. The precise nature of these changes in perspective, however, bears investigation. For not only can their study help us to understand the past; it may also lead us to a better understanding of our own intellectual situation. In this quest the political theories of the 17th century and particularly of the English Civil War are especially rewarding. It was in those memorable years that all the major issues of modern political theory were first stated, and with the most perfect clarity. As we have come to reject the optimism of the eighteenth century, and the crude positivism of the nineteenth, we tend more and more to return to our origins in search of a new start. This involves a good deal of reinterpretation, as the intensity with which the writings of Hobbes and Locke, for instance, are being reexamined in England and America testify. These philosophical giants have, however, by the force of their ideas been able to limit the scope of interpretive license. A provocative minor writer, such as Harrington, may for this reason be more revealing. The present study is therefore not only an effort to explain more soundly Harrington's own ideas, but also to treat him as an illustration of the mutations that the art of interpreting political ideas has undergone, and, perhaps to make some suggestions about the problems of writing intellectual history in general.

The Encyclopedist and the Peruvian Princess: The Poetics of Illegibility in French Enlightenment Book Culture

PMLA ◽  
2006 ◽  
Vol 121 (1) ◽  
pp. 107-123
Author(s):  
Lorraine Piroux
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
History Of The Book ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
French Enlightenment ◽  
History Of ◽  
Book Culture

This study focuses on the French Enlightenment's fascination with the materiality of non-Western and nonalphabetic scripts in the broader context of the history of the book. By examining definitions of writing in the Encyclopédie as well as Françoise de Graffigny's novelistic appropriation of the Inca quipu script in Lettres d'une Péruvienne (1747), I argue that there emerges from these texts a conception of the literary sign capable of challenging the fundamental principles of the Enlightenment printed book: dematerialized textuality and absolute legibility. Shaped by the scriptural imagination of eighteenth-century book culture, literature was able to acquire full aesthetic legitimacy only insofar as it was defined as the other of the purely semantic text. (LP)

Warrior, Peasant and Brahmin

1995 ◽  
Vol 29 (3) ◽  
pp. 637-654 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. C. Heesterman
Keyword(s):  
South Asia ◽  
Time Scale ◽  
The Other ◽  
Modern History ◽  
History Of

It may be expected of the Kingsley Martin lecturer that he addresses a theme of topical relevance. This is as it should be, for the modern history of South Asia offers an exceptionally wideranging choice of themes for reflection and inquiry. It will, then, seem strangely inappropriate to go to the other end of the time scale, to the early beginnings of Indian civilization. It would be vain to try and advance an excuse for this turn-about — such excuses would be too easily tainted by special pleading. It is just the romantic lure of a world that was irredeemably lost long ago. Or was it? It may be nearer to us than we care to admit.

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