The Problem of ‘Atheism’ in Early Modern England

1985 ◽  
Vol 35 ◽  
pp. 135-157 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Hunter
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern England ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Real ◽  
Modern Thought ◽  
The One ◽  
The Relationship

To speak of ‘atheism’ in the context of early modern England immediately invites confusion, and it is for this reason that I shall place the word in inverted commas throughout this paper. On the one hand, I intend to deal with what a twentieth-century reader might expect ‘atheism’ to imply, namely overt hostility to religion. On the other, I want to consider at some length the profuse writings on ‘atheism’ that survive from the period: in these, as we shall see, the word if often used to describe a much broader range of phenomena, in a manner typical of a genre which often appears frustratingly heightened and rhetorical. Some might argue that this juxtaposition displays—and will encourage—muddled thought. But, on the contrary, I think that it is precisely from such a combination that we stand to learn most. Not only are we likely to discover how contemporaries experienced and responded to the threat of irreligion in the society of their day. In addition, by re-examining the relationship between the real and the exaggerated in their perceptions of such heterodoxy, we may be able to draw broader conclusions about early modern thought.

Philosophy and Common Sense

Philosophy ◽  
1988 ◽  
Vol 63 (244) ◽  
pp. 161-174 ◽  
Author(s):  
Keith Campbell
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Common Sense ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
The Other ◽  
Jerry Fodor ◽  
Rational Acceptability ◽  
Three Stages ◽  
The One ◽  
The Relationship

This paper raises once more the question of the relationship between philosophy on the one hand and common sense on the other. More particularly, it is concerned with the role which common sense can play in passing judgment on the rational acceptability (or otherwise) of large-scale hypotheses in natural philosophy and the cosmological part of metaphysics. There are, as I see it, three stages through which the relationship has passed in the course of the twentieth century. There is the era of G. E. Moore, the Quine–Feyerabend period, and now a new and modest vindication of common sense is emerging in the work of Jerry Fodor.

Episcopal Tombs in Early Modern England

2004 ◽  
Vol 55 (4) ◽  
pp. 654-680 ◽  
Author(s):  
PETER SHERLOCK
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Early Modern England ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
The Status ◽  
The One ◽  
The Church

The Reformation simultaneously transformed the identity and role of bishops in the Church of England, and the function of monuments to the dead. This article considers the extent to which tombs of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century bishops represented a set of episcopal ideals distinct from those conveyed by the monuments of earlier bishops on the one hand and contemporary laity and clergy on the other. It argues that in death bishops were increasingly undifferentiated from other groups such as the gentry in the dress, posture, location and inscriptions of their monuments. As a result of the inherent tension between tradition and reform which surrounded both bishops and tombs, episcopal monuments were unsuccessful as a means of enhancing the status or preserving the memory and teachings of their subjects in the wake of the Reformation.

Art for Nothing’s Sake

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Corey McEleney
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern England ◽  
The Other ◽  
Literary Genre ◽  
Narrative Structures ◽  
The One

Chapter Three initiates a two-chapter sequence on the most hotly contested literary genre in early modern England: romance. It offers close readings of two Elizabethan texts frequently cited for their condemnations of romance: Roger Ascham’s The Scholemaster and Thomas Nashe’s The Unfortunate Traveller. Critics generally take these texts at face value, citing them as unequivocal Protestant diatribes against the pleasures of romance and arguing that Ascham and Nashe project such pleasures onto the dangers of traveling abroad to Italy. The chapter draws on Paul de Man’s theory of irony in order to think about the disjunction between the texts’ didactic statements, on the one hand, and the mode in which those statements are delivered, or undelivered, on the other. In opposition to conventional readings that recuperate such disjunctions, the chapter analyzes how the rhetorical motions and narrative structures of these texts fail to line up with Ascham’s and Nashe’s more explicit condemnations of romance. Specifically, it show how the texts’ errancy and play, in the forms of digression, alliteration, and narrative interruptions, undercut their pedagogical intentions. Rather than simply celebrating such play, however, the chapter points to its high costs for both writers.

Some reflections on the relationship between ‘gesture’ and ‘sign’

Gesture ◽  
2008 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 348-366 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adam Kendon
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
The Other ◽  
Sign Languages ◽  
Structural Linguistics ◽  
Similarities And Differences ◽  
The One ◽  
Psychological View ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Historical Origins ◽  
As If

In recent discussions there has been a tendency to refer to ‘gesture’ and ‘sign’ as if these are distinct categories, sometimes even as if they are in opposition to one another. Here I trace the historical origins of this distinction. I suggest that it is a product of the application to the analysis of sign languages of a formalist model of language derived from structural linguistics, on the one hand, and, on the other, of a cognitive-psychological view of ‘gesture’ that emerged in the latter half of the twentieth century. I suggest that this division between ‘gesture’ and ‘sign’ tends to exaggerate differences and obscure areas of overlap. It should be replaced by a comparative semiotics of the utterance uses of visible bodily action. This will be better able to articulate the similarities and differences between how kinesics is used, according to whether and how it is employed in relation to other communicative modalities such as speech.

scholarly journals The Italian London of John North: Cultural Contact and Linguistic Encounter in Early Modern England

2017 ◽  
Vol 70 (1) ◽  
pp. 88-131 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Gallagher
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Everyday Life ◽  
Early Modern England ◽  
The Other ◽  
Personal Networks ◽  
Cultural Contact ◽  
Cultural Encounter ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Social ◽  
The One

AbstractThis article takes as its subject the remarkable diary kept by a young English gentleman named John North from 1575 to 1579. On his journey home from Italy in 1575–77, North changed the language of his diary from English to Italian. On his return to London, he continued to keep a record of his everyday life in Italian. This article uses North’s diary as a starting point from which to reconstruct the social and sensory worlds of a returned traveler and Italianate gentleman. In doing so, it offers a way of bridging the gap between individual experiences and personal networks on the one hand, and the wider processes of cultural encounter and linguistic contact on the other.

scholarly journals The Problem of the “Other”: Where Is the Real “I”?

2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 7472-7475
Keyword(s):  
Conceptual Analysis ◽  
A Priori ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Real ◽  
Methodological Basis ◽  
The Social ◽  
The One ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Traditional Understanding

The article deals with the study of the problem of “The Other” in the context of its influence on the formation and formation of “The I”. The methodological basis of the study is existentialism and psychoanalysis. The paper outlines the transition from the traditional understanding of the relationship “The I” - “The Other” to non-classical - “The Other” - “The I”. The paper considers the conditions for constructing the theory of the existence of “The Other” by J.-P. Sartre, as well as the symbolic theory of “The Other” by J. Lacan. The conclusions about the essence of the phenomena of “The I” and “The Other” are drawn based on the conceptual analysis. “The I” is defined as a field of absence, deprivation in an individual. “The Other” is defined as the Symbolic and the ontological facet of the social. The ambivalent process of interaction between “The Other” and “The I” is also presented. “The I” does not exist initially and a priori but it is formed in the process of filling the lack and void with the symbols of “The Other”. The means is the desire which, by splitting an individual, allows him to perceive and realize his being as self. The article shows that this splitting is dual: on the one hand, the I denies the existence of the Other within myself (sadistic component), and on the other, the I entirely denies its Self (masochistic component). The impossibility of being completely satisfied and identifying self with the objects of the Other allows the I not to become like the Other and perceive self as a self-independent and independent being.

“Real” and “Notional” in Newman’s Thought

2020 ◽  
Vol 94 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-56
Author(s):  
Keith Beaumont ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Spiritual Experience ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Real ◽  
The One ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Theology And Philosophy

Newman’s constant preoccupation with “connectedness” leads him to explore and to insist upon the importance of the relationship between the “notional” and the “real,” and therefore of that between theology and philosophy, on the one hand, and spirituality (in the sense of lived spiritual experience) and morality or ethics, on the other. This paper explores Newman’s expression of these ideas, firstly in his sermons and theological writings, and finally in the more philosophical context of the Grammar of Assent.

CREDIT, DEBT, AND HONOR IN CASTILE, 1600-1650

2003 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 8-27 ◽  
Author(s):  
Scott Taylor
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
The Other ◽  
Criminal Cases ◽  
Early Modern Spain ◽  
The Mediterranean ◽  
The One ◽  
Traditional Understanding ◽  
The Way

AbstractBased largely on the findings of anthropologists of the Mediterranean in the twentieth century, the traditional understanding of honor in early modern Spain has been defined as a concern for chastity, for women, and a willingness to protect women's sexual purity and avenge affronts, for men. Criminal cases from Castile in the period 1600-1650 demonstrate that creditworthiness was also an important component of honor, both for men and for women. In these cases, early modern Castilians became involved in violent disputes over credit, invoking honor and the rituals of the duel to justify their positions and attack their opponents. Understanding the connection between credit, debt, and honor leads us to update the anthropological models that pre-modern European historians employ, on the one hand, and to a new appreciation for the way seventeenth-century Castilians understood their public reputations and identity, on the other.

Corpus Mysticum et Representationem: Hildegard of Bingen's Scivias and Ordo Virtutum

1996 ◽  
Vol 37 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-22 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michal Kobialka
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Orientation ◽  
Real Space ◽  
Institutional Structure ◽  
The Other ◽  
Objective Knowledge ◽  
The Real ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Theatre Studies ◽  
The One ◽  
The Relationship

Ever since the project of supplying objective knowledge was challenged by the debates about colonialism, gender, sexual orientation, and ethnicity, academics from different fields have begun to share a conception of knowledge as representational, differing primarily in the accounts of how their, “representations” are related to objects that are represented. Understandably, Plato's and Aristotle's definitions of mimesis have acquired new currency. According to Plato, whenever “you see one, you conceive of the other.” According to Aristotle, the relationship between techne and phusis is contained in the formulation that, on the one hand, art imitates nature; on the other hand, art carries to its end what nature is incapable of effecting. Both Plato and Aristotle perceive mimesis as the process of either epistemological or ontological repetition or doubling in which “one” (thought or subject) becomes “two” (thought or subject doubles as idea or object), in theatre studies, for example, the prevailing tradition defines representation in terms of a promise of a performative act. Such an act signifies that the “I” or “we” making the promise understands or knows the problem, the object, or the text and will be able to transfer it from nature, that is, from the real space, to the theatrical, “imaginary” space where the declaration of its existence and the formulation of its speech will be staged in a tight spotlight. This process is authorized by an institutional structure that safeguards the promise, its execution, and its use.

Catholic and Quaker Attitudes to Work, Rest, and Play in Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century England

2002 ◽  
Vol 37 ◽  
pp. 185-209
Author(s):  
Michael A. Mullett
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern England ◽  
The Other ◽  
Protestant Ethic ◽  
Religious Groups ◽  
Use Of Time ◽  
Spirit Of Capitalism ◽  
The One

Since its publication in 1904–5, Max Weber’s The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism has provided a paradigm for assessments of the attitudes to the profitable use of time among different branches of Christianity, emphasising the sanctification of work and thrifty care for time allegedly found in pronouncedly Protestant religious groups. This paper tests further assumptions made by Weber and his school by considering attitudes espoused within the two religious groups in early modern England which are often taken to epitomize the stereotypical extremes of Weberian hypotheses: on the one hand the Catholics, on the other the Quakers.

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