Optimism and Romanticism

PMLA ◽  
1927 ◽  
Vol 42 (4) ◽  
pp. 921-945 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arthur O. Lovejoy
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
History Of Ideas ◽  
History Of ◽  
New Ideas

The purpose of this paper is, first, to attempt to correct a still rather widely prevalent error concerning the logical import and the usual emotional temper of eighteenth-century optimism, and, second, to point out that the significance in the history of ideas of the multiplication and the popularity of theodicies in the first half of that century consisted less in the tendency of these arguments to diffuse optimistic views of the nature of reality than in their tendency to procure acceptance for certain new ideas of the nature of the good, which the logical exigencies of the optimistic argument involved—ideas pregnant with important consequences for both ethics and aesthetics, since they were to be among the most distinctive elements in what perhaps best deserves to be named “Romanticism.”

scholarly journals pre-eighteenth-century traditions of revivalism: damascus in the thirteenth century

2005 ◽  
Vol 68 (2) ◽  
pp. 195-214 ◽  
Author(s):  
konrad hirschler
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Social History ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
History Of Ideas ◽  
Contemporary Society ◽  
Current State ◽  
History Of ◽  
State Of Affairs ◽  
Large Sections

this article examines whether it is possible to trace eighteenth- and nineteenth-century revivalist thought to earlier ‘medieval’ examples. the discussion is centred on the issue of ijtiha¯d/taqli¯d, which featured prominently in revivalist thought. taking the example of scholars in thirteenth-century damascus, it firstly compares the respective readings of ijtiha¯d/taqli¯d, by focusing on one individual, abu¯ sha¯ma (d. 1267). it secondly asks whether a scholar like abu¯ sha¯ma, who had adopted a reading similar to later revivalists, also took a critical and oppositional stand against large sections of his contemporary society, i.e. a revivalist posture. it is this article's main contention that the example of abu¯ sha¯ma shows the need to study in more detail possible revivalist traditions prior to the ‘grand’ movements. the combination of the history of ideas and social history might allow a deeper understanding of how and in what contexts calls for reform and opposition to the current state of affairs were expressed.

scholarly journals The Conceptual Foundations of the Modern Idea of Government in the British Eighteenth Century: A Distributional Concept Analysis

2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 619-652 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter de Bolla ◽  
Ewan Jones ◽  
Paul Nulty ◽  
Gabriel Recchia ◽  
John Regan
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
History Of Ideas ◽  
Computer Assisted ◽  
Digital Archives ◽  
Scale Reading ◽  
Reading Methods ◽  
Human Scale ◽  
History Of ◽  
Mixed Approach ◽  
Conceptual Foundations

This essay sets out a new method for the history of ideas. Using a mixed approach combining computer assisted reading methods with more traditional close reading, the essay tracks the evolution of a set of terms over the eighteenth century that have become central to how we think about government in particular and political concepts in general. The essay is offered as an example of how data mining very large digital archives allows us to see trends and patterns that are invisible at the granular level of human scale reading, and it proposes that these largescale observations can both complement and complicate our hitherto analogue histories of ideas. The findings of this mixed approach indicate that ‘despotism’ functioned as a type of gate in an electronic circuit, sometimes allowing the connection to liberty and government and on others blocking those connections. Most significantly ‘despotism’ is shown to be an essential ingredient in the conceptual foundations of a theory of rights, liberty and government in the period and that this structure underpins contemporary theories of government.

The Becoming of Change in 3D: Dialectics, Darwin, and Dewey

2021 ◽  
pp. 699-728
Author(s):  
Moshe Farjoun
Keyword(s):  
Evolutionary Theory ◽  
Conceptual Models ◽  
Process Philosophy ◽  
History Of Ideas ◽  
Greek Philosophy ◽  
Change Models ◽  
History Of ◽  
New Ideas ◽  
Important Means ◽  
Relational Process

Dialectical development through a conflict process of affirmation, negation, and synthesis, provides a template, both for modelling organizational change, and for constructing new, synthetic conceptual models of change. This chapter highlights two other important means by which dialectics can stimulate new change models: as a relational process philosophy, and as an evolutionary theory. A selective review of the history of ideas about change, from Greek philosophy to Hegelian and Marxian dialectics, to Darwin, to pragmatism, underscores how relational process principles link several, not commonly connected, “becoming” literatures, and how these principles can stimulate key conceptual innovations. The contrast of dialectics with Darwin’s evolutionary theory uncovers several, non-obvious affinities: in underlying principles, change patterns, and mechanisms. The capacity of dialectics—as a philosophy and as an evolutionary theory—to inspire new ideas, is illustrated by a reading of Dewey’s work anew, and through other examples pertinent to contemporary phenomena.

Domesticating Religious “Fanaticism” in Eighteenth-Century Germany

2018 ◽  
Vol 98 (1) ◽  
pp. 111-138
Author(s):  
Simon Grote
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Historical Perspective ◽  
History Of Ideas ◽  
Commercial Success ◽  
History Of ◽  
Stark Contrast ◽  
The University

Abstract The decline of “fanaticism” in eighteenth-century Germany, a myth propagated by self-proclaimed proponents of Enlightenment, continues to shape historians’ representations of the ascendancy of “religious” Enlightenment. To discredit this myth and suggest a means of replacing it, this essay departs from the conventional attention to university theology as a history of ideas and proposes adding a book-historical perspective. Its focus is the German Pietist theologian Joachim Lange (1670–1744). Condemned by critics as a “fanatic” by virtue of his alleged intellectual kinship with French Reformed theologian Pierre Poiret (1646–1719), Lange is best known today for his vehement and ultimately ineffectual opposition to Enlightenment’s theological standard-bearers at the University of Halle. But Lange’s kinship with Poiret was only partial, and the stark contrast between the careers of two of Lange’s textbooks reveals that although his theological star was falling by the 1730s, elements of Lange’s ostensibly outmoded theology continued to find an audience into the nineteenth century, through the enormous commercial success of his Latin grammar.

Edmund Burke's Idea of the Body Corporate: A Study in Imagery

1965 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 184-197 ◽  
Author(s):  
Walter D. Love
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
The Body ◽  
History Of Ideas ◽  
Personal Life ◽  
History Of ◽  
Ways Of Thinking

Burke is recognized as master of a language highly figurative, full of grace and telling images. But the imagery of nonfiction prose is not so much studied as the imagery of poetry, drama, and fiction. It should be. It reveals a great deal about a thinker. I have not studied Burke's imagery to spy on his personal life, conscious or subconscious, as some students of other writers do, nor have I tried to evaluate his style. I have used it as an oblique way of getting at the meaning of some of his concepts and I think it reveals something about his place in the history of ideas, making him a stalwart of eighteenth-century ways of thinking, instead of a harbinger of the nineteenth century.

Experience and Ideas: Education for Universalism in Eighteenth-Century Scotland

1983 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 50-82 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles Camic
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Social History ◽  
Sociology Of Knowledge ◽  
Social Conditions ◽  
History Of Ideas ◽  
Social Changes ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Micro Level ◽  
The Relationship

The nature of the relationship between ideas and the social conditions in which they develop has long been among the central concerns of fields like the sociology of knowledge, the sociology of intellectuals, and the social history of ideas. For generations, scholars in these areas have hotly debated the proper way of characterizing the form of this relationship and how it should be conceptualized and studied. With few exceptions, however, there has been an astonishing consensus on one matter: fundamental intellectual reorientations have almost invariably been seen as the product—whether simple or complex—of one or more major social changes. As far as it has gone, this perspective has led to extremely important conclusions, but except among the psychoanalytically inclined, it has remained strangely and regrettably silent on the specific micro-level processes by which macro-level social changes actually translate into changes in ideas.

The Material‐Cultural Turn

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dan Hicks
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Cultural Anthropology ◽  
History Of Ideas ◽  
Paradigm Shifts ◽  
Culture Studies ◽  
The Past ◽  
Material Culture Studies ◽  
History Of ◽  
New Ideas ◽  
Cultural Turn

The terms ‘material culture’ and ‘material culture studies’ emerged, one after another, during the twentieth century in the disciplines of archaeology and socio-cultural anthropology, and especially in the place of intersection between the two: anthropological archaeology. The purpose of this article, however, is to excavate the idea of ‘material culture studies’, rather than to bury it. Excavation examines the remains of the past in the present and for the present. It proceeds down from the surface, but the archaeological convention is to reverse this sequence in writing: from the past to the present. In the discussion of the history of ideas and theories, a major risk of such a chronological framework is that new ideas are narrated progressively, as paradigm shifts. The main argument of the article relates to the distinctive form taken by the ‘cultural turn’ in British archaeology and anthropology during the 1980s and 1990s.

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