Light unto the Nations

2020 ◽  
pp. 157-200
Author(s):  
Adam Sutcliffe
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Political Life ◽  
The Political ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Jewish State ◽  
History Of ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Century Thought

This chapter focuses on the purpose of the Jews in relation to the potential and meaning of nationhood, in both Zionist and non-Zionist contexts. It talks about Moses Hess, a writer in Germany in the 1860s, who linked a profoundly negative view of the Jews' diasporic role as arch-capitalists to his irenic view of the role of the Jews in his Zionist vision of the future. It explains how a Zionist grappling with the idea of Jewish exemplarity runs through the twentieth-century history of the movement. This chapter also highlights the cultural Zionism of Ahad Ha'am and the political rhetoric of David Ben-Gurion, who repeatedly invoked Isaiah's “light unto the nations” as his vision for the Jewish state. It analyzes the relationship of Jewish exemplarity and purpose to the broader political life of the nation state that became a rich and complicated seam of debate within twentieth century thought.

On Metaphysics and the Political: A Polemics of Reading Baudelaire in the 1930s

2019 ◽  
Vol 58 (2) ◽  
pp. 249-259
Author(s):  
Joseph Acquisto
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Political Crisis ◽  
The Political ◽  
Modern Poetry ◽  
Progressive Politics ◽  
The World ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Insight Into

This essay examines a polemic between two Baudelaire critics of the 1930s, Jean Cassou and Benjamin Fondane, which centered on the relationship of poetry to progressive politics and metaphysics. I argue that a return to Baudelaire's poetry can yield insight into what seems like an impasse in Cassou and Fondane. Baudelaire provides the possibility of realigning metaphysics and politics so that poetry has the potential to become the space in which we can begin to think the two of them together, as opposed to seeing them in unresolvable tension. Or rather, the tension that Baudelaire animates between the two allows us a new way of thinking about the role of esthetics in moments of political crisis. We can in some ways see Baudelaire as responding, avant la lettre, to two of his early twentieth-century readers who correctly perceived his work as the space that breathes a new urgency into the questions of how modern poetry relates to the world from which it springs and in which it intervenes.

The Red Menace Reconsidered: A Forgotten History of Communist Mobilization in Rio de Janeiro’s Favelas, 1945-1964

2014 ◽  
Vol 94 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-33 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brodwyn Fischer
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Urban Poor ◽  
The Political ◽  
Labor Politics ◽  
Urban Social Movements ◽  
History Of ◽  
Political Left ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Instrumental Role

Abstract This article focuses on the relationship between the political Left and Brazil’s urban poor by exploring the paradoxical role of Brazilian communists in the massive land struggles that mobilized Rio’s favelas against forced eviction in the mid-twentieth century. Without the communists’ organizational, legal, and political acumen, Rio’s iconic favelas might never have become a permanent and precious urban foothold for the migrant poor. Without the residents’ support, the Brazilian Communist Party might not have experienced electoral triumph in the late 1940s or maintained a strong political presence through the decades when it was declared illegal. And yet favela activists rarely acknowledge communist involvement in their struggles, and Communist activists and scholars grant such movements only a marginal, instrumental role in the Brazilian Communist movement. This dance of mutual forgetting reveals much about the subtle but persistent disjuncture between leftist ideology and grassroots political practice that characterized mid-twentieth-century Brazil. Analysts have long bemoaned and explored this disjuncture in the context of Brazil’s labor politics; this article argues that the gap between party doctrine and the massive, diffuse urban social movements of the mid-twentieth century was broader and more fateful still.

Muscovy and the Tatars

2020 ◽  
Vol 54 (4) ◽  
pp. 403-431
Author(s):  
Bulat R. Rakhimzianov
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Social Institutions ◽  
The Political ◽  
East European ◽  
Central Eurasia ◽  
History Of ◽  
Mutual Relations ◽  
Forest Line ◽  
The Relationship

Abstract This article explores relations between Muscovy and the so-called Later Golden Horde successor states that existed during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries on the territory of Desht-i Qipchaq (the Qipchaq Steppe, a part of the East European steppe bounded roughly by the Oskol and Tobol rivers, the steppe-forest line, and the Caspian and Aral Seas). As a part of, and later a successor to, the Juchid ulus (also known as the Golden Horde), Muscovy adopted a number of its political and social institutions. The most crucial events in the almost six-century-long history of relations between Muscovy and the Tatars (13–18th centuries) were the Mongol invasion of the Northern, Eastern and parts of the Southern Rus’ principalities between 1237 and 1241, and the Muscovite annexation of the Kazan and Astrakhan khanates between 1552 and 1556. According to the model proposed here, the Tatars began as the dominant partner in these mutual relations; however, from the beginning of the seventeenth century this role was gradually inverted. Indicators of a change in the relationship between the Muscovite grand principality and the Golden Horde can be found in the diplomatic contacts between Muscovy and the Tatar khanates. The main goal of the article is to reveal the changing position of Muscovy within the system of the Later Golden Horde successor states. An additional goal is to revisit the role of the Tatar khanates in the political history of Central Eurasia in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

The Gallic Singularity and the Royal Mistress

2020 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
pp. 44-66
Author(s):  
Christine Adams
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Soft Power ◽  
Political Power ◽  
The Political ◽  
Marie Antoinette ◽  
Louis Xvi ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Political Realm

The relationship of the French king and royal mistress, complementary but unequal, embodied the Gallic singularity; the royal mistress exercised a civilizing manner and the soft power of women on the king’s behalf. However, both her contemporaries and nineteenth- and early twentieth-century historians were uncomfortable with the mistress’s political power. Furthermore, paradoxical attitudes about French womanhood have led to analyses of her role that are often contradictory. Royal mistresses have simultaneously been celebrated for their civilizing effect in the realm of culture, chided for their frivolous expenditures on clothing and jewelry, and excoriated for their dangerous meddling in politics. Their increasing visibility in the political realm by the eighteenth century led many to blame Louis XV’s mistresses—along with Queen Marie-Antoinette, who exercised a similar influence over her husband, Louis XVI—for the degradation and eventual fall of the monarchy. This article reexamines the historiography of the royal mistress.

scholarly journals Apuntes para una mecánica política del paisaje (Ilustrados con algunas escenas barcelonesas) | Notes on the politics of landscape (Illustrated with a few scenes of Barcelona)

ZARCH ◽  
2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Victor Ténez Ybern
Keyword(s):  
Balance Of Power ◽  
Recent History ◽  
The Political ◽  
Human Group ◽  
Political Role ◽  
Political Landscape ◽  
Dynamic Relationship ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Relationship

Si asumimos que el paisaje es el resultado perceptible de la relación dinámica entre un determinado grupo humano y su medio; esa definición que se cuenta entre las de más consenso entre aquellos que dicen hacer paisajes, suscita de inmediato ciertas preguntas: ¿Cuál es el papel de aquel que pretende crear paisajes, si el paisaje es un proceso que se da por si solo? ¿Hasta qué punto incide cambiar el aspecto de un lugar en esa relación entre la gente y su entorno cotidiano?El texto pretende explorar las consecuencias de esas paradójicas preguntas, a partir de una primera hipótesis: la del carácter intrínsecamente político del proyecto del paisaje. De esta hipótesis parte la intención de mostrar la evolución de la reflexión sobre ese papel político del hacer paisajes, en el que el hacedor de paisajes que está siempre situado entre los equilibrios de poder que se establecen entre las instituciones y la gente. A partir de aquí, se analizan algunos momentos clave de la historia de ese paisaje político, donde el “hacedor de paisajes” intenta encontrar su lugar.En el horizonte del texto, aparecen también imágenes de la historia reciente de mi ciudad, a modo de ilustración de lo dicho. If we accept that landscape is the perceptible result of the dynamic relationship process between a specific human group and an environment, this definition, which enjoys the most acceptance among those people who ‘make landscape’, immediately raises certain questions: What is the role of the person who aims to create landscapes, if landscape is a process that takes place on its own? To what point does this affect the relationship between people and their daily setting?This article initially aims to explore the consequences of that paradox through a first hypothesis: the intrinsically political nature of the landscape project. This hypothesis springs from the intention of describing the evolution of the reflection on this political role of making landscape, in which ‘landscape makers’ constantly find themselves affected by the balance of power established between institutions and people. Subsequently, analysis will be conducted on a series of key periods in the history of the political landscape in which landscape makers endeavour to find their place.Pictures of the recent history of my city appear interspersed within the text, in order to illustrate what has been described.

How to Exist Politically and Learn from It: Hannah Arendt and the Problem of Democratic Education

2010 ◽  
Vol 112 (2) ◽  
pp. 556-575
Author(s):  
Gert Biesta
Keyword(s):  
Hannah Arendt ◽  
Democratic Education ◽  
Research Question ◽  
Political Life ◽  
The Political ◽  
Moral Qualities ◽  
Democratic Life ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Background Context

Background/Context In discussions about democratic education, there is a strong tendency to see the role of education as that of the preparation of children and young people for their future participation in democratic life. A major problem with this view is that it relies on the idea that the guarantee for democracy lies in the existence of a properly educated citizenry so that once all citizens have received their education, democracy will simply follow. Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study The question that is explored in this article is whether it is possible to think of the relationship between education and democracy differently than in terms of preparation. This is important not only to be able to acknowledge the political nature of democratic education but also to be able to acknowledge the political “foundation” of democratic politics itself. Research Design The argumentation in the article is developed through a critical analysis and discussion of the work of Hannah Arendt, with a specific focus on her ideas about the relationship between education and politics and her views on the role of understanding in politics. Findings/Results Arendt's writings on the relationship between education and politics seem to be informed by a “developmentalistic” perspective in which it is maintained that the child is not yet ready for political life, so education has to be separated from politics and seen as a preparation for future participation in political life. Arendt's writings on politics and the role of understanding in political life point in a different direction. They articulate what it means to exist politically—that is, to exist together in plurality—and highlight that political existence is neither based on, nor can be guaranteed by, moral qualities such as tolerance and respect. Conclusions/Recommendations The main conclusion of the article is that democratic education should not be seen as the preparation of citizens for their future participation in political life. Rather, it should focus on creating opportunities for political existence inside and outside schools. Rather than thinking of democratic education as learning for political existence, it is argued that the focus of our educational endeavours should be on how we can learn from political existence.

‘Even If You Don’t Want to Drink, You Still Have to Drink’

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph Lawson
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Historical Perspective ◽  
Historical Narratives ◽  
Historical Texts ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Invented Tradition ◽  
History Of ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter considers the history of alcohol in Nuosu Yi society in relation to the formal codification of a Yi heritage of alcohol-related culture, and the question of alcohol in Yi health. The relationship of newly invented tradition to older practice and thought is often obscure in studies that lack historical perspective. Examining the historical narratives associated with the exposition of a Yi heritage of alcohol, this study reveals that those narratives are woven from a tapestry of threads with histories of their own, and they therefore shape present-day heritage work. After a brief overview of ideas about alcohol in contemporary discourses on Yi heritage, the chapter then analyses historical texts to argue that many of these ideas are remarkably similar to ones that emerged in the context of nineteenth and early twentieth century contact between Yi and Han communities.

Hope, or On Theology

2020 ◽  
pp. 170-197
Author(s):  
Ryan Patrick Hanley
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
The Political ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Political Implications ◽  
Self Interest ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
Universal Order ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Theological Virtue

Chapter 6 turns to Fénelon’s theology, focusing on his treatment of hope and its significance for his political philosophy. It argues that he regarded hope not just as a key theological virtue, but also as a key virtue of political rulers and political reformers. Its discussion of the political implications of Fénelon’s theology proceeds in three parts. It first examines the role of hope in Telemachus. It then turns to the treatment of hope in Fénelon’s theology, focusing on three particular discussions: the place of hope in love, the relationship of hope to self-interest, and the place of hope in prayer. The final section turns to two aspects of Fénelon’s theology beyond hope which also have significant implications for his political philosophy: his understanding of the relationship of human being to divine being, and his arguments for the existence of God and their implications for universal order.

Britain’s Imperial Press System

2020 ◽  
pp. 434-450
Author(s):  
Simon J. Potter
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
State Intervention ◽  
Press Freedom ◽  
British Government ◽  
System P ◽  
News Agencies ◽  
History Of ◽  
British Press ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter examines the twentieth-century British press in its imperial and transnational contexts. It demonstrates how Britain's imperial press system, which developed during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to allow news to flow around the British empire, increasingly failed to serve British geopolitical interests from the mid-twentieth century onwards. It considers the relationship between the British government and the news agency Reuters, and the role of the Empire Press Union. It argues that although contemporary journalists often emphasised the importance of the ideal of press freedom when talking about their profession, state intervention in the affairs of news agencies represents a significant thread in the history of the twentieth-century British press.

Ethics Committees and Consultation in Mental Health

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Don C. Postema
Keyword(s):  
Ethics Education ◽  
Ethics Committees ◽  
The United States ◽  
Biomedical Ethics ◽  
Spiritual Beliefs ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship

Understanding the role of ethics committees in providing ethics consultations, ethics education, and ethics-related policies is the context for exploring the relationship of ethics, psychiatry, and religious and spiritual beliefs. After a brief history of biomedical ethics in the United States since the mid-20th century, this chapter presents several case studies that exemplify frequently encountered tensions in these relationships. The central contention is that respecting these beliefs is not equivalent to acquiescing to ethical claims based on them. Rigorous critical reflection and psychiatric insight, coupled with the values embedded in the social practices of healthcare, provide the grounds for evaluating the weight and bearing of religious and spiritual beliefs in ethically complex cases. This is one contribution that ethics committees can make at the intersection of psychiatry and religion.

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