Le mélange du sacré et du profane dans les livrets de tragédies lyriques du librettiste Nicolas-François Guillard (1752-1814)

2013 ◽  
pp. 48-57
Author(s):  
Cécile Champonnois
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Family Roles ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Original Works ◽  
Giovanni Paisiello ◽  
Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock

Nicolas François Guillard (1752-1814) was one of the best librettists of the Tournant des Lumières. The libretto of Proserpine by Quinault, set to music by Lully at the end of the seventeenth century, was adapted by Guillard and once again set to music by Giovanni Paisiello in 1803. Six years later, in 1809, La Mort d’Adam, adapt-ed by Guillard from Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock’ Der Tod Adams (1757), was set to music by Jean-François Lesueur. These rewritings, with religious or sacred topics staged for a secular theatre by Guillard, are very different from the original works and tend to be family dramas: he then transforms them into secular works with secular content. Human sacrifices are present in these works but seem to feature here for family reasons and not only for religious purposes. Divinities are presented by the librettist as human beings, whose family roles are predominant. The sacred and the profane are mixed in these two librettos, changed into hybrid works. Guillard seems to use the same model to adapt historical, mythological or religious works, which means that the role and the impor-tance of the religious in the works staged at the Académie Impériale de Musique in the period of the Tournant des Lumières has to be examined.

Belief in the Human

2018 ◽  
pp. 250-281
Author(s):  
Ethan H. Shagan
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Social World ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
The Social ◽  
New Ideas ◽  
Suspension Of Disbelief

This chapter cites Samuel Taylor Coleridge's concept of the “willing suspension of disbelief” in order to describe the timeless process by which human beings believe in their own creations. As seen before, Europeans influenced by new ideas in the seventeenth century were freed to believe in spiritual objects in much the same way they believed in mundane ones, as acts of sovereign judgment. With the category so perforated, there was no intrinsic reason why belief had to remain bound to objects judged “true” in a transcendent or universal sense; it might also alight upon objects judged true in more provisional or instrumental ways. Crucially, this included the social world: ephemeral human creations, the ideas and things that humans themselves make.

Epilogue and Conclusion

2021 ◽  
pp. 268-272
Author(s):  
Sarah Mortimer
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Human Nature ◽  
Religious Belief ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Political Authority ◽  
Historical Change ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Hugo Grotius ◽  
The Church

This chapter draws together the themes of the book and looks forward to the later-seventeenth century. It argues that for much of the sixteenth century politics was subordinate to religion; temporal authorities needed the additional sanctions provided by religious belief if they were to exert any power over the consciences of individuals. The effect was to entangle temporal power in the deepening conflicts over religious truth, and thus to reveal the brittleness of any conception of political authority which relied on the support of the Church. At the same time, older traditions of political thought did not go away and often became stronger. The circulation of classical ideas, the discovery of new peoples, the growing interest in historical change and development all suggested alternative ways of legitimizing political power, often using natural law and avoiding any reliance on specifically Christian commitments. What happened in the early-seventeenth century, and most obviously in the writing of Hugo Grotius, was a move not only to ground political society in a particular conception of human nature (conceived of juridically, as a source of rights and obligations) but also to detach Christianity from that view of human nature. It was this understanding of human beings which enabled the development of a social contract tradition through the seventeenth century and beyond, and became an important source for modern liberalism. The questions it raised would help to shape the thought of the next century.

Natural Sovereignty and Omnipotence in Hobbes’s Leviathan

2021 ◽  
pp. 193-212
Author(s):  
A.P. Martinich
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Easy Answer ◽  
Do So

According to Hobbes, God is a natural sovereign because of his omnipotence, not because of his goodness or creation. The relation between power and kingship is also expressed in the idea of Yahweh as a warrior god, for example in Deuteronomy and the Book of Psalms. Kings, “mortal gods,” need power to protect their subjects and could only do so if they had properties similar to those attributed to God. In the seventeenth-century, intellectuals sometimes made God the model for human sovereigns, and sometimes the reverse. Since both God and human sovereigns are owed obedience, a troubling question arises: “Should human beings obey God or their sovereign if there is a conflict?” Hobbes has an easy answer. God commands people to obey their human sovereign. Arash Abizadeh’s interpretation that God is a person by fiction is refuted.

Human Life as a State of Mediocrity in John Locke

2021 ◽  
pp. 85-105
Author(s):  
Giuliana Di Biase
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
John Locke ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Early Church ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Church Fathers ◽  
Perfect Knowledge ◽  
Further Development ◽  
The Church

This chapter investigates the genesis and evolution of Locke’s idea of human life as a “state of mediocrity”. While this idea had ancient roots going back to the early Church fathers, it remained current in the seventeenth century where mediocrity was generally equated with a condition of partial ignorance and imperfection. Locke’s account of it is original; while life is a time of mediocrity, death opens the way to the extremes of eternal misery or eternal happiness. Initially, inspired by the Church fathers, Locke conceived of human life as a condition of intellectual mediocrity. Subsequently, and arguably prompted by his reading of the pessimistic outlooks of Nicole and Pascal, he redefined the state of mediocrity in more optimistic terms: humans are naturally suited to their mediocre state. A further development of his conception of mediocrity, again involving a partial rethinking of the human condition, can be found in the Essay, where Locke represents mediocrity as an imperfect state of insatiable desire. It is redeemed, however, by the ability of living human beings to attain perfect knowledge of morality.

Universal language

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Donald Rutherford
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Chinese Characters ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Modern Logic ◽  
Original Language ◽  
International Language ◽  
Universal Language ◽  
Philosophical Language

Most often associated with attempts to establish an international language such as Esperanto, the idea of a universal language is rooted in the biblical claim of an original language common to all human beings. The idea received its most thorough investigation during the seventeenth century. Drawing on the example of Chinese characters, early schemes involved a system of written signs that would allow communication between speakers of different languages. Later thinkers argued for the importance of an ideal ‘philosophical language’ in which the structure of signs exactly mirrored the structure of reality. While such projects fell short of their authors’ expectations, their influence can be discerned in the formalisms of modern logic and science.

Predestination and freedom in Milton's Paradise Lost

2006 ◽  
Vol 59 (1) ◽  
pp. 64-80
Author(s):  
Benjamin Myers
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Paradise Lost ◽  
Decisive Role ◽  
Human Freedom ◽  
Fluid Sphere ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Epic Poem ◽  
Human Decision ◽  
History Of

John Milton's epic poem Paradise Lost (1667) offers a highly creative seventeenth-century reconstruction of the doctrine of predestination, a reconstruction which both anticipates modern theological developments and sheds important light on the history of predestinarian thought. Moving beyond the framework of post-Reformation controversies, the poem emphasises both the freedom and the universality of electing grace, and the eternally decisive role of human freedom in salvation. The poem erases the distinction between an eternal election of some human beings and an eternal rejection of others, portraying reprobation instead as the temporal self-condemnation of those who wilfully reject their own election and so exclude themselves from salvation. While election is grounded in the gracious will of God, reprobation is thus grounded in the fluid sphere of human decision. Highlighting this sphere of human decision, the poem depicts the freedom of human beings to actualise the future as itself the object of divine predestination. While presenting its own unique vision of predestination, Paradise Lost thus moves towards the influential and distinctively modern formulations of later thinkers like Schleiermacher and Barth.

scholarly journals Catholic Political Thought and Calvinist Ecclesiology in Samuel Rutherford's Lex, Rex (1644)

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-23
Author(s):  
Karie Schultz
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Civil Wars ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Popular Sovereignty ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Political Ideas ◽  
Law Of Nations ◽  
Human Liberty ◽  
The Church ◽  
Civil Government

Abstract This article presents a significant reinterpretation of an essential text in Scottish (and British) political thought, Samuel Rutherford's Lex, Rex, by analyzing its relationship with Catholic scholasticism. While scholars have observed Rutherford's use of Catholic authors, there has been no sustained analysis of how Rutherford strategically applied this intellectual tradition to the religious and political context of the British civil wars. Ideas about human liberty, the law of nations, and popular sovereignty that were developed by Catholic scholastics in the School of Salamanca allowed Rutherford to defend limited monarchy and fulfill an ecclesiological purpose in seventeenth-century Britain. He, and the majority of his Covenanter contemporaries, believed in jure divino presbyterianism: scripture mandated that elders and synods, not bishops, should rule the church. To ensure a presbyterian settlement, Rutherford needed to disprove royalist absolutists who claimed that presbyterianism threatened absolute monarchy (the divinely ordained form of civil government) by limiting royal supremacy over the church. By building on Catholic scholastic political ideas, Rutherford was able to argue that human beings could change the form of civil government and that absolute monarchy was not required by God. Ironically, to make a civil state safe for presbyterianism, Rutherford resorted to Catholic scholastics rather than those of his own confessional tradition. This analysis urges reconsideration of not only the porosity of traditional confessional boundaries in early modern political thought but the respective positions of both Calvinism and Catholicism in shaping the political ideas underlying the British revolutions of the mid-seventeenth century.

Nifo, Agostino (c.1470–1538)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edward P. Mahoney
Keyword(s):  
Strong Influence ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Medical Doctor ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Public Controversy ◽  
Renaissance Humanism ◽  
Marsilio Ficino ◽  
Agostino Nifo ◽  
Original Works ◽  
Human Intellect

Agostino Nifo was a university teacher, medical doctor and extremely prolific writer. His books included many commentaries on Aristotle’s logic, natural philosophy and metaphysics, as well as original works on topics ranging from elementary logic to beauty and love. However, his most important works had to do with the human intellect, and with Averroes’ view that there is just one intellect shared by all human beings. Although he never accepted Averroes’ position as true, he did initially believe that Averroes correctly interpreted Aristotle on this point. He also entered into public controversy with Pomponazzi on the question whether human immortality could be proved. Nifo’s Aristotelianism reflects his interest in many different traditions of commentary on Aristotle, including medieval Latin commentators, especially Thomas Aquinas, medieval Arab commentators and their Latin followers, especially John of Jandun, but most of all the Greek commentators. Here he shows the strong influence of Renaissance humanism, which made the Greek texts available. It was when Nifo himself learned Greek that he came to abandon the notion that Averroes was an accurate interpreter of Aristotle. Nifo was also very interested in Plato and Platonism, particularly as presented by Marsilio Ficino. His careful presentations of other people’s doctrines were popular in university circles for much of the sixteenth century.

Margaret Cavendish

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Cunning
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Cross Section ◽  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Sensory Perception ◽  
First Century ◽  
Margaret Cavendish ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
The Universe

Margaret Cavendish, a seventeenth-century philosopher, scientist, poet, playwright, and novelist, went to battle with the great thinkers of her time, and in many cases arguably got the better of them, but she did not have the platform that she would have had in the twenty-first century. She took a creative and systematic stand on the major questions of philosophy of mind, epistemology, metaphysics, and political philosophy. She defends a number of theses across her corpus: for example, that human beings and all other members of the created universe are wholly material; that matter is eternal; that the universe is a plenum of contiguous bodies; that matter is generally speaking knowledgeable and perceptive and that non-human creatures like spiders, plants, and cells exhibit wisdom and skill; that motion is never transferred from one body to another, but bodies always move by motions that are internal to them; that sensory perception is not via impressions or stamping; that we can have no ideas of immaterials; and that creatures depend for their properties and features on the behavior of the beings that surround them. Cavendish uses her fictional work to further illustrate these views, and in particular to illustrate the view that creatures depend on their surroundings for their social and political properties. For example, she crafts alternative worlds in which women are not seen as unfit for roles such as philosopher, scientist, and military general, and in which they flourish. This volume of Cavendish’s writings provides a cross-section of her interconnected writings, views, and arguments.

scholarly journals 3. Similarities Across the Centuries: A Comparison Between Two Vocal Works by Barbara Strozzi and Peter Maxwell Davies

2018 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-36
Author(s):  
Rossella Marisi
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Cultural Climate ◽  
Original Works ◽  
Musical Creativity ◽  
Vocal Works ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Peter Maxwell Davies

Abstract Musical creativity may be expressed by composers in diverse ways: sometimes they compose fully original works, which are characterized by specific features making them unique. Other times, musicians may feel a particular affinity with colleagues who lived centuries before, or identify peculiar resemblances between the time they live in, and a previous epoch, such as similar cultural climate and approach to life: in these cases, composers may author pieces which show surprising similarities with those of some predecessors. The present study compares a work of the seventeenth century, composed by Barbara Strozzi, and one composed in the 1960s by Peter Maxwell Davies, highlighting their similarities.

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