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.

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.

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.

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.

scholarly journals Vulgar Modernism: J. M. Richards, Modernism and the Vernacular in British Architecture

2015 ◽  
Vol 58 ◽  
pp. 229-259 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jessica Kelly
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Modern Architecture ◽  
The World ◽  
Architectural Review ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
British Architecture ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Reyner Banham

In 1946 J. M. Richards, editor of theArchitectural Review (AR)and self-proclaimed champion of modernism, published a book entitledThe Castles on the Ground(Fig. 1). This book, written while working for the Ministry of Information (Mol) in Cairo during the war, was a study of British suburban architecture and contained long, romantic descriptions of the suburban house and garden. Richards described the suburb as a place in which ‘everything is in its place’ and where ‘the abruptness, the barbarities of the world are far away’. For this reasonThe Castles on the Groundis most often remembered as a retreat from pre-war modernism, into nostalgia for mock-Tudor houses and privet hedges. The writer and critic Reyner Banham, who worked with Richards at the AR in the 1950s, described the book as a ‘blank betrayal of everything that Modern Architecture was supposed to stand for’. More recently, however, it has been rediscovered and reassessed for its contribution to mid-twentieth-century debates about the relationship between modern architects and the British public. These reassessments get closer to Richards’s original aim for the book. He was not concerned with the style of suburban architecture for its own sake, but with the question of why the style was so popular and what it meant for the role of modern architects in Britain and their relationship to the ‘man in the street’.

Social Media Use Among Olympians and Sport Journalists in Hungary

2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 181-199
Author(s):  
Agnes Kovacs ◽  
Tamas Doczi ◽  
Dunja Antunovic
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Media Use ◽  
Social Media Use ◽  
The World ◽  
Social Media Platforms ◽  
The Media ◽  
Hungarian Case ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Insight Into

The Olympic Games are among the most followed events in the world, so athletes who participate there are exceptionally interesting for the media. This research investigated Olympians’ social media use, sport journalists’ attitudes about Olympians’ social media use, and the role of social media in the relationship between Olympians and sport journalists in Hungary. The findings suggest that most Hungarian Olympians do not think that being on social media is an exceptionally key issue in their life, and a significant portion of them do not have public social media pages. However, sport journalists would like to see more information about athletes on social media platforms. The Hungarian case offers not only a general understanding of the athlete–journalist relationship, and the role of social media in it, but also insight into the specific features of the phenomenon in a state-supported, hybrid sport economy.

Commentary on the New Charity Undertakings Law

2017 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 273-309 ◽  
Author(s):  
Larry Catá Backer
Keyword(s):  
Civil Society ◽  
Communist Party ◽  
National Development ◽  
The Political ◽  
Unique Contribution ◽  
Political Policy ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Theoretical Considerations

Abstract China’s new Charity Law represents the culmination of over a decade of planning for the appropriate development of the productive forces of the charity sector in aid of socialist modernization. Together with the related Foreign ngo Management Law, it represents an important advance in the organization of the civil society sector within emerging structures of Socialist Rule of Law principles. While both Charity and Foreign ngo Management Laws could profitably be considered as parts of a whole, each merits discussion for its own unique contribution to national development. Moreover, while analysis tends to focus on legal conformity of the Charity Law to the state constitution, little work has been done to analyze the relationship of the Charity Law to the political constitution of China. This essay seeks to fill that gap by considering the role of the Charity Law through the lens of the Constitution of the Communist Party of China. More specifically, the essay examines the extent to which the provisions of the Charity Law, and its underlying policies, contribute to the implementation and realization of the Chinese Communist Party (ccp) Basic Line and in the context of the overall political policy of “socialist modernization which has served as the core of the political line of the ccp since the last decades of the 20th century. The essay is organized as follows: Section ii considers the specific provisions of the Charity Law, with some reference to changes between the first draft and the final version of the Charity Law. Section iii then considers some of the more theoretical considerations that suggest a framework for understanding the great contribution of the Charity Law as well as the challenges that remain for the development of the productive forces of the civil society sector at this historical stage of China’s development.

scholarly journals The interaction of theater and cinematography in Uzbekistan culture in the first half of the xx century

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 94-104
Author(s):  
Amina Azizova
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Individual Characteristics ◽  
Scientific Problem ◽  
The World ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Factors Of Influence ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Image Type ◽  
Creative Life

The form, typology, essence and causes of the interaction between theater and cinema in the world is one of the priorities in the field, and a number of scientific studies have been conducted on the subject. In world experience, during the development of cinematography, it has been used the help of theatrical figures in overcoming the problems of acting, directing and dramaturgy. The study of theater and cinema as the main types of artistic worldview, in which the relationship between the two independent arts, exchanges of actors, process of interaction, individual characteristics were assessed, and it was considered as a new phenomenon. The article studies issues, causes and factors of influence of the same process in 1920–1930. The interaction of Uzbek theater and cinema, the study of creative ties, see it as a scientific problem has attracted attention in recent years. The article examines the role of Uzbek stage leaders in the development of screen art as a separate process, as well as the phenomenon of interaction between theater and cinema. The author explores a new creative life, a biography of a stage actor in cinema, opened for theater actors on the eve of the twentieth century. The art of filmmaking, which has been fighting for the actor for half a century, studies on facts that have attracted theater performers. Theatrical art has proven to be a model for cinematography in terms of decorating, makeup, music, lighting, and acting. Keywords: theater, actor, cinema, director, genre, image, type, role, phenomenon, screen art, character.

Searching for “Tolerance” in Islamic Thought

2019 ◽  
pp. 524-545
Author(s):  
Humeira Iqtidar
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Public Intellectual ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Role ◽  
Political Ideas ◽  
Liberal Conception ◽  
Islamic Thought ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Historical Origins

This chapter argues that the search for liberal tolerance within Islamic thought will inevitably be a tautological, somewhat barren exercise, given the specific, historical origins of the liberal conception of tolerance. Moreover, through a comparison of the political ideas of two important Islamic thinkers of the twentieth century, Abul Aʻla Maududi (1903–1979), an influential Islamist thinker, and Javed Ahmed Ghamidi (1951–), a prominent contemporary public intellectual, the chapter argues for the value of thinking explicitly about the relationship between the state as an institution, and the political role of difference, rather than of revealing attitudes toward minorities or thinking of tolerance as a virtue.

Piety on the Plains

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Wuthnow
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Church Leaders ◽  
Public Affairs ◽  
Presidential Campaign ◽  
Methodist Episcopal ◽  
Farming Communities ◽  
Methodist Episcopal Church ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter examines how Kansas became a bastion of Protestant Republican conservatism. The 1850s saw the first alliances between Republicans and Methodists in Kansas. The relationship of religion to politics that emerged in those years continued through the end of the nineteenth century—and shaped much of what happened in the twentieth century. The relationships between churches and public affairs in Kansas were complicated because Kansans were divided about the state being free or having slavery. Nearly all these complications were evident as Kansas moved toward statehood. The chapter first considers Abraham Lincoln's visit to the Kansas Avenue Methodist Episcopal Church in Atchison during his presidential campaign in 1859 before discussing the role of the churches in establishing civic order in the region's towns and farming communities. It also explores public religion, how abolition and temperance brought church leaders and politics together, and church expansion in Kansas.

The Proper Study of Religion

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sam Gill
Keyword(s):  
The United States ◽  
Human Knowledge ◽  
The World ◽  
Extensive Range ◽  
Explosive Expansion ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Considerable Experience ◽  
Academic Study

The Proper Study of Religion charts an innovative course of development for the academic study of religion by engaging the legacy of Jonathan Z. Smith (1938–2017), perhaps the field’s most influential and important scholar in the last several decades. Smith was the author’s teacher and mentor for fifty years. Their careers coincided with the explosive expansion of the study of religion in secular universities in the United States beginning in the mid-1960s. Building on Smith’s foundational legacy through creative encounters, the book explores an extensive range of engaging topics, including comparison as essential to academic technique and to human knowledge itself; the important role of experience, richly understood, to both academic studies of religion and to religions as lived; play, philosophically understood, as a core dynamic of Smith’s entire program; the relationship of academic document-based studies to the sensory-rich real world of religions; and self-moving as providing a biological and philosophical foundation on which to develop a proper academic study of religion with expansive potential. The foregrounding of human self-movement, new to the study of religion, is informed by the author’s considerable experience as a dancer and student of dancing in cultures around the world. The Proper Study of Religion honors the remarkable and challenging work of an unforgettable giant of a man while also offering critical assessments and innovative ideas in the effort to advance the remarkable legacy of Jonathan Z. Smith.

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