‘Greek Wisdom’ as Secular Knowledge and Science

1997 ◽  
pp. 79-118
Author(s):  
Yaacov Shavit
Keyword(s):  
Classical Antiquity ◽  
Positive Signal ◽  
Intellectual Tradition ◽  
Jewish Culture ◽  
Jewish Heritage ◽  
Jewish Intellectual ◽  
The Arts ◽  
The World ◽  
The One

This chapter focuses on how ‘Greek wisdom’ is treated in Jewish culture. It shows that the term ‘Greek wisdom’ had a long history, and the maskilim (men of letters and thinkers) turned to it to seek support and legitimization for their views in the Jewish intellectual tradition. The term ‘wisdom’ was the main — perhaps even the only positive signal with which the Jews marked part of the Greek-Hellenistic culture, and the one with the longest and most consecutive history; it was generally identified with Greek wisdom. It meant the heritage and legacy of classical antiquity and Hellenism in philosophy, sciences, and the arts; it also symbolized a lost Jewish heritage and the proper relationship between the Jewish world and the world of the Gentiles. Moreover, wisdom became a multipurpose and multivalent concept that in the intellectual utopia of the maskilim was intended to serve as a bridge and intermediary between the Jewish intellectual tradition and the outside world.

Psychological Humanities, Sciences, and the Arts in Russia

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julia Vassilieva
Keyword(s):  
Art Criticism ◽  
Unique Character ◽  
Science And Art ◽  
Research Institutes ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Emotional Work ◽  
The World ◽  
Key Concepts ◽  
The One ◽  
The Ideal

The interdisciplinary connections between psychology, the humanities, and the arts in Russia played a powerful role in delineating the unique character of the psychological field in the country. During the 19th and early 20th centuries an approach in Russian psychology that drew on the work of philosophers and theologists, art and literature critics, poets and writers represented a powerful current in the Russian quest for self-understanding. The interdisciplinary exchanges between psychology, sciences, and the arts intensified after the October Revolution of 1917. The revolution’s imperative of reshaping the world in a socialist mold ushered in a period of bold experimentation in the arts and the formulation of similarly ambitious research agendas in the sciences. The first 15 years following the revolution saw intense traffic between scientific laboratories, research institutes, and teaching institutions, on the one hand, and theaters, art studios, and the cinema industry, on the other, reconfiguring what had traditionally been understood as the distinct domains of science and art. The ideal of synthetic knowledge and the imperative of integration, especially in the domain of psychology, was also the main driving force behind the emergence of the cultural-historical paradigm proposed by Lev Vygotsky. Moreover, many of Vygotsky’s key concepts—including sign, mediation, and “perejivanie” (emotional work)—are indebted to his early encounters with literature, theater, and art criticism. A non-classical paradigm, the most recent and original development in Russian psychology, continues to draw important insights from aesthetic theories and philosophy. Overall, the Russian tradition in psychological humanities provides a powerful example of epistemological practice that brings art, humanistic inquiry, and scientific research well and truly together, generating a remarkable synthesis of knowledge.

What J.T. Fraser Gave the World

KronoScope ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-34
Author(s):  
Frederick Turner
Keyword(s):  
Related Problem ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Experience Of Time ◽  
The World ◽  
Nature Of Time ◽  
The Many ◽  
The One ◽  
Fourth Theme ◽  
The Way

Abstract This summary of the fundamental insights of J.T. Fraser dwells on four main themes. The first is the way that Fraser disposes of the ancient struggle between monism and dualism, with its related problem of ontology versus epistemology. His tree-like vision of the evolution of the many out of the one is both ordered and open-ended. The second is his critique of philosophy’s (and science’s) tendency to reify simple, defined, pure, and exclusive abstractions. Subjectivity, intentionality, consciousness, freedom, mind, cause, and the experience of time are shown by him to be composite, present in different degrees and kinds in different organisms and different times, constructed and complex. The third theme is Fraser’s decisive refutation of the metaphor of time as a line, as in clocks, calendars, and the t-axis in science. We must explore other geometries. The fourth theme is Fraser’s rehabilitations of the arts, including literature, as potentially legitimate ways of understanding the world and exploring the nature of time.

scholarly journals Türk ve İslam Eserleri Müzesi

2021 ◽  
pp. 339-336
Author(s):  
Zeynep Atbaş
Keyword(s):  
Islamic Art ◽  
Book Illustration ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Arts ◽  
The World ◽  
The Face ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Veil ◽  
The One

"Ottoman sultans showed a great interest in books; on the one hand, they had their palace workshops prepare manuscripts ornamented with unique illustrations and illuminations; on the other hand, they collected books created in other locations of the Islamic world through various means, such as, gifting, looting, and purchasing. The subject of this article involves the artistic manuscripts from the Ilkhanid era that entered the Topkapı Palace Treasury. Most manuscripts in the Topkapı Palace Library consist of copies and sections (juz’) of the Koran. With their illumination and binding, these large-format books designed by the skillful illuminators and bookbinders of the Ilkhanid era are early fourteenth-century masterpieces of Islamic art of the book. Among these are Koran sections prepared for the famous Ilkhanid ruler, Sultan Uljaytu Khodabanda, and the renowned vizier, Rashid al-Din. Some examples were written by the most illustrious Islamic calligraphers, Yaqut al-Musta’simi and Arghun Kamili, illuminated by the famous artist of the era who worked in Baghdad, Muhammad b. Aybak b. Abdallah, and bound by bookbinder Abd al-Rahman. The Ilkhanid era was also a time when fascinating and important manuscripts were prepared in terms of book illustration. Two of the three Mongol-era manuscripts in the Topkapı Palace collection are copies of the Jami’at-Tawarikh—a general history of the world prepared by a commission led by the vizier Rashid al-Din under the order of the Ilkhanid ruler Ghazan Khan— while the third is a copy of the Garshaspnama. In addition, some paintings that appear in one of the palace albums belong to a volume of the Jami’at-Tawarikh on the history of Mongol khans, which has not survived. The significant and unique paintings of the Ilkhanid era are the Miʿrajnama paintings made by Ahmed Musa featured in the album prepared for Bahram Mirza, the brother of the Safavid sultan, Shah Tahmasp. The preface of the album written by Dust Muhammad refers to the famous painter Ahmed Musa, who lived in the era of the Ilkhanid ruler Abu Said, to have “removed the veil from the face of painting and invented the painting that was popular in that era.” In addition, the author states that he illustrated a Miʿrajnama. However, only the eight album pages with miʿraj images have survived this work. Through their bindings, illuminations, calligraphy, and illustrations, Ilkhanid era manuscripts from the Topkapı Palace constitute a vital collection that demonstrates the advanced level reached by the arts of the book during this era. "

Postmodernism

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Deeds Ermarth
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Charles Dickens ◽  
Full Range ◽  
Academic Disciplines ◽  
Past Century ◽  
Cultural Changes ◽  
European Culture ◽  
The Arts ◽  
The World ◽  
The One

The term ‘postmodernism’ appears in a range of contexts, from academic essays to clothing advertisements in the New York Times. Its meaning differs with context to such an extent that it seems to function like Lévi-Strauss’ ‘floating signifier’: not so much to express a value as to hold open a space for that which exceeds expression. This broad capacity of the term ‘postmodernism’ testifies to the scope of the cultural changes it attempts to encompass. Across a wide range of cultural activity there has been a sustained and multivalent challenge to various founding assumptions of Western European culture that have been in place since at least the fifteenth century and in some cases since the fifth century BCE. During the past century new and cognate developments in science, in art, in philosophy and in politics, all have disturbed beliefs that have been basic to modernity: beliefs concerning, for example, structure and identity, transcendence and particularity, the nature of time and space, and causality. Such beliefs are not mere abstractions but powerful engines of knowledge with very practical outcomes. For example, phenomenology seeks to collapse the dualistic distinction between subject and object; relativity physics shifts descriptive emphasis from reality to measurement; the arts move away from realism; consensus politics confronts totalitarianism and genocide. These and related cultural events belong to seismic changes in the way we register the world, formulate thought, and communicate with each other. To grasp what is at stake in postmodernism it is necessary to think historically and broadly, and in that context to recognize that what we are discussing is a condition we are already ‘in’ and not at all a set of beliefs that we can choose or not choose to believe. For these and other reasons it is more appropriate to speak of ‘postmodernity’ rather than the more limited ‘postmodernism’ which sounds as though it might be something optional. Both terms are employed here depending on whether discussion concerns a general condition (postmodernity) or a particular challenge (postmodernism). The difficulty in achieving an agreed focus and vocabulary results in part from the fact that grasping the full range of postmodernity requires investigation across the range of practice, both in and out of academia, and requires a broadly diverse set of problems and issues. Postmodernity is not an ‘academic’ issue; it affects everyone at the most practical level and across the range of practice in various terms. What one might call its ‘multilingual’ impetus – this bringing together of methods and ideas long segregated both in academic disciplines and in practical life – particularly characterizes postmodernism and largely accounts for such resistance as it generates. In academic contexts discussion has been particularly hampered by institutional commitments to traditional disciplinary classifications. Despite lip service to the contrary, universities, libraries and publishers all continue to pursue essentially disciplinary agendas. Few alleged ‘interdisciplinary’ or ‘multidisciplinary’ programmes actually confront the founding methodological differences between disciplines, or amount to much more than mere splicing activities of the kind Charles Dickens pilloried nearly two centuries ago with his book reviewer who boned up on Chinese metaphysics by consulting the Encyclopaedia Brittanica under ‘C’ for China and under ‘M’ for Metaphysics, and then ‘combined his information’. Although diverse and eclectic, postmodernism can be recognized by two key assumptions: first, the assumption that there is no common denominator – in ‘nature’ or ‘truth’ or ‘God’ or ‘time’ – that guarantees either the One-ness of the world or the possibility of neutral, objective thought; second, the assumption that all human systems operate like language as self-reflexive rather than referential systems, in other words systems of differential function that are powerful but finite, and that construct and maintain meaning and value.

Postmodernism

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Deeds Ermarth
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
New York Times ◽  
Academic Disciplines ◽  
Common Denominator ◽  
Cultural Changes ◽  
European Culture ◽  
The Arts ◽  
The World ◽  
The One

The term ‘postmodernism’ appears in a range of contexts, from academic essays to clothing advertisements in the New York Times. Its meaning differs with context to such an extent that it seems to function like Lévi-Strauss’ ‘floating signifier’(Derrida 1982: 290): not so much to express a value as to hold open a space for that which exceeds expression. This broad capacity of the term ‘postmodernism’ testifies to the scope of the cultural changes it attempts to compass. Across a wide range of cultural activity there has been a sustained and multivalent challenge to various founding assumptions of Western European culture since at least the fifteenth century and in some cases since the fifth century bc: assumptions about structure and identity, about transcendence and particularity, about the nature of time and space. From physics to philosophy, from politics to art, the description of the world has changed in ways that upset some basic beliefs of modernity. For example, phenomenology seeks to collapse the dualistic distinction between subject and object; relativity physics shifts descriptive emphasis from reality to measurement; the arts move away from realism; and consensus politics confronts totalitarianism and genocide. These and related cultural events belong to seismic changes in the way we register the world and communicate with each other. To grasp what is at stake in postmodernism it is necessary to think historically and broadly, in the kind of complex terms that inevitably involve multidisciplinary effort. This multilingual impetus, this bringing together of methods and ideas long segregated both in academic disciplines and in practical life, particularly characterizes postmodernism and largely accounts for such resistance as it generates. Although diverse and eclectic, postmodernism can be recognized by two key assumptions. First, the assumption that there is no common denominator – in ‘nature’ or ‘truth’ or ‘God’ or ‘the future’ – that guarantees either the One-ness of the world or the possibility of neutral or objective thought. Second, the assumption that all human systems operate like language, being self-reflexive rather than referential systems – systems of differential function which are powerful but finite, and which construct and maintain meaning and value.

scholarly journals THE IMAGE OF CHINA IN THE CORRESPONDENCE OF CATHERINE II

2021 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
pp. 62-78
Author(s):  
Natalia G. Suraeva
Keyword(s):  
18Th Century ◽  
The Other ◽  
Official Journal ◽  
Chinese History ◽  
General Description ◽  
Literary Critic ◽  
The West ◽  
The Arts ◽  
The World ◽  
The One

In 1762, Catherine II (1729-1796), Catherine le Grand, as Voltaire called her, an extraordinary woman who was destined to undergo many reforms and establish Russia’s place in the world, ascended to the Russian throne. Her reign coincided with the reign of Emperor Qianlong (1711-1799), one of the most enlightened monarchs in Chinese history; during his time, the empire achieved many military victories and brilliant achievements in the arts. By the time of Catherine’s accession to the throne, relations between the two countries were very strained. Meanwhile, the age of Enlightenment, the century of the ardour for the philosophy and art of China, began in Europe. On the one hand, Catherine was influenced by the ideas of the West; on the other hand, she constantly had to regulate conflicts on the Russian-Chinese border, the reason for which was most often the question of extraditing Mongols and Dzungars to the Chinese who were fleeing within Russia. The purpose of this article is to determine what image of China the Russian empress formed and how she spoke about this country in her correspondence with European correspondents since it is known that Catherine II wrote a lot. To do this, first, it is necessary to characterise the personality of the empress, to understand her interests and habits. To understand what issues she had to resolve, one also needs to know the state of Russian-Chinese relations in the second half of the 18th century. Finally, the article gives a general description of Catherine II’s correspondence with various high-ranking persons, among whom Jean d’Alembert, Diderot, Voltaire, Friedrich Melchior Grimm (Franco-German publicist, artist and literary critic), Swiss scientist and philosopher Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann, Madame Geoffrin and Madame Bielke can be named. The letters she received very often contained diplomatic news, dynastic problems, court gossip; her answers were, for the most part, semi-official journal notes. It is noteworthy that despite the extensive correspondence conducted by Catherine the Great, she practically did not touch upon the issues of China, except for letters to Voltaire, who, as you know, admired China and tried to learn more about it from the words of the empress.

scholarly journals Leading and Organising Education for Citizenship of the World

2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 1-6 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lejf Moos ◽  
Elisabet Nihlfors ◽  
Jan Merok Paulsen
Keyword(s):  
General Education ◽  
The Other ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Policy And Practice ◽  
The Core ◽  
Language History ◽  
The Arts ◽  
The World ◽  
The One ◽  
Point Of Departure

This special issue discusses governance, leadership and education in the light of Nordic ideas about general education and citizenship of the world. Particular focus is placed on the battle between two very different discourses in contemporary educational policy and practice: an outcomes/standard-based discourse, and a general education-based discourse of citizenship of the world.Our point of departure is that we need to analyse the close relations between the core and purpose of schooling (the democratic Bildung of students) and the leadership of schools and relations to the outer world. On the one hand, society produces a discourse based on outcomes, with a focus on the marketplace, governance, bureaucracies, account-ability and technocratic homogenisation. On the other hand, society focuses on culture in the arts, language, history, relations and communication, producing a discourse based on democratic Bildung and citizenship of the world.

Antiquities and Political Prestige in the Early Modern Era

2007 ◽  
Author(s):  
Margarita Diaz-Andreu
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Urban Landscape ◽  
Country House ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Arts ◽  
The World ◽  
The One ◽  
Early Modern Era ◽  
Modern Era

Television programmes about archaeology, the Asterix series on many children’s bookshelves, Celtic-flavoured holidays in Ireland, the megalomaniacal classical style in the business buildings erected since the late 1980s—all these tell us about the enduring popularity of the past in people’s minds. The intellectual ‘other side of the coin’ are the departments of archaeology, museums of archaeology, and heritage departments operating all over the world. This interest in the past is certainly not new. Whereas the latter—the museums, university and heritage departments—only appeared in the urban landscape less than two hundred years ago, by then several generations of intellectuals with knowledge in the arts had been aware of the existence of an ancient past. A Doric folly on the bank of the river overlooked by the cathedral in the pretty city of Durham was built in 1830 by a Polish count and the eighteenth-century estate of La Alameda de Osuna on the outskirts of Madrid, with its Greek-inspired temple of love with a statue of Bacchus (substituting the original Venus statue that had been taken by the Napoleonic troops on their withdrawal to France)—are only two examples of my own personal daily encounter with the past I have had at diVerent periods in my life. Yet, a different type of past is also familiar to me, a past that is more related to the nation’s past. In La Alameda de Osuna estate, in addition to its many classical features, there is an eighteenth-century copy of a medieval hermit’s chapel, and a country house which used to have displayed automatons in traditional dress. In the seventeenth century a beautiful Gothic-style font cover was made for Durham cathedral illustrating a continuity with a medieval past. Many other examples could be added. All of them illustrate an obsession with the past which on the one hand has lasted at least several centuries. On the other, however, they also appear to indicate an initial quasi-fixation with the classical period, which gradually became counter-balanced by an appeal to each country’s past. This reveals a continuous transformation in time and space in the discourse of the past.

Nature, Culture, Myth, and the Musician in Early Modern England

1998 ◽  
Vol 51 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-47 ◽  
Author(s):  
Linda Phyllis Austern
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Religion And Politics ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Musical Composition ◽  
Classical Antiquity ◽  
Science Technology ◽  
The Arts ◽  
The One

In sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England, music was often considered an aspect of natural philosophy, the general study of natural and cultural phenomena that had been inherited from classical antiquity and the Middle Ages, but was undergoing rapid metamorphosis into more modern fields of science, technology, and the arts. Against this background, many writers began to invoke machine metaphors and the triumph of cultural products over raw nature and Nature's corollaries in the form of women and animals. Older epistemologies of magic and metaphor, which had also incorporated gendered ideas of artifice, perfection, nature, and creation, informed these emerging ideas. The result on the one hand was a practice of secular musical composition that included sounds from the natural world as feminine novelties to be bounded and improved by stylistic artifice. On the other was a documentary allegorization of music that drew from chronicle history, mythology, natural science, religion, and politics to demonstrate the moral and aesthetic superiority of music and musicians that elevated natural elements into enduring musical artifice.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Steane
Keyword(s):  
Physical World ◽  
Religious Language ◽  
Complete Picture ◽  
Final Part ◽  
Arts And Humanities ◽  
The Arts ◽  
The World ◽  
The One ◽  
Major Argument ◽  
Better Than

The motivation, themes, and content of the book are introduced. The aim is to offer a better view of what science tells us about the nature of the physical world—better than the one widely assumed in our culture. Science is a rich tapestry which does not at all suggest that the world is a purposeless machine, nor does it undermine the arts and humanities. The book then engages the area of values and meaning, and shows the different type of discourse that is involved there. It offers a reply to a major argument of Hume and Dawkins, about the content of religious language. The final part of the book shows how religious response can inhabit the complete picture without awkwardness.

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