The High Point (IV): Spiritual Crisis (1650–1713)

1997 ◽  
pp. 170-194
Author(s):  
Jonathan Israel
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Cultural Transformation ◽  
The Other ◽  
The West ◽  
Anti Semitism ◽  
European Culture ◽  
Late Fifteenth ◽  
The Many ◽  
The One

This chapter explores how, during the latter half of the seventeenth century, the Jewish world was shaken spiritually more profoundly than at any time since the expulsions of the late fifteenth century. A mounting turmoil of inner pressures erupted in the 1650s and 1660s in a drama which was to convulse world Jewry for decades. Moreover, although this Jewish upheaval had some separate and independent roots, unconnected with the current intellectual preoccupations of Christian Europe, it took place during, and shared some causes with, the deepening crisis besetting seventeenth-century European culture as a whole. Inevitably, the ferment within the Synagogue interacted on the wider upheaval within European devotion and thought, the one chain of encounters pervading the other in a remarkable process of cultural transformation. Ultimately, the upheaval is perhaps best understood as a cultural reaction to the immense disruptions and migrations of the previous two centuries and the many unresolved contradictions the vast treks, first to the East and then to the West, had given rise to. It may be true that the reintegration of Jews was more economic than cultural, yet the rifts and disintegrative tendencies within western Christendom had placed the age-old confrontation of Christianity and Judaism on a totally new basis. The chapter then looks at the Shabbatean movement, Spinozism, philosemitism, and anti-Semitism.

The foundations and prerequisites of imagology

2021 ◽  
pp. 65-74
Author(s):  
Valerii P. Trykov ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Social Engineering ◽  
Dominant Strategy ◽  
The Other ◽  
Special Role ◽  
The West ◽  
European Culture ◽  
Post War ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The One ◽  
Eu Project

The article examines the conceptual foundations and scientific, sociocultural and philosophical prerequisites of imagology, the field of interdisciplinary research in humanitaristics, the subject of which is the image of the “Other” (foreign country, people, culture, etc.). It is shown that the imagology appeared as a response to the crisis of comparatives of the mid-20th century, with a special role in the formation of its methodology played by the German comparatist scientist H. Dyserinck and his Aachen School. The article analyzes the influence on the formation of the imagology of post-structuralist and constructivist ideological-thematic complex (auto-reference of language, discursive history, construction of social reality, etc.), linguistic and cultural turn in the West in the 1960s. Shown is that, extrapolated to national issues, this set of ideas and approaches has led to a transition from the essentialist concept of the nation to the concept of a nation as an “imaginary community” or an intellectual construct. A fundamental difference in approaches to the study of an image of the “Other” in traditional comparativism and imagology, which arises from a different understanding of the nation, has been distinguished. It is concluded that the imagology studies the image of the “Other” primarily in its manipulative, socio-ideological function, i.e., as an important tool for the formation and transformation of national and cultural identity. The article identifies ideological, socio-political factors that prepared the birth of the imagology and ensured its development in western Humanities (fear of possible recurrences of extreme nationalism and fascism in post-war Europe, the EU project, which set the task of forming a pan-European identity). It is concluded that the imagology, on the one hand, has actualized an important field of scientific research — the study of the image of the “Other”, but, on the other hand, in the broader cultural and historical perspective, marked a departure not only from the traditions of comparativism and historical poetics, but also from the humanist tradition of the European culture, becoming part of a manipulative dominant strategy in the West. To the culture of “incorporation” into a “foreign word” in order to understand it, preserve it and to ensure a genuine dialogue of cultures, the imagology has contrasted the social engineering and the technology of active “designing” a new identity.

Rigidity Versus Openness in Late Classical Islamic Law: The Case of the Seventeenth-Century Palestinian Muftī Khayr al-Dīn al-Ramlī

1998 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 165-195 ◽  
Author(s):  
Haim Gerber
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Islamic Law ◽  
The Other ◽  
Customary Law ◽  
The West ◽  
Scholarly Literature ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The One ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Over Time

AbstractIn this study I reexamine some well-known generalizations about Islamic law prior to the impact of the West, e.g., the contention that Islamic law became increasingly closed, based more and more on blind imitation. My examination of the fatwā collection of the seventeenth-century Palestinian Muftī Khayr al-Dīn al-Ramlī suggests that increasing closure never took place. On the one hand al-Ramlī faithfully continues the tradition of his classical predecessors, or, in other words, he practices taqlīd by obligating himself to earlier authorities. On the other hand, his fatwās convey a sense of openness, flexibility, and liveliness. These characteristics are concretized in some of the major terms that he uses: ijtihād, or free discretion of the jurist in areas of the law that remained open; iṣtiḥsān, or relaxation of formal rules; and ʿurf, or local customary law, which, by definition, is changeable over time. In my view, the flexibility of Islamic law has been underemphasized in the scholarly literature, and hence it is on this factor in particular that I have chosen to concentrate.

“Apply to Muslims What Was Said of the Jews:” Popes and Canonists Between a Taxonomy of Otherness andInfidelitas

2014 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 65-96 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefan K. Stantchev
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
The Other ◽  
Historical Period ◽  
Specific Target ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The Law ◽  
Late Fifteenth ◽  
The One ◽  
Inherent Ambiguity

This article analyzes the targets of papal policies on Christians' relations with non-(Roman)Christians contained in canon law'sOn Jews, Saracens, and Their Servantsin a historical period that has attracted comparatively little attention: the mid-thirteenth to the late fifteenth century. It argues the inherent ambiguity of the normative discourse on “proper” relations with “infidels.” On the one hand, popes and canonists faithfully preserved a taxonomy of otherness inherited from the church's ancient past. On the other hand, they often reduced all difference to the pastoral distinction between flock and “infidels.” The conflation of non-Christians occurred in multiple ways: through the explicit extension of a specific policy's targets, overt canonistic discussion, the tacit application of the law to analogous situations, or its simplification for use in the confessional. As a result, a number of policies aimed originally at a specific target were applied to all non-Christians. In the course of the later Middle Ages, a whole group of policies meant to define Christians' proper relations with others became potentially applicable against all non-Christians. In the words of a widely, if regionally disseminated, penitential work, all that was said of the Jews applies to the Muslims and all that was said of heretics, applies to schismatics.

Revisiting the Agenda of the Orthodox Neo-Patristic Movement

2018 ◽  
Vol 136 (2) ◽  
pp. 99-117
Author(s):  
Viorel Coman
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
The West ◽  
Basic Principles ◽  
Eastern Christianity ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Constructive Dialogue ◽  
Orthodox Theology ◽  
The Many ◽  
The One

The Neo-Patristic movement’s program to liberate Orthodox theology from the influences of Western scholasticism is one of the many reasons that explain the consolidation of anti-Western feelings in some Orthodox circles today. Although the basic principles of the Neo-Patristic movement could represent, if misunderstood, a source of inspiration for the fundamentalist groups, this article argues that the position of the Neo-Patristic direction vis-à-vis the West cannot be reduced to its efforts to free theology from scholastic influences. To support this argument, the article turns to Dumitru Stăniloae, a leading Neo-Patristic figure, and shows that his theological program has been guided by two main axes: on the one hand, the quest for an authentic restauratio patristica in Orthodoxy, which frees theology from Western scholastic influences and restores the ethos of Eastern Christianity; one the other hand, a genuine interest to engage himself in a constructive dialogue with contemporary Western theology.

AFRICAN WOMEN AND FORBIDDEN GROUNDS: FEMALE SEXUALITY AND SELF-DETERMINATION IN AFRICAN LITERATURE

Imbizo ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 40-54
Author(s):  
Oyeh O. Otu
Keyword(s):  
Female Sexuality ◽  
Sense Of Self ◽  
African Literature ◽  
The Other ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
African Women ◽  
The Core ◽  
The Many ◽  
The One ◽  
Sexual Repression

This article examines how female conditioning and sexual repression affect the woman’s sense of self, womanhood, identity and her place in society. It argues that the woman’s body is at the core of the many sites of gender struggles/ politics. Accordingly, the woman’s body must be decolonised for her to attain true emancipation. On the one hand, this study identifies the grave consequences of sexual repression, how it robs women of their freedom to choose whom to love or marry, the freedom to seek legal redress against sexual abuse and terror, and how it hinders their quest for self-determination. On the other hand, it underscores the need to give women sexual freedom that must be respected and enforced by law for the overall good of society.

Comparative Analysis of Ahmet Hamdi Tanpinar’s Travels to European Countries

2017 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 78
Author(s):  
Aysel KAMAL ◽  
Sinem ATIS
Keyword(s):  
Social History ◽  
Young Lady ◽  
The Other ◽  
European Countries ◽  
Cultural Relations ◽  
The West ◽  
Literary Works ◽  
European Culture ◽  
Turkish Literature ◽  
Art And Architecture

Ahmet Hamdi Tanpinar (1901-1962) is one of the most controversial authors in the 20th century Turkish literature. Literature critics find it difficult to place him in a school of literature and thought. There are many reasons that they have caused Tanpinar to give the impression of ambiguity in his thoughts through his literary works. One of them is that he is always open to (even admires) the "other" thought to a certain age, and he considers synthesis thinking at later ages. Tanpinar states in the letter that he wrote to a young lady from Antalya that he composed the foundations of his first period aesthetics due to the contributions from western (French) writers. The influence of the western writers on him has also inspired his interest in the materialist culture of the West. In 1953 and 1959 he organized two tours to Europe in order to see places where Western thought and culture were produced. He shared his impressions that he gained in European countries in his literary works. In the literary works of Tanpinar, Europe comes out as an aesthetic object. The most dominant facts of this aesthetic are music, painting, etc. In this work, in the writings of Tanpinar about the countries that he travelled in Europe, some factors were detected like European culture, lifestyle, socio-cultural relations, art and architecture, political and social history and so on. And the effects of European countries were compared with Tanpinar’s thought and aesthetics. Keywords: Ahmet Hamdi Tanpinar, Europe, poetry, music, painting, culture, life

‘There shall be no musical servitude’: Towards a Multitudinous Shostakovich in the West

2020 ◽  
Vol 145 (2) ◽  
pp. 495-505
Author(s):  
EIRINI DIAMANTOULI
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Communist Party ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Political ◽  
Musical Style ◽  
The West ◽  
Political Views ◽  
Political Interests ◽  
The One ◽  
The Cold War

Ideologically motivated attempts to elucidate Shostakovich’s political views and to determine whether and how they may be coded into his compositions have come to characterize the Western reception of the composer’s works since his death in 1975. Fuelled by the political oppositions of the cold war, Shostakovich’s posthumous reputation in the West has been largely shaped by two conflicting perspectives. These have positioned him on the one hand as a secret dissident, bent and broken under the unbearable strain of totalitarianism, made heroic through his veiled musical resistance to Communism; and on the other hand as a composer compromised by his capitulation to the regime – represented in an anachronistic musical style. Both perspectives surrender Shostakovich and his music to a crude oversimplification driven by vested political interests. Western listeners thus conditioned are primed to hear either the coded dissidence of a tragic victim of Communist brutality or the sinister submission of a ‘loyal son of the Communist Party’.1 For those prepared to accept Shostakovich as a ‘tragic victim’, the publication of his purported memoirs in 1979, ‘as related to and edited by’ the author Solomon Volkov, presents a tantalizing conclusion: bitterly yet discreetly scornful of the Stalinist regime, Shostakovich was indeed a secret dissident and this dissidence was made tangible in his music.

Informed Consent: Ezenwa–Ohaeto between Past and Future Uses of Pidgin

Matatu ◽  
2006 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 115-134 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chantal Zabus
Keyword(s):  
Informed Consent ◽  
First Language ◽  
West African ◽  
The Other ◽  
Wole Soyinka ◽  
The West ◽  
West African Coast ◽  
African Coast ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
The One

The essay shows how Ezenwa–Ohaeto's poetry in pidgin, particularly in his collection (1988), emblematizes a linguistic interface between, on the one hand, the pseudo-pidgin of Onitsha Market pamphleteers of the 1950s and 1960s (including in its gendered guise as in Cyprian Ekwensi) and, on the other, its quasicreolized form in contemporary news and television and radio dramas as well as a potential first language. While locating Nigerian Pidgin or EnPi in the wider context of the emergence of pidgins on the West African Coast, the essay also draws on examples from Joyce Cary, Frank Aig–Imoukhuede, Ogali A. Ogali, Ola Rotimi, Wole Soyinka, and Tunde Fatunde among others. It is not by default but out of choice and with their 'informed consent' that EnPi writers such as Ezenwa–Ohaeto contributed to the unfinished plot of the pidgin–creole continuum.

Development of a Single-Code/Default Coding Strategy in Pigeons

2000 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 261-264 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tricia S. Clement ◽  
Thomas R. Zentall
Keyword(s):  
Conditional Discrimination ◽  
The Other ◽  
Matching Accuracy ◽  
Efficient Coding ◽  
Coding Strategy ◽  
One To One ◽  
Retention Intervals ◽  
The Many ◽  
The One ◽  
Better Than

We tested the hypothesis that pigeons could use a cognitively efficient coding strategy by training them on a conditional discrimination (delayed symbolic matching) in which one alternative was correct following the presentation of one sample (one-to-one), whereas the other alternative was correct following the presentation of any one of four other samples (many-to-one). When retention intervals of different durations were inserted between the offset of the sample and the onset of the choice stimuli, divergent retention functions were found. With increasing retention interval, matching accuracy on trials involving any of the many-to-one samples was increasingly better than matching accuracy on trials involving the one-to-one sample. Furthermore, following this test, pigeons treated a novel sample as if it had been one of the many-to-one samples. The data suggest that rather than learning each of the five sample-comparison associations independently, the pigeons developed a cognitively efficient single-code/default coding strategy.

Managing to Avoid Innovation

1999 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-32 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. H. Vaux ◽  
M. P. S. F. Gomes ◽  
R. J. Grieve ◽  
S. W. Woolgar
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Advanced Technology ◽  
Manufacturing Companies ◽  
Small Companies ◽  
Small Company ◽  
The West ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Technology And Innovation ◽  
Company Culture ◽  
The One

This paper addresses differences in the way that the problems of small UK firms are construed by policy makers on the one hand, and by the executives of small companies on the other. The authors employ a discursively-based analysis of interviews carried out with managers of small manufacturing companies in the West London area. They suggest that SME executives construe their attitudes to advanced technology and innovation within the terms of some clear, but implicit management values which tend to lead to the perception of innovation as a risk to be managed, rather than an opportunity to be exploited. It is suggested this has significant implications for attempts to change small company culture.

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