Scholastic Approaches to Reasonable Disagreement

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rudolf Schuessler
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
General Framework ◽  
Reasonable Disagreement ◽  
Truth Claims ◽  
European Intellectual History ◽  
Early Modern Era ◽  
First Time ◽  
Modern Era

The scholastic controversy on probable opinions in the seventeenth century was one of the most extensive and acrimonious debates of the early modern era. Historiography has treated it as a quarrel over moral casuistry, but this underestimates its import. The scholastic preoccupation with the ‘use of opinions’ should be understood as a search for a general framework for dealing with reasonable disagreement between competent evaluators of truth claims (not only moral ones). In the early modern era, scholastic analyses as well as regulations concerning the prudent and legitimate use of opinions acquired an unprecedented scope and depth. For the first time in European intellectual history, detailed theories of reasonable disagreement emerged, based on explicit characterizations of competing probable opinions as reasonably tenable.

The Changing Persona of the Justices and their Quarter Sessions

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Norma Landau
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Local Government ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern England ◽  
Modern State ◽  
Justices Of The Peace ◽  
Early Modern Era ◽  
Modern Era

The standard portrait of the justices of the peace of early modern England is that of gentry, landed provincials, conducting their counties’ local government and so personifying ‘self-government at the king’s command.’ This essay disputes that depiction. First, it argues that it was not until relatively late in the early modern era that local gentry determined the persona of the county bench. Second, it argues that it was not until the later seventeenth century that the early modern state sufficiently differentiated its functions so as to create ‘local government.’ In so doing, it created a sphere of government fit for provincial rulers.

Theatrical torture versus dramatic cruelty: subjection through representation or praxis1

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frans-Willem Korsten
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
The Other ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Political Event ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Early Modern Era ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Modern Era ◽  
Peculiar Case

The distinction between the theatrical and the dramatic is pivotal for different modes of subjection in the early modern era. Institutionally speaking, society was organized ideologically, theatrically by the introjection of what was shown publicly to private, but equally collective, theatres of the mind. This could be described as a logic of torture. In contrast, and on the other hand, the dramatic application of punishment on ships, and the pain it involved, served what Robert Cover called a ‘balance of terror’, based on a logic of what Deleuze defined as ‘cruelty’. In order to clarify this distinction, and the implication it has for our ideas on gouvernmentalité, this chapter will propose a close reading of a painting by Lieve Verschuier that either depicts a peculiar case of keelhauling or, allegorically, the lynching of the brothers De Witt in 1672. Although the painting is clearly theatrical, formally speaking, it superimposes a dramatic logic on the traumatic political event of the lynching of the brothers De Witt. This will be considered in the chapter as one instance of a more general shift in the seventeenth century: a shift away from the theatrical logic of torture to the dramatic logic of cruelty.

THE SEMANTICS OF ‘PEACE’ IN EARLY MODERN ENGLAND

2013 ◽  
Vol 23 ◽  
pp. 127-153 ◽  
Author(s):  
Phil Withington
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Digital Technology ◽  
Political Action ◽  
Early Modern England ◽  
The Political ◽  
Modern Culture ◽  
Political Conflicts ◽  
Early Modern Era ◽  
Modern Era

ABSTRACTThis paper begins to consider the meanings of a word that was ubiquitous in early modern culture, but which has been surprisingly neglected by historians. Focusing on printed sources and taking advantage of recent advances in digital technology, it outlines the changing uses of ‘peace’ between 1500 and 1700 and its predominant meanings at particular moments in time. The paper suggests that while these meanings were clearly derived from Christian and civic republican sources, the political conflicts of the seventeenth century saw the term politicised, appropriated and popularised in new and unexpected ways. It also argues that the semantic confusion which often attended ‘peace’ – most evident, perhaps, in its capacity to legitimise and sanction violence after 1640 – stemmed from its simultaneous role as a descriptor of society and self, and of spiritual and civil life. As a result, who should define, police and enforce peace became deeply contested issues of the course of the period. In tracing the semantics of the term in this way, the article serves as a contribution to the burgeoning historical literature on the paradigmatic vocabularies of the early modern era. It also illuminates the complicated relationship between words and concepts and the importance of both in motivating and legitimising social and political action.

scholarly journals Property vs. Liberty: Procedural law and practice of freedom trials in Portugal and Brazil

2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 55
Author(s):  
Sven Korzilius
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Civil Law ◽  
Legal Doctrine ◽  
Master Narratives ◽  
Procedural Law ◽  
Law And Courts ◽  
Early Modern Era ◽  
Roman Model ◽  
First Time ◽  
Modern Era

The article provides an overview of the historiographical debates on the relevance of law and courts for colonial slavery in the early modern, presenting several possible master narratives. Departing from the question about the legal sources used by the jurists of the early modern era producing “slave law in action”, the article focuses on procedural law of the freedom trials, especially on the interim situation of the person whose status the trial was about. This aspect of the proceedings is fascinating, because here the tension between the two extreme positions of the parties (liberty vs. slavery/property) is discharged for the first time. A close look at the sources proves that the jurists sought to justify the possible solutions not only with the custom of the courts (<em>stilus curiae</em>), but that a variety of legal formants contributed to colonial slave law, notably the authority of the Roman model, which the article presents shortly in its development, and of certain medieval forms, like the <em>summariissimum </em>or the <em>actio </em>(or<em> execeptio</em>)<em> spolii</em>. Legal doctrine was frequently quoted. As a result, Brazilian colonial slavery did not occur in a legal vacuum, but proves to have been highly institutionalized, and many aspects of the civil law of slavery appear as a relatively conservative continuation of European practice, without visible innovations to the favor or the detriment of the unfree population.

Conclusion

2020 ◽  
pp. 164-166
Author(s):  
John-Mark Philo
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
English Civil War ◽  
The Political ◽  
Tudor England ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
The Moment ◽  
Early Modern Era ◽  
Modern Era

The conclusion draws together the main themes and concerns of the book: namely how the translation and application of Livy in Tudor England was intricately connected to the most pressing political and cultural concerns of the day. So too it reflects on Livy’s impact on the vernacular literatures of the period, including William Painter’s novellas and Shakespeare’s poetry and prose. It also underlines the fact that, rather than a diminishing interest in Livy, the seventeenth century saw the historian at the heart of the constitutional debates underpinning the English Civil War. The translation of Livy in the early-modern period, as the conclusion underlines, functioned not only as a reflection of the political concerns of the moment, but also as an active attempt to reshape, refashion, and urge forward those concerns. Though Livy’s part in the Classical Reception of the early-modern era is sometimes underplayed, it would be difficult to exaggerate the importance of Livy’s contribution to the culture and politics of sixteenth-, and indeed seventeenth-, century England.

Men of prowess and women of piety: A case study of Aceh Dar al-Salam in the seventeenth century

2013 ◽  
Vol 44 (2) ◽  
pp. 204-225 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sher Banu A.L. Khan
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Southeast Asia ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Female Leadership ◽  
Successful Leadership ◽  
Early Modern Era ◽  
Modern Era

Studies on leadership in Southeast Asia's early modern era have tended to centre necessarily on men, and in particular, on O.W. Wolters' concept of ‘men of prowess’. The concept of female leadership is still little researched. This case study of Sultanah Safiatuddin Syah of Aceh (1641–75) provides some insights into female leadership in the Malay-Muslim island world of Southeast Asia. Contrary to the received view that successful leadership tended to be male (men of prowess), this article demonstrates that female leadership and the justification for the position of the ruler relied less on notions of sacral and charismatic power based on male prowess, but instead shifted to Muslim notions of piety and the just ruler.

scholarly journals Hungry women: sin and rebellion through food and music in the early modern era

2015 ◽  
Vol 26 ◽  
pp. 101-13
Author(s):  
Gioia Filocamo
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
External World ◽  
Sexual Pleasure ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Male Control ◽  
Female Composer ◽  
Early Modern Era ◽  
Modern Era

Longing for food has always had different implications for men and women: associated with power and strength for men, it tends to have a worrying proximity to sexual pleasure for women. Showing an interesting parallelism throughout the Cinquecento, Italian humanists and teachers insisted on forbidding women music and gluttony. Food and music were both considered dangerous stimulants for the female senses, and every woman was encouraged to consider herself as a kind of food to be offered to the only human beings authorized to feel and satisfy desires: men and babies. Women could properly express themselves only inside monastic circles: the most prolific female composer of the seventeenth century was a nun, as was the first woman who wrote down recipes. Elaborate music and food became the means to maintain a lively relationship with the external world. Moreover, nuns also escaped male control by using the opposite system of affirming themselves through fasting and mortifying the flesh.

Becoming Turk the Rajput Way: Conversion and Identity in an Indian Warrior Narrative

2009 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 211-243 ◽  
Author(s):  
CYNTHIA TALBOT
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
The Self ◽  
Literary Language ◽  
Muslim Community ◽  
Self Identity ◽  
History Of ◽  
Early Modern Era ◽  
Modern Era

AbstractThe Kyamkhanis were a small Indian Muslim community who flourished in northern Rajasthan from c. 1450 to 1730. This article examines memories of the Kyamkhani past recorded in a seventeenth-century history of the ruling lineage, as a case study of both the process of Islamic expansionism in South Asia and the self-identity of rural Muslim gentry. While celebrating the ancestor who had converted to Islam generations earlier, the Kyamkhanis also represented themselves as local warriors of the Rajput class, an affiliation that is considered exclusively Hindu in India today. Their history was written in a local literary language, Braj Bhasa, rather than in the more cosmopolitan Persian that was widely used by Muslim elites at the time. The Kyamkhanis of the early modern era thus negotiated multiple social and cultural spheres, simultaneously participating in the local/vernacular as well as global/cosmopolitan arenas.

Conclusion

2020 ◽  
pp. 199-206
Author(s):  
Paul B. Moyer
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
New England ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Main Charge ◽  
Early Modern Era ◽  
Modern Era

This chapter looks at factors that shaped alleged cases of occult crime in New England, the broader English Atlantic, and Europe during the early modern era. It talks about a widow residing in Lynn, Massachusetts, by the name of Ann Burt, who came under suspicion for witchcraft in 1669 and was believed to have been acquitted as she died of natural causes in 1673. It also details the malefic affliction of five victims as the main charge laid against Widow Burt, including other witnesses that claimed she could read minds and move with preternatural speed. The chapter describes the forces operating on a local, regional, and transatlantic level that shaped the episode of Widow Burt coming under suspicion for witchcraft in 1669. It discusses how the case of Ann Burt was linked to a larger campaign of witch-hunting that stretched across the seventeenth-century English Atlantic.

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