The Search for the Absolute

Janus Head ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 85-96
Author(s):  
Owen Anderson ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Alternative Pathway ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Analytic Philosophy ◽  
Rudolf Carnap ◽  
New Science ◽  
The Absolute ◽  
Answering Questions

Contemporary Analytic Philosophy finds itself within a historical context, answering questions that have been handed to it by earlier philosophers. Specifically contemporary Analytic Philosophy finds itself responding to the Idealists of the nineteenth century in the hope of justifying the "new science" that seems to give us so many practical benefits. In doing this, questions arise as to how contemporary Analytic Philosophy will answer the problems that Idealists struggled with. In thefollowing, a brief overview of the Idealist enterprise will be contrasted with two contemporary Analytic Philosophers, namely Rudolf Carnap and W.V. Quine, in order to understand how the latter two deal with the philosophical problems handed to them by their tradition. Specifically, the question of universals and their relation to the absolute, and the assumption behind this concerning intuition are going to be investigated. This article will argue that the Idealist tradition raised important questions that Carnap and Quine were not able to answer. It will critique Carnap and Quine as failing to find the universal required for thought and propose an alternative pathway to finding the solution.

Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rowan Strong
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Victorian Period ◽  
British Colonies ◽  
Christian Society

The Introduction looks at the historical context of British and Irish Christianity in the 1840s when the Anglican emigrant chaplaincy began. It also looks at conclusions of historians examining British and Irish emigration in the nineteenth century. Scholars have known for many years that the Victorian period in Britain was one of massive religiosity. Yet, when historians describe emigrants from this highly Christian society arriving in British colonies, the settlers are often described as generally religiously indifferent, unchurched, and even hostile to religion. On this basis it becomes difficult to understand how so many churches were built by British colonists in Australia and other settler colonies; how colonial denominations became established so quickly and effectively; and how sectarianism began, let alone flourished. Finally, this Introduction provides a discussion of the strengths and weaknesses of the groups of sources that have been used in this study.

Law as Institution

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin Loughlin
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Economic Change ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Administrative Law ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
English Translations ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Anglo American

Institutionalism is a theory that maintains that law is neither norm nor command but institution. It emerges in the late-nineteenth century primarily through the work of Hauriou in France and Romano in Italy. Their innovative studies are shaped by reflecting on the effects of social and economic change on law, which manifests itself primarily in the emergence of administrative law. In this chapter the importance of institutional jurisprudence is assessed by examining its historical context and offering reflections on its continuing significance. It argues that, partly because of the lack of English translations of its leading exponents, institutionalism has been relatively neglected in Anglo-American jurisprudence, and that it continues to offer acute insights into contemporary juristic controversies.

Hobbes's Political Philosophy

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
A.P. Martinich
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Laws Of Nature ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Prima Facie ◽  
Literal Meaning ◽  
Christian Doctrine ◽  
New Science ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Apparent Conflict

Hobbes’s Political Philosophy: Interpretation and Interpretations extends a position first explained in The Two Gods of Leviathan (1992). Hobbes presented what he believed would be a science of politics, a set of timeless truths grounded in definitions. In chapters on the laws of nature, authorization and representation, sovereignty by acquisition, and others, the author explains this science of politics. In addition to the timeless science, Hobbes had two timebound projects: (1) to eliminate the apparent conflict between the new science of Copernicus and Galileo and traditional Christian doctrine, and (2) to show that Christianity, correctly understood, is not politically destabilizing. The strategy for accomplishing (1) was to distinguish science from religion and to understand Christianity as essentially belief in the literal meaning of the Bible. The strategy for accomplishing (2) was to appeal to biblical teachings such as “Servants, obey your masters,” and “All authority comes from God.” Criticisms of the author’s interpretations are the occasion for (a) fleshing out Hobbes’s historical context and (b) describing the nature of interpretation in dialogue with opposing interpretations by scholars such as Jeffrey Collins, Edwin Curley, John Deigh, and Quentin Skinner. Interpretation is updating one’s network of beliefs in order to re-establish an equilibrium upset by a text. Interpretations may be judged according to prima facie properties of good interpretations such as completeness, consistency, simplicity, generality, palpability, and defensibility.

Political Economy and the Science of Economics in Victorian Britain

2005 ◽  
Author(s):  
Keith Tribe
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Political Economy ◽  
Public Education ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Access To Higher Education ◽  
Teaching And Research ◽  
Victorian Britain ◽  
New Science ◽  
University Life

This chapter looks at the historical understanding of political economy. It also describes the transformation of political economy as a general understanding of wealth and its distribution to a new science of economics. This transition can be linked to the expanding system of public education during the later end of the nineteenth century and the reorganisation of university life around teaching and research in modern subjects. The movement for wider access to higher education was associated with the formation of new university subjects in the humanities. Among these modern subjects, commerce and economics were prominent as new disciplines of study relevant to the modern world.

Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Juliette Atkinson
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
French Literature ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Transnational Networks ◽  
Foreign Literature ◽  
Do So

Victorian readers, real and fictional, often claimed to throw immoral French novels into the fire, but their engagement with French literature was far more complex than such acts suggest. This book strives to bring clarity to the ongoing critical debate regarding the insularity and prudishness of nineteenth-century readers. The socio-historical context of Anglo-French relations, like attitudes to foreign literature, moved between attraction and distrust; politicians worked to strengthen an ‘entente cordiale’ and tourists rushed across the Channel, but there was also a wariness of French radicalism and imperial ambitions. The book explores reactions to the contemporary French fiction that circulated in England between 1830 and 1870, drawing on reviews, letters, novels, and bibliographical data to do so. It aims to challenge preconceptions about Victorian Gallophobia, reflect on complex contemporary notions of immorality, and argue that French literature was not simply ‘received’ but emerged through complex transnational networks.

Background and Context

2020 ◽  
pp. 17-42
Author(s):  
Kristian Coates Ulrichsen
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Saudi Arabia ◽  
Arabian Peninsula ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Abu Dhabi ◽  
Economic Policies ◽  
Gulf States ◽  
New Generation ◽  
Coup Attempt

This chapter provides historical context to the tensions between Qatar and Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and Abu Dhabi from the mid-nineteenth century up until 2011. The chapter covers the emergence of Qatar and the disruptive impact on all the smaller Gulf States, including the UAE, of Saudi expansionary designs on the Arabian Peninsula. Beginning in the 1990s, a new generation of Qatari leaders began to develop political and economic policies that carved a more autonomous role for Qatar in regional affairs. In February 1996, the same four states that would blockade Qatar in 2017 were linked to an abortive coup attempt against the Emir of Qatar, and the chapter ends by examining the aftermath of the coup attempt and the trajectory of Saudi pressure on Qatar in the 2000s.

Wheat Breeding : Coalescence of a Modern Science, 1900-1939

1998 ◽  
Author(s):  
John H. Perkins
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Plant Breeding ◽  
Industrial Revolution ◽  
Modern Science ◽  
Educational Programs ◽  
Wheat Breeding ◽  
Ecological Impacts ◽  
New Science ◽  
Slow Decline ◽  
Political Economic

Plant breeding in general and wheat breeding specifically were rudimentary activities on many grounds in the nineteenth century. Not many people engaged in the activity. Those who did were self-taught. because no formal educational programs existed in the subject. For the most part, they had only a few very modest institutional bases within which to work. Many farmers paid them little or no attention, and governments usually ignored their contributions and gave them next to no support. They had no organized way of broadly disseminating their results, which in any case were few in number. By 1970, wheat and other plant breeders occupied a very different position within both the scientific and political economic landscapes. Many people worked as breeders. They were highly trained in educational programs dedicated to the reproduction of plant breeders. Elaborate networks of institutions gave them employment. A substantial proportion of farmers cared very much what they did, and governments gave substantial, sometimes lavish, support. They had means of communicating their work that included both scientific and popular outlets. And they had substantial results to convey to farmers and the general public, some of them remarkable either for their scientific cleverness or for their broad political, economic, and ecological impacts, or both. Another way of gaining perspective on the change in status of wheat and other plant breeders is to suggest that their absence might not have been noticed by anybody but their families had they suddenly disappeared in the nineteenth century. In contrast, the twentieth century came increasingly to depend upon the plant breeders. Cessation of wheat breeding after 1970, for example, would have put some agricultural systems in distinct danger of slow decline or even collapse and failure. In both political economic and ecological terms, an increasing portion of the global human community became absolutely dependent upon wheat breeders and other plant scientists, certainly for prosperity as we now know it and possibly for survival and security. The transformation of wheat breeding from nearly invisible to virtually indispensable resulted from two mutually interacting events: a commercial-industrial revolution in agriculture and construction of a new science of plant breeding.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document