Unity and Diversity in European Culture, c. 1800: Summary of Discussion

2006 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vincent Morley
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
German Idealism ◽  
Art World ◽  
Discussion Session ◽  
Market Place ◽  
Napoleon Bonaparte ◽  
European Culture ◽  
Symphonic Music ◽  
National Languages

This chapter summarizes issues discussed during the conference on ‘Unity and diversity in European culture, c. 1800’, held in September 2003. Emma Winter opened the first discussion session by suggesting that the replacement of traditional patronage by the market place and the gravitation of the centre of the art world from Rome to Paris were more contested than would appear from the paper presented by James Sheehan. With reference to John Deathridge's paper, Siegfried Weichlein suggested a connection between the rise of German idealism and Germany's retrospective identification with abstract symphonic music, with which Deathridge agreed. Coming back to Sheehan's paper, one participant pointed out the irony that in the eighteenth century the opera was quintessentially Italian while at the same time uniquely cosmopolitan. Volker Sellin suggested that Napoleon Bonaparte hampered rather than fostered German nationalism by abolishing many of the smaller free imperial cities, ecclesiastical territories, and so on in favour of modern states. Other speakers discussed topics related to cultural university and diversity in Europe, including cosmopolitanism, patriotism, nationalism and the invention of national languages.

The British Background of the American Hallams

1970 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-35 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip Highfill
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
North America ◽  
European Culture ◽  
Eastern Seaboard ◽  
Market Towns

Among the pioneer artists who sought with uneven luck to bring some reflection of European culture to the crude seaports and market towns of the American eastern seaboard in the eighteenth century, none had such lasting importance as the Hallam family, the founders of the first permanent and stable theatrical company in North America.

The potential which may lie in discarded, undeveloped or overlooked ideas

2015 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
pp. 328-344
Author(s):  
Tony Proctor
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Entrepreneurial Activity ◽  
Market Place ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Goods And Services ◽  
Temporary Solution ◽  
New Ideas ◽  
The Times ◽  
Escapement Mechanism

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine a particular aspect of the history of the watchmaking industry during the eighteenth century. Attention is drawn to overlooked ideas and inventions and how years later they may become profitable business opportunities for entrepreneurs. The approach adopted allows examination of the development and commercialisation of a watch escapement mechanism, the rack lever, within the context of the development of other escapements. The rack lever was an escapement which was initially overlooked in the early part of the eighteenth century but which many decades later was reinvented and became a commercial success in the early nineteenth century. Design/methodology/approach Reference is made to the literature on entrepreneurship and acquisition of knowledge in the eighteenth century and the nature of watchmaking in the same epoch. The literature on entrepreneurship produces a framework for examining the actions that were taken to bring the rack lever escapement to market. The historical context within which the innovations occurred was examined to establish the events and circumstances surrounding the times when commercialisation took place. An account of the commercialisation of the rack lever escapement is presented. Findings The entrepreneurial opportunity examined in this article relates to a need to satisfy consumers with a reasonably accurate and reliable portable time piece. The historical context within which commercialisation took place was found to be significant. Attention to the escapement mechanism in watches was identified as the key to improving performance, and the focus of the paper is placed upon how this opportunity was satisfied through the means provided by the rack lever escapement. Alertness to the potential of already discovered but undeveloped ideas appears to be an additional feature behind the entrepreneurial activity. The paper shows that innovation can be a discontinuous process. It also indicates the relevance of modern-day knowledge brokers in facilitating the process of new product innovation. Originality/value Entrepreneurship and innovation along with research and development are all intrinsically linked in producing goods and services to satisfy customer wants and needs. Together, they represent a cornerstone which helps to establish a business and maintain its continued survival. Importantly, the development of new products is a key contributor to this end and innovation and entrepreneurship play their part in bringing this about. The paper suggests that new ideas can occur which may be deemed unsuitable for commercialisation at one period in time but which can at a future time be considered a temporary solution to meet an unfulfilled need in the market place. It argues for the case for reserving judgement on new ideas that are not commercialised and ensuring that knowledge of them is kept for posterity and made accessible to future generations.

scholarly journals Johan Ernst Gunnerus and the Quest for the Soul in the Eighteenth Century

2015 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
pp. 132-160
Author(s):  
Friedemann Stengel
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Present Article ◽  
Salient Feature ◽  
Political Scientist ◽  
Clear Cut ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
European Culture ◽  
Interdisciplinary Nature ◽  
Immortality Of The Soul ◽  
Shed Light

The Norwegian bishop, theologian, philosopher, political scientist, and naturalist, Johan Ernst Gunnerus, can be regarded as one of the most significant proponents of continental European culture in eighteenth-century Norway. The eighteenth-century debate on the meaning and locus of the soul, considered the most central scholarly debate of the ‘Century of Enlightenment’, clearly exemplifies Gunnerus’ own entanglement in contemporaneous philosophical and theological debates. While delineating his position within it, the present article seeks to shed light on its crucial dimensions and arguments, while also illuminating its impact on the transmission of traditional Christian ideas. Theological-philosophical concepts underwent dramatic transformations – in particular, on the question of the immortality of the soul – that also extended to anthropology, eschatology and the divine doctrine. Positioning Gunnerus within this debate demonstrates the interdisciplinary nature of scholarly interactions on topics that today might be deemed purely theological. Their vigorous resistance to dogma and barriers to autonomous thinking form a salient feature of the Enlightenment era. In contextualizing Gunnerus’ doctrine on the soul, it becomes clear that classifying theologies and philosophies according to clear-cut categories like ‘Enlightenment’, ‘Pietism’, or ‘Esotericism’, prunes the complexity of the debates and implicates far-reaching perspectives of the Enlightenment discourse in notions generated in the centuries thereafter.

The Invention of National Languages

2006 ◽  
Author(s):  
Otto Dann
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Social Movement ◽  
John Locke ◽  
Political Identity ◽  
Western World ◽  
Johann Gottfried Herder ◽  
Philosophical Discourse ◽  
Ethnic Consciousness ◽  
Etienne Bonnot De Condillac ◽  
National Languages

In the second half of the eighteenth century, a qualified kind of ethnogenesis can be observed among the educated classes of the Western world. In the course of their social emancipation a new political identity emerged, one orientated towards the fatherland, the state, and its population. This new ethnic consciousness bridged older identities such as estate, profession or religion. It originated in connection with the great eighteenth-century social movement of patriotism, which became more and more politicised. The philosophical discourse about the nature of language, which had existed since antiquity, intensified immensely during the eighteenth century. John Locke and George Berkeley in Britain and Étienne Bonnot de Condillac in France provided important stimuli in this respect. Johann Gottfried Herder was the first to take vernacular languages and popular poetry seriously as expressions of the culture of illiterate peoples. This chapter examines how national languages were invented and looks at the divergent situations in which the first national languages were used in Europe.

Music, Bacchus, and Freedom

2018 ◽  
pp. 160-176
Author(s):  
Hedy Law
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
World View ◽  
The Body ◽  
Music Drama ◽  
French Music ◽  
Birth Of Tragedy ◽  
Symphonic Music ◽  
Freedom Of Action

Nietzsche points out in The Birth of Tragedy (1872, rev. 1886) that modern Dionysiac music began with Beethoven’s symphonic music and matured in Wagner’s music drama. Yet his account fails to explain a convention of Bacchus in pre-nineteenth-century music. This chapter provides a corrective by explaining the relationships among music, Bacchus, and freedom in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century French music. With the use of Euripides’s Bacchae, the section “Bacchus and Pentheus” in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, and Nietzsche’s essay “The Dionysian World View,” this article relates the themes of musical deviance and political defiance, liberation and destruction, and orgy and regeneration to the ideas of positive and negative freedoms as well as freedom of action and freedom of motion. This article thus contextualizes d’Alembert’s De la liberté de la musique of 1759 by arguing that representations of Bacchus enable music and the body to construct freedom as an embodied concept.

Clergy and the Care of the Insane in Eighteenth-Century Britain

2004 ◽  
Vol 73 (1) ◽  
pp. 114-138 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. A. Houston
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Medical Care ◽  
Residential Care ◽  
Barriers To Entry ◽  
Market Place ◽  
Eighteenth Century Britain

Writers on seventeenth- and eighteenth-century England have stressed the significance of doctors and clergy in the provision of residential care for the better-off mad person. “The private madhouse trade in fact started with the practice of doctors taking private patients into their homes.” So wrote Macalpine and Hunter. According to William Parry-Jones, English “lunatics from the more affluent classes were cared for individually, often in the custody of medical men or clergymen.” The two professions commonly overlapped, meaning that clerics could provide medical care. Andrew Mason has written enthusiastically that “towards the end of the seventeenth-century, so-called ‘clerical mad doctors’ abounded.” As educated men working in an occupation with few barriers to entry, English clergy could “readily take up medicine,” which was just one element of the burgeoning eighteenth-century market place. “Those entering the madbusiness were drawn from … clergymen, both orthodox and non-conformist, businessmen, widows, surgeons, speculators, and physicians.”

Holy Wars, Empires, and the Portability of the Past: The Modern Uses of Medieval Crusades

2006 ◽  
Vol 48 (2) ◽  
pp. 293-325 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adam Knobler
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Military Force ◽  
Holy Land ◽  
Napoleon Bonaparte ◽  
The Past ◽  
Political Struggles ◽  
Modern Warfare ◽  
Church Policy ◽  
The Middle Ages

On 12 June 1798, Napoleon Bonaparte took control of the islands of Malta. The Knights Hospitaller surrendered with little fight, and the independently recognized polity of the Knights of St. John, the last bastion of the medieval chivalric orders, fell. Founded in the Middle Ages as a military order created both to carry the sword against Islam and provide shelter and medical care for pilgrims to the Holy Land, the Knights had by the end of the eighteenth century become an anachronism. The Ottoman Empire, the last of the great Muslim powers of the Mediterranean, had long been considered little more than a pawn in larger political struggles on the Continent. The practical application of crusading as church policy had long fallen out of favor. As a military force, the Order was no longer of any consequence. The Grand Council that directed the Order consisted for the most part of Maltese or Italian nobles of little formal training in the strategy and tactics of “modern” warfare. Historians of the late eighteenth century had come to the conclusion that the crusades of the Middle Ages were little more than the fanatical hate mongering of an unenlightened time. As Edward Gibbon wrote: “The principle of the crusades was a savage fanaticism; and the most important effects were analogous to the cause…. The belief of the Catholics was corrupted by new legends…. The active spirit of the Latins preyed on the vitals of their reason and religion…. The lives and labours of millions, which were buried in the East, would have been more profitably employed in the improvement of their native country….”

scholarly journals The Concept of "Money" in the Context of National Linguocultures

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tatyana Yu. Zalavina ◽  
Yulia V. Yuzhakova ◽  
Natalya V. Dyorina ◽  
Liliya S. Polyakova
Keyword(s):  
Scientific Data ◽  
Verbal Representation ◽  
European Culture ◽  
Language Representation ◽  
Analytical Review ◽  
Training Courses ◽  
Basic Concepts ◽  
Scientific Results ◽  
National Languages ◽  
Cultural Linguistics

This paper presents an analytical review of scientific works devoted to one of the topical studies in cognitive and cultural linguistics, to the concept of "money" that is included in the corpus of basic concepts of European civilization. The framework consists of systematization of most of existing scientific results of verbal representation, structuring of the concept of "money" in the context of Russian, English, German, French languages. A comparative analysis of the ways and means of language representation of the concept "money" in Russian, English, German, French, sets the combination of versatile and specific features that embody the nature of the concept of "money" in these national languages. The obtained scientific findings represent the opportunities of an embodiment of the general cultural concept of "money" in national linguocultures. The practical value is determined by the fact that the obtained structured scientific data in the specified conceptual field can be used by scientists when developing linguoculturological dictionaries of basic concepts of European culture, as well as in the development of training courses, for which these dictionaries will become a content database.

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