scholarly journals Representing Orality: Scott’s The Lay of the Last Minstrel and Conjectural History

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Regan
Keyword(s):  
Civil Society ◽  
Human Development ◽  
Oral Poetry ◽  
Preliminary Survey ◽  
Scottish Enlightenment ◽  
Area Of Interest ◽  
History Of ◽  
Conjectural History ◽  
Historical Theory

This article contextualizes Walter Scott's The Lay of the Last Minstrel in relation to an Edinburgh literary milieu influenced by some the most famous progenitors of Scottish Enlightenment historical theory. After a preliminary survey of the intellectual landscape out of which Scott's poem comes, the discussion is orientated specifically around the influence, on Scott, of Adam Ferguson's seminal conjectural history, the Essay on the History of Civil Society. Oral poetry is integral to Ferguson's nuanced deteriorationist narrative of human development, and it is my central contention that The Lay is the apotheosis of a Romantic anxiety over the representation of preliterary verse. This article's primary area of interest is not the poetry of The Lay itself but the discourses of history, historicity, verse and versification to which Scott, Adam Ferguson, Francis Jeffrey and several others contributed before, during and after the poem's publication.

PHILOSOPHICAL HISTORY AND THE SCIENCE OF MAN IN SCOTLAND: ADAM FERGUSON'S RESPONSE TO ROUSSEAU

2013 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 543-568 ◽  
Author(s):  
IAIN MCDANIEL
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Civil Society ◽  
Roman Republic ◽  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Adam Smith ◽  
The State ◽  
Scottish Enlightenment ◽  
Art And Culture ◽  
History Of

Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Discourse on the Origin and the Foundations of Inequality is now recognized to have played a fundamental role in the shaping of Scottish Enlightenment political thought. Yet despite some excellent studies of Rousseau's influence on Adam Smith, his impact on Smith's contemporary, Adam Ferguson, has not been examined in detail. This article reassesses Rousseau's legacy in eighteenth-century Scotland by focusing on Ferguson's critique of Rousseau in his Essay on the History of Civil Society (1767), his History of the Progress and Termination of the Roman Republic (1783), and his lectures and published writings in moral philosophy. Ferguson's differences from Rousseau were more pronounced than is sometimes assumed. Not only did Ferguson offer one of the most substantial eighteenth-century refutations of the Genevan's thinking on sociability, nature, art, and culture, he also provided an alternative to the theoretical history of the state set out in the Discourse on Inequality.

Circles

2019 ◽  
pp. 101-132
Author(s):  
Michelle Burnham
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Human Development ◽  
British Empire ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Pacific World ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
History Of ◽  
Conjectural History ◽  
Historical Moment

This chapter recovers and analyzes a forgotten 1778 novel set in New Zealand and the wider Pacific world. The Travels of Hildebrand Bowman implicitly links North America’s Atlantic Revolution against England with indigenous anti-colonial Pacific uprisings against Europeans. It does so by transforming European stadial theory—then in vogue as a framework for understanding the long conjectural history of human development—from a linear into a cyclical narrative. Written and published in a historical moment when debates about British empire were considerably more complex and unresolved than they would be a decade later, the novel brings cannibalism and consumption together in a critique of transoceanic capitalism. Hildebrand Bowman positions Britain as a cannibal empire that feeds on the bodies of others. The novel moreover sexualizes this relation in ways that draw from European explorers’ depictions of the Pacific, as the bodies of women expose imperialist consumption as its own form of cannibalism.

Introduction

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-39
Author(s):  
Craig Smith
Keyword(s):  
Civil Society ◽  
Scottish Enlightenment ◽  
Philosophical Foundations ◽  
History Of ◽  
Proper Context

Chapter 1 includes a biography of Adam Ferguson and examines the various critical interpretations of his thought. It concludes that each of these, stoic, civic republican, natural jurisprudence, Marxist sociological, Highlander, and conservative, are partial accounts that miss important features of his thought. The introduction makes the case for downplaying the importance of the Essay on the History of Civil Society and for moving beyond the idea of Ferguson as an outlier to the mainstream of the Scottish Enlightenment. It argues that the proper context for understanding Ferguson is to be found in his intellectual project of building a moral pedagogy upon secure empirical and philosophical foundations.

‘God Hath Ordained to Man a Helper’: Hobbes, Patriarchy and Conjugal Right

1989 ◽  
Vol 19 (4) ◽  
pp. 445-463 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carole Pateman
Keyword(s):  
Civil Society ◽  
Natural Condition ◽  
Protective Association ◽  
The Family ◽  
History Of ◽  
Conjectural History ◽  
Original Contract ◽  
Political Right

There are two conflicting and equally misleading interpretations of Hobbes: either he is a patri-archalist like Filmer – but the premise of Hobbes's theory is that political right originates in maternal not paternal lordship; or he is an anti-patriarchalist – but he endorses the subjection of wives to husbands in civil society. To appreciate how Hobbes turns mother right into a specifically modern, non-paternal form of patriarchy, an understanding is required of his peculiar view of the family as a protective association of master and servants that originates in conquest (contract). Secondly, a conjectural history of the defeat of women by men in the natural condition and their incorporation into ‘families’ has to be provided. The overthrow of mother right enables men to enter the original contract, to create Leviathan in their own image, and to secure the fruits of their conquest by establishing patriarchal political right, exercised in large part as conjugal right.

scholarly journals BETWEEN DISTANCE AND SYMPATHY: DR JOHN MOORE'S PHILOSOPHICAL TRAVEL WRITING

2014 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 655-675 ◽  
Author(s):  
JOHN BREWER
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Travel Literature ◽  
Scottish Enlightenment ◽  
Travel Narrative ◽  
Grand Tour ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Travel Books ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
History Of ◽  
Conjectural History

Dr John Moore's four-volume account of his Grand Tour in the company of the Duke of Hamilton was one of the most successful European travel books of the late eighteenth century. Moore's text, I argue, is a philosophical travel narrative, an examination of manners, customs and characters, analogous to the philosophical histories of the Scottish Enlightenment. Intended as a critique of the superficial observations of much travel literature, it argues for a greater degree of closeness between the traveler and the native, one based on sympathetic conversation rather than observation, but accompanied by a more distanced analysis, based on conjectural history, of the hidden processes that explain manners and character. Difference should be understood through a combination of sympathy and analysis that makes travel and its accounting valuable.

Adam Ferguson and the Idea of Civil Society

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Craig Smith
Keyword(s):  
Civil Society ◽  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
David Hume ◽  
Adam Smith ◽  
Scottish Enlightenment ◽  
Commercial Society ◽  
University Of Edinburgh ◽  
English Speaking ◽  
English Speaking World ◽  
The University

Adam Ferguson was a Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Edinburgh and a leading member of the Scottish Enlightenment. A friend of David Hume and Adam Smith, Ferguson was among the leading exponents of the Scottish Enlightenment’s attempts to develop a science of man and was among the first in the English speaking world to make use of the terms civilization, civil society, and political science. This book challenges many of the prevailing assumptions about Ferguson’s thinking. It explores how Ferguson sought to create a methodology for moral science that combined empirically based social theory with normative moralising with a view to supporting the virtuous education of the British elite. The Ferguson that emerges is far from the stereotyped image of a nostalgic republican sceptical about modernity, and instead is one much closer to the mainstream Scottish Enlightenment’s defence of eighteenth century British commercial society.

Development Strategy and Its Implications for Unity in the Muslim World

2003 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 46-87
Author(s):  
Ataul Huq Pramanik
Keyword(s):  
Civil Society ◽  
Human Development ◽  
Development Strategy ◽  
Development Strategies ◽  
Muslim World ◽  
Universal Values ◽  
Muslim Communities

This paper seeks to achieve the following objectives: to discuss the idea of unity from the Islamic and secular perspectives; to test empirically how the absence of certain universal values (virtues) in the pursued development strategies shattered unity and thereby led to the Ummah’s disintegration; to examine how the interrelationships between growth and democracy can promote unity by creating a civil society through higher human development; and to examine the Organization of the Islamic Conference’s (OIC) role in strengthening unity among diverse Muslim communities.

Juvenile Justice

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Asha Bajpai
Keyword(s):  
Civil Society ◽  
Juvenile Justice ◽  
United Nations ◽  
International Law ◽  
Law Reform ◽  
Child Victims ◽  
Present Stage ◽  
Alternative Care ◽  
Need Of Care ◽  
History Of

This chapter deals with those children in especially difficult circumstances that are vulnerable, marginalized, destitute, and neglected and deprived of their basic rights. It commences with a history of the Juvenile Justice legislation in India right from the Children’s Act of 1960s to the current Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2015. The barriers faced in the administration and implementation of the Juvenile Justice legislation throughout its evolution to its present stage is discussed in detail. How the law deals with children in need of care and protection and children in conflict with law are discussed in this chapter. Landmark judgements by courts and suggestions for further law reform are included. This chapter also contains international law relating to administration of juvenile justice, and United Nations guidelines in matters in matters involving child victims and witnesses of crime including UN Guidelines on Alternative Care of Children. Some civil society interventions are also included.

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