Luis de Miranda
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- September 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781474454193
- eISBN:
- 9781474480864
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474454193.001.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Political Philosophy
This book provides the first ever transnational and longue-durée intellectual history of a highly influential but largely understudied modern phrase: esprit de corps. A strong attachment and ...
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This book provides the first ever transnational and longue-durée intellectual history of a highly influential but largely understudied modern phrase: esprit de corps. A strong attachment and dedication among the members of a community of practice or a body politic, esprit de corps can be perceived as beneficial (collective élan) or detrimental (groupthink).
As a polemical argumentative signifier, esprit de corps has played a significant role in the cultural and political history of the last 300 years: the idea was influential and debated during the European secularisation of education in the eighteenth-century, during the French Revolution, during the United States process of Independence, and the French Empire. It was praised by British colonialists, French sociologists, and during the World Wars. It was instrumental during the rise of administrative nation-states and the triumph of corporate capitalism. ‘Esprit de corps’ is today a keyword in nationalist and managerial discourses.
Born in eighteenth-century France in military as well as political discourse, the phrase and its implications were over the centuries an important matter of debate for major thinkers and politicians: d’Alembert, Voltaire, Rousseau, Lord Chesterfield, Bentham, the Founding Fathers, Sieyès, Mirabeau, British MPs, Napoleon, Hegel, Tocqueville, Durkheim, Waldeck-Rousseau, de Gaulle, Orwell, Bourdieu, Deleuze & Guattari, etc. For some of them, esprit de corps is the very engine of History.
In the end, this book a cautionary analysis of past and current ideologies of ultra-unified human ensembles, a recurrent historical and theoretical fabulation the author calls ensemblance.Less
This book provides the first ever transnational and longue-durée intellectual history of a highly influential but largely understudied modern phrase: esprit de corps. A strong attachment and dedication among the members of a community of practice or a body politic, esprit de corps can be perceived as beneficial (collective élan) or detrimental (groupthink).
As a polemical argumentative signifier, esprit de corps has played a significant role in the cultural and political history of the last 300 years: the idea was influential and debated during the European secularisation of education in the eighteenth-century, during the French Revolution, during the United States process of Independence, and the French Empire. It was praised by British colonialists, French sociologists, and during the World Wars. It was instrumental during the rise of administrative nation-states and the triumph of corporate capitalism. ‘Esprit de corps’ is today a keyword in nationalist and managerial discourses.
Born in eighteenth-century France in military as well as political discourse, the phrase and its implications were over the centuries an important matter of debate for major thinkers and politicians: d’Alembert, Voltaire, Rousseau, Lord Chesterfield, Bentham, the Founding Fathers, Sieyès, Mirabeau, British MPs, Napoleon, Hegel, Tocqueville, Durkheim, Waldeck-Rousseau, de Gaulle, Orwell, Bourdieu, Deleuze & Guattari, etc. For some of them, esprit de corps is the very engine of History.
In the end, this book a cautionary analysis of past and current ideologies of ultra-unified human ensembles, a recurrent historical and theoretical fabulation the author calls ensemblance.
Clifford Siskin
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- May 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780262035316
- eISBN:
- 9780262336345
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- The MIT Press
- DOI:
- 10.7551/mitpress/9780262035316.003.0003
- Subject:
- History, History of Science, Technology, and Medicine
History is a genre consisting historically of different kinds with different functions. Instead of just writing “a history” of system, we need to recover the changing relationship between these two ...
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History is a genre consisting historically of different kinds with different functions. Instead of just writing “a history” of system, we need to recover the changing relationship between these two genres—starting with Bacon’s emphasis on the need for new histories and Galileo’s focus on system. This chapter follows their interrelations into the eighteenth century using a new computational resource I call Tectonics. It maps spatially over time the coming together of system and history at the century’s end as they share more and more title pages, modifying each other and forming a new platform for knowledge: the narrow-but-deep disciplines of modernity. The chapter confirms this finding using Encyclopedia Britannica and then—with turns to William Jones and the novel--shows how history itself became one of those narrowed disciplines by foregrounding “ideas” and the modern subject that embodies them. The chapter shows how these interrelations of system and history shaped the efforts of system theory, including Immanuel Wallerstein and Niklas Luhmann, and recovers for this book a different kind of history: Bacon’s notion of a capacious literary history that would tell the “story of learning” from age to age. The chapter concludes with Carl Woese’s efforts to transform biology through a newly capacious history, and with explanations of the scope and kinds of history featured in this book: the histories of “mediation,” “blame,” and the “real.”.Less
History is a genre consisting historically of different kinds with different functions. Instead of just writing “a history” of system, we need to recover the changing relationship between these two genres—starting with Bacon’s emphasis on the need for new histories and Galileo’s focus on system. This chapter follows their interrelations into the eighteenth century using a new computational resource I call Tectonics. It maps spatially over time the coming together of system and history at the century’s end as they share more and more title pages, modifying each other and forming a new platform for knowledge: the narrow-but-deep disciplines of modernity. The chapter confirms this finding using Encyclopedia Britannica and then—with turns to William Jones and the novel--shows how history itself became one of those narrowed disciplines by foregrounding “ideas” and the modern subject that embodies them. The chapter shows how these interrelations of system and history shaped the efforts of system theory, including Immanuel Wallerstein and Niklas Luhmann, and recovers for this book a different kind of history: Bacon’s notion of a capacious literary history that would tell the “story of learning” from age to age. The chapter concludes with Carl Woese’s efforts to transform biology through a newly capacious history, and with explanations of the scope and kinds of history featured in this book: the histories of “mediation,” “blame,” and the “real.”.
Patrick McDonagh, C. F. Goodey, and Tim Stainton
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781526125316
- eISBN:
- 9781526136213
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9781526125316.003.0001
- Subject:
- History, Social History
Intellectual disability is an unstable concept, and its fundamental instability is magnified when we track its history and relation to other concepts. This introductory chapter explores some of the ...
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Intellectual disability is an unstable concept, and its fundamental instability is magnified when we track its history and relation to other concepts. This introductory chapter explores some of the challenges of investigating the forces shaping the concept of intellectual disability in Europe and Britain across the centuries: not only those generated by shifting language and terminology, but also the demands imposed by the interdisciplinary nature of this project, which takes us through histories of literature, religion, law, education, philosophy, psychology and medicine, in addition to engaging with cultural and social history. Further, the fundamental slipperiness of the idea of intellectual disability raises the question of whether it could even be said to exist in forms similar to that which it assumes today. This introduction also includes a review of literature exploring the history of intellectual disability, and an overview of the chapters to follow.Less
Intellectual disability is an unstable concept, and its fundamental instability is magnified when we track its history and relation to other concepts. This introductory chapter explores some of the challenges of investigating the forces shaping the concept of intellectual disability in Europe and Britain across the centuries: not only those generated by shifting language and terminology, but also the demands imposed by the interdisciplinary nature of this project, which takes us through histories of literature, religion, law, education, philosophy, psychology and medicine, in addition to engaging with cultural and social history. Further, the fundamental slipperiness of the idea of intellectual disability raises the question of whether it could even be said to exist in forms similar to that which it assumes today. This introduction also includes a review of literature exploring the history of intellectual disability, and an overview of the chapters to follow.
Patrick Fessenbecker
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- September 2021
- ISBN:
- 9781474460606
- eISBN:
- 9781474484817
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474460606.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century and Victorian Literature
Perhaps the most influential contemporary versions of formalism are those that justify formal interpretation as a form of historical analysis. A defense of reading for the content, which often ...
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Perhaps the most influential contemporary versions of formalism are those that justify formal interpretation as a form of historical analysis. A defense of reading for the content, which often involves bringing writers from the past into an anachronistic conversation with contemporary issues, thus requires understanding and responding to the arguments in favor of historicist reading. Richard Rorty’s distinction between “historical” and “rational” reconstructions, where the former renders a view in a thinker’s own words while the latter sympathetically translates it into contemporary terms, clarifies the relationship between the competing impulses to bring texts into conversation with current issues and to understand them in their own terms. Far from betraying the literary text’s artistic nature, moreover, a parsing of the language of appreciation philosophers use in justifying rational reconstruction, suggests that it is at least in part an aesthetic practice.Less
Perhaps the most influential contemporary versions of formalism are those that justify formal interpretation as a form of historical analysis. A defense of reading for the content, which often involves bringing writers from the past into an anachronistic conversation with contemporary issues, thus requires understanding and responding to the arguments in favor of historicist reading. Richard Rorty’s distinction between “historical” and “rational” reconstructions, where the former renders a view in a thinker’s own words while the latter sympathetically translates it into contemporary terms, clarifies the relationship between the competing impulses to bring texts into conversation with current issues and to understand them in their own terms. Far from betraying the literary text’s artistic nature, moreover, a parsing of the language of appreciation philosophers use in justifying rational reconstruction, suggests that it is at least in part an aesthetic practice.
Joe Earle, Cahal Moran, and Zach Ward-Perkins
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- May 2017
- ISBN:
- 9781526110121
- eISBN:
- 9781526120748
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9781526110121.003.0005
- Subject:
- Economics and Finance, History of Economic Thought
Chapter 4 details the history of how the discipline of economics came to be so narrow and the more recent student led movements to reform it. It also includes a critique of the new CORE syllabus.
Chapter 4 details the history of how the discipline of economics came to be so narrow and the more recent student led movements to reform it. It also includes a critique of the new CORE syllabus.
James Montgomery
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- May 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780748683321
- eISBN:
- 9780748695072
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748683321.001.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Islam
This book documents and explores a ninth century Muslim thinker’s response to an emergent information technology—widely available books written on rag-paper. By 850, in Baghdad rag-paper books were ...
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This book documents and explores a ninth century Muslim thinker’s response to an emergent information technology—widely available books written on rag-paper. By 850, in Baghdad rag-paper books were all the rage. A book market, with its professionals: stationers, copyists, booksellers and authors, emerged. A cosmopolitan society responded enthusiastically. Al-Jā?i? had, for most of his life, earned his living as an influential counselor, a special adviser to the elite. By the time of his death in 868/9, he had become a professional author. Al-Jā?i? was a bibliomaniac and prided himself on his expertise in Kalām, a dialectical method for ascertaining the truth, the predominant intellectual discipline of his day, a rigorous study of the nature of God and the universe derived from close observation of creation and informed by inferential and analogical reasoning about the suprasensible world. Al-Jāḥiẓ: In Praise of Books concentrates on The Book of Living, the most important work by al-Jā?i?, a documentation of almost all creation, from insect life, such as beetles and flies, to reptiles, such as lizards and snakes, to birds and mammals. The primary focus of the study is the extensive praise of books that The Book of Living contains. This is also the story of how al-Jā?i? thought that his book would save his society from the disorder it had fallen into through its addiction to argument and dissent, an addiction that created social tumult.Less
This book documents and explores a ninth century Muslim thinker’s response to an emergent information technology—widely available books written on rag-paper. By 850, in Baghdad rag-paper books were all the rage. A book market, with its professionals: stationers, copyists, booksellers and authors, emerged. A cosmopolitan society responded enthusiastically. Al-Jā?i? had, for most of his life, earned his living as an influential counselor, a special adviser to the elite. By the time of his death in 868/9, he had become a professional author. Al-Jā?i? was a bibliomaniac and prided himself on his expertise in Kalām, a dialectical method for ascertaining the truth, the predominant intellectual discipline of his day, a rigorous study of the nature of God and the universe derived from close observation of creation and informed by inferential and analogical reasoning about the suprasensible world. Al-Jāḥiẓ: In Praise of Books concentrates on The Book of Living, the most important work by al-Jā?i?, a documentation of almost all creation, from insect life, such as beetles and flies, to reptiles, such as lizards and snakes, to birds and mammals. The primary focus of the study is the extensive praise of books that The Book of Living contains. This is also the story of how al-Jā?i? thought that his book would save his society from the disorder it had fallen into through its addiction to argument and dissent, an addiction that created social tumult.
Patrick McDonagh, C. F. Goodey, and Tim Stainton (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781526125316
- eISBN:
- 9781526136213
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9781526125316.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, Social History
This collection explores how concepts of intellectual or learning disability evolved from a range of influences, gradually developing from earlier and decidedly distinct concepts, including ‘idiocy’ ...
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This collection explores how concepts of intellectual or learning disability evolved from a range of influences, gradually developing from earlier and decidedly distinct concepts, including ‘idiocy’ and ‘folly’, which were themselves generated by very specific social and intellectual environments. With essays extending across legal, educational, literary, religious, philosophical, and psychiatric histories, this collection maintains a rigorous distinction between historical and contemporary concepts in demonstrating how intellectual disability and related notions were products of the prevailing social, cultural, and intellectual environments in which they took form, and themselves performed important functions within these environments. Focusing on British and European material from the middle ages to the late nineteenth century, this collection asks ‘How and why did these concepts form?’ ‘How did they connect with one another?’ and ‘What historical circumstances contributed to building these connections?’ While the emphasis is on conceptual history or a history of ideas, these essays also address the consequences of these defining forces for the people who found themselves enclosed by the shifting definitional field.Less
This collection explores how concepts of intellectual or learning disability evolved from a range of influences, gradually developing from earlier and decidedly distinct concepts, including ‘idiocy’ and ‘folly’, which were themselves generated by very specific social and intellectual environments. With essays extending across legal, educational, literary, religious, philosophical, and psychiatric histories, this collection maintains a rigorous distinction between historical and contemporary concepts in demonstrating how intellectual disability and related notions were products of the prevailing social, cultural, and intellectual environments in which they took form, and themselves performed important functions within these environments. Focusing on British and European material from the middle ages to the late nineteenth century, this collection asks ‘How and why did these concepts form?’ ‘How did they connect with one another?’ and ‘What historical circumstances contributed to building these connections?’ While the emphasis is on conceptual history or a history of ideas, these essays also address the consequences of these defining forces for the people who found themselves enclosed by the shifting definitional field.
Carool Kersten
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- October 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780190247775
- eISBN:
- 9780190638528
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780190247775.003.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Islam
The introduction lays out the intentions of this intellectual history of contemporary Indonesian Islam. As a history of ideas, the book is theoretically framed by the notions of “circulation of ...
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The introduction lays out the intentions of this intellectual history of contemporary Indonesian Islam. As a history of ideas, the book is theoretically framed by the notions of “circulation of ideas”, developed in South Asian and Indian Ocean Studies, and Edward Said’s “traveling theory”. It is further informed by Zygmunt Bauman’s explanation of the role of intellectuals in Legislators and Interpreters and Bruce Robbins’ interpretation of intellectual work in Secular Vocations. It outlines the analysis of the rise of a new generation of Muslim intellectuals who are not only critical citizens vis-à-vis the state, but who have also interrogated the intellectual and political credentials of earlier generations of Muslim activists and leaders, and who have their own ideas about the localization of Islam and how Indonesian nation-building relates to regional, transregional, and global contexts.Less
The introduction lays out the intentions of this intellectual history of contemporary Indonesian Islam. As a history of ideas, the book is theoretically framed by the notions of “circulation of ideas”, developed in South Asian and Indian Ocean Studies, and Edward Said’s “traveling theory”. It is further informed by Zygmunt Bauman’s explanation of the role of intellectuals in Legislators and Interpreters and Bruce Robbins’ interpretation of intellectual work in Secular Vocations. It outlines the analysis of the rise of a new generation of Muslim intellectuals who are not only critical citizens vis-à-vis the state, but who have also interrogated the intellectual and political credentials of earlier generations of Muslim activists and leaders, and who have their own ideas about the localization of Islam and how Indonesian nation-building relates to regional, transregional, and global contexts.
David Lloyd Dusenbury
- Published in print:
- 2021
- Published Online:
- September 2021
- ISBN:
- 9780198856962
- eISBN:
- 9780191890079
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198856962.003.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Early Christian Studies
Stoic philosophers in antiquity held that ‘the world is like a city and a polity’, and that human nature is like ‘a code of civil law’ (Cicero, De Finibus III). In his late-antique treatise On Human ...
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Stoic philosophers in antiquity held that ‘the world is like a city and a polity’, and that human nature is like ‘a code of civil law’ (Cicero, De Finibus III). In his late-antique treatise On Human Nature, Nemesius rejects a variety of Stoic tenets. His world city is certainly not theirs. Nevertheless, this chapter argues that the Syrian philosopher-bishop held—with the Stoics—that humans are, by birth, world-citizens who are in communion with the whole of creation, and indeed, with the Demiurge. It is the ancient idea of a ‘world city’, it is claimed here, which gives structural and conceptual unity to On Human Nature—a unity which many of Nemesius’ interpreters have failed to discern.Less
Stoic philosophers in antiquity held that ‘the world is like a city and a polity’, and that human nature is like ‘a code of civil law’ (Cicero, De Finibus III). In his late-antique treatise On Human Nature, Nemesius rejects a variety of Stoic tenets. His world city is certainly not theirs. Nevertheless, this chapter argues that the Syrian philosopher-bishop held—with the Stoics—that humans are, by birth, world-citizens who are in communion with the whole of creation, and indeed, with the Demiurge. It is the ancient idea of a ‘world city’, it is claimed here, which gives structural and conceptual unity to On Human Nature—a unity which many of Nemesius’ interpreters have failed to discern.
David Lloyd Dusenbury
- Published in print:
- 2021
- Published Online:
- September 2021
- ISBN:
- 9780198856962
- eISBN:
- 9780191890079
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198856962.003.0003
- Subject:
- Religion, Early Christian Studies
In this chapter, on Human Nature 2–5, Nemesius denies that the soul is a body, a harmony, a mixture, or a quality. His cosmopolitan anthropology rests on the conviction that the human soul is an ...
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In this chapter, on Human Nature 2–5, Nemesius denies that the soul is a body, a harmony, a mixture, or a quality. His cosmopolitan anthropology rests on the conviction that the human soul is an incorporeal and immortal substance. Yet this creates two acute problems for the bishop. First, how is an incorporeal soul united to a body? And second, is it possible for an immortal soul to be united to a non-human body? In settling the first question, Nemesius draws on both Plato and Galen. ‘The body is an instrument of the soul’, he writes. This is a concept which underlies his physiology and psychology. In his handling of the second question, though, Nemesius uses Galen’s medical philosophy to refute Platonic theories of reincarnation. This is a far-reaching decision: it means that Nemesius’ idea of human nature, as such—as an idea—diverges from much of the Platonic tradition in late antiquity.Less
In this chapter, on Human Nature 2–5, Nemesius denies that the soul is a body, a harmony, a mixture, or a quality. His cosmopolitan anthropology rests on the conviction that the human soul is an incorporeal and immortal substance. Yet this creates two acute problems for the bishop. First, how is an incorporeal soul united to a body? And second, is it possible for an immortal soul to be united to a non-human body? In settling the first question, Nemesius draws on both Plato and Galen. ‘The body is an instrument of the soul’, he writes. This is a concept which underlies his physiology and psychology. In his handling of the second question, though, Nemesius uses Galen’s medical philosophy to refute Platonic theories of reincarnation. This is a far-reaching decision: it means that Nemesius’ idea of human nature, as such—as an idea—diverges from much of the Platonic tradition in late antiquity.
David Lloyd Dusenbury
- Published in print:
- 2021
- Published Online:
- September 2021
- ISBN:
- 9780198856962
- eISBN:
- 9780191890079
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198856962.003.0005
- Subject:
- Religion, Early Christian Studies
Like other early Christian writers, Nemesius condemns any theory which denies that humans are by nature free. Though he believes that the human body is an instrument, he passionately rejects the idea ...
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Like other early Christian writers, Nemesius condemns any theory which denies that humans are by nature free. Though he believes that the human body is an instrument, he passionately rejects the idea that ‘humankind is a mere instrument’. He cannot tolerate any reduction of humans to the status of a tool, whether by ‘pagans’ (in theories of fate), or by Christians (in theories of providence). In this chapter, we reconstruct Nemesius’ theories of human freedom and divine providence. The bishop believes that human laws—and, hence, crime and punishment—are inconceivable in the absence of human choice. Since all cities have laws, he reasons, humans must have a natural power of choice. From this cosmopolitan line of reasoning (which has roots in Greek antiquity), Nemesius derives a subtle theory of divine world-governance in the final pages of his (unfinished) treatise.Less
Like other early Christian writers, Nemesius condemns any theory which denies that humans are by nature free. Though he believes that the human body is an instrument, he passionately rejects the idea that ‘humankind is a mere instrument’. He cannot tolerate any reduction of humans to the status of a tool, whether by ‘pagans’ (in theories of fate), or by Christians (in theories of providence). In this chapter, we reconstruct Nemesius’ theories of human freedom and divine providence. The bishop believes that human laws—and, hence, crime and punishment—are inconceivable in the absence of human choice. Since all cities have laws, he reasons, humans must have a natural power of choice. From this cosmopolitan line of reasoning (which has roots in Greek antiquity), Nemesius derives a subtle theory of divine world-governance in the final pages of his (unfinished) treatise.
David Lloyd Dusenbury
- Published in print:
- 2021
- Published Online:
- September 2021
- ISBN:
- 9780198856962
- eISBN:
- 9780191890079
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198856962.003.0002
- Subject:
- Religion, Early Christian Studies
In this chapter, we begin to reconstruct Nemesius’ anthropology, beginning with On Human Nature 1. And what we are meant to take from Nemesius’ prologue is something he calls a ‘familiar’ idea: that ...
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In this chapter, we begin to reconstruct Nemesius’ anthropology, beginning with On Human Nature 1. And what we are meant to take from Nemesius’ prologue is something he calls a ‘familiar’ idea: that the world is a divine polity. The Platonic commentator Calcidius seems to have been a rough contemporary of Nemesius’ (and may have been a Syrian). In the first pages of his monumental Timaeus commentary, Calcidius refers to the ‘city or republic of this sensible world’. Nemesius never uses such precise terminology, but there is much to suggest that he structures his treatise with an eye to this archaic, yet philosophically sophisticated world-picture. It is in his prologue, too, that Nemesius sketches his theory of human origins—featuring a bold interpretation of the Fall which seems to turn upon his use of Galen’s medical vocabulary.Less
In this chapter, we begin to reconstruct Nemesius’ anthropology, beginning with On Human Nature 1. And what we are meant to take from Nemesius’ prologue is something he calls a ‘familiar’ idea: that the world is a divine polity. The Platonic commentator Calcidius seems to have been a rough contemporary of Nemesius’ (and may have been a Syrian). In the first pages of his monumental Timaeus commentary, Calcidius refers to the ‘city or republic of this sensible world’. Nemesius never uses such precise terminology, but there is much to suggest that he structures his treatise with an eye to this archaic, yet philosophically sophisticated world-picture. It is in his prologue, too, that Nemesius sketches his theory of human origins—featuring a bold interpretation of the Fall which seems to turn upon his use of Galen’s medical vocabulary.
David Lloyd Dusenbury
- Published in print:
- 2021
- Published Online:
- September 2021
- ISBN:
- 9780198856962
- eISBN:
- 9780191890079
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198856962.003.0004
- Subject:
- Religion, Early Christian Studies
This chapter argues that the physiological and psychological chapters of Nemesius’ treatise are not random memoranda on the human organism or disjecta membra taken from a range of late-antique ...
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This chapter argues that the physiological and psychological chapters of Nemesius’ treatise are not random memoranda on the human organism or disjecta membra taken from a range of late-antique sources. On the contrary, it is claimed here that Human Nature 6‒28, where the medical anthropology of the Platonic–Galenic tradition comes to the fore, mark a decisive phase in Nemesius’ argument. The human is defined by the bishop as the only living being which is at once ruler (intellect) and ruled (body). In Human Nature 6‒28, this image of humankind is given an anatomical proof. Nemesius describes the parts of the human body as organs of the soul by means of which—by a divine logic which is obscured, but not negated by injury and pathology—the soul’s government of the body is realized.Less
This chapter argues that the physiological and psychological chapters of Nemesius’ treatise are not random memoranda on the human organism or disjecta membra taken from a range of late-antique sources. On the contrary, it is claimed here that Human Nature 6‒28, where the medical anthropology of the Platonic–Galenic tradition comes to the fore, mark a decisive phase in Nemesius’ argument. The human is defined by the bishop as the only living being which is at once ruler (intellect) and ruled (body). In Human Nature 6‒28, this image of humankind is given an anatomical proof. Nemesius describes the parts of the human body as organs of the soul by means of which—by a divine logic which is obscured, but not negated by injury and pathology—the soul’s government of the body is realized.
David Lloyd Dusenbury
- Published in print:
- 2021
- Published Online:
- September 2021
- ISBN:
- 9780198856962
- eISBN:
- 9780191890079
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198856962.001.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Early Christian Studies
Nemesius of Emesa’s On Human Nature (De Natura Hominis) is the first Christian anthropology. Written in Greek, circa 390 CE, it was read in half a dozen languages—from Baghdad to Oxford—well into the ...
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Nemesius of Emesa’s On Human Nature (De Natura Hominis) is the first Christian anthropology. Written in Greek, circa 390 CE, it was read in half a dozen languages—from Baghdad to Oxford—well into the early modern period. Nemesius’ text circulated in two Latin versions in the centuries that saw the rise of European universities, shaping scholastic theories of human nature. During the Renaissance, it saw a flurry of print editions, helping to inspire a new discourse of human dignity. This is the first monograph in English on Nemesius’ treatise. On the interpretation offered here, the Syrian bishop seeks to define the human qua human. His early Christian anthropology is cosmopolitan. ‘Things that are natural’, he writes, ‘are the same for all’. In his pages, a host of texts and discourses—biblical and medical, legal and philosophical—are made to converge upon a decisive tenet of Christian late antiquity: humans’ natural freedom. For Nemesius, reason and choice are a divine double-strand of powers. Since he believes that both are a natural human inheritance, he concludes that much is ‘in our power’. Nemesius defines humans as the only living beings who are at once ruler (intellect) and ruled (body). Because of this, the human is a ‘little world’, binding the rationality of angels to the flux of elements, the tranquillity of plants, and the impulsiveness of animals. This book traces Nemesius’ reasoning through the whole of On Human Nature, as he seeks to give a long-influential image of humankind both philosophical and anatomical proof.Less
Nemesius of Emesa’s On Human Nature (De Natura Hominis) is the first Christian anthropology. Written in Greek, circa 390 CE, it was read in half a dozen languages—from Baghdad to Oxford—well into the early modern period. Nemesius’ text circulated in two Latin versions in the centuries that saw the rise of European universities, shaping scholastic theories of human nature. During the Renaissance, it saw a flurry of print editions, helping to inspire a new discourse of human dignity. This is the first monograph in English on Nemesius’ treatise. On the interpretation offered here, the Syrian bishop seeks to define the human qua human. His early Christian anthropology is cosmopolitan. ‘Things that are natural’, he writes, ‘are the same for all’. In his pages, a host of texts and discourses—biblical and medical, legal and philosophical—are made to converge upon a decisive tenet of Christian late antiquity: humans’ natural freedom. For Nemesius, reason and choice are a divine double-strand of powers. Since he believes that both are a natural human inheritance, he concludes that much is ‘in our power’. Nemesius defines humans as the only living beings who are at once ruler (intellect) and ruled (body). Because of this, the human is a ‘little world’, binding the rationality of angels to the flux of elements, the tranquillity of plants, and the impulsiveness of animals. This book traces Nemesius’ reasoning through the whole of On Human Nature, as he seeks to give a long-influential image of humankind both philosophical and anatomical proof.
