Search Results

The Modernity of Early Modernity

in Rhetoric, Modality, Modernity

This chapter makes a case for the modernity of Early Modernity. Thomas Hobbes and Giovanni Battista Vico are secessionist thinkers, seceding from the normative, moralistic, prescriptive program of ... More

This chapter makes a case for the modernity of Early Modernity. Thomas Hobbes and Giovanni Battista Vico are secessionist thinkers, seceding from the normative, moralistic, prescriptive program of Classical political philosophy, repudiating the terms and arguments that dominated medieval and Renaissance as well as ancient thought, jettisoning the dubious transcendental assumptions underpinning its moralistic speculation. While Hobbes and Vico's work can be read as an actualization of the Aristotelian rhetorical possibilities, it remains, on the whole, simply possibility in modernist inquiry. It is a modernism inadequately represented, still, in the nineteenth- and twentieth-century retrievals of rhetoric. Hobbesian psychology has strong affinities of beliefs and habits with those of Aristotle's Rhetoric; and, perhaps more so than Aristotle's inquiry, it is permeated by a “sophisticated” pessimism. Vico's pessimism is expressed in his investment in irony as an explanatory thesis of great power: civility as unintended consequence. All of this, this chapter argues, is rhetorical in tone: and all easily effaced, elided.Less

The Anglo-Dutch-American Archipelago

Jonathan Scott

in How the Old World Ended: The Anglo-Dutch-American Revolution 1500-1800

This chapter focuses upon developments within what may be retrospectively designated an Anglo-Dutch-American archipelago. This was a geographical constellation, incorporating the Northern ... More

This chapter focuses upon developments within what may be retrospectively designated an Anglo-Dutch-American archipelago. This was a geographical constellation, incorporating the Northern Netherlands, the British Isles and Atlantic North America, connected by people, their culture, and ships. In more modern metaphorical terms it scrutinizes the Anglo-Dutch subsection of the runway, and the aviation fuel in question, which was importantly North American. The chapter describes a series of economic, cultural, political, and military changes which began in the region between the Baltic and North Sea before crossing the North Sea, and then the Atlantic. The result was the process here called Anglo-Dutch-American early modernity. This world-changing current of invention (oceanic to begin with, electric eventually) achieved a breakthrough in the Low Countries, gathered heft and momentum in seventeenth-century England, and by connection with North America made something new.Less

Early Republican Denial of Actors of Violence, 1919–1973

Fatma Müge Göçek

in Denial of Violence: Ottoman Past, Turkish Present, and Collective Violence against the Armenians, 1789-2009

The 6–7 September 1955 pogroms committed against non-Muslims, including Armenians, constitute the collective violence of this stage. The chapter analyzes the early republican denial of actors of ... More

The 6–7 September 1955 pogroms committed against non-Muslims, including Armenians, constitute the collective violence of this stage. The chapter analyzes the early republican denial of actors of violence as the republican state and its governments argued that all perpetrators of prior violence against the Armenians were tried and duly punished, whereas almost all transitioned into the republic with their violent past silenced and occupied significant military and administrative posts. Such denial of actors, the chapter argues, emerges through the interaction of the early republican structure of sameness and early republican modernity, on the one hand, and of exclusionary republican sentiments with the 1919–22 military tribunals, on the other. The dual early republican denial rejects its past Young Turk connection and hides the numerous perpetrators within the republican elite.Less

Introducing Lives

Kevin Sharpe and Steven N. Zwicker (eds)

in Writing Lives: Biography and Textuality, Identity and Representation in Early Modern England

This book explores the processes and histories out of which biography emerged as a literary genre in late early modern England. It examines the purposes and uses of biographies and other forms of ... More

This book explores the processes and histories out of which biography emerged as a literary genre in late early modern England. It examines the purposes and uses of biographies and other forms of life writing in early modernity; how and in what ways biography is shaped by cultural styles and national habits of recording, memorialising, and celebrating lives; and how the nation emerged as a determining factor in life writing. It also considers the importance of materials and methods in biographical writing, along with the role of sex and sexuality in modern biography.Less

Nature without Nature: Prolegomena to a History of Nature Studies in Early Modern Japan

Federico Marcon

in The Knowledge of Nature and the Nature of Knowledge in Early Modern Japan

This chapter introduces the argument of the book and its analytical terminology. It presents the contradiction inherent in a project that purports to historicize a form of knowledge like science that ... More

This chapter introduces the argument of the book and its analytical terminology. It presents the contradiction inherent in a project that purports to historicize a form of knowledge like science that has universalistic claims. It defends its strategy of historicizing the very notion of scientific knowledge, by which it avoids the metaphysical traps of either adopting a transcendental and a historical notion of science—which transforms it into a kind of universal—or elevating a historically specific notion of science born in 19th century Europe to an a historical, transcendental standard of judgment.Less

Continuing Uncertainty in the Mainstream

Anthony Carty

in Philosophy of International Law

The chapter shows that the statist language with which the Court works is unable to grasp the processes of international life. It will be implicit in the critique that the reason lies in the Court's ... More

The chapter shows that the statist language with which the Court works is unable to grasp the processes of international life. It will be implicit in the critique that the reason lies in the Court's continued adherence to the security-oriented language of the classical state sovereign of early modernity. The chapter concludes by setting out possible minimum conditions for an effective observation of the practice of states as institutions and the place of lawyers within them, by invoking the idea of a public space, within and outside the state, in which legal argument can take place.Less

Professor Penck’s Pupils

Steven Seegel

in Map Men: Transnational Lives and Deaths of Geographers in the Making of East Central Europe

The chapter introduces, formally, the main mapmen: Albrecht Penck of Saxony, Eugeniusz Mikolaj Romer of West Galicia in Poland, Stepan L’vovych Rudnyts’kyi of Eastern Galicia in Ukraine, Isaiah ... More

The chapter introduces, formally, the main mapmen: Albrecht Penck of Saxony, Eugeniusz Mikolaj Romer of West Galicia in Poland, Stepan L’vovych Rudnyts’kyi of Eastern Galicia in Ukraine, Isaiah Bowman of Ontario, and Count Teleki de Szek of Transylvania. The chapter provides brief genealogies of the mapmen’s families, for their pursuits in geography were tied closely to feelings of national legacy. Romer, for example, sought to establish Polish geography as a dominant science that confirmed the legacy and influence of the Poles on European land or Count Teleki who used geography to campaign for Transylvania’s independent statehood. All of the men reckoned with imperial powers and colonial aspirations under the guise of establishing their homeland’s geography as a transnational science that broke borders while establishing the strength and dignity of their homelands. The chapter gives special attention to how academic pursuits and marriages affected the class status of the mapmen. It also gives further detail about the men’s first meeting on an AGS expedition through the continental United States and to Alaska in 1912.Less

Documenting the Three Waves of Mid-Qing Protest

Ho-Fung Hung

in Protest with Chinese Characteristics: Demonstrations, Riots, and Petitions in the Mid-Qing Dynasty

This chapter discusses data and methodological issues, and provides a general overview and classification of all documented protests. These episodes were not distributed evenly over time but were ... More

This chapter discusses data and methodological issues, and provides a general overview and classification of all documented protests. These episodes were not distributed evenly over time but were clustered in three waves: 1740–1759, 1776–1795, and 1820–1839. The reasons for establishing 1740 and 1839 as the temporal boundaries of the study are twofold. First, Qing China during this period was at its height of early modernity. Its levels of centralized state power and commercialized economy were comparable to eighteenth-century Europe. Second, studies that deal with unrest in the late Ming–early Qing period (from the late seventeenth to the early eighteenth century) and the late Qing period (from the end of the first Opium War, in 1842, to the collapse of the Qing empire in 1911) are relatively abundant.Less

Cities of the Stranger

Meredith Evans

in This Distracted Globe

Hamlet is the point of departure for this consideration of the status of law and the sovereign in early modern treatments of piracy and travel over water.

Epilogue: The Transcivilizational Feminine and World Literature

Ning Ma

in The Age of Silver: The Rise of the Novel East and West

The epilogue presents the parallel employments of the figure of the chaste feminine in seventeenth-century Chinese “talent-beauty” novels and the English works of Samuel Richardson, such as Pamela. ... More

The epilogue presents the parallel employments of the figure of the chaste feminine in seventeenth-century Chinese “talent-beauty” novels and the English works of Samuel Richardson, such as Pamela. It proposes that this East-West correspondence reflects analogous narrative shifts toward representing a more interiorized mode of morality and individual existence in response to the ongoing destablizations of past cultural forms. The parallel in question was noted by Goethe when he advanced his famous notion of “world literature.” Recalling this event and its underlying global dynamics, including Goethe’s vision of a geographical transformation of word civilization, the epilogue reinforces the necessity of the horizontal comparative literature method. It argues that a more future-looking concept of world literature demands an unearthing of a polycentric mode of transcultural early modernity.Less

Conclusion: (Dis)connected Histories and the Beginnings of European Conquest in Asia

Zoltán Biedermann

in (Dis)connected Empires: Imperial Portugal, Sri Lankan Diplomacy, and the Making of a Habsburg Conquest in Asia

The collapse of the inter-imperial dialogue in Sri Lanka calls for further extrapolations regarding the merits and shortcomings of connected history. Do commensurability and the potential for mutual ... More

The collapse of the inter-imperial dialogue in Sri Lanka calls for further extrapolations regarding the merits and shortcomings of connected history. Do commensurability and the potential for mutual understandings logically increase as societies talk to each other, or can they also decrease? What does the case examined in this book tell us about the interdependence of the global and the local? Does Sri Lanka enrich our understanding of the making of global power dynamics elsewhere? May it be worth engaging more systematically than before in ‘(dis)connected history’—an approach that explores the global connectivity of early modern polities along with the obstacles arising to it? A methodological state of grace would allow us to examine the profound, inextricable intertwinement of deeply contradictory processes of convergence and divergence as a core characteristic of early modernity at large.Less

Kant’s Rejection of Just War: International Order between Democratic Constitutionalism and Revolutionary Violence

Oliver Eberl

in The Justification of War and International Order: From Past to Present

Following up on Tischer’s, Becker Lorca’s and Teschke’s observations on early modern war discourse, Oliver Eberl in this chapter elaborates Immanuel Kant’s critique of the justification of the use of ... More

Following up on Tischer’s, Becker Lorca’s and Teschke’s observations on early modern war discourse, Oliver Eberl in this chapter elaborates Immanuel Kant’s critique of the justification of the use of force in early modernity which revolutionized the thinking on international order. Kant condemned the justification of the use of force as just war since this would perpetuate the state of nature which the states still found themselves in. Kant does not link directly theory and practice but rather formulates his theory on the background of revolutionary change, which in his view opens up the possibility of a completely new approach to international order. However, in unfolding his theory, Kant had to take into consideration its possible practical consequences in the context of an unstable international constellation of power. Furthermore, he had to accommodate the practice of the French republic to identify its opponents as ‘unjust enemies’, thereby contradicting the envisaged role of the revolution as the nucleus of the new era of peace envisioned by Kant.Less

Firewater and Corpse-Reviver: Alcohol in Later Sanskrit Sources

James McHugh

in An Unholy Brew: Alcohol in Indian History and Religions

Chapter 9 contains some very brief observations on what happened to the drinks, ideas, narratives, and rituals discussed in this book over the later second millennium CE. Although limited to certain ... More

Chapter 9 contains some very brief observations on what happened to the drinks, ideas, narratives, and rituals discussed in this book over the later second millennium CE. Although limited to certain narrow sectarian and professional contexts, many of these ancient intellectual resources still formed a repertoire of materials with which to think about drink and drugs in very changed historical circumstances. The chapter first examines what happened to traditional methods of surā brewing, and how distillation was incorporated, practically and conceptually. Then the chapter briefly considers how tobacco was described and classified within the world of Sanskrit texts. Although this period witnessed new technologies and substances, the Sanskritic tradition continued to adapt to these new situations, often by having recourse to ancient ideas and motifs.Less

Humanitarian Intervention: Justifying War for a New International Order

Beate Jahn

in The Justification of War and International Order: From Past to Present

Beate Jahn follows on from Nina Wilén’s chapter: Contrary to the widely held belief that humanitarian intervention is the result of a gradual universalization of moral obligations, Jahn shows that ... More

Beate Jahn follows on from Nina Wilén’s chapter: Contrary to the widely held belief that humanitarian intervention is the result of a gradual universalization of moral obligations, Jahn shows that classical authors—Francisco de Vitoria, Edmund Burke, Thomas Paine, and John Stuart Mill—as well as state practice regularly contemplated and often justified the use of force as measures to rescue citizens of other states from excessive violence. The authors dealt with, moreover, show that humanitarian action requires particular political arrangements—making regime change the direct aim of such wars. The meteoric rise of the concept of humanitarian intervention during the 1990s thus did not signify the advent of a new type of war. Instead, it functioned as a ‘doctrinal advance guard’ for a new international political order—which finds itself today in rapid decline.Less

Animal Souls and Beast Machines: descartes’s mechanical biology

Deborah J. Brown

in Animals: A History

Descartes’ long-standing interest in animals had many motivations—to reinforce his dualism of mind and body; to demonstrate the completeness of his physics; and to resolve what he considered to be ... More

Descartes’ long-standing interest in animals had many motivations—to reinforce his dualism of mind and body; to demonstrate the completeness of his physics; and to resolve what he considered to be inconsistent metaphysical and theological positions on the status of animal souls. Thus, the subject of animals serves to unite the various strands of Cartesian philosophy, whilst posing some of the deepest and most persistent challenges to that philosophy. Whether or not we agree with Descartes’s notorious view that animals are mere machines lacking all thought and sensibility, it is important to recognize that Descartes established the terms of a debate which continues to shape our thinking about animals, their cognitive capacities and their relationship to us. This chapter locates Descartes’ position within the scientific and moral debates of his time, emphasizing the sophistication of his attempts to explain animal life and behavior and the challenge he throws down to nonmechanistic explanations.Less