According to Carl Schmitt's concept of the political, the specific distinction to which political actions and motives can be reduced is that between friend and enemy. In the Middle Ages, Peter the Venerable (1092-1156), the abbot of Cluny, was the first to conceive the Church as a spatial entity surrounded and contrastively shaped by the the nature of its assailants: Jewish, Muslim, and heterodox religious competitors. From then on, the Ecclesia perceived and established itself as a fortress (...) constantly under siege, but interiorly illuminated by the Sapientia, the inner light of the Holy Spirit. At the same time, the « true social mutation of the year 1100 » (D. Barthélemy) that transformed the old religion based on the cult of relics into the sacramental "religion of new times" began to narrow the acceptation of the word Ecclesia to the clerical elite who had the power to invoke the Holy Spirit in the sacrament of the Eucharist. Through the Eucharist, the communicant was taken into Christ's mystical body and took part of the supernatural society of the Church. The devil, therefore, was identifiable in all his disguises by his constant blasphemy against the Incarnation of Christ, which is the raison d'être of the Fortress Church, and the condition of possibility of the Eucharist, and therefore of Christian society. At Saint-Gilles du Gard (ca.1160-70), Notre-Dame de Laon (ca.1190-1205) and Notre-Dame de Germigny-l'Exempt (ca.1215), I propose that the Incarnation tympana with their claim of kinship to authoritative Antiquity ("1200 style") emerged and resurfaced as a key, but ephemeral, composition translating this ideology in the transition between Romanesque and Gothic. (shrink)

In _The Later Middle Ages,_ the third volume of his monumental _History of Political Ideas,_ Eric Voegelin continues his exploration of one of the most crucial periods in the history of political thought. Illuminating the great figures of the high Middle Ages, Voegelin traces the historical momentum of our modern world in the core evocative symbols that constituted medieval civilization. These symbols revolved around the enduring aspiration for the _sacrum imperium,_ the one order (...) capable of embracing the transcendent and immanent, the ecclesiastical and political, the divine and human. The story of the later Middle Ages is that of the "civilizational schism"—the movement in which not only the reality but the aspiration for the _sacrum imperium_ gradually disappeared and the unification of faith and reason dissolved. His recognition of this civilizational schism provides Voegelin with a unique perspective on medieval society. William of Ockham, Dante, Giles of Rome, and Marsilius of Padua all emerge in Voegelin's study as predecessors to modern thought; each turns to personal authority and intellectual analysis in an attempt to comprehend the loss of the _sacrum imperium_ as an authoritative ideal. Voegelin is further drawn into investigations that, despite insufficient attention by scholars, still bear relevance to the study of the later Middle Ages. The mysticism apparent in _Piers Plowman_ and the apocalyptic revolt of Cola di Rienzo are merely two reactions to the disintegration of wholeness. Yet the story of the later Middle Ages does not merely revolve around disintegration. Voegelin recognizes the emergence of the constitutional political tradition as the most positive development of this period. He is at his best when explaining the difference between the presence of a representative institution and the growth of communal consciousness. Voegelin's study of the English political pattern is matched only by his unique perspective on the German imperial zone, culminating in a fitting conclusion on Nicholas of Cusa—the one political thinker with the ability to evoke the unity of mankind beyond fragmentation. _The Later Middle Ages_ is at once a brilliant examination of the symbols that characterized medieval society and a remarkable predecessor to Voegelin's study of the modern world, beginning with the Renaissance and the Reformation. (shrink)

The History of Political Ideas by the German-American philosopher Eric Voegelin is a monumental work of around 2,600 pages. It remained unpublished during his lifetime, and it came to light through the American edition and the now completed Portuguese edition. Being the author of the first world edition of an abridged version of the History of Political Ideas ; the translator of the first three volumes of the 2012-2018 Portuguese edition; and the author of The civil (...) philosophy of Eric Voegelin I consider that the History of Political Ideas challenges the present climate of opinion: it subverts the dominant corrosive forces of moral relativism, intolerant neo-positivism, end-of-history obsessions, postmodernist deconstructions, agnosticism, nihilism, new age religions, and the all-pervasive ideology of money. Eric Voegelin achieves all this leading his readers from Antiquity to Modern Age. His monumental work begins with the “spiritual disintegration” of the Greek world, after the peak of Plato and Aristotle, a disintegration that ushered a long process of transition in the self-understanding of man in the Mediterranean world. The series goes through Middle Ages, R enaissance and Reformation as Voegelin analyzes the collapse of imperial Christianity, which led to the rise of autonomous reason and sectarian revolts that reached full development in later centuries. A new form of modern human consciousness replaced the Christian understanding of a divinely created closed cosmos. The collection ends - in a suspensive way - with “The Crisis and the Apocalypse of Man” focused on thinkers such as Comte, Bakunine and Marx; although they experienced true epiphanies, they become self-obsessed to the detriment of the world to which they refer. Such “Apocalypse of Man” must now be challenged, albeit with methodologies and hermeneutic principles other than those that Voegelin himself abandoned some decades ago. (shrink)

Voegelin's magisterial account of medieval political thought opens with a survey of the structure of the period and continues with an analysis of the Germanic invasions, the fall of Rome, and the rise of empire and monastic Christianity. The political implications of Christianity and philosophy in the period are elaborated in chapters devoted to John of Salisbury, Joachim of Flora, Frederick II, Siger de Brabant, Francis of Assisi, Roman law, and climaxing in a remarkable study of Saint Thomas (...) Aquinas's mighty thirteenth-century synthesis. Although _History of Political Ideas_ was begun as a textbook for Macmillan, Voegelin never intended it to be a conventional chronological account. He sought instead an original comprehensive interpretation, founded on primary materials and taking into account the most advanced specialist scholarship—or science as he called it—available to him. Because of this, the book grew well beyond the confines of an easily marketable college survey and until now remained unpublished. In the process of writing it, Voegelin himself outgrew the conceptual frame of a "History of Political Ideas," turning to compose _Order and History_ and the other works of his maturity. _History of Political Ideas_ became the ordered collection of materials from which much of Voegelin's later theoretical elaboration grew, structured in a manner that reveals the conceptual intimations of his later thought. As such, it provides an unparalleled opportunity to observe the working methods and the intellectual evolution of one of our century's leading political thinkers. In its embracing scope, _History of Political Ideas_ contains both analyses of themes Voegelin developed in his later works and discussions of authors and ideas to which he did not return or which he later approached from a different angle and with a different emphasis. _The Middle Ages to Aquinas_ has withstood the test of time. What makes it still highly valuable is its thoroughly revisionist approach, cutting through all the convenient clichés and generalizations and seeking to establish the experiential underpinnings that typified the medieval period. (shrink)

For centuries, philosophers, political scientists, and jurists have struggled to understand the possibilities for justice and peace among a multiplicity of sovereign states. Like Dante, who sought to organize the world under the authority of the Holy Roman Empire, many theorists have tried to explain how sovereign states should be governed to ensure stability and peace in the absence of any established higher authority. Theories of World Governance traces the various conceptual approaches to world harmony from the close of (...) the Middle Ages to today. Considering the immediate problems of order in a decentralized world community, Cornelius F. Murphy, Jr., outlines what he believes are the essential long-term conditions for world peace. Covering a wide range of disciplines -- from theology and philosophy to jurisprudence, ethics, and sociology -- Murphy explores how theorists have reflected upon the necessary components of an effective global order. At the outset, the thought of Christian Europe was shaped by a belief in a natural order established by the Creator of the universe. However, with the advent of the Enlightenment, the connections between the human and the transcendent were severed. There was a movement from a theocentric understanding of the powers of the human mind to an intellectual outlook that blurred the distinctions between the divine and human. This study in the history of ideas examines the profound effects of the fundamental shift from transcendence to immanence upon the development of international theory. Murphy discusses the thought of Leibniz, Wolff, Kant, Hegel, and Phillip Allott, among others. The study concludes with an extended reflection on the importanceof a sound political philosophy to the future well-being of the global community. Possible improvements in the existing arrangements, such as reform of the United Nations, are discussed. Murphy suggests that in order for a society of sovereign states to be transformed into a world political community, human rights and self-governance within states must first be strengthened and, at the same time, individuals of all states must begin to realize their responsibilities toward the whole human family. (shrink)

In _The New Order and Last Orientation,_ Eric Voegelin explores two distinctly different yet equally important aspects of modernity. He begins by offering a vivid account of the political situation in seventeenth-century Europe after the decline of the church and the passing of the empire. Voegelin shows how the intellectual and political disorder of the period was met by such seemingly disparate responses as Grotius's theory of natural right, Hobbes's _Leviathan,_ the role of the Fronde in the formation (...) of the French national state, Spinoza's _Tractatus Theologico-Politicus,_ and Locke's _Second Treatise,_ the blueprint of a modern middle-class society. By putting these responses and the thought of Montesquieu, Hume, and others in the context of the birth pains of the national state and the emergence of a new self-understanding of man, Voegelin achieves a brilliant mixture of political history and profound philosophical analysis. Voegelin's verdict of modernity is pronounced most powerfully in the opening part of "Last Orientation," in the chapter entitled "Phenomenalism." His discussion of the intellectual confusion underlying the modern project of scientistic phenomenalism is the most original criticism leveled against modernity to date. It is at the same time the first step toward a recovery of reality through philosophy conceived as a science of substance in the spirit of Giordano Bruno. Voegelin's first example of such an effort at recovering reality is the chapter on Schelling, one of the spiritual realists who has not been affected by the prevailing rationalist or reductionist creeds that are part of the modern disorder. Schelling's indirect yet powerful influence on Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and Freud more than justifies Voegelin's interest in his philosophy and character, even though Voegelin would later distance himself from some of Schelling's positions. The volume's concluding chapter, "Nietzsche and Pascal," applies the understanding gained from the study of Schelling to the thought of the most powerful critic of the age, Nietzsche. Nietzsche's self-avowed affinity with Pascal provides the key to an analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of his thought and reaffirms the connection that links the beginning of modernity with its most recent crises and the efforts to overcome them. (shrink)

_Celebrating the fortieth anniversary of this seminal book, this new edition includes an illuminating foreword by Carlos Eire and Ronald K. Rittges_ The seeds of the swift and sweeping religious movement that reshaped European thought in the 1500s were sown in the late Middle Ages. In this book, Steven Ozment traces the growth and dissemination of dissenting intellectual trends through three centuries to their explosive burgeoning in the Reformations—both Protestant and Catholic—of the sixteenth century. He elucidates with great clarity (...) the complex philosophical and theological issues that inspired antagonistic schools, traditions, and movements from Aquinas to Calvin. This masterly synthesis of the intellectual and religious history of the period illuminates the impact of late medieval ideas on early modern society. With a new foreword by Carlos Eire and Ronald K. Rittgers, this modern classic is ripe for rediscovery by a new generation of students and scholars. (shrink)

The concept of providence is embedded in the life and theology of the church. Its uses are frequent and varied in understandings of politics, nature, and individual life-stories. Parallels can be discerned in other faiths. In this volume, David Fergusson traces the development of providential ideas at successive periods in church history. These include the early appropriation of Stoic and Platonic ideas, the codification of providence in the Middle Ages, its foregrounding in Reformed theology, and its secular applications (...) in the modern era. Responses to the Lisbon earthquake provide an instructive case study. Although confidence in divine providence was shaken after 1914, several models were advanced during the twentieth century. Drawing upon this diversity of approaches, Fergusson offers a chastened but constructive account for the contemporary church. Arguing for a polyphonic approach, he aims to distribute providence across all three articles of the faith. (shrink)

In this groundbreaking work, Ellen Meiksins Wood rewrites the history of political theory, from Plato to Rousseau. Treating canonical thinkers as passionately engaged human beings, Wood examines their ideas not simply in the context of political languages but as creative responses to the social relations and conflicts of their time and place. She identifies a distinctive relation between property and state in Western history and shows how the canon, while largely the work of members or clients (...) of dominant classes, was shaped by complex interactions among proprietors, labourers and states. Western political theory, Wood argues, owes much of its vigour, and also many ambiguities, to these complex and often contradictory relations. In this new edition, incorporating both volumes, the book takes us from classical antiquity to the age of enlightenement. In the first volume, Wood traces the development of the Western tradition from classical antiquity through to the Middle Ages in the perspective of social history--a significant departure not only from the standard abstract history of ideas but also from other contextual methods. In the second volume, Wood moves on to explore the formation of the modern state, the rise of capitalism, the Renaissance and Reformation, the scientific revolution and the Age of Enlightenment. In her focus on canonical thinkers through the ages, Wood illuminates a rich and provocative legacy of political ideas unmatched in Western history"--Publisher's website. (shrink)

By closely examining the sources, movements, and persons of the Renaissance and the Reformation, Voegelin reveals the roots of today's political ideologies in this fourth volume of his _History of Political Ideas._ This insightful study lays the groundwork for Voegelin's critique of the modern period and is essential to an understanding of his later analysis. Voegelin identifies not one but two distinct beginnings of the movement toward modern political consciousness: the Renaissance and the Reformation. Historically, however, the (...) powerful effects of the second have overshadowed the first. In this book, Voegelin carefully examines both periods and their presence in modern thought. The Renaissance, represented by the works of Niccolò Machiavelli, Desiderius Erasmus, and Thomas More, is characterized by a struggle for balance. Machiavelli and Erasmus both looked to a virtuous prince to achieve order, one calling for brute force and the other for Christian spirituality to reach their goal. Also a participant in the first beginning of modernity, More was a complex thinker identified as a saint both of the church and of the communist movement. The issues he explored in _Utopia,_ as Voegelin demonstrates, indirectly gave rise to concepts that have profoundly affected Western history: colonization, imperialism, national socialism, and communism. Exploring the transition from the Renaissance to the Reformation is a brilliant chapter, "The People of God," which examines the sectarian movement. These pages contain the rich historical background that led to Voegelin's later conclusions about Gnosticism and its modern influences. Voegelin offers a controversial view of the Reformation as well as the political and religious situation directly preceding it. Yet he sheds light on the strengths and inadequacies of its key figures, Martin Luther and John Calvin. The driving force behind the Reformation stemmed solely from the powerful personality of Luther. What began as an abstract, purely technical discussion developed into a full-blown revolt. Later in the period, Calvin confronted the problems left behind by Luther and endeavored to create his own universal church to supplant the Catholic Church. His theory of a new elite would have a distinct impact on history. By examining the political ideas that first emerged during the Renaissance and Reformation, this fascinating volume provides a foundation for understanding the events of centuries to follow. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Absolute and Ordained Power of God and King in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries: Philosophy, Science, Politics, and LawFrancis OakleyThe quintessentially scholastic distinction between God’s power understood as absolute and ordained (potentia dei absoluta et ordinata) has been described “as a ‘yes and no’ answer to the question whether God is able to do or arrange things other than he did in creating the orders of nature and (...) grace.” 1 The importance of that distinction the historical scholarship of the past forty years has served increasingly to indicate. 2 The idea that it expressed had emerged already in the twelfth century, and in the standard form familiar to us from later years we now know it to have surfaced among the theologians of Paris in the opening years of the thirteenth. We also know that long before the end of the thirteenth century it had come to be understood in the two distinct ways that were to persist on through the late medieval and early modern centuries and to be acknowledged in the neo-scholastic manuals of the late nineteenth century.According to the first of these understandings, embedded in the classical formulations given to the distinction by Albertus Magnus, Thomas Aquinas, William of Ockham, and many other later thinkers, the term potentia absoluta was used simply to denote God’s power in itself, taken in abstracto and without reference to the orders of nature and grace he has actually willed de potentia ordinata to establish. There was no question, that is, of the absolute power’s [End Page 669] being understood as a presently-active power by means of which God intervenes in the world to act apart from or set aside the order established by the ordained power. It refers instead to God’s ability to do many things he does not choose to do. Or put in the temporal terms that William Courtenay favors, it refers to “the total possibilities initially open to God, some of which were realized by creating the established order,” the “unrealized possibilities” being “now only hypothetically possible.” 3Side by side with this “classical” usage, however, there had emerged already in the thirteenth century what has been called a “juristic” or “opera-tionalized” understanding of the potentia dei absoluta as a presently-active power of potential interposition in the established order. Thus Duns Scotus, who gave a most influential expression to this alternative understanding, drawing an analogy not only with kings but with any free agent within whose power the law falls, distinguished between the ordained power by which God acts de jure in accordance with the rightful law he has established and the absolute power whereby de facto he can act apart from or against the law. In such a formulation the absolute power clearly exceeds the ordained. Rather than referring simply to the realm of logical possibility prior to God’s ordination of things, that absolute power is now construed as a presently-active and extraordinary power capable of acting apart from the order established de potentia ordinata and prevailing in the ordinary course of things. This “juristic” understanding of the distinction was clearly affiliated closely with the cognate distinction that medieval canonists invoked as early as the thirteenth century in an attempt to elucidate what the pope, in the absoluteness of his plenitudo potestatis, or absolute power, could do that was not open for him to do when acting in accordance with his merely ordained or “ordinary” power.Philosophy and ScienceIn an earlier and complementary article, I traced the career of the power distinction, as well as the persistence of the two distinct ways of understanding it, across the fifteenth century and on into the thinking of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century theologians, Lutheran and Reformed as well as Catholic. 4 It remains now to go on to demonstrate that the currency of the distinction in these later centuries was no more confined to strictly theological circles or settings than it had been during the Middle Ages. The Coimbran commentators and Suárez certainly deployed it for more generally philosophical purposes, 5 [End Page 670] and in the seventeenth century they were by no means... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Jacob Burckhardt, Religion, and the Historiography of “Crisis” and “Transition”Thomas Albert Howard*A great historical subject, the representation of which should be the high point of a historian’s life, must cohere sympathetically and mysteriously to the author’s innermost being.Jacob Burckhardt 1If you are to venture to interpret the past you can do so only out of the fullest exertion of the vigor of the present: only when you can put (...) forth your... qualities in all their strength will you divine what is worth knowing and preserving in the past.Friedrich Nietzsche 2The renowned nineteenth-century Swiss-German historian Jacob Burckhardt (1818–97) was a masterful historian of crises and transitional periods. Two of his major works, The Age of Constantine the Great (1852) and The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy (1860), bear out this claim. In his Constantine Burckhardt deals with the transition from late pagan antiquity to the early Christian Middle Ages, and in his more famous Renaissance he deals with the transition from the late Middle Ages to the beginnings of secular modernity. In the [End Page 149] latter, as is well known, he established one of the most compelling and creative theses in the history of modern historiography, virtually creating the “idea of the Renaissance” that has long influenced both scholarly and popular conceptions of that period. 3What elicited Burckhardt’s interest in crises and transitions in general and in these two periods of crisis and transition in particular? In this article, I shall argue that there is a strong relationship between Burckhardt’s own historical experience in the early and mid-nineteenth century and his choice of subject and mode of analysis in these two monumental works. In theoretical terms one observes a “dialectical” form of objectivity in the execution of Burckhardt’s historiographical tasks: a structural affinity or kinship between subject (Burckhardt, his historical experience) and object (late antiquity, Renaissance) predisposes Burckhardt to his theme/argument and thus provides a key to understanding the genesis and the character of insights that he offers in these two works. 4 To establish this point I shall focus on the category of religion, on Burckhardt’s own experience of questions of religious truth and skepticism in the nineteenth century, and on his treatment of religion in these two works.The Young Jacob Burckhardt and ReligionReligion is a crucial but often neglected aspect of Jacob Burckhardt’s thought. 5 Like a number of nineteenth-century German intellectuals, Burckhardt was a Pfarrersohn, a “pastor’s son.” 6 He grew up in a profoundly conservative Protestant environment in Basel, nicknamed “pious Basel” for its dogged resistance to the “ideas of 1789” and for its earlier heritage of Reformation and pietist religiosity. During Burckhardt’s youth in fact, his father was a children’s minister and head-deacon (Obersthelfer) before becoming in 1838 the city cathedral’s Antistes, the highest and most prestigious ecclesiastical office in Basel. In short, as his biographer Werner Kaegi has noted, Burckhardt’s early [End Page 150] upbringing and education were strongly shaped by the world of his father, a world of “old Protestant piety.” 7Following his father’s example, Burckhardt started out on the clerical track, studying theology at the University of Basel. However, during his Theologie-studium (1837–39) he experienced a profound crisis of faith brought on by an encounter with German historical biblical criticism and liberal theology represented in the person of W. M. L. de Wette (1780–1848). A radical theologian and biblical scholar, de Wette had wound up in Basel in 1822 after being dismissed from the University of Berlin for holding views considered heterodox and politically threatening by the conservative Prussian government. 8 In a letter to his friend Johannes Riggenbach written in August 1838 Burckhardt tells how de Wette’s critical theology had unseated his faith. “In my eyes,” Burckhardt wrote,de Wette’s system grows in stature every day; one simply must follow him, there is no alternative; but every day a part of our traditional church doctrine melts away under his hand. Today, finally, I realized that he regards the birth of Christ simply as a myth... (shrink)

This volume charts the Bible's progress from the end of the Middle Ages to the Enlightenment. During this period, for the first time since antiquity, the Latin Church focused on recovering and re-establishing the text of Scripture in its original languages. It considered the theological challenges of treating Scripture as another ancient text edited with the tools of philology. This crucial period also saw the creation of many definitive translations of the Bible into modern European vernaculars. Although previous translations (...) exist, these early modern translators, often under the influence of the Protestant Reformation, distinguished themselves in their efforts to communicate the nuances of the original texts and to address contemporary doctrinal controversies. In the Renaissance's rich explosion of ideas, Scripture played a ubiquitous role, influencing culture through its presence in philosophy, literature, and the arts. This history examines the Bible's impact in Europe and its increasing prominence around the globe. (shrink)

The meticulous printing at a moderate price of this remarkable work is a credit to the publisher. During the past thirty years M. Gilson has been the greatest single influence upon lay readers in reviving serious interest in the clerical speculation, which for twelve hundred years conscientiously spanned the gap between the collapse of Greek science and Roman law and the late sweep of modern sciences and their secular philosophies. Preoccupation with short-term apologetics after the Reformation increased clerical aloofness from (...) professional science and philosophy and probably increased the non-scholastic’s assumption that the Christian Era was merely a dark or middle age between ancient and modern intellectual life. In fact, early and medieval thinkers gradually confronted their Christian faith and pagan science and against the basso ostinato of secular warfare developed the varied themes of scientific theology and human philosophy, which crystallized into the mature Scholasticism of the thirteenth century. Hence the seventeenth century founders of modern philosophy, as M. Gilson first found à propos of Descartes, started to philosophize from a metaphysical inheritance much richer than the original Greek patrimony, especially in the light it cast upon the reality of God, the origin of the universe in which man lives, the nature and destiny of man himself. To overlook this linking inheritance, is to make modern philosophy less intelligible; while to personally judge its value, we must return to its historical sources. This is the task to which M. Gilson has devoted his pioneering judgment; this work is probably the final synthesis of his scholarship. (shrink)

This article seeks to contextualise Ellen Meiksins Wood’s recent survey of classical and medieval political thought within the context of some of the prevailing approaches to the history of political thought. After an initial elaboration of Wood’s ‘political-Marxist’ approach to issues of historical development and contextualisation, I emphasise what is significant about Wood’s specific contribution to the study of Greek, Roman and medieval political ideas in particular, as well as to the history of (...) class='Hi'>political thought in general. (shrink)

Benz is a most prolific writer on the history of speculative theology and theosophy and he is especially well-known for his studies on Oetinger and Swedenborg, but at the beginning of his long career he devoted several books to earlier doctrinal developments. There have been many other serious attempts at a comprehensive exposition of the evolution of the different branches of Franciscan theology but the present one is especially interesting because of its strong speculative foundations. Although speculative, these foundations (...) do not prevent a continual elaboration of the political context of the genesis of ideas. From the "predecessor" Joachin da Fiore through Saint Francis himself, to the little known figures of Angelo Clareno, and Olivi and Arnoldo da Villanova, we see the unfolding of the eschatologically orientated theories of the "spiritual church," the challenge which they represented to the "official" theology of the late middle ages, and the ways they were neutralized by the Church of Rome. The book is dealing with more than obscure heresies of remote ages: it expounds issues and ideas which foreshadow and anticipate German Idealism's philosophy of history.--M. J. V. (shrink)

This three-volume series provides a critical examination of the history of theology in Scotland from the early middle ages to the close of the twentieth century. Volume I covers the period from the appearance of Christianity around the time of Columba to the era of Reformed Orthodoxy in the seventeenth century.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Literature 25.2 (2001) 364-367 [Access article in PDF] Book Review Hamlet in Purgatory Hamlet in Purgatory, by Stephen Greenblatt; xii & 322 pp. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001, $29.95. Hamlet in Purgatory is both more and less than literary criticism of Shakespeare's most haunting and most critically belabored play. Greenblatt has captured an evolving culture of belief which informs the play and goes far beyond source studies (...) or the history of ideas. He assays to show how the Medieval doctrine of Purgatory and the rejection of it by Protestant Reformers shaped the structure of Hamlet and the world of Hamlet's spiritual agony.Central to the argument is the notion that the rejection of Purgatory, and ritual practices associated with the doctrine, threatened to disrupt community and sever the relations between the living and the dead. Thus, the senior Hamlet's plea to "Remember me" takes precedence over his injunction to revenge; traditional preoccupations of Hamlet criticism become secondary to the concern for spiritual community which Reformation doctrine threatened. The exegesis is scholarly and the prose is engaging, yet the book suffers from the new historicist tendency to become absorbed more with context than with criticism and to assume too readily the relevance of the context to the criticism. Put another way, Greenblatt, like other new historicists, is not always rigorous in his inferences.Greenblatt warns that his book "requires a certain hermeneutical patience, a willingness to suspend direct literary analysis, in order to examine more thoroughly what has been treated as mere background for the canonical work of art" (p. 5). Although the book culminates in a description of the migration of discarded religious ritual into the theater, and a thoughtful commentary on Hamlet, Greenblatt cautions that "... for the book to work properly, the reader should understand literary analysis, and specifically the analysis of Hamlet, to be suspended in another sense as well, that is, distributed in tiny, almost invisible particles throughout my account" (p. 5). Amen. The caveats are essential for anyone who might expect an "interpretation" of Hamlet. Rather, Greenblatt has evoked the conflict of enduring beliefs and Reformist critiques which animated Shakespeare's imagination and Hamlet's suffering.Hermeneutical patience certainly is demanded of the reader, because more than half of the book presents commentaries on the doctrine of Purgatory from the late Middle Ages to the early seventeenth century. Greenblatt begins with Simon Fish's 1529 "Supplication for the Beggars," (p. 15) an anti-purgatorial (and anti-clerical) tract addressed to Henry VIII. Fish argued that the doctrine of Purgatory is at the heart of ecclesiastical corruption and is a danger to the state, because the fear that the doctrine can generate enables the clergy to extort enormous wealth in the form of "suffrages," donations for trentals, anniversary Masses, and other perpetual penitential memorials on behalf of the dead. Fish's argument is double: its theological burden is that Purgatory is a non-scriptural superstition; its rhetoric is that it is an abuse of the [End Page 364] poor and a danger to the economic solvency of the kingdom. Fish invokes both doctrinal error and political danger; this is thus an excellent tract to begin the elucidation of the complexity of Reformist objections to Purgatory in sixteenth-century England. Greenblatt adds that other Reformers saw Purgatory as a poetic creation, a fable, and therefore a vain imagining. John Donne's "Devotions upon Emergent Occasions" is cited to show that post-Catholic divines believed that purgation must be completed in this life.According to Greenblatt, an unintended consequence for the laity of the rejection of Purgatory is the creation of a radical divide between the living and the dead. If we pray for the dead, they are not as absent from us as if they had passed on to the timeless worlds of Heaven or Hell. Even if Purgatory is expensive or fabulous, its loss destroys a community with the dead that involved a reciprocal and continuing relationship, whereby the living can aid the dead towards Heaven and saved souls can eventually become intercessors in Heaven for the living... (shrink)

This paper would like to contribute to the discussion on the formation of the idea of Europe and contextually shaping of the debate on the New World in early modern and modern history. Following an important Italian historiographic tradition, the paper discusses the eighteenth-century within a wider objective and subjective historical development.The first part of the paper focuses on the Eurocentric realigning of the relations in the Atlantic world. It argues that this realignment remains basically a middle period (...) phenomenon. The resistance by the Anglo and Hispano-American colonies to the “reforms” and the internationalisation of the crisis of American Empires actually caused a real caesura in the political history of the Atlantic.The second part of the paper focuses on the impact of the Eurocentric reorganisation of European/American relations on collective consciousness, political ideologies and historical discourses on both sides of the Atlantic. It argues that this impact was much more lasting and profound.The paper focuses finally on the anti-Eurocentrism matured in the Americas in the late eighteenth-century. It argues that this attitude declines to present the European cultural and ideological heritage, on the basis of an age-long American experience that historiography presents by now as multiethnic, multicultural and métisse. The paper suggests in particular that this American anti-Eurocentrism can be considered to some extent prototypical of a phenomenon destined to develop in nineteenth and twentieth century in the framework of the apogee, crisis and decline of Europe in the international world system and international world society. (shrink)

This collection of essays, written by leading experts, showcases historiographical problems, fresh interpretations, and new debates in medieval and Renaissance history and political thought. Recent scholarship on medieval and Renaissance political thought is witness to tectonic movements. These involve quiet, yet considerable, re-evaluations of key thinkers such as Thomas Aquinas and Machiavelli, as well as the string of lesser known "political thinkers" who wrote in western Europe between Late Antiquity and the Reformation. Taking stock of thirty (...) years of developments, this volume demonstrates the contemporary vibrancy of the history of medieval and Renaissance political thought. By both celebrating and challenging the perspectives of a generation of scholars, notably Cary J. Nederman, it offers refreshing new assessments. The book re-introduces the history of western political thought in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance to the wider disciplines of History and Political Science. Recent historiographical debates have revolutionized discussion of whether or not there was an "Aristotelian revolution" in the thirteenth century. Thinkers such as Machiavelli and Marsilius of Padua are read in new ways; less well-known texts, such as the Irish On the Twelve Abuses of the Age, offer new perspectives. Further, the collection argues that medieval political ideas contain important lessons for the study of concepts of contemporary interest such as toleration. The volume is an ideal resource for both students and scholars interested in medieval and Renaissance history as well as the history of political thought. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Ideas 61.3 (2000) 513-530 [Access article in PDF] Hans Blumenberg and Hannah Arendt on the "Unworldly Worldliness" of the Modern Age Elizabeth Brient Introduction In attempting to describe and respond to the dominant ethos of the modern age one is quickly confronted with a startling and seemingly intractable paradox: the age which has defined itself by the very intensity of its "this worldly" (...) orientation is at the same time haunted by an ever growing sense of world loss, of the Unheimlichkeit of modern reality.On the one hand the modern turn away from the transcendent contemplative and religious ideals and values of antiquity and the Middle Ages is evidenced by a profoundly new, active, and indeed constructive approach to the world. Modern science is predicated on an objective stance which demystifies the cosmos and allows for a technological mastery of nature which has improved human life in innumerable ways. The modern conception of the self is grounded in a new conception of the autonomy and dignity of the individual, and modern political theory begins with the notion that society is an artifact to be constructed in the service of the very individuals who constitute the body politic. We are made uneasy by the nagging suspicion that life in this world which we have remade for ourselves is somehow hollow, an artificial construction without depth or solidity, a merely superficial order which threatens to dissolve into meaninglessness. The technological advances made possible by modern science have also brought the atomic bomb, global warming, and acid rain. Power over nature has led to the power to destroy nature. The modern world has seen an unprecedented rise in individual freedom, and yet the autonomy of the individual has all too often given way to the anomie of the individual. Loss of community advances alongside failed experiments in social engineering, and the specter of totalitarianism haunts the modern dream of social and political emancipation. [End Page 513]Paradoxically, then, modern worldliness is attended by an uneasy sense of world alienation. It has become quite common in attempting to give an account for this perplexing state of affairs to speak of a process of secularization in the transition from the medieval to the modern world, a process in which many of the central ideas and principles of the modern age are taken to be secular variations on medieval theological themes. Thus, for example, faith in the progress of science or of history is taken to be a secularized version of belief in divine Providence, the political equality of all individuals under the law is said to be a secular reiteration of the understanding of the equality of all human beings before God, the transcendental subject is exposed as a secular version of the divine or angelic knower, and the communist state and other modern utopias marking the end of history are said to be secularizations of Christian eschatological expectations of the end of the world and the coming reign of God.This reading of the epochal transition explains the worldly character of modern reality in terms of the "immanentization" or secularization of religious attitudes and expectations. It also serves to explain the uncanny sense of worldlessness characteristic of much of modern life. This is because the new secular forms are now revealed either as distorted and impoverished versions of an originally meaningful world view (as for example in Neo-Scholasticism) or as the unfortunate perpetuation or unfolding of an inherently nihilistic tradition (as say Nietzsche, Heidegger, and many contemporary post modernists would have it). But does the secularization thesis as a tool of historical explanation really do justice either to the complex reality of the epochal transition in concrete historical terms or even, and more to the point, to the fundamental character of the supposedly secularized modern ideas?Hans Blumenberg and Hannah Arendt would both no doubt answer emphatically in the negative. Both insist on the genuine novelty of modernity, on the fundamentally unprecedented character of the modern orientation to and in the... (shrink)

Reaching into our own time, _Crisis and the Apocalypse of Man_ confronts the disintegration of traditional sources of meaning and the correlative attempt to generate new sources of order from within the self. Voegelin allows us to contemplate the crisis in its starkest terms as the apocalypse of man that now seeks to replace the apocalypse of God. The totalitarian upheaval that convulsed Voegelin's world, and whose aftermath still defines ours, is only the external manifestation of an inner spiritual turmoil. (...) Its roots have been probed throughout the eight volumes of _History of Political Ideas,_ but its emergence is marked by the age of Enlightenment. In our postmodern era, discussions of the collapse of the "enlightenment project" have become commonplace. Voegelin compels us to follow the great-souled individuals who sought to go from disintegration of the present toward evocations of order for the future. Such thinkers as Comte, Bakunin, and Marx suffered through the crisis and fully understood the need for a new outpouring of the spirit. They resolved to supply the deficiency themselves. As a consequence they launched us irrevocably on the path of the apocalypse of man. One of the great merits of Voegelin's analysis is his exposition of the pervasive character of this crisis. It is not confined to the megalomaniacal dreamers of a revolutionary apocalypse; rather, echoes of it are found in the more moderate Enlightenment preoccupation with progress to be attained through application of the scientific method. Faith in the capacity of instrumental reason to answer the ultimate questions of human existence defined men such as Voltaire, Helvétius, Diderot, D'Alembert, and Condorcet. It remains the authoritative faith of our world today, Voegelin argues, demonstrated by our continuing inability to step outside the parameters of the Enlightenment. Are we condemned, then, to oscillate between the rational incoherence of a science that never delivers on its promises and a now discredited revolutionary idealism that wreaks havoc in practice? This is the question toward which Voegelin's final volume points. While not direct, his response is evident everywhere. _Crisis and the Apocalypse of Man_ could have been written only by a man who had reached his own resolution of the crisis. (shrink)

The purpose of this volume is to explore the medieval inheritance of modern international relations. Recent years have seen a flourishing of work on the history of international political thought, but the bulk of this has focused on the early modern and modern periods, leaving continuities with the medieval world largely ignored. The medieval is often used as a synonym for the barbaric and obsolete, yet this picture does not match that found in relevant work in the (...) class='Hi'>history of political thought. The book thus offers a chance to correct this misconception of the evolution of Western international thought, highlighting that the history of international thought should be regarded as an important dimension of thinking about the international and one that should not be consigned to history departments. Questions addressed include: what is the medieval influence on modern conception of rights, law, and community? how have medieval ideas shaped modern conceptions of self-determination, consent, and legitimacy? are there 'medieval' answers to 'modern' questions? is the modern world still working its way through the Middle Ages? to what extent is the 'modern outlook' genuinely secular? is there a 'theology' of international relations? what are the implications of continuity for predominant historical narrative of the emergence and expansion of international society? Medieval and modern are certainly different; however, this collection of essays proceeds from the conviction that the modern world was not built on a new plot with new building materials. Instead, it was constructed out of the rubble, that is, the raw materials, of the Middle Ages.This will be of great interest to students and scholars of IR, IR theory and political theory.. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 40.4 (2002) 541 [Access article in PDF] Book Review Prophecy: The History of an Idea in Medieval Jewish Philosophy Howard Kreisel. Prophecy: The History of an Idea in Medieval Jewish Philosophy. Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2001. Pp. x + 669. Cloth, $200.00. This is a big book on a big subject. Kreisel offers us a full view of the most substantial discussions (...) in the Jewish Middle Ages of the phenomenon of prophecy (the cognitive awareness of the word of God) and of the bearer of the prophetic message. Even more, he does not stop with the end of the medieval period, but proceeds to Spinoza, whose ideas about prophecy and the prophet are shown, however, to depend upon medieval views, even while turning them on their head.Kreisel presents the views of seven thinkers: Saadiah Gaon, Judah Halevi, Maimonides, Gersonides, Crescas, Albo, and Spinoza. The chronological span of those covered is roughly seven hundred years, from the middle of the tenth century to the middle of the seventeenth century. Equally broad are the geographical span, from Baghdad to Andalusia to Amsterdam; and the linguistic diversity, Arabic, Hebrew, and Latin.The challenge to be met in such a large project is to produce a coherent narrative in which the various participants talk to, not past, each other. After all, there is no prima facie reason why seven thinkers, writing at different times, in widely dispersed geographic locations, and in different languages, should all be conjuring up the same general ideas about prophecy. Even allowing for the religious tradition common to them and the biblical (Hebrew) background, there is still potentially much to divide them. The success of the book depends upon weaving together in a perspicuous fashion the disparate discussions.Kreisel is very aware of the challenge and rises to the occasion. He does much more than just present seriatim the views of his chosen thinkers. He presents their respective positions in dialectical fashion, with, for example, Maimonides responding to Halevi, Gersonides to Maimonides, and Spinoza to the entire prophetic tradition. The dialogue between thinkers throughout the medieval centuries on the subject of prophecy moves between poles of naturalism and supernaturalism, from understanding prophecy and the prophet without emphasizing divine intervention to understanding the same in less naturalistic ways. No one before Spinoza dismissed this project of accounting for how mortal (finite) minds could comprehend the divine, and within the medieval period itself Kreisel distinguishes strongly between those (especially Maimonides and Gersonides) who emphasized the human element in prophecy, the intellectual and moral conditions for prophetic insight, and those (especially Halevi and Crescas) who emphasized the role of the divine in prophecy. Given this latter dichotomy, Spinoza and Maimonides, so different in other ways, may be seen as sharing more in common with each other than either share with Halevi and the "supernaturalist" tradition that he represents.Kreisel works hard to present a philosophical dialogue between thinkers. This is important, lest the debate collapse into one between rationalists and religious fundamentalists. Halevi and Crescas emerge as important philosophers in their own right, even as they indicate the shortcomings of Greek wisdom and, in the case of Crescas, of the naturalism and reductionism of Maimonides and Gersonides. The end result of Kreisel's careful reconstruction is a deep discussion of the epistemology and politics of prophecy. The interested historian of ideas will learn much about medieval debates relating to (divine) knowledge of particulars, the nature of miracles, the nature and role of the imagination in prophecy, human happiness and perfection, and the prophetic mission.I would signal for special notice and attention the importance, stressed by Kreisel, of the universalist and cosmopolitan (Enlightenment) implications of the prophetic teachings of thinkers like Maimonides and Spinoza, who (again) diverge from each other in so many ways. Kreisel demarcates the latter thinkers from those like Halevi, whose supernaturalism undergirds a parochial, even racialist, belief in the superiority of the Jews. Finally, by stressing the (human) intellectual and/or moral qualities that are requisite for prophecy, Kreisel makes a... (shrink)

The third volume of The History of Evil encompasses the early modern era from 1450–1700. This revolutionary period exhibited immense change in both secular knowledge and sacred understanding. It saw the fall of Constantinople and the rise of religious violence, the burning of witches and the drowning of Anabaptists, the ill treatment of indigenous peoples from Africa to the Americas, the reframing of formal authorities in religion, philosophy, and science, and it produced profound reflection on good and evil in (...) the genius of Shakespeare, Milton, Bacon, Teresa of Avila, and the Cambridge Platonists. This superb treatment of the history of evil during a formative period of the early modern era will appeal to those with interests in philosophy, theology, social and political history, and the history of ideas. (shrink)

Spanning six centuries of political thought in European history, this book puts the ideas of thinkers from Christine de Pizan to Simone de Beauvoir in the broader contexts of their time. Conventional histories of political thought have sometimes relegated feminist thinking to the footnotes. This text considers how feminism is central to key notions of modern political discourse such as autonomy, liberty and equality, and feminist discussions of morality have been linked to major currents in (...) class='Hi'>political thought such as republicanism, civic humanism and romanticism. This collection of essays aims to show that feminism is not a variant of modern radical discourse but is a mode of analyzing the issues of authority, power and virtue that have been at the heart of European political thought from the Middle Ages. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Giles of Rome on Political AuthorityGraham McAleerDabo tibi regem in furore meo“I will give you a king in my rage” 1It is a commonplace among historians of medieval political theory that two great systems of thought dominate the period. Augustine’s City of God held the field until Thomas Aquinas absorbed Aristotle’s political thought largely culled from the latter’s Politics and Nicomachean Ethics. Aquinas stands as a (...) watershed, a moment when both sources meet and a synthesis is worked out in which Augustine loses ground to Aristotle. Indeed, Augustine’s thought loses such a hold on the political theory of the age that R. A. Markus has spoken of a “comfortable obliviousness” in the minds of theorists subsequent to Aquinas that “a profound cleavage” had been wrought by Thomas in the tradition of Christian political thought. 2 Ptolemy of Lucca and Giles of Rome, both of whom were students of Thomas, are picked out by Markus as typical of those theorists who are oblivious to the definitive break that Aquinas makes with Augustine.Although modern commentators of medieval political theory speak of an Augustinian tradition after Aquinas they are only referring to a series of thinkers who defended papal authority over and above monarchical authority. This tradition is said to be Augustinian because the thinkers defending papal authority, who included Giles, James of Viterbo and Augustinus Triumphus, were members of the Order of Hermits of St. Augustine. Nevertheless, these Augustinians are said to have absorbed Thomas’s Aristotelianism: convinced by his argument that since coercive power is intrinsic to political authority and since political authority is natural to the human condition, it must have been the case that coercive power existed in the state of innocence. These Augustinians, [End Page 21] modern scholarship maintains, did not then defend Augustine’s thesis that coercive political authority is unnatural to human society and was only introduced (albeit necessarily) into post-lapsarian society so that the worst excesses of our sinful condition might be controlled. Markus is by no means alone in identifying Giles as a follower of Thomas whose theory of dominium marks a radical break with Augustine. 3 Recently, J. M. Blythe has cited Markus when concurring with him that Giles simply adopts Thomas’s position which, as he puts it, “was to become ubiquitous in late medieval political discourse.” 4Perhaps this consensus has its origin in a most peculiar fact about twentieth-century scholarship on Giles’s political thought: none of it is based on a wide reading of his philosophical and theological corpus. Admittedly, an extensive reading of Giles is a daunting task. The editors-in-chief of the project to provide critical editions of Giles’s works catalogue sixty-seven titles and this vast array of writings match those of the other “greats” of the period in their scope, variety, complexity, and influence. 5 The hope of this essay is to show that a reading of Giles’s Sentences-commentary reveals him to be far more Augustinian than previously acknowledged this century.Although it is well recognized that Giles was one of the most original and influential political theorists of the Middle Ages, the pages dedicated to his political ideas amount to a few pages here and there, and sometimes as little as a few isolated comments, in the standard works on medieval political theory. 6 Moreover, these works unanimously consider only Giles’s explicitly political works. This limitation began with Otto Gierke, who single-handedly demonstrated the depth and richness of medieval political theory. At the beginning of his classic work, Political Theory of the Middle Age, Gierke provides a fifteen-page list of sources. For Thomas’s political thought Gierke directs us not only to Thomas’s explicitly political treatises such as his commentary on Aristotle’s Politics and the opusculum, De regimine principum, but also to the Summa theologiae, Summa contra gentiles, Thomas’s Disputed and Quodlibetal questions, [End Page 22] his exposition of the Psalms, and commentaries on Paul’s Letters as well as his Sentences-commentary. Yet for Giles only his De regimine principum and De potestate ecclesiastica are cited. 7 Gierke’s selection is repeated... (shrink)

Characterized by many historically significant events, such as the invention of the printing press, the discovery of the New World, and the Protestant Reformation, the years between 1300 and 1600 are a remarkably rich source of ideas about the mind. They witnessed a resurgence of Aristotelianism and Platonism and the development of humanism. However, philosophical understanding of the complex arguments and debates during this period remain difficult to grasp. Philosophy of Mind in the Late Middle Ages and Renaissance provides (...) an outstanding survey of philosophy of mind in this fascinating and still controversial period and examines the thought of figures such as Aquinas, Suárez, and Ficino. Following an introduction by Stephan Schmid, thirteen specially commissioned chapters by an international team of contributors discuss key topics, thinkers, and debates, including: mind and method, the mind and its illnesses, the powers of the soul, Averroism, intentionality and representationalism, theories of consciousness, will and its freedom, external and internal senses, Renaissance theories of the passions, the mind-body problem and the rise of dualism, and the 'cognitive turn'. Essential reading for students and researchers in philosophy of mind, medieval philosophy, and the history of philosophy, Philosophy of Mind in the Late Middle Ages and Renaissance is also a valuable resource for those in related disciplines such as religion, literature, and Renaissance studies. (shrink)

Through a focused and systematic examination of late medieval scholastic writers - theologians, philosophers and jurists - Joseph Canning explores how ideas about power and legitimate authority were developed over the 'long fourteenth century'. The author provides a new model for understanding late medieval political thought, taking full account of the intensive engagement with political reality characteristic of writers in this period. He argues that they used Aristotelian and Augustinian ideas to develop radically new approaches to power and (...) authority, especially in response to political and religious crises. The book examines the disputes between King Philip IV of France and Pope Boniface VIII and draws upon the writings of Dante Alighieri, Marsilius of Padua, William of Ockham, Bartolus, Baldus and John Wyclif to demonstrate the variety of forms of discourse used in the period. It focuses on the most fundamental problem in the history of political thought - where does legitimate authority lie? (shrink)

Books reviewed:John Barton and John Muddiman, The Oxford Bible CommentaryLuke Timothy Johnson and William S. Kurz, The Future of Catholic Biblical Scholarship: A Constructive ConversationDavid R. Bauer, An Annotated Guide to Biblical Resources for MinistryDavid Martin, John Orme Mills and W. S. F. Pickering, Sociology and Theology: Alliance and ConflictRichard K. Fenn, The Return of the Primitive: A New Sociological Theory of ReligionJoseph Blenkinsopp, Treasures Old and New: Essays in the Theology of the PentateuchJohn Jarick, 1 ChroniclesMartin Hengel, The Septuagint (...) As Christian Scripture: Its Prehistory and the Problem of Its CanonTricia Gates Brown, Spirit in the Writings of John: Johannine Pneumatology in Social‐Scientific PerspectiveFrederick H. Cryer and Thomas L. Thompson, Qumran between the Old and New TestamentOtto Kaiser, The Old Testament Apocrypha: An IntroductionDavid A. deSilva, Introducing the Apocrypha: Message, Context, and SignificanceMarie E. Isaacs, Reading Hebrews and James: A Literary and Theological CommentaryUwe Michael Lang, Turning Towards the Lord: Orientation in Liturgical PrayerWendy E. Sproston North, The Lazarus Story within the Johannine TraditionAlan Kreider, The Origins of Christendom in the WestBernard Hamilton, The Christian World of the Middle AgesH. E. J. Cowdrey, Pope Gregory VII, 1073–1085G. R. Evans, The Medieval Theologians: An Introduction to Theology in the Medieval PeriodNicholas Vincent, The Holy Blood: King Henry III and the Westminster Blood RelicRichard Dutton, Alison Findlay and Richard Wilson, Theatre and Religion: Lancastrian ShakespeareHoward Kreisel, Prophecy: The History of an Idea in Medieval Jewish PhilosophyHeinz Halm, Shi'ism Carl W. Ernst, Rethinking Islam in the Contemporary WorldMark D. Meyerson and Edward D. English, Christians, Muslims, and Jews in Medieval and Early Modern Spain: Interaction and Cultural ChangeBruce Masters, Christians and Jews in the Ottoman Arab World: The Roots of SectarianismMatthew Dillon, Girls and Women in Classical Greek ReligionJane E. A. Dawson, The Politics of Religion in the Age of Mary, Queen of Scots: The Earl of Argyll and the Struggle for Britain and IrelandSteven Nadler, Spinoza: A LifeDabney Townsend, Hume's Aesthetic Theory: Taste and SentimentImmanuel Kant, Theoretical Philosophy after 1781Felicity McCutcheon, Religion Within the Limits of Language Alone: Wittgenstein on Philosophy and ReligionEmyr Vaughan Thomas, Wittgensteinian Values: Philosophy, Religious Belief and Descriptivist MethodologyTerry Nardin, The Philosophy of Michael OakeshottKirk Ludwig, Donald DavidsonMartin Heidegger, Off the Beaten TrackFrank Lambert, ‘Pedlar in Divinity’: George Whitefield and the Transatlantic RevivalsDeclan Marmion, A Spirituality Of Everyday Faith: A Theological Investigation of the Notion of Spirituality in Karl RahnerHugh Rayment‐Pickard, Impossible God: Derrida's TheologyJoseph Pearce, Old Thunder: A Life of Hilaire Belloc. (shrink)

Some legal historians are startled by the fact that Grotius was able to develop a new theory of res communes omnium and mare liberum by using antique ideas whereas these ideas were known in philosophy and jurisprudence throughout the Middle Ages. This contribution shows that Grotius's theory of res communes omnium was innovative only because he developed a new concept of ownership and placed it within a new framework of ius naturale. Both new concepts, ownership and ius naturale, had (...) their predecessors in medieval theology and the jurisprudence of the Spanish Scholastics, but it was Grotius who merged them to a consistent new theory. This theory of res communes also enabled him to reconcile it with both the Roman legal sources and with contemporary practical needs. (shrink)

This book reveals how the medieval papacy grew from modest beginnings into an impressive institution in the Middle Ages and deals with a wide field. It charts the history of the papacy and its relations to East and West from the 4 th to the 12 th centuries, embraces such varied subjects as law, finance, diplomacy, liturgy, and theology. The development of medieval symbolism is also discussed as are the view of eminent political scientists of the period. (...) This re-issues reprints the revised, 3rd edition of 1970. (shrink)

This volume continues the story of European political theorising by focusing on medieval and Renaissance thinkers. It includes extensive discussion of the practices that underpinned medieval political theories and which continued to play crucial roles in the eventual development of early-modern political institutions and debates. The author strikes a balance between trying to understand the philosophical cogency of medieval and Renaissance arguments on the one hand, elucidating why historically-suited medieval and Renaissance thinkers thought the ways they did (...) about politics; and why we often think otherwise. (shrink)

This essay analyzes the work of Paolo Prodi (1932–2016), which is characterised by a constant reflection on secularisation. As a democratic Catholic, he explored the relationship between the Roman Church and the modern world starting from the Council of Trent and from the dual figure of the pope as a temporal ruler and spiritual guide. His original contribution concerned the conflict between law and conscience: a problem that led him to design a triptych of books on the foundations of the (...) western world. He was influenced not only by Verfassungsgeschichte (German constitutional history), but also by Harold Berman. If for Weber the modern world was born from the Reformation, for Berman it was the ‘Gregorian revolution’ that changed the fate of Latin Europe. For Prodi, too, the medieval conflict between canon and civil law introduced a peculiar structure in Europe that would last until the triumph of the nation states and the so-called ‘political religions’. In his three books (the first dedicated to the oath, the second to justice, the last to economics), Prodi placed at the centre of his analysis the notion of forum; the history of moral theology and casuistry and the relationship between penitence and justice. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Pierre Bayle dans la République des Lettres: Philosophie, Religion, CritiqueJosé R. Maia NetoAntony McKenna and Gianni Paganini, editors. Pierre Bayle dans la République des Lettres: Philosophie, Religion, Critique. Paris: Honoré Champion, 2004. Pp. 589. Cloth, €90.00.Pierre Bayle is an early modern philosopher who has received relatively little attention given the philosophical relevance and historical influence of his work. Fortunately this situation has been rapidly changing in recent years. (...) This volume, edited by Antony McKenna and Gianni Paganini, is a good sample of the volume, quality, scope, and polemical nature of current Bayle scholarship. The book contains twenty-five articles by the main Bayle scholars from France, Italy, England, the Netherlands, Canada, and the United States. It also contains an introduction by the editors, who give an overview of current scholarship, summarizing its main trends and achievements, and a useful name index. The articles are organized in five sections, each dealing with some aspect of Bayle's life and thought.The first set of articles, gathered under the heading, "Interlocutors, Friends and Enemies," deals with Bayle's personal relations as a Huguenot exiled in the Netherlands. Luisa Simonutti deals with Bayle's relations to one of the radical Reformed groups in Holland, the Quakers. Although Bayle disagreed with their religious views, he respected and maintained [End Page 476] healthy intellectual exchanges with them. Hans Bots examines Bayle's view of the "republic of letters," of which he was a major architect—a republic whose right to citizenship required the suspension of religious, political, and national partisanship and engagement in free intellectual debate. H. H. M. van Lieshout contests the entrenched view that Bayle lived as a recluse scholar in Rotterdam. Both she and Bots show how Bayle's main work, the Dictionary, exhibits his life committed to the "republic of letters." Finally, Hubert Bost focuses on Bayle's activity as a journalist, crucial in this republic but also revealing the difficulty of the pursued ideal of neutrality.The next three sections of the book deal with Bayle's thoughts on religion and philosophy. Anna Belgrado denies the late Bayle scholar Elizabeth Labrousse's thesis that Bayle's thought is wrought with Protestantism. Bayle's views on the Jews, the Middle Ages, and women are examined, respectively, by Myrian Yardeni, Gregorio Piaia, and Maria-Cristina Pitassi, who concur in concluding that, although not free from the prejudices of his time, Bayle's views are more complex and balanced than those of his contemporaries.Bayle's political views and in particular his view on tolerance receive a good deal of attention in the volume. Stefano Brogi explains Bayle's attack on the "rational theologians" (Le Clerc), at first sight puzzling given their defense of religious tolerance, pointing out Bayle's radical opposition between faith and reason. According to Jean-Michel Gros, it is this radical separation of philosophy from theology that renders Bayle's view of tolerance so modern, unlike Locke's, for instance, which still has a theological ground. Jonathan Israel explains another apparent puzzle: Bayle's defense of absolute monarchism despite his philosophical and religious ideas, which were no less radical than Spinoza's. Bayle, unlike Spinoza, does not support republicanism because of his pessimistic view of human nature. John Christian Laursen shows that the political menace posed by the Millenarians explains Bayle's unusual lack of tolerance towards them.One of the most influential contemporary Bayle scholars, Gianluca Mori, summarizes his view of Bayle as a philosophical atheist, and he is contested in this by Jean-Luc Solère, who argues that for Bayle, materialism does not provide a coherent metaphysical system alternative to the Christian one, so that Bayle's position amounts to a radical skepticism with regard to reason. In his contribution to the volume, Mori argues that Bayle's skepticism is restricted, and is not relevant to the issue of theism versus atheism. He replies to Solère's objections to his interpretation in an appendix to his article. Mori's interpretation relies on the method of reading Bayle's text as containing irreligious views hidden beneath apparently orthodox claims. Thomas Lennon relies on the opposite approach to argue... (shrink)

The author believes that it is impossible to resolve the crucial theological issues of our time without an appreciation of the historical roots of the development of theology itself. Congar does not attempt in this volume a systematic analysis of the content of theology, as it is expressed in history. He limits himself to the meaning of the discipline of theology as it expresses itself in six periods in the life of the church, The Patristic Age and St. Augustine, (...) From the Sixth Century to the Twelfth Century, The Renaissance of the Twelfth Century, The Golden Age of Scholasticism, The Reformation and the Counter-Reformation, From the Seventeenth Century to the Present. The work begins with a definition of the word 'theology' from its early pre-Christian usage to its adoption by the Greek and Latin Christians. 'Theology', according to Congar, in its Christian and catholic sense, means a reasoned account about God; it is a "body of knowledge which rationally interprets, elaborates, and ordains the truths of revelation." Unlike the pagan philosophers who thought of theology in a speculative sense, the Christians who had received a revelation, conceived of God in concrete terms, as Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. But the discipline of theology took many forms and shapes over the years of Christian history. The twelfth century seems to be a critical century, at least for the author, because it is in St. Thomas Aquinas' Summa that theology becomes "a defined discipline exposing a rational explanation of revelation." Theology in the sixteenth century is characterized by the growth of intellectual problems and new intellectual needs, the collapse of the synthesis and unity of the Middle Ages, the birth of new forms of intellectual activity and research. Luther's theological position is then characterized as "an enraged Augustinianism shorn of its Catholic ties." Luther interprets Christian theology as salvation, i.e., man's conversion to God through Christ. Luther is anti-ecclesiastical and anti-institutional, anti-scholastic, and anti-rational. But what permits Congar such a simplistic reductionism is that he begins the theological task at the wrong place. I do not think it is an adequate notion of the theological enterprise to ask the theologian what he considers to be the task of theology. Rather I think the theologian looks at the whole of the Christian faith and attempts some rapprochement between it and modern categories of thought. The theological enterprise is the dogmatic enterprise, but it is dogmatic as theology responds to the thought-forms of the modern world. Congar is too restrictive in his understanding of what theology ought to be doing--and what it actually does. This error becomes clear when we observe again and again a parodying of various theological positions.--W. A. J. (shrink)

This paper traces back the sources of our present legal system and of market economy to Medieval Europe which itself benefited from Hellenistic and Roman legal culture and commercial practices. Roman provinces placed Rome in the wider Greek cultural and commercial world. If Aristotle was already transcending the narrow polis-based conceptions of his predecessors, after him Hellenistic Civilization saw the emergence of a new school of philosophy: Stoicism. The legal thought in the Latin West will hence be characterized by Cicero’s (...) writings and its Stoic sources. The Roman legal system was similar to the later northern European customary law and the English common law; Roman law was evolutionary and customary. The rise of Western individualism, whether it dates back to St. Augustine in the fifth century, or to the two Papal Revolutions of Gregory I (establishing the nuclear family as the core of individualism) and of Gregory VII, also played a crucial role in shaping the western legal tradition. The paper describes the main forces that led to this second (Gregorian) revolution. Monasticism is one of them. Benedictine monasticism plaid a leading role in the Peace of God Movement. Hence collective oath-taking by groups in the name of peace was essential in the founding of cities and in the formation of guilds. Europe’s economic resurgence in the Eleventh Century was on the basis of the creation of the rule of law by the Peace of God movement. This movement also allowed for Europe’s agricultural economy to progress. Indeed, the European Middle Ages is one of the major periods of technological innovation in the history of the world. The Gregorian Revolution itself was supported and financed by the Commercial Revolution: Italian bankers sustained Papal reformers against the Emperors. The independence of the Italian cities and provinces reveals one of the most important consequences of the Gregorian Revolution: the polycentricism of Western Europe. This Revolution also witnessed the first large number of political pamphlets in European history; the Gregorian clergy emphasizing a compact theory of government. Soon after, the order of Cistercians was founded (1098) and underwent spectacular growth during the next two centuries. The Cistercians accepted no rents or labor services from feudal donors but would take only full possession of land to do with it as they wished.These monasteries were the most economically effective units that had ever existed in Europe, and perhaps in the world, before that time. Finally, the Magna Carta (1215) that will be so influential on modern political thought can be seen as a direct consequence of the Gregorian Revolution. (shrink)

"The 'new' often consists not in the invention of new categories of thought but rather in surprising employment of existing ones". The book proves this thesis, in an ingenious manner, as far as the origins of modern science are concerned. For a contemporary historian of science, the idea that the sciences had their roots in philosophical and theological thinking of the Middle Ages is hardly a surprise, but to know exactly how this did happen makes a profound difference. The (...) book is not based on new texts or new findings in the history of science--the author calls it "an interpretative essay only"--but it offers a deep insight into the evolution of concepts and ideas. The reader, under the author's guidance, can trace some evolutionary paths in a very detailed manner. In spite of being "an interpretative essay," it is the solid work of a historian. (shrink)

Introduction: Laughter as an expression of human nature in the Middle Ages and the early modern period: literary, historical, theological, philosophical, and psychological reflections -- Judith Hagen. Laughter in Procopius's wars -- Livnat Holtzman. "Does God really laugh?": appropriate and inappropriate descriptions of God in Islamic traditionalist theology -- Daniel F. Pigg. Laughter in Beowulf: ambiguity, ambivalence, and group identity formation -- Mark Burde. The parodia sacra problem and medieval comic studies -- Olga V. Trokhimenko. Women's laughter and gender (...) politics in medieval conduct discourse -- Madelon Köhler-Busch. Pushing decorum: uneasy laughter in Heinrich von Dem Türlîn's Diu crône -- Connie L. Scarborough. Laughter and the comic in a religious text -- John Sewell. The son rebelled and so the father made man alone: ridicule and boundary maintenance in The Nizzahon vetus -- Birgit Wiedl. Laughing at the beast: the judensau: anti-Jewish propaganda and humor from the Middle Ages to the early modern period -- Fabian Alfie. Yes . . . but was it funny? Cecco Angiolieri, Rustico Filippi and Giovanni Boccaccio -- Nicolino Applauso. Curses and laughter in medieval Italian comic poetry -- Feargal Béarra. Tromdhámh guaire: a context for laughter and audience in early modern Ireland -- Jean E. Jost. Humorous transgression in the non-conformist fabliaux: a Bakhtinian analysis of three comic tales -- Gretchen Mieszkowski. Chaucerian comedy: Troilus and Criseyde -- Sarah Gordon. Laughing and eating in the fabliaux -- Christine Bousquet-Labouérie. Laughter and medieval stalls -- Scott L. Taylor. Esoteric humor and the incommensurability of laughter -- Jean N. Goodrich. The function of laughter in The second shepherds' play -- Albrecht Classen. Laughing in late-medieval verse and prose narratives -- Rosa Alvarez perez. The workings of desire: Panurge and the dogs -- Elizabeth Chesney Zegura. Laughing out loud in the Heptaméron: a reassessment of Marguerite de Navarre's ambivalent humor -- Lia B. Ross. You had to be there: the elusive humor of the Sottie -- Kyle Diroberto. Sacred parody in Robert Greene's Groatsworth of wit -- Martha Moffitt Peacock. The comedy of the shrew: theorizing humor in early modern Netherlandish art -- Jessica Tvordi. The comic personas of Milton's Prolusion VI: negotiating masculine identity through self-directed humor -- John Alexander. Ridentum dicere verum (using laughter to speak the truth): laughter and the language of the early modern clown "pickelhering" in German literature of the late seventeenth century (1675-1700) -- Thomas Willard. Andreae's ludibrium: Menippean satire in The chymische hochzeit -- Diane Rudall. The comic power of illusion-allusion -- Allison P. Coudert. Laughing at credulity and superstition in the long eighteenth century. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:A few years ago the esteemed Franciscan scholar David Flood argued that when early Franciscans used the term subditi in early texts to describe their work relationships, they "imagined a new way of working" and "gave work a new definition." To them labor was "a social act;" it was for others as well as self; it offered "the possibility of being a complete person," and "the possibility of a (...) human order marked by abundance and justice." It was refreshing to see a neglected subject receive proper scrutiny, and his conclusion, that the first Franciscans had "a particular idea of labor: a way of extending others recognition, proposing solidarity, and contributing more to production that they took from it," is a most welcome addition to Franciscan history. I agree wholeheartedly with the core of Flood's conclusion but believe it needs to be qualified. My primary intention here is offer the needed correction by placing Franciscan work theology in its larger historical context. Once monastic theology prior to Francis is documented I conclude that while early Franciscans did present society with a varieties of possibilities, these were not, as Flood maintains, either new or unique. Their ideas about work were but a continuation of a theology of work first articulated by Peter Damian and fellow reformers. After this main task is completed I offer some further speculation about the role Franciscan behavior and attitude toward work played in the anti-Franciscan criticism of the Late Middle Ages. I suggest that the Franciscan failure to keep abreast with society's expectations regarding work was in part responsible for that criticism.Christian attitudes toward labor are rooted in the Old Testament. Genesis establishes work as an activity proper to God and prelapsarian humanity. In the presence of sin labor becomes difficult and punitive, but continues to be simultaneously redemptive . Jesus "the Carpenter" says little directly about work, but the canonical authors do. Work has intrinsic value and is necessary for self-survival and the community . It is the basis for social justice and salvation . Early Christian literature deals with work in a similar manner. It is infrequently discussed, but when it is mentioned it is given due respect. Tertullian and Origen hint at a theology of work, but one has to wait for monasticism to see work theology become substantive. The Desert Fathers and Mothers and the rules of Pachomius, Basil, Augustine, Macarius, Four Fathers, Caesarius of Arles, the Master, and Benedict all discuss the spiritual necessity of work and mandate its inclusion in the daily life of monastics. During the first millennium Western society was more concerned with working than with thinking about work, but by the eleventh century conditions were more conducive to reflection. Peter Damian recognized the opportunity and responded creatively. Within his voluminous writings is the first sophisticated Christian reflection on the concept of work. It is, we shall see, the foundation for future theologies, including Francis's.Born in Ravenna in 1007 Peter Damian was educated in the liberal arts at Faenza, Parma, and probably Ravenna. Upon completion of his studies he enjoyed immediate success as a teacher, but he retired soon and entered Romuald of Ravenna's Camoldolesian monastery at Fonte Avellana ca.1034. Instead of ending his intellectual career the move actually propelled him into the limelight. By his death in 1072 Damian was a leading intellectual force throughout the West. He was also revered as a pioneering leader of the religious renewal and reform movement of the High Middle Ages. His influence was vast, a fact fully appreciated by Dante and the reason why he chose Damian as his ideal man. Although today Damian's creativity and originality is often overlooked it is hard to ignore these traits in his work theology. The theology is not, however, systematically.. (shrink)

The formation of the modern state, the rise of capitalism, the Renaissance and Reformation, the scientific revolution and the Age of Enlightenment have all been attributed to the “early modern” period. Nearly everything about its history remains controversial, but one thing is certain: it left a rich and provocative legacy of political ideas unmatched in Western history. The concepts of liberty, equality, property, human rights and revolution born in those turbulent centuries continue to shape, and to limit, (...) political discourse today. Assessing the work and background of figures such as Machiavelli, Luther, Calvin, Spinoza, the Levellers, Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau, Ellen Wood vividly explores the ideas of the canonical thinkers, not as philosophical abstractions but as passionately engaged responses to the social conflicts of their day. (shrink)

The history of Sephardic Judaism, from the late Middle Age to Modernity, and its diatribes against Christianity, which claims to be its theological resolution and, therefore, considers it abolished time, points out the direction of theological, philosophical and even political thought, which crystallize in the evolution of modern Judaism itself and in philosophical schools that are breeding grounds for a given materialism, the fullest systematic culmination of which is the work of Amsterdam-born, Sephardic Jew Benedictus de Espinosa.

In this very readable and interesting book Mr. Weatherby explores the thesis that Newman, while remaining true to Catholic doctrinal orthodoxy, nevertheless, compromised philosophically with the subjectivism, relativism, and individualism inherent in modern thought. Mr. Weatherby further claims that Newman treated these premises of modern thought as though "they were capable of synthesis with Catholic dogma." In coming to this position, Newman rejected the fifteen hundred-year old idea of a unified Christian society and accepted instead the fragmentation on which modern (...) culture is based. To develop his main point, Weatherby divides his book into four parts. Part One, "Newman and the Old Orthodoxy," reveals Newman’s divergence philosophically from the Caroline theological tradition and the Metaphysical poets. Newman did not deny that the Creation reflects the mind of God, but he personally could not find it. He was forced, therefore, to look for the "Paradise within" since he was unable to find God’s Paradise without. In Part Two, "The Spirit Afloat," after examining Newman’s Idealism and his relation to the Alexandrian Fathers, who were essentially mystic and idealist, Weatherby shows that Newman was a man of his times in that he had a much greater affinity with the Romantic poets than with the Metaphysical poets or those of the Middle Ages and Renaissance. These latter expressed metaphorically their full accord with the Thomist and Caroline outlook that God’s operations were visible in every detail of nature and that man by reason can proceed from the order and beauty of the visible world to a knowledge of God. The Romantics, on the other hand, with their more subjective view of life and nature, stressed not so much the external reality as man’s individual apprehension of it. The Romantics’ dominant impulse was their search for the "Paradise within." In Part Three, "Newman’s Modernism: A Theology of Safeguards," a study of Newman’s orthodox subjectivism, individualism, and relativism is presented, and Weatherby uses William R. Ingel’s words on Newman to point out that "one side of religion was based on principles which, when logically drawn out, must lead away from Catholicism in the direction of an individualistic religion of experience, and a substitution of history for dogma which makes all truth relative and all values fluid." Weatherby in Part Four, "The Consequences," articulates his criticism of Newman’s stand. It is, he claims, too radical one. Although Weatherby takes care not to call Newman a revolutionary—only a radical in his thinking—he points out that had Newman followed his anti-traditional mode of thought to its logical conclusion, political and social revolution could have resulted. Weatherby claims that Newman attempts to escape from the revolutionary consequences of his philosophy in that his "radicalism is never translated into religious or political activism." One of the strengths of Mr. Weatherby’s book is the great thoroughness with which he supports his stand. He gives specific and numerous examples and quotations from Newman’s works and from those of the other writers and philosophers he is using to make his point. This method, while admirable on the whole, occasionally results in repetition since Weatherby makes certain to give a summary after each comparison that is made.—M. L. F. (shrink)