Nearly a century ago, Friedrich Leo argued with his characteristic acumen that the neo-Ciceronian style of Tacitus'Dialogus de oratoribuswas as much a function of its genre as its subject. ‘The genre’, he observed, ‘demands its style. One who deals with different genres must write in different styles.’ Alfred Gudeman, the target of Leo's review, had therefore missed a key step in the argument for Tacitean authorship when he invoked ‘the influence of subject-matter’ without considering the demands of genre. In (...) hindsight, the point seems almost obvious, and the sophistication of recent work on the date and style of theDialogushas left Gudeman's discussion far behind. The advance in method—if not necessarily in results—has been profound. Leo's success in linking genre and style, however, has also had a second, less happy result: it has encouraged belief in a corresponding link between genre and content, as if Tacitus necessarily embraced Ciceronian values along with his Ciceronian forms. TheDialogusis often thought to accept Cicero's aesthetic agenda and to examine why the orators of succeeding generations failed to maintain its ideals and standards. Perhaps inevitably, its analysis is then read as a rather depressing tale of oratory's literary, social, and moral decline. This view demands reconsideration. To explore, as theDialoguscertainly does, the collapse of Ciceronian values is not necessarily to regret that collapse. We have, I think, too often read our own prejudices into theDialogusby presuming a post-Augustan decline in oratorical standards and, in the process, reducing our sensitivity to important variations in and departures from the generic conventions that Tacitus so deliberately recalls. The result is a significant distortion of theDialogus' view of oratory under the empire. (shrink)

quippe Byzantium fertili solo, fecundo mari, quia uis piscium in metapontum erumpens et obliquis subter undas saxis exterrita omisso alterius litoris flexu hos ad portus defertur.For Byzantium is favoured with fertile soil and teeming seas, since a multitude of fish, bursting out and spooked by rocks slanting beneath the water, leave off the curve of the opposite shore and are wafted to these harbours. That is the text of the second Medicean and all of its descendants. For centuries now the (...) unfitness of the words in metapontum has been obvious to editors. J. Lipsius conjectured innumera Pontum, G. Brotier innumera Ponto, N. Bach and G.A. Ruperti immensa Pontum. F. Ritter returned to the problem again and again, first proposing immensa Ponto, then immensum Ponto, i.e. ‘immensa multitudine’, and finally in meatu Ponti. Bach's and Ruperti's remedy is clearly the most efficient. Modern editors agree in printing uis piscium immensa Pontum erumpens, ‘an immense multitude of fish, bursting out of the Pontus'. Neat, but perhaps unnecessary. My object here is to defend the text of the manuscripts. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to show, by the example of Hugo Grotius's Annales et Historiae de rebus Belgicis (AH), that the nature and content of the concept of Tacitism (Tacitist, Tacitean) in the period around 1600 was markedly different from modern perceptions of the style and political purport of Tacitus's works. This gap between current and early-modern conceptions of Tacitus is important to bear in mind for intellectual historians dealing with early-modern intellectual currents such as Reason (...) of State, Neo-Stoicism, Tacitism, and others. This article first describes how the Tacitean style is characterised in literary criticism around 1600; then it explores the qualities of Hugo Grotius's imitation of Tacitus from the 17th-century perspective and from that of some main aspects of the present-day view of Tacitus. It concludes that Grotius's imitation shows Tacitus's style in a characteristically 17th-century mirror, in that it puts emphasis on Tacitean syntax, brevity and choice of words (the stylistic micro-level), as well as on political iudicium and Reason of State, but omits imitation of the narrative and structural qualities of Tacitus's composition, and their implications, which are central to modern interpretations. ☆ This article is part of the outcome of a research project on Grotius's Annales et Historiae conducted at the Radboud University Nijmegen in 2004–2008 with a VENI-grant from the Dutch research organisation NWO. I thank Corinna Vermeulen, Marc van der Poel, Hans Blom and HEI's anonymous referees for their comments on this piece. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Tacitus, Annales VI: Beginning and EndClifford AndoOur sole witness for the text of Annales I–VI, the so-called Mediceus, 1 duly registers the ends of books 1 through 4, but of no book thereafter. The question of where to locate the beginning of book 6 has not been discussed at any length since 1848, and that we have the end of book 6 at our 6.51 has not, to (...) my knowledge, ever been disputed. The answer we posit to both questions has, obviously, profound implications for modern attempts to interpret the structure of the Annales. This note urges on the former issue a return to the division after 5.11 first established by Lipsius, and on the latter proposes the radical solution that we do not possess the end of book 6.Though Emilio Ferretti (1541, ad loc.) was the first to perceive the difficulty in the text of books 5 and 6 as preserved by M, Lipsius took the necessary step of establishing a break between the books, at 5.11: his book 6 begins at the start of A.D. 32. Though he perceived that a two-year gap separates 5.5 and 5.6, he settled on 6.1 not for any solid reason, but on purely arbitrary grounds (1585, 265). Lipsius did, however, attempt to anticipate one counterattack: some will argue that his division leaves book 5 too short, since it will contain the events of only three years, 29–31 A.D. (ibid.). In 1848 Friedrich Haase attacked the position taken by Lipsius on several fronts: first, Lipsius’ division leaves book 6 disproportionately short, and nothing can be missing from the end of this book because it cannot be doubted that Tacitus began book 7 with the accession of Gaius. Second, even if it were not self-evident that the death of the emperor was more important than the end of a year, this would follow naturally upon the observation that Tacitus closes book 12 in October, after the death of Claudius, although in order to complete that year he would only have had to move the first ten chapters of book 13. Third, there is no way that the scribe could have overlooked or forgotten a colophon between 5.11 and 6.1 because M records them in such large letters. Finally, Tacitus would have regarded the death of Seianus, [End Page 285] the aftermath of which is covered in 5.6–11, as eminently suitable for the end of a book, as he closed book 9 with the death of Messalina, or book 15 with the suppression of the Pisonian conspiracy. Haase also anticipated, and dismissed, the charge that, on his reconstruction, book 5 will be too short, since it will cover even less than the three years assumed by Lipsius (1848, 152–53).Subsequent scholars, to the extent that any have commented on this issue, have followed Haase as resolutely as earlier editors followed Lipsius. 2 Variations on Haase’s argument have been offered by Nipperdey 1879, who suggested that the downfall of Seianus was so dramatic that readers needed a respite in the form of a book-break before resuming with the prosecution of his adherents (ad 5.5); and by Ronald Martin, who argued that “in spite of the loss of most of Book 5 and (probably) the beginning of Book 6 it seems clear that, as Germanicus dies towards the end of Book 2, with the aftermath of his death flowing over into the opening chapters of Book 3, so Seianus’ death occurred at or near the end of Book 5, while the aftermath of his death flows over into the early chapters of Book 6” (1991, 1518 n. 55).We can first dispose of any concerns about the length of either book. There were relatively few constraints upon the size of a papyrus roll: one could be as long or short as desired. A roll’s apparent length would also depend in large measure on the hand in which it was written, and how tightly it was rolled. For obvious reasons, long books were far more unwieldy than short ones, not least because it... (shrink)

Tacitus understands himself as a historiographer who writes against forgetting. This essay examines how Tacitus conceives of forgetting and how he depicts processes of forgetting. (1) First I will introduce forgetting as an important research theme in modern memory studies. Research on forgetting can help us to understand transformations in the collective memory of modern and ancient social groups. (2) In Tacitus’ works about Roman imperial history forgetting stands out as a crucial topic. (3) When analysing processes (...) of forgetting in the Annals, the Histories and the Agricola, we can distinguish different forms of forgetting (such as ‘automatic forgetting’ and ‘directed forgetting’) as well as certain methods that Tacitus depicts as supporting or impeding forgetting. I will focus on ‘removing’ as an ambivalent method of forgetting, and on ‘writing’, which is central to Tacitus’ concept of the historiographer. This analysis of Tacitus’ works reveals that his ideas on forgetting are highly relevant to the twenty-first century. Tacitus’ age, like our own, was one of dramatic societal change, in which social frames are transformed, while the objects of collective memory are questioned and reevaluated. (shrink)

Boccalini’s Ragguagli di Parnasso (1612) provides us with a satirically inflected view of how Tacitean quotation was used throughout the sixteenth century as a medium of political knowledge. A detailed analysis of some Tacitean scenes in Ragguagli will help us to elicit some of the issues underlying the turn to Tacitus in the intellectual climate of the period: the search for truth in a new era of moral relativism; debates about the applicability of ancient maxims to contemporary realities; and (...) the connection between externally acquired techniques and internalized wisdom. In both Ragguagli and Comentarii Tacitus’ characterization of the emperor Galba becomes emblematic of the gulf that can open up between theoretical knowledge and practical understanding. When the same model is used to measure Tacitus’ own unsuccessful tenure of power over Lesbos in Ragguagli, Boccalini presents a case study of how ‘properly’ to make use of Tacitean political insight. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Tacitus, Germanicus, Piso, and the Tabula SiarensisJulián GonzálezTacitus describes the funerary honors that were decreed for Germanicus in a dense narrative covering the whole of chapter 83 of book 2 of his Annals. Modern critics consider that this extensive chapter was taken from the acta senatus, from which not only the senatus consulta would have been taken but also various items from the debate, especially the sententiae of (...) the senators and the interventions of the emperor himself. 1 In the introductory phrase honores ut quis amore in Germanicum aut ingenio ualidus reperti decretique the word decreti clearly indicates that we are dealing with a decision of the Senate, but I also believe that reperti, “found after a search,” ties in perfectly with the result of a senatorial deliberation. This initial supposition is supported by Ann. 2.83.3, where Tacitus records the proposal of the Senate to dedicate to Germanicus a golden imago clipeata among the portraits of the classical orators (cum censeretur clipeus auro et magnitudine insignis inter auctores), a proposal rejected by Tiberius. The use of the technical term censeretur, “vote,” and the fact that Tacitus records the intervention of the emperor verbatim can only be explained in terms of direct consultation of the acta senatus.The Tabula Siarensis, discovered in 1982 in the province of Sevilla, preserves on two large bronze fragments much of the Senatus Consultum de Honoribus Germanici Decernendis that was decreed at the end of A.D. 19. We know this from fr. IIb, lines 20–21, in which it is decreed that the senatus consultum be inscribed together with another, earlier, senatus consultum, which was passed on 16 December (Itemque hoc s(enatus) c(onsultum) in aere incideretur cum eo s(enatus) c(onsulto) quod factum est A.D. XVII kal. Ian.... figeretur). The text of fr. IIb, lines 18–19, placere uti libellus, quem is (Drusus) proxumo senatu recitasset, in aere incideretur, mentions, in turn, another session of the Senate different from that of 16 December. [End Page 123]As we compare Tacitus’ narrative with the official documents, then, we have to reckon with two (or three) senatus consulta and one comitial law, the lex Valeria Aurelia (found on the Tabula Hebana), through which we have at our disposal an unrivaled wealth of information on the funerary honors of Germanicus. This will allow us to ascertain not only to what extent Tacitus uses the acta senatus and in what way he adapts his narrative to the content of these sources, but also to what extent his signature statement sine ira et studio is valid. Thanks to these discoveries, we now have another example to add to the speech of Claudius in support of the admission to the Senate of the leading men of the Three Gauls. Although it is certain that Tacitus used the acta senatus, our first observation in comparing his narrative to the contents of the Tabula Siarensis and the Tabula Hebana is in some ways surprising, since Tacitus only mentions a dozen honors, while the Tabula Siarensis records a total of twenty-seven, to which one must add others to be found in the Tabula Hebana that are equally ignored by Tacitus.Tacitus divides Germanicus’ funerary honors into four sections:1. In the first of these he mentions the following: (a) that his name be sung in the carmen Saliare; (b) that the curule chairs, decorated with laurel crowns, be positioned in the places usually occupied by the sacerdotes Augustales; (c) that an ivory statue of him precede the pompa circensis; and (d) that no flamen or augur be elected in his place unless he belong to the gens Iulia. These measures do not feature in the extant portions of the Tabula Siarensis, although the Tabula Hebana mentions some of them, specifically the inclusion of Germanicus’ name in the carmen Saliare (Tab. Heb. lines 4–5), and the positioning of the curule chairs, decorated with laurel crowns, in places usually occupied by the sodales Augustales (Tab. Heb. lines 50–52), and probably also the ivory statue carried in front of the pompa circensis. 2This would indicate, in the opinion of some scholars, that Tacitus... (shrink)

Juan de Vera’s El Enbaxador (1620) was one of the main treatises on the role of the ambassador in Early Modern Europe and the first one published in Spanish. At the time, Spain was no exception to the influence of Tacitus as a significant ancient author to inspire the political practice of the age. Juan de Vera, a nobleman and writer, soon an ambassador and entitled count, incorporated his own reading of Tacitus into El Enbaxador. Justus Lipsius, the (...) outstanding editor of Tacitus’ works, was also a main source for this book which was defined by John Elliott as a ‘quintessentially Lipsian handbook for diplomats’. The focus of this article is on Tacitus’ citations in El Enbaxador and their contexts within the book. My aim is to identify the specific themes for which Tacitus served as an exemplary source of guidance according to this particular text. Notably, some of such themes pertain to ambassadorial affairs, while others are common political topics in Early Modern Europe. Vera's reading of Tacitus in El Enbaxador gained wider dissemination beyond Spain as the work was subsequently translated into French and Italian. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The aim of this paper is to investigate the intertextual relationship between Spinoza and Tacitus in the Political Treatise, underlining how Spinoza uses Tacitus’ quotes against his main political enemy: Tacitism. I will show that Spinoza’s use of Tacitus is very selective and can be aptly characterized as a twofold political use: Tacitus’ quotes shape Spinoza’s political insights, but they are also used to confront Tacitism. To develop this twofold reading, after a brief introduction, I (...) will consider Tacitus’ reception in Early Modern period, describing Tacitism and its political standpoints. Then, I will analyse Spinoza’s use of Tacitus, considering his approach to three core themes: the nature of peace and sedition, the nature of the masses and the use of secrets (arcana). Finally, I will draw a comparison between the use to which Tacitus’ quotes are put by Spinoza on the one hand and by the Tacitists on the other, stressing how this comparison contributes to our understanding of their opposed political positions: democracy for Spinoza and monarchy for the Tacitists. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Ideas 61.2 (2000) 167-187 [Access article in PDF] Amelot de La Houssaye (1634-1706) Annotates Tacitus Jacob Soll Thousands have worked on Tacitus. Some have translated him, others have commented on him. Some have put his text into paraphrases, because of his obscurity: Some others have sucked out the juice and marrow, which is to say, the Sentences, Aphorismes, Apophtegms, and the Political (...) Axioms, of which he is as fertile, as he is sterile in words. His Translators have made him speak every Language, well or badly, according to what they understood or did not. Of his Commentators, some, as if they were Grammarians, have only picked through his Latin, and his fashions of speaking, which are all extraordinary. The others, like students of Politics, neither stopping to look at his phrases, nor his diction, have studied to penetrate the mysteries, and the secrets of the Art-of-governing, of which he has been the Master, and universal Oracle, for more than five-hundred years. 1Thus wrote Nicolas-Abraham Amelot de La Houssaye in the preface of his book, Tibère: Discours politiques sur Tacite (Paris: chez Frédéric Léonard, 1684). He was describing what has become known as the Tacitist movement of political theory, based on the work of the Roman historian Tacitus, which began in the 1580s and lasted until the French Revolution. 2 The practice of translating, commenting [End Page 167] on, or writing like Tacitus began in earnest in the late sixteenth century. Authoritative Latin editions as well as vernacular translations flourished and great kings turned to these now accessible texts as manuals for ruling. 3 Tacitus provided examples from history which could be used to form the basis of a practical political "science." Alongside Machiavelli, practitioners of reason of state placed the works of Tacitus as the founding stones of their humanist canon of secular political philosophy. 4 Marc-Antoine Muret began teaching Tacitus at the University of Rome in 1580, and at the same time Justus Lipsius and Carolus Paschalius began a Latinist tradition of commenting on Tacitus's works. 5 Lipsius, by far the most influential of the sixteenth-century Tacitists, was not only a philologist interested in reestablishing Tacitus's original text but also a commentator who sought to extract moral and political sententiae from the Roman historian. 6 Thus humanist scholarly practices served as the basis of Tacitean political theory as historical exempla, verified by philology, became useful for practical politics. 7 Scholarship and secular political science were bound for the long journey into the modern age. 8 [End Page 168]If humanist scholarship formed the basis of Tacitean political theory, it is also the key for understanding how it worked. Tacitism was an editorial practice and thus scholarly editors became political theorists. Justus Lipsius did not attempt to write his own version of a Tacitean Annales. Instead, he chopped up Tacitus's text, making a commonplace notebook for absolutist princes with his Politicorum libri sex (Leiden: Plantin, 1589). 9 Understanding the Lipsian tradition--the process by which Tacitus was read, broken down and "represented" by scholarly editors--clarifies an unexplored yet essential element of the evolution of secular political theory from a tool of Absolutism to an arm of revolutionary republicanism. 10The most striking example of the Lipsian tradition can be found in the works of Amelot de La Houssaye, whose vision of Tacitean scholarship we have already seen. Between 1670 and his death in 1706 Amelot was the most prolific translator and commentator of Tacitus in France. Between 1676 and 1808, at least 107 editions of 23 different works by Amelot were published in French, almost all Tacitean in nature. 11 These books were widely read and inspired numerous foreign editions. The unifying thread of this extraordinarily large corpus of works is Amelot de La Houssaye's fascination with Tacitus. He not only translated and commented on Tacitus; he also represented the major works of secular political philosophy of his time as Tacitean in origin. Machiavelli, for example, was "proven... (shrink)

This is a book that contrary to common practice, shows the commonalities of ancient and modern theories of freedom, law, and rational actions. Studying the works of the ancients is necessary to understanding those that follow. Thomas Chaimowicz challenges current trends in research on antiquity in his examination of Montesquieu's and Burk's path of inquiry. He focuses on ideas of balance and freedom. Montesquieu and Burke believe that freedom and balance are closely connected, for without balance within a state there (...) can be no freedom. When Montesquieu speaks of republics, he means those of antiquity as they were understood in the eighteenth century. In this view, freedom can develop only within the framework of established tradition. Edmund Burke's greatest service to political thought may lie in making use of this idea when he fought against the abstractions of the French Revolutionaries. Antiquity as the Source of Modernity examines Montesquieu's "Roman mind," meaning not an attitude influenced by the ancients, but one primarily influenced by Roman heritage. It speaks to the antithesis of monarchy and despotism in Montesquieu's thought and the influence of Tacitus and Pliny the Younger on him. The separation of powers and its relation to the concept of the mixed constitution as well as Montesquieu's smaller masterpiece Considerations on the Causes of the Grandeur and Decadence of the Romans are examined in detail. Finally, the discussion leads seamlessly to Burke, who, as a critical admirer of Montesquieu, partly incorporated his interpretation of the English constitution into his own thinking threatened by teachings of the French Revolution and its British adherents. The central idea of Antiquity as the Source of Modernity is timeless. It is that the ancient past can lead to a clearer understanding of what follows. This perspective represents a reversal of the conventional procedures for conducting this kind of research, but it is a reversal that Chaimowicz embraces in order to add a new dimension to the study and impetration of both Montesquieu and Burke. Thomas Chaimowicz was a distinguished visiting professor at the International Academy of Philosophy in the Principality of Liechtenstein and honorary professor of Roman Lay at the University of Salzburg. This is the final work commissioned by the late Russell Kirk for his efforts on behalf of the Transaction Library of Conservative Thought. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Veritas Filia Temporis: Experience and Belief in Early Modern Culture *Brendan DooleyFew observers in the seventeenth century had any illusions about the reliability of political information imparted by the sources newly minted or voluminously increased during the course of the century. The newsletters appeared to be concocted from malicious gossip. 1The newspapers seemed to be published at the bidding of powerful political interests with little inclination to tell the (...) truth, 2and histories of recent events seemed to be based on faulty sources even when the writers endeavored to procure faithful accounts. “Truth is by nature elusive and slippery,” history theorist Agostino Mascardi admitted. All he could recommend as a defense for the inaccurate historian was the injunction against throwing the first stone: “Omnis homo mendax,” said David the holy king; and those who are such harsh critics of historians’ involuntary lies may well be astute trammelers of perfidy and deceit in their own lives.” 3He had no answer about historians who deliberately distorted the truth. In fact just when readers might have desired it most, from the earliest episodes of the Thirty-Years War to the last episodes of the Turkish Wars at the end of the century, the possibility of [End Page 487]gaining a realistic picture of the contemporary world seemed to be getting more and more remote.The argument of this article centers around a discussion of the cultural consequences of this late seventeenth-century trend. To some of the readers, writers, thinkers, and theorists in this period, the unreliability of information about their own time or about the past, however compounded by contemporary political and social circumstances, was nothing but a minor nuisance. To others it was a hint about the bad faith of the governments who influenced writers. To still others, this same unreliability raised deeply troubling questions about human nature and existence. It provided social and political reasons for historical skepticism, quite apart from one’s familiarity with Sextus Empiricus or the elite intellectual trends of the time. It placed everyday social and political reality in a new light, thus adding a more mundane element to the uneasy feeling produced by the new science and cosmology—the feeling, that is, of being borne along in uncontrollable currents whose exact nature the best minds nonetheless seemed incapable of understanding. It added to the disquiet produced by confessional disputes, suggesting that truth might be beyond human capacity to grasp. 4Not only in Italy but throughout Europe in the late seventeenth century this discussion will show, existing methods of ascertaining facts in political and military affairs both in the present and in past times came under a new sort of scrutiny as part of what some scholarship has regarded as no less than a wide-ranging “crisis of consciousness” at the threshold of the Enlightenment. 5The conclusion opens briefly onto the sequel of these episodes. The crisis was resolved at least in part by a corresponding movement for methodological change as well as by a reform of ideas about the proper place for intellectual improvisation in the formation of narrative in order to make historical writing persuasive as well as civically useful again. If the product of error and fraud was skepticism, the product of skepticism was modern historiography. 6 [End Page 488]History and ExperienceObviously, the elusiveness of political truth that helped touch off the late seventeenth-century crisis was no novelty of the age. Deliberate misinformation was a fully-recognized political strategy at least by the time that Machiavelli made it an explicit part of prudence by recommending the cultivation of good appearances and expressing his admiration for Pope Alexander VI and Ferdinand I of Spain as being the best liars of their time. 7In the late sixteenth century theorists all over Europe sought to join Machiavelli’s insights about the inner workings of state power to those of Tacitus in the light of conventional morality. 8In Italy it was the Piedmontese writer Giovanni Botero who, exploring these Tacitist perspectives in his Reason of State, expressed the fewest reservations about insisting on the propriety of a policy of state secrecy and misinformation. 9Florentine political theorist... (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to assess the nature and proper context of Grotius's imitation of Tacitus. It starts by establishing how the Tacitean style is characterised in the literary criticism around 1600. It then explores the qualities of Grotius's imitation from both the seventeenth-century and the modern perspective. It concludes that Grotius's imitation shows Tacitus's style in a characteristically seventeenth-century mirror, in that it emphasises Tacitean syntax, brevity and choice of words , as well as political (...) edge and iudicium, but overlooks the narrative and structural qualities of the longer lines of composition in Tacitus's works, that are recognised in modern interpretations. (shrink)

This study delves into the unexplored intersection of Socinianism, a religious movement challenging Christian orthodoxy in the Early Modern period, and Tacitism, a political discourse inspired by Tacitus. Both fostered critical thinking, intertwining in nuanced ways. Socinianism’s theological skepticism questioned established beliefs, while Tacitism scrutinized historical and political accounts. Their controversial nature resulted in covert existence among elite intellectuals, shaping socio-political discourse. Socinianism’s theological nonconformity, akin to Tacitism’s critique of traditional political narratives, often sparked conflicts with authorities, revealing the (...) intricate relationship between religion and politics in the Early Modern Era and influencing the development of secular thought. (shrink)

Book 4 of the Annals, covering the years A.D. 23–8, traces the turning-point in the story of Tiberius' reign. Tacitus prepares us for disaster from the start. After a reference to fortuna in suitably Sallustian language and the deum ira in rem Romanam , we are told that the year A.D. 23 ‘initiated the deterioration in Tiberius’ principate .1 Modern historians are agreed that a decisive factor in this’ deterioration was the emperor's determination to leave Rome in A.D. 26, (...) a move which Tacitus gloomily portends in chapter 41 and eventually records, in due chronological sequence, at 57. 1. Suetonius is our other main source for this momentous event, and it is instructive to compare his treatment of it with that of Tacitus. (shrink)

It is often claimed that in the ancient world character was believed to be something fixed, given at birth and immutable during life. This belief is said to underlie the portrayal of individuals in ancient historiography and biography, particularly in the early Roman Empire; and tc constitute the chief point of difference in psychological assumptions between ancient and modern biography. In this article, I wish to examine the truth of these claims, with particular reference to Plutarch and Tacitus.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Actors in the Audience: Theatricality and Doublespeak from Nero to HadrianJohn T. KirbyShadi Bartsch. Actors in the Audience: Theatricality and Doublespeak from Nero to Hadrian. Cambridge, Mass., and London: Harvard University Press, 1994. x + 310 pp. Cloth, $37.50. (Revealing Antiquity 6)The unsuspecting reader, if such exists in the 1990s, will probably not know what to make of the title of this book. Even deeply suspicious ones will (...) not be able to predict its contents. Nor does the subtitle produce full disclosure. The reason, I think, is that classical philologists will, by virtue of their training, expect something rather different from a book so titled: they might suppose it to be a work on technical aspects of Roman theater, or perhaps an assessment of oratory in the imperial Senate. The author is deliberately coy in the preface:I have not written an introduction to this book, preferring to let the reader travel through its twists and turns unequipped with the lamp of foreknowledge. All I will say at the outset is that it is a book about representation, not reality, although much of its content serves to undermine that distinction (a trait in which I follow the tendency of my ancient sources); a book about the ways in which antithetical categories such as spectator and spectacle, intention and interpretation, and praise and blame were variously conflated and exploited by writers and historians of the first century a.d. as a reaction to the transformation of Rome from republic to empire; a book about what happens to language’s ability to mean when all communication is distorted by the pull of a centralized and autocratic authority.(vi)But these compressed remarks in fact offer a serviceable précis of what is to come. Put another way, this is a book about rhetoric, about Rezeptionsästhetik, about the reciprocal reflexes of language and power.What are the effects of political power upon the free and fearless use of language? The question is not new. Hesiod and Demosthenes both posed it, answering in quite different ways. Tacitus revisited the issue explicitly in his Dialogus de oratoribus, and more subtly in the historical writings. Indeed the problem continues to be a pressing one today, as the whole scholarly project of Michel Foucault demonstrates. This is a main theme of Actors in the Audience.A contrapuntal issue is that of how texts of all kinds problematize the distinction between reality and illusion (“fiction”?). Here again we may reach back as far as Hesiod and—though he might balk at a subpoena to such testimony—Plato. This latter theme is at least as persistently (post-)modern as the first; one thinks of Pirandello’s Sei personaggi in cerca d’autore and Woody Allen’s The Purple Rose of Cairo.Bartsch’s project begins to come into focus by page 2. After a brief meditation on the savagery of Caligula, she moves to a vivid evocation of Nero as scaenicus and of his scrutiny of the audiences at his thespian and musical performances, “as if the spectators were the performers here” (5); for Tacitus, Dio, and Suetonius, “Nero’s rule is the occasion for a transformation of the theater into the site of a reversal of actor-audience relations, and as an emperor onstage, [End Page 155] Nero literally constrained his audience to be actors” (10). Moreover, according to Bartsch, Tacitus sees this phenomenon extending beyond the theater itself to encompass the Neronian political scene in general.The first three of the book’s five chapters—“The Emperor’s Audience: Nero and the Theatrical Paradigm,” “The Invasion of the Stage: Nero Tragoedus,” and “Oppositional Innuendo: Performance, Allusion, and the Audience”—all have to do with Nero in some respect. Chapter 2 turns to the issue of reality versus illusion. Bartsch demonstrates that, in the realm of politics, this is already of explicit interest to Philostratus. She then goes on to consider its implications for the reign of Nero. We read of popular graffiti, sparked by Nero’s murder of his mother Agrippina, that classed him with the legendary matricides Orestes and Alcmeon. These, plus the numerous theatrical roles (such as Oedipus and... (shrink)

This paper explores political fear in classical thought. Through an analysis of Plato, Aristotle, Thucydides, and Sallust, I discuss two broad uses of fear: fear as a source of unity and of moral energy. In addition, the paper addresses the enervating role of political fear in Tacitus’ writings. The discussion centers on three issues: first, I draw attention to an important and often neglected set of themes in classical thought; second, I provide a historical resource for contemporary discussions of (...) political fear; third, I argue that fear’s multiple uses in political theorizing ought to be a focus of scholarly inquiry. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:American Journal of Philology 122.3 (2001) 451-454 [Access article in PDF] Susan P. Mattern. Rome and the Enemy: Imperial Strategy in the Principate. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1999. xxi + 259 pp. Cloth, $35.00. This well-written book is nothing if not bold. Its time frame is, broadly speaking, the first two and a half centuries A.D. Its basis is the view that has met increasingly (...) wide acceptance over the past quarter-century, that the Romans' conduct of foreign relations was altogether different from what we assume of modern states. The Roman mindset, motivation, intelligence, and strategy are all alien to us and thus require evaluation on their own terms. Consequently, in five chapters Mattern first examines the character and education of Rome's small decision-making elite. She next moves to their "image of the world," variously gained through campaigning, geographical knowledge, intelligence, and ethnology. A chapter on strategy follows, treating the size and deployment of the Roman army and the different means by which the empire was defined and defended. Income and expenditure are the focus of the fourth chapter, with particular reference to the expense of maintaining the army, the cost of warfare, and the economic gain to be made from conquests. Finally a chapter on "values" concludes the book--the unashamed glorification of conquest, the prestige accruing to the Romans in general and to the emperor in particular, and reinforcement of the sense that it was discipline, both moral and organizational, that made Rome supreme over other peoples. [End Page 451]The discussion of all these aspects displays insight and balanced judgment, and the accompanying bibliography is valuable (some notes are repetitious, however: cf. 117 n. 163 with 172 n. 36). The work of Ampelius (ed. Budé 1993) might have been cited (25) as another example of how weak even a schoolmaster's geographical knowledge could be. Although, to be sure, it is true that "bird's-eye view" was hardly an option for Roman representations of the world (26), we might still recall Artemidorus' (Oneirocritica 2.68) vision of dreamers flying along and looking down at the landscape below, while the presentation of Rome's Marble Plan is large-scale and ichnographic. The Tabula Banasitana (AE 1971.534) merits citing as a prime example of Marcus Aurelius' pondering with care the bestowal of benefits upon people on a remote fringe of the empire (180). In stating that we shall never know where the Teutoburg Forest was, let alone the site of Varus' defeat (167), Mattern seems to overlook the finds made at Kalkriese (see now W. Schlüter in J. D. Creighton and R. J. A. Wilson, eds., Roman Germany: Studies in Cultural Interaction [1999] 125-59); equally, she shows no awareness of a kernel of truth in the tradition that Hadrian abandoned Dacia, at least in part (104; cf. Barrington Atlas, Directory, 1376). In treating the Roman concern to save "face" (177), there is more to be made of L. Caesennius Paetus as scapegoat. The major step of annexing Armenia must surely reflect instructions he brought with him from Rome, rather than just a personal preference (cf. 92 n. 46), but all the blame for the rapid, catastrophic failure of the annexation attempt is then heaped upon him alone. Tacitus grasped Rome's vulnerability in this region. He has the Parthian cavalry commander Vasaces coolly dismiss Paetus' bluster about long-standing Roman control there: "imaginem retinendi largiendive penes nos, vim penes Parthos" (Ann. 15.14). Later, after Corbulo's diplomatic victory, Tacitus can detail the official tokens of respect insisted upon by Tiridates during his journey to Rome and conclude ironically: "scilicet externae superbiae sueto non inerat notitia nostri apud quos vis imperii valet, inania tramittuntur" (Ann. 15.31).These and other sundry observations aside, it is the book's principal thesis that invites comment, namely Mattern's sweeping claim: "I would argue that Rome's real strategy lay in the realm of psychology. The empire was defended not by 'scientific frontiers,' however we might choose to... (shrink)

The Germania of Tacitus is the most extensive account of the ancient Germans written during the Roman period, but has been relatively neglected in the scholarship of the English-speaking world: the last commentary appeared in 1938, and only a handful of studies have appeared since that time. In recent decades, however, there have been important scholarly developments that significantly affect our understanding of it. Ongoing archaeological work in western and central Europe has greatly increased our knowledge of the iron-age (...) cultures in those regions, while new anthropological and literary approaches have called into question some of the traditional assumptions that shaped the use of this text as a historical source. This new commentary, together with the extensive introduction, provides a current and comprehensive guide to the relevant textual and archaeological evidence and also examines the methodological issues involved in the interpretation of this important work. (shrink)

This article traces the association between the European overseas empires and the concept of sovereignty, arguing that, ever since the days of Cicero—if not earlier—Europeans had clung to the idea that there was a close association between a people and the territory it happened to occupy. This made it necessary to think of an “empire” as a unity—an “immense body,” to use Tacitus’s phrase—that would embrace all its subjects under a single sovereign. By the end of the eighteenth century (...) it had become possible, in this way, to speak of “empires of liberty” that would operate for the ultimate benefit of all their “citizens,” freeing them from previous tyrannical rulers and bringing them under the protection of more benign regimes. In such empires sovereignty could only ever be, as it had become in Europe, undivided. The collapse of Europe's “first” empires in the Americas, however, was followed rapidly by Napoleon’s attempt to create a new kind of Empire in Europe. The ultimate, and costly, failure of this project led many, Benjamin Constant among them, to believe that the age of empires was now over and had been replaced by the age of commerce. But what in fact succeeded Napoleon was the modern European state system, which attempted not to replace empire by trade, as Constant had hoped, but to create a new kind of empire, one that sought to minimize domination and settlement, and to make a sharp distinction between imperial ruler and imperial subject. In this kind of empire, sovereignty could only be “divided.” Various kinds of divided rule were thus devised in the nineteenth century. Far, however, from being an improvement on the past, this ultimately resulted in—or at least contributed greatly to—the emergence of the largely fictional and inevitably unstable societies that after the final collapse of the European empires became the new states of the “developing world.”. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to draw a comparison between two models of sovereignty, embodied by Philip II of Spain and the Roman emperor Tiberius, as described in Cornelius Tacitus’ Annales. My analysis is based on Diez Libros de la Razón de Estado, the Castilian translation of Della Ragion di Stato by Giovanni Botero (1544–1617), made by the Spanish Court historian Antonio de Herrera y Tordesillas (1549–1625). Herrera’s translation plays an important role in the Spanish reception of the (...) wider debates on the relationship between ethics and politics in early modern Spain. I will first address the reliability of Herrera’s translation, highlighting the instances in which his translation was moulded to be applicable to the Spanish court. What emerges from this analysis is the concern with the notion of ‘prudence’ that enabled Philip II’s political style. Secondly, I intend to show how Herrera depicts Tiberius as acounterpart to Philip II and how the latter takes on the deeds of the prudent monarch. The comparison herein outlined stems from the use of quotations from the Tacitean oeuvre, which had become an important tool for policy-making at the time. (shrink)

`Long may the barbarians continue, I pray, if not to love us, at least to hate one another.' Cornelius Tacitus, Rome's greatest historian and the last great writer of classical Latin prose, produced his first two books in AD 98. He was inspired to take up his pen when the assassination of Domitian ended `fifteen years of enforced silence'. The first products were brief: the biography of his late father-in-law Julius Agricola and an account of Rome's most dangerous enemies, (...) the Germans. Since Agricola's claim to fame was that as governor for seven years he had completed the conquest of Britain, begun four decades earlier, much of the first work is devoted to Britain and its people. The second is the only surviving specimen from the ancient world of an ethnographic study. Each in its way has had immense influence on our perception of Rome and the northern `barbarians'. This edition reflects recent research in Roman-British and Roman-German history and includes newly discovered evidence on Tacitus' early career. (shrink)

Richly illustrated study drawing on art, literature and science to explore Victorian attitudes towards sight.

Tacitus behandelt in seinem Rednerdialog die Gründe für den Verfall der römischen Beredsamkeit beim Übergang von der Republik zur Kaiserzeit, ferner Dilettantentum und echte Wissenschaft, die Bedeutung der Philosophie für die Erziehung, das Verhältnis zwischen Zeitgeist und wahrer idealistischer Beredsamkeit. Dem Text und der Übersetzung sind Zeugnisse zur Überlieferungsgeschichte beigegeben; die umfangreiche Einführung enthält eine Biographie des Tacitus unter besonderer Berücksichtigung seiner Tätigkeit als Redner und erörtert in übersichtlicher Weise alle wesentlichen Fragen, die im Zusammenhang mit dem Rednerdialog (...) stehen. Literaturhinweise und ein erklärendes Namenverzeichnis vervollständigen diese Ausgabe. (shrink)

Seit 1923 erscheinen in der Sammlung Tusculum maßgebende Editionen griechischer und lateinischer Werke mit deutscher Übersetzung. Die Originaltexte werden zudem eingeleitet und umfassend kommentiert; nach der neuen Konzeption bieten schließlich thematische Essays tiefere Einblicke in das Werk, seinen historischen Kontext und sein Nachleben. Die hohe wissenschaftliche Qualität der Ausgaben, gepaart mit dem leserfreundlichen Sprachstil der Einführungs- und Kommentarteile, macht jeden Tusculum-Band zu einer fundamentalen Lektüre nicht nur für Studierende, die sich zum ersten Mal einem antiken Autor nähern, und für Wissenschaftler, (...) die spezifische Aspekte eines Werkes vertiefen möchten, sondern für alle, die sich durch vertrauenswürdige Übersetzungen einen Zugang zur Antiken Welt verschaffen wollen. In der Reihe wurden bisher über 270 Titel publiziert, alle erhältlich als Buch und eBook. Dadruch werden bislang vergriffene Titel und Raritäten wieder vollständig verfügbar gemacht. Zusätzlich zu der Buchreihe erscheint bei De Gruyter zum 90-jährigen Jubiläum das eBook-PaketTusculum Online, eine digitale Sammlung aller von 1923 bis 2013 erschienenen Titel -eine gebührende Würdigung eines wichtigen Stücks deutscher Verlagsgeschichte. Mehr Informationen rund um Tusculum erhalten Sie unter: www.degruyter.com/tusculum. (shrink)

In this new collection of essays, Andrew Feenberg argues that conflicts over the design and organization of the technical systems that structure our society shape deep choices for the future. A pioneer in the philosophy of technology, Feenberg demonstrates the continuing vitality of the critical theory of the Frankfurt School. He calls into question the anti-technological stance commonly associated with its theoretical legacy and argues that technology contains potentialities that could be developed as the basis for an alternative form of (...) modern society. Feenberg's critical reflections on the ideas of Jürgen Habermas, Herbert Marcuse, Jean-François Lyotard, and Kitaro Nishida shed new light on the philosophical study of technology and modernity. He contests the prevalent conception of technology as an unstoppable force responsive only to its own internal dynamic and politicizes the discussion of its social and cultural construction. This argument is substantiated in a series of compelling and well-grounded case studies. Through his exploration of science fiction and film, AIDS research, the French experience with the "information superhighway," and the Japanese reception of Western values, he demonstrates how technology, when subjected to public pressure and debate, can incorporate ethical and aesthetic values. (shrink)

Jetzt beim Akademie Verlag: Sammlung Tusculum - die berühmte zweisprachige Bibliothek der Antike! Die 1923 gegründete Sammlung Tusculum umfasst ca. 200 klassische Werke der griechischen und lateinischen Literatur des Altertums und bildet damit das Fundament der abendländischen Geistesgeschichte ab. Die Werke Ciceros, Ovids und Horaz’ gehören ebenso zum Programm wie die philosophischen Schriften Platons, die Dramen des Sophokles oder die enzyklopädische Naturgeschichte des Plinius. Die Reihe bietet die weltliterarisch bedeutenden Originaltexte zusammen mit exzellenten deutschen Übersetzungen und kurzen Sachkommentaren. Von renommierten (...) Altphilologen betreut, präsentiert Tusculum zuverlässige Standardausgaben mit klassischer Einbandgestaltung für Wissenschaftler und Bibliotheken, Studenten und Lehrer sowie das allgemeine Publikum mit Interesse an antiker Dichtung und Philosophie. Der Name der Reihe geht auf die ehemalige Stadt Tusculum in Latium zurück, in der Cicero eine Villa besaß, die ihm als Refugium diente und in der er die Tuskulanen verfasste. Neben der hochwertig ausgestatteten Hauptreihe erscheinen in der Serie Tusculum Studienausgaben einschlägige Texte für Universität und Schule im Taschenbuch. Im Akademie Verlag startet die Reihe 2011 mit sieben wichtigen Neuerscheinungen. (shrink)

It is not enough, says Quintilian , to assemble the various parts of a speech. The orator must arrange his points in the natural and logical order for his purposes, and he must unify the different sections so skilfully that no join will show , producing a single body instead of assorted limbs. If we define ascommissura the rhetorical device which welds together different themes or chapters with an associative link in word or thought , Tacitus already had this (...) lesson by heart when he wrote the Germania. That he exploited the same technique in his major works, concentrating on his transitions as hard as would Macaulay on his, appears not to have been noticed, and certainly has not received systematic study. (shrink)

Frontinus appears only once in Tacitus'Agricola, at a moment in the text where Tacitus is filling in some background, sketching a rough history of the Roman occupation of Britain up to the time when Agricola took over as governor of the province. His appearance is brief, and the momentum of the whole section makes it tempting to see him as a mere footnote in the tale of Agricola's life and career. I will argue, however, that Frontinus' role in (...) the text is more significant than that. Indeed, it is my contention that he is closely bound up with – and helps Tacitus and his readers to explore – one of the text's most pressing concerns: namely senatorial conduct, status and identity, in Domitianic and post-Domitianic Rome. (shrink)

The utterances of Claudius were celebrated, or rather notorious. Suetonius, like Tacitus himself, points out that he could be eloquent but that, especially when he spoke impromptu or added unrehearsed remarks to a prepared speech, he revealed that he had no sense of what was appropriate to his dignity as Princeps, or to the time, place and audience. The biographer cruelly collected various examples of his subject's verbal ineptitude.

**A newly revised edition of two seminal works on Imperial Rome** Undeniably one of Rome’s most important historians, Tacitus was also one of its most gifted. *The Agricola* is both a portrait of Julius Agricola-the most famous governor of Roman Britain and Tacitus’s respected father-in-law-and the first known detailed portrayal of the British Isles. In the *Germania*, Tacitus focuses on the warlike German tribes beyond the Rhine, often comparing the behavior of "barbarian" peoples favorably with the decadence (...) and corruption of Imperial Rome. (shrink)

Can subjective taste regulate social norms or political practices? This book argues that from the late seventeenth century to the present national cultures have sought to regulate the democratic subject through the academic form of arguments about the proper relations of aesthetics to ethics and politics. In so doing it offers a radical reconsideration of the history of modernity, tracing the emergence of criticism as a socio-cultural practice across all the major European nations, and drawing on an extensive range (...) of European literature and philosophy. (shrink)

Natural law has long been considered the traditional source of Roman Catholic canon law. However, new scholarship is critical of this approach as it portrays the Catholic Church as static, ahistorical, and insensitive to cultural change. In its attempt to stem the massive loss of effectiveness being experienced by canon law, the church has to reconsider its theory of legal foundation, especially its natural law theory. Church Law in Modernity analyses the criticism levelled at the church and puts forward (...) solutions for reconciling church law with modernity by revealing the historical and cultural authenticity of all law, and revising the processes of law making. In a modern church, there is no way of thinking of the law without the participation of the faithful in legislation. Judith Hahn therefore proposes a reformed legislative process for the church in the hope of reconciling the natural law origins of church law with a new, modern theology. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Ideas 62.2 (2001) 281-299 [Access article in PDF] Eighteenth-Century Anticipations of the Sociology of Conflict: The Case of Adam Ferguson Lisa Hill Adam Ferguson (1723-1816), a leading figure of the Scottish Enlightenment, is a most interesting figure in the history of sociological thought. Though sometimes perceived as a secondary figure, there have been some attempts to recover him as one of, if not the (...) first "sociologist." 1 Much has been written about Ferguson's contribution to modern social science; 2 this article focuses upon his highly prescient work in the area of conflict theory. It is important to note at the outset, however, that Ferguson's inspiration for these apparently novel insights is classical. His early social theory is curious because it "straddles traditions"; 3 on the one hand he owes a profound debt to classical civic humanism, [End Page 281] but on the other his work quite authentically signposts the emergence of social science proper. This bridging of traditions in Ferguson is a key theme of this paper.Ferguson relies heavily upon conflict in his explanation of historical processes and in the securing of social order. Conflict generates many positive unintended consequences; it leads to the formation of the state, formal defense institutions, and large scale communities; and it plays a pivotal role in the development of the moral personality and contributes to the maintenance of stability and social cohesion. Conflict preserves the balance of powers in government and prevents the encroachment of despotism. In this regard, then, conflict cannot be regarded as wholly unnecessary, destructive, or undesirable but as integral to progress and the march towards civilization. 4Gladys Bryson has noted that Ferguson's exposition of conflict was original with him and "set him off from the conventional position of his century." 5 Even so the benefits of conflict and dissension had been canvassed long before by Tacitus and Machiavelli, both of whom influenced Ferguson's analysis. 6 In it he challenges the false dichotomy promulgated by contractarians of tranquil society on the one hand and violent, isolated chaos on the other; rather, he argues, we are social beings with belligerent tendencies. He also confronts the Aristotelian (and later Hobbesian) premise that the key purpose of society is stability and social harmony. Instead, Ferguson lays great stress on the positive benefits of competition and conflict in our social development and in the maintenance of community. Conflict is just as natural as repose and may even be equally desirable. In this Ferguson indicates his debt to Socrates' suggestion that "some circumstances in the lot of mankind" prompt us to be social, while others prompt us "to war and dissension." 7 As a highlander, Ferguson was well acquainted with the realities of conflict. He also had a brief but lively career as chaplain to the Black Watch Regiment, 8 and it seems likely that his unique views on the positive aspects of "opposition" were reinforced by this experience.Because of this emphasis Ludwig Gumplowicz identified Ferguson as the first significant exponent of the "group struggle" theory of social development. 9 [End Page 282] Ferguson's discussion of conflict and its unintended effects is also partly responsible for his modern reputation as "father of sociology"; 10 and although it is doubtful that he deserves the title, Ferguson was probably the first thinker to place so great an emphasis upon the positive aspects of conflict. 11 The discussion also anticipates nineteenth- and twentieth-century conflict theory in positing conflict as an authentic medium, even form, of solidary association, there is an early dialectical historiography in which class conflict is shown to give rise to constitutional government. A particularly interesting aspect of the discussion is Ferguson's anticipation of Norbert Elias's work on the social function of competitive sport, particularly its role in the process of achieving "civilization."Because of Ferguson's providentialism and in particular his emphasis on the virtue of beneficence, 12 John Bernstein has suggested that "Ferguson's admiration for the qualities revealed in conflict constitute... (shrink)

This paper reviews the debate about behavioral modernity in our species, listing counterexamples to the thesis that there was a dramatic change to the minds of Cro-Magnon sapiens in Europe in the Upper Paleolithic. It is argued that we were probably behaviorally modern from about 150,000 years ago, and that aspects of this mentality were apparent in developments in tool technologies and hunting practices across the prior Homo lineage. Key behaviors expressive of behavioral modernity include practical reasoning about (...) the past and future and role-differentiated rights-based cooperation, which are more obvious in their effects than is the vague but much-used notion of symbolic thinking. Behavioral modernity leads to technological innovation but is not sufficient to maintain such innovations in face of population loss and environmental instability, which along with the vagaries of preservation explains why the archaeological record of behavioral modernity in our species is patchy until the Upper Paleolithic. (shrink)

This book is a comprehensive analysis of the major intellectual positions in the philosophical debate on Islamic law that is occurring in contemporary Iran.

In the modern age, the political secret has acquired a bad reputation. With modern democracy’s ideal of transparency, political secrecy is identified with political crime or corruption. The article argues that this repression of secrecy in modern democracies falls short of a substantial understanding of the structure and workings of political secrecy. By outlining a genealogy of political secrecy, it elucidates the logic as well as the blind spots of a current culture of secrecy. It focuses on two fundamental logics (...) of secrecy, deduced from the Latin terms ‘ arcanum’ and ‘ secretum’. Whereas the logic of arcanum regards secrecy as a legitimate dimension of government, a modern logic of secretum is marked by an inextricable dialectics between the withdrawal and communication of knowledge, between secrecy and publicity. Here, the secret is not so much a piece of withheld knowledge as a ‘secrecy effect’ that binds the realm of secrecy to the public sphere by a dialectics of permanent suspicion and scandal. Instead of falling into the trap of this ‘secrecy effect’ it is worth taking a closer look at the tradition of thought on the arcana imperii, from Tacitus to early modern doctrines of raison d’état to Carl Schmitt. What this tradition deals with is the functionality of secrecy and its complicated relation to the law. The arcana tradition elaborates the crucial point of secrecy: its potential, but also its profound ambivalence. Secrecy opens up a discretionary space of action exempt from the rule of law, and, according to Carl Schmitt, ignores the law so as to allow it to become effective. Secrecy serves to protect and stabilize the state, but at the same time it opens a space of exception from the rule of law that breeds violence, corruption and oppression. Instead of seeing secrecy as the opposite of a political culture of transparency, it is more productive to regard secrecy as transparency's complement – a counterpart, however, that is marked by the profound paradox of being both a consolidation of and a threat to democracy. (shrink)

IS POSTMODERNISM A NEW, perhaps decisive stage that completes the unfinished project of modernity, as Jürgen Habermas and, in some respects, Jean-François Lyotard claim? Or does it intend to break with that project altogether, as Derrida and Rorty maintain? The latter, more radical thesis tends to go hand in hand with the assumption of an essential continuity between modern and premodern thinking. Among those who defend the latter thesis we find Nietzsche, Heidegger, Derrida, and Rorty. Rorty's position has become (...) somewhat questionable, however, since in the Introduction to his recent Essays on Heidegger and Others he distances himself from the very term "postmodern." "The term," he writes, "has been so over-used that it is causing more trouble than it is worth.... It seems best to think of Heidegger and Derrida simply as post-Nietzschean philosophers--to assign them places in a conversational sequence which runs from Descartes through Kant and Hegel to Nietzsche and beyond rather than to view them as initiating or manifesting a radical departure." This way of contextualizing the so-called postmoderns with the moderns differs from the radical discontinuity Derrida proposes and that Rorty himself formerly appeared to advocate. Western philosophy would then follow a single course from its Greek beginnings to the present with some distinct swerves, of which the so-called postmodern is one, but with no radical interruptions. According to the recent view the ontotheological principles that guided Greek and medieval thought continue to operate in the rationalist and, indirectly, in the empiricist philosophies of the modern age. This essay will argue that there is discontinuity between modern and premodern and continuity between modern and postmodern. (shrink)

Viral modernity is a concept based upon the nature of viruses, the ancient and critical role they play in evolution and culture, and the basic application to understanding the role of information and forms of bioinformation in the social world. The concept draws a close association between viral biology on the one hand, and information science on the other – it is an illustration and prime example of bioinformationalism that brings together two of the most powerful forces that now (...) drive cultural evolution. The concept of viral modernity applies to viral technologies, codes and ecosystems in information, publishing, education and emerging knowledge systems. This paper traces the relationship between epidemics, quarantine, and public health management and outlines elements of viral-digital philosophy based on the fusion of living and technological systems. We discuss Covid-19 as a ‘bioinformationalist’ response that represents historically unprecedented level of sharing information from the sequencing of the genome to testing for a vaccination. Finally, we look at the US response to Covid-19 through the lens of infodemics and post-truth. The paper is followed by three open reviews, which further refine its conclusions as they relate to philosophy and the notion of the virus as Pharmakon. (shrink)

At one stage in his account of the war against Tacfarinas, Tacitus describes the strategy of the proconsul of Africa, P. Cornelius Dolabella, as follows: ‘excito cum popularibus rege Ptolemaeo quattuor agmina parat, quae legatis aut tribunis data; et praedatorias manus delecti Maurorum duxere: ipse consultor aderat omnibus’.

This book presents an alternative view of cosmopolitanism, citizenship and modernity in early 20th-century India through the multiple lenses of mysticism, travel, friendship, art, and politics.It makes a key intervention in the understanding of cosmopolitan modernity based on the lives and experiences of Rabindranath Tagore, Ananda Coomaraswamy, Sri Aurobindo, Mirra Alfassa, James Cousins, Paul Richard, Dilip Kumar Roy, and Taraknath Das. Using archival texts and photographs, Mohanty interrogates the ideas of tradition and modernity, the local and the (...) global, and Self and the world as integral to the conception of a cosmopolitan world order. The volume will interest scholars and students of modern Indian history, comparative literature, cultural studies, Indian philosophy, and South Asian studies and the general reader. (shrink)