Much Ado About Dugald: The Chequered Career of Dugald Stewart's Letter to Sir William Forbes on James Beattie's Essay on Truth

Summary

Although Sir William Forbes of Pitsligo's An Account of the Life and Writings of James Beattie has long served as an invaluable resource for those interested in Beattie's life and thought, there has been little scholarship on the genesis of Forbes's book. This article considers the role played by Dugald Stewart—as well as that of his friend, Archibald Alison—in the making of Forbes's Life of Beattie. It also examines the reasons for Forbes's decision not to print Stewart's letter in its entirety in the Life of Beattie and explores the letter's significance for understanding Stewart's philosophical development.     

Civil Power and the Deconstruction of Scholasticism in the Thought of Marc'antonio de Dominis

Summary

Marc'antonio de Dominis is well known to historians as a figure in the political and religious culture of early modern Britain and Europe. This article contends that he was also a major theorist of civil power: his critique of Catholic scholastic political thought is compelling and his account of divine right kingship sheds light on conceptual problems that troubled a range of early modern thinkers. De Dominis dismantled the scholastic theory of political power on its own terms, insisting that Almain, Bellarmine, Suárez and others could not distinguish, as they sought to, between the potestas politica in general and the rule of particular princes. By this insight de Dominis could vindicate royal authority against the deposing pretensions of the Pope, the main objective of James I's supporters during the Allegiance Controversy, but his own positive account of how to think about power ran into theoretical trouble which he evidently perceived himself. If the potestas politica cannot be abstracted from a specific regime, and if the prince's absolute sovereignty depends on this fact, can politics be understood only at the level of the particular and contingent? The article closes by setting Thomas Hobbes—well versed in Jacobean polemic—in the context of this question.     

Jacob Talmon between Zionism and Cold War Liberalism

The paper focuses on the problematic relationship between Talmon's liberalism and Zionism. My argument is that Talmon's nationalism (Zionism included)—historicist, romantic, visionary—lived in permanent tension with his liberalism—empiricist, pluralist, pragmatic. His critique of totalitarian democracy, reflecting his British experience, emerged independently from his Zionism, grounded in Central European nationalism. The two represented different worlds. Talmon lived in both, serving as an ambassador in-between them, without ever bringing them together.

The essay's first section describes the political education of the young Jacob Talmon (née Flajszer) and the making of The Origins of Totalitarian Democracy. It demonstrates the independence of Talmon's Cold War liberal project from his Zionism. The second section places Talmon in the context of Cold War liberal discourse, showing how integral his critique of revolutionary politics was to contemporary liberalism. The third illustrates the tensions between Talmon's view of Jewish history and his liberalism, between his Zionism and his critique of revolutionary politics. Focusing on Talmon's analyses of nationalism, it highlights the ambiguity of his Zionism.     

Neither Cyclops nor Sophist: Christian Formation Against the State

Abstract

This article identifies a deep paradox at the heart of the modern state—in its ability and professed purposes to form the moral characters of its citizens—and then offers a Christian response. Were it not for the manifest success of states in persisting in this paradox, it would delegitimize them on grounds of incoherence and duplicity. In an argument that is occasionally Aristotelian, the article shows how modern (secular, liberal) states morally form citizens who willingly submit to the state's formation on grounds that the state has legitimacy so long as it does not claim moral authority. This line of reasoning is explicated with reference to Sheldon Wolin on Alexander Hamilton and feudalism as well as Martha Nussbaum on Aristotle. In response, Christian freedom, ecclesial peoplehood, and poverty not only run counter to state formation but positively resist it.     

Stewart,Kant, and the Reworking of Common Sense

Summary

Dugald Stewart was the first metaphysician of any significance in Britain who attempted to take account of Kantian philosophy, although his analysis appears generally dismissive. Traditionally this has been imputed to Stewart's poor understanding of Kant and to his efforts to defend the orthodoxy of common sense. This paper argues that, notwithstanding Stewart's reading, Kant's philosophy helped him in a reconsideration and reassessment of common sense philosophy. In his mature works—the Philosophical Essays (1810), the second volume of the Elements of the Philosophy of the Human Mind (1814), and the second part of his historical ‘Dissertation? (1815–1821)—Stewart's analysis of Kantian philosophy is far from being uniform. In the first two works, he takes a cautious approach to transcendentalism, showing some interest in the challenge it might represent for common sense; in the last, he turns to rash criticism. This change may appear confusing and inconsistent unless considered in the light of a precise ‘nationalistic’ strategy. In fact, once Stewart had taken from Kantian philosophy what he deemed useful for his own aims, he eventually dismissed it in order to show that his reworked version of common sense was the most original and most consistent outcome of the whole Anglo-Scottish philosophical tradition.     

Papadiamandis and Homer: A Note

Abstract

Meaningful allusion to the classics in Papadiamandis's work is not a matter of the text's being stuffed with overt classical references. In his early novels we find a large number of, as it were, classical one-liners: essentially undigested – or at best opportunistic – allusions. The technique is a less focused form of Roidis's in Pope Joan; perhaps a closer comparison is Kalligas's Thanos Vlekas, which is replete with Homeric allusions and puns, none of them integral to the narrative. Similarly, we find in early Papadiamandis a disorderly collection of allusions: Byron, Milton, Aesop, Sophocles, Juvenal, Homer et al.; and sometimes we see his allusiveness to be a mere tic of style rather than fully purposive. In other words, .it is as true here as elsewhere in Greek literary tradition that we need to sift meaningful from more or less chance allusion.     

Machiavelli's scientific method: a common understanding of his novelty in the sixteenth century

This paper argues that Machiavelli's method, his inductive and comparative use of history and experience for political analysis, and his fashioning of historical-political analysis as ‘science’, played an important and still unrecognised role in his reception in the sixteenth century. It makes the case that Machiavelli's inductive reasoning and stress on historia and experientia offered a model for scientific method that open-minded sixteenth-century scholars, eager to understand, organise and augment human knowledge (scientia), could fit to their own epistemology. By focusing on the question of method—a crucial issue for sixteenth-century contemporaries—the paper offers more than a key to the understanding of Machiavelli's positive reception. It also helps in apprehending the crucial importance of Lucretius to Machiavelli's scholarship; the role of the late Renaissance fascination with historia in his reception; and the breadth of appropriation of his method exactly in the decades when anti-Machiavellianism became official politics all over Europe. These claims are sustained through the cases of Machiavelli's early translators and promulgators; the French legal humanists and historiographers; the Swiss, Italian and French scholars engaging with medicine, Paracelsism and astronomy; the authors of political maxims from all over Europe; and finally Francis Bacon.     

Piero Gobetti and the Liberal Revolution in Italy

Abstract

Piero Gobetti, who died at an early age in 1926 after a severe beating by Fascist squadristi, is one of the most remarkable figures in twentieth‐century Italian culture. A writer and thinker with deep political commitment, Gobetti launched the reviews and journals during the political crisis in Italy between 1918 and 1925 which provided a meeting point for the otherwise dispersed forces of the Italian Left. The republication of his essay ‘The Liberal Revolution. An Essay of the Political Struggle in Italy’ ‐ the fifth edition since it first appeared in 1924 — has reopened the debate on Gobetti and provides an opportunity to consider Gobetti's ideas outside the context of the often politically motivated interpretations that have been placed on them.     

Rousseau's Discarded Children: The Panoply of Excuses and the Question of Hypocrisy

Summary

Although Rousseau's treatment of his children has provoked much controversy, sustained and scholarly discussions are rare. This study is the first to present the evidence comprehensively and systematically. It engages each of Rousseau's contentions about his children in order to carefully discern the significance of this episode for his life and work. It offers an analytical table of each rationale—nineteen different ones, of five major types. It discusses documents of 1751 and 1778 which strongly defend the actions, the ambiguous arguments in the Second Part of the Confessions (1769–1770), the oscillations in the period surrounding the Confessions (1764–1770), and finally the development of unqualified remorse in the middle period of Emile (1757–1762). It concludes by advancing a middle position between those who ultimately see his behaviour and associated excuses as demonstrating his unchecked individualism and subjectivism, and those who ultimately absolve this episode in order to find him a moralist in good standing.     

Jakob Philipp Fallmerayer and George Finlay

Abstract

The collection of Finlay Papers in the British School at Athens though throwing invaluable light on the character of George Finlay and on conditions in the Greece and western Europe of his day, are by no means complete in their coverage. The diaries cover only certain years; the Letter Book records mainly family and business correspondence; the actual copies of surviving letters both to and from Finlay—apart from Finlay to Leake or Leicester Warren—seem to owe their preservation to chance rather than policy. Yet Finlay was no less interested in the history of Trebizond than in Greek topography or in numismatics, and a stray survival among his papers seems to indicate that he had closer relations with Fallmerayer than is suggested by the almost total omission of any reference to him in the works on the Fragmentist (as Fallmerayer called himself). The editor of Fallmerayer's collected works, his best friend G. M. Thomas (the ‘carissimus Thomas’ of the Tagebücher), does mention the generosity of Fallmerayer's attitude towards Finlay's work on Trebizond, but that is about all.     

Philosophy of sport

Ernest Gellner was, by all accounts, one of the most unconventional thinkers of the twentieth century. Not only was the content of his theories often strikingly original, but he also arrived at them by use of a singularly personal thought-style. The article describes the most salient features of this thought-style: his quest for overviews, on the one hand, and for penetrating and unexpected insights, on the other, his opposition to what he perceived as humanistic complacency, his academic elitism, and much else. In the final section, an assessment of the most conspicuous feature of Gellner's thought-style—his tendency to downplay the importance of detail and to focus on high-level theory—is given. It is argued that this characteristic served Gellner better in philosophy and the history of ideas than in the social sciences.     

Lincoln's Reflective Patriotism

Abstract

In speech and deed, Lincoln's statesmanship manifests the possibility of an honorable, reasonable, and just love of country—that is, a reflective patriotism imbued by a republican love of liberty under God's Providence. In his speeches and writings, Lincoln consistently underscored that love of country must be governed by “reason,” “wisdom,” and “intelligence.” Thus, in his First Inaugural, March 4, 1861, he characteristically appealed to the combined forces of “Intelligence, patriotism, Christianity, and a firm reliance on Him, who has never yet forsaken this favored land.” Lincoln's reflective patriotism was nurtured by his gratitude to the Founders and measured by his fidelity to a national Union dedicated to the universal moral principles of the Declaration under the particular rule of law established by the Constitution. Historically, it was articulated as an alternative to rival forms of allegiance that Lincoln opposed as both unjust and unreasonable during the Civil War era—namely, sectionalism, nativism, and the imperialism of Manifest Destiny. Each of these disordered forms of love threatened the inseparable moral and fraternal bonds of liberty and Union that Lincoln sought to perpetuate through an ordinate love of country guided by wisdom and critical self-awareness. Lincoln's Eulogy to Henry Clay, June 6, 1852 provides the most cogent expression of his reflective patriotism.     

Teaching Political Science in China: Observations and Suggestions from a Foreign Visitor

Abstract

In responding to the other participants in the Symposium on Plato's Philosophers I attempt to clarify the reasons for, and the results of, my attempt to bring out the interrelations among the dialogues in order to determine what Plato thought. Recognizing that the indications of the dramatic dates of some the dialogues are controversial, I argue that the dates point to an over-arching narrative–the story of the rise, development, and limitations of Socratic philosophy. Plato uses his other philosophers—the Athenian Stranger, Parmenides, Timaeus, and the Eleatic Stranger—to bring out the problems that gave rise to Socratic philosophy and the limitations of his responses. Plato makes Socrates his “hero,” because Socrates provides the best account of the human beings who engage in the search for wisdom. By contrasting him with the other philosophers, Plato dramatizes the insoluble problems that make philosophy always a search for wisdom.     

Practical Hagiography: James of Voragine’s Sermones and Vita on St Margaret of Antioch

Abstract

In addition to his exceedingly popular Legenda Aurea, James of Voragine wrote in another hagiographical genre: sermons on the saints. The Sermones de sanctis likewise became immediately popular, as his Dominican brothers used James’s model sermons to learn to preach about the saints in a format that would provide the laity with intelligible and practical theological instruction. James’s corpus gives us a rather unusual opportunity to compare the ways in which a single author manipulates multiple hagiographical genres, and his writings on St Margaret of Antioch allow us to explore how a medieval preacher used a historically disputed saint — a dragon-fighter — to provide a practical model of sanctity to his lay audience. I compare the representations of Margaret in James’s sermones and vita, arguing that James adapted certain features of Margaret’s saintly example in the vita to instruct the audience of his sermons about proper Christian virtues and actions. As a point of comparison, I explore a sermon by Évrard of Val des Écoliers in which the Augustinian teaches his audience a practical skill — how to pray — through Margaret’s example.     

Spiritual Warfare in Machiavelli's Prince

Machiavelli uses metaphors to convey meaning beyond the surface of his text. Access to his metaphors often begins via his “mistakes,” such as his calling (in chapter 12 of the Prince) Philip II of Macedon a “mercenary,” when in fact Philip was no such thing. This article focuses on chapters 12–14 of The Prince and explores the metaphoric meanings of Machiavelli's four types of soldiers—mercenary, auxiliary, mixed, and one's own—to explicate Machiavelli's account of how the mind of the West was conquered via “spiritual warfare.” It then explains Machiavelli's strategy for re-conquest by a new spiritual army trained by Machiavelli that will fight to defeat the regnant spiritual power and further Machiavelli's new principles.     

Genealogical narrative and self-knowledge in Rousseau's Discourse on the Origin and the Foundations of Inequality among Men

SUMMARY

Why did Rousseau cast the substance of the Second Discourse in the form of a genealogy? In this essay the author attempts to work out the relation between the literary form (genealogical narrative, as the author calls it) of the Discourse's two main parts and the content. A key thesis of Rousseau's text concerns our lack of self-knowledge, indeed, our ignorance of our ignorance. The author argues that in a number of ways genealogical narrative is meant to respond to that lack. In the course of his discussion he comments on Rousseau's puzzling remarks in the Second Discourse about his expository method. Further, given the thesis that we lack self-knowledge, Rousseau owes us an account of his genesis as self-knowing genealogist. He attempts to do so in part through his narrative of the ‘illumination of Vincennes’. The author examines that narrative as well, reading it and the Discourse in light of each other. Can Rousseau resolve the problems of self-reference that the philosophical use of genealogy often leads to? The article discusses this complex metaphilosophical problem, along with views about the value of genealogical accounts, in light of recent work by Robert Guay, John Kekes, Alasdair MacIntyre, and Frederick Neuhouser, among others.     

French Eighteenth-Century Materialists and Natural Law

Summary

This article looks at the discussions of natural law by the eighteenth-century French materialists Julien Offray de La Mettre, Denis Diderot, Paul Thiry d'Holbach and Claude-Adrien Helvétius. It is particularly concerned with their discussion of moral values and their attempt to find a materialistic basis for them as part of their rejection of religion. The discussion brings out the différences between them and analyses their dialogues on this question, including the other materialists' rejection of La Mettrie's amoralism, which threatened to undermine their attempt to found a natural law taught by experience and based on human nature. Particular attention is paid to Diderot's many writings which grapple with the subject, beginning with his Encyclopédie article droit naturel, probably written in 1754. He discussed the question in many of his later writings, including in his annotations on the works of Helvétius, who based natural law on the general interest. These writings reveal a tension between Diderot's emphasis on the search for individual happiness and the interests of society as he, together with d'Holbach, attempted to provide a natural basis for morality and government from which to criticise existing institutions.     

Hits,Misses and Close Calls: An Image Essay on Pattern Formation in On Growth and Form

Abstract

The second edition of D’Arcy Thompson’s On Growth and Form was written only shortly before the advent of computers made it possible to develop more sophisticated mathematical models of processes of growth, morphogenesis and pattern formation in nature. It also predates the blossoming of several branches of science with the conceptual tools to investigate complex phenomena such as self-organization, nonlinear dynamics and chaos, fractal geometry and self-organization. As a result, Thompson’s aspirations sometimes fall short of his means — and occasionally he sets out on the wrong path. This image essay explores some of the instances in which Thompson surpassed his limitations or, alternatively, was constrained by them. In either circumstance, it illustrates how his themes remain areas of significant scientific activity today.     

Illustrations of the History of Knitting Selected from the Collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum

Abstract

Based on new archival findings, this essay maps the life and business strategies of Brussels tapissiers Albert Auwercx and Judocus de Vos. It shows that categorising Auwerxc as a minor tapissier — a label he was assigned in the past — ignores the underlying structure and dynamics of the industry. Brussels tapissiers created an intricate web of social networks that generated trust, which paved the way for semi-structured and flexible cooperation between small firms. Judocus de Vos also belonged to the Brussels social and production networks but made his name as a commercial link and broker between Brussels, the Antwerp-Oudenarde production and trading complex, and the European élite — particularly after 1719 when he handed over the reins and assets of the De Vos workshop to his brother Jan-Frans.     

Jacob Vernet and ‘The Religious Enlightenment’: ‘Rational Calvinism’, the Pastors of Geneva and the French philosophes

Summary

In this article I react to dismissive remarks made about my Jacob Vernet, Geneva and the philosophes (1994) in a recent book by David Sorkin, The Religious Enlightenment (2008). Vernet, a distinguished Genevan pastor and theologian, who fell foul of d'Alembert, Voltaire and Rousseau, is one of six figures studied by Sorkin, who claims that the religious dimension of the Enlightenment has been much underestimated and that the philosophes were considerably less significant than has usually been thought. Reacting to the accusation that my treatment of Vernet's theology was superficial and unreliable, I reconsider the latter's major theological works (including his Traité de la vérité de la religion chrétienne, Instruction chrétienne, and Pièces fugitives sur l'eucharistie) in an attempt to validate my previous interpretation, and illustrate that Vernet refused to acknowledge ideas that he had actually published. The second part of the article draws more general conclusions, pointing out spectacular errors in Sorkin's depiction of eighteenth-century Geneva and arguing that he has a clear agenda, which, in my opinion, is wrong-headed, easy to refute and—above all—often based on gratuitous accusations and statements lacking any evidence.