Kypros,Tourkia kai ellinismos

Gianrinaldo Carli was a central figure in the origin of the Milanese Enlightenment of the late eighteenth century. Carli's political career as well as his works connected him both to the mid-century reforms by Pompeo Neri and to the times of Beccaria and the Verri brothers—the heyday of Lombard intellectual life in Europe. Not originally from Lombardy, but from the Venetian periphery, Carli became an erudite scholar of witchcraft and magic and an influential functionary of the Habsburg administration in Milan. He remains most famous for his works on money and his contributions to the journal Il Caffè. Most of his later political writings, which were widely circulated in Italy following the American Revolution, originated in debates with Pietro Verri over the nature of Natural Law, of the Social Contract, and the relationship between patriotism and cosmopolitanism. They illustrate key aspects of Lombard political culture of the 1780s: a culture that was critical of Rousseau, trustful of the reformist experience and supportive of Enlightened Absolutism. Within this context, Carli's works have traditionally been difficult to place.     

When Nazi dreams come true: The third Reich's internal struggle over the future of Europe after a German victory

In the present article it is argued that Pieter de la Court's Political Maxims of the State of Holland presented a remarkably consistent grand strategy for Holland in relation to its Dutch allies and the European powers. I present an outline of this strategy, which was built around the accomplishment and defence of commercial goals; I sketch a historical context that takes into account the general historical shift from tribute-taking agrarian societies towards commercial wealth-generating polities, and also the violent contemporary military and ideological background against which De la Court's strategy stands out; I argue that his strategy can be understood by his use of three basic game theoretic concepts (prisoner's dilemma, assurance game and free-riding); and I stress the distinctive character of De la Court's work, by comparing the practical and strategic use of these concepts in the Maxims with the function of the same concepts in the philosophical contract theories of Thomas Hobbes and Benedict de Spinoza.     

Reconsidering John Sergeant's Attacks on Locke's Essay

The Catholic polemicist John Sergeant published three major works of philosophy towards the end of his literary career, The Method to Science (1696), Solid Philosophy (1697) and Metaphysics (1700). They were highly critical of what Sergeant saw as the idea‐grounded epistemology of the Cartesians and John Locke, whom he labelled ‘ideists’. Previous scholars have interpreted Sergeant's texts as manifestations of his lifelong obsession with certainty, as initially developed in his Restoration polemics against Anglican divines. Using a previously neglected autobiographical letter, it is demonstrated that Sergeant's intentions were very different. Like Edward Stillingfleet and other critics, Sergeant saw Locke's philosophy as inspiring contemporary heterodoxy. The article identifies the specific channels by which Sergeant saw Lockeanism seeping into irreligion. Moreover, unlike Locke's Anglican critics, Sergeant resorted not to polemical accusations, but to abstract philosophy. This must also be explained contextually: Sergeant wished his works to become textbooks at the universities, concerned as he was by the pedagogical impact of the Essay. A premise of this article is that reception history is less useful for elucidating on the meaning of the received text than for telling us something about the intentions of the receiver, and about the intellectual culture in which the process of reception occurs. With this in mind, the article finishes by recontextualizing Sergeant's works within a broader narrative: his was an attempt to reassert the place of philosophy as a propaedeutic to theology in an age when such a conception of philosophy's social role was coming under intense scrutiny.     

Restorationist Counter‐Enlightenment: Thomas M'Crie on the Concept of Civil Liberty

Enlightenment notions for Counter‐Enlightenment purposes have not to date been used to provide a comprehensive context for Scottish religious history‐writing in the age of Counter‐Revolution and Restoration. The Evangelical historian and divine Thomas M'Crie's studies on Scottish Reformation history, Life of John Knox and Life of Andrew Melville, published in 1811 and 1819 respectively, exhibit an abundance of historiographical material for research. M'Crie was among the most renowned writers of his own time, but his historical works have been briefly passed over in recent secondary sources. The main purpose of this study is to rescue M'Crie's historical works on the Scottish Reformation past from near oblivion. This article argues that M'Crie produced an apology for the Scottish Reformation, adopting an aggressive style that attacked Scottish Enlightenment historians and thinkers such as William Robertson and David Hume, especially in the matter of their treatment of John Knox and Andrew Melville. M'Crie tried to restore his chosen past in order to influence the religious and political affairs of Scotland. In M'Crie's Counter‐Enlightenment historiography, the concept of civil liberty and Presbyterianism become interchangeable in a Restorationist religio‐political discourse. That is why M'Crie's enthusiasm for the Scottish Reformation constitutes the most representative example of the Presbyterian interpretation, which held its own against Enlightenment influence.     

Gianrinaldo Carli at the centre of the Milanese Enlightenment

Gianrinaldo Carli was a central figure in the origin of the Milanese Enlightenment of the late eighteenth century. Carli's political career as well as his works connected him both to the mid-century reforms by Pompeo Neri and to the times of Beccaria and the Verri brothers—the heyday of Lombard intellectual life in Europe. Not originally from Lombardy, but from the Venetian periphery, Carli became an erudite scholar of witchcraft and magic and an influential functionary of the Habsburg administration in Milan. He remains most famous for his works on money and his contributions to the journal Il Caffè. Most of his later political writings, which were widely circulated in Italy following the American Revolution, originated in debates with Pietro Verri over the nature of Natural Law, of the Social Contract, and the relationship between patriotism and cosmopolitanism. They illustrate key aspects of Lombard political culture of the 1780s: a culture that was critical of Rousseau, trustful of the reformist experience and supportive of Enlightened Absolutism. Within this context, Carli's works have traditionally been difficult to place.     

Selected writings on Philosophy,Religion and Politics

Benedetto Croce was the author of the most important and original theory of history in the 20th century. His theory was that of ‘absolute historicism’, and this necessarily entailed an acute critique of inherited ideas about the Enlightenment. This article studies both Croce's theoretical analysis of Enlightenment and his historical analysis of the Neapolitan Enlightenment. Croce's interest in the Enlightenment had political as well as philosophical roots. All over Europe in the 1920s and 1930s historical and theoretical research was occurring into in the Age of Enlightenment. The broad goal of such research was to bring forth a new concept of reason, which would have purchase in the contemporary debate about rationalism and irrationalism. This debate, which flourished in the era of totalitarian regimes, raised a series of further questions: What was culture? What was the task of culture in the fight against political irrationalism? What was the relationship between culture and the growth of public opinion? With respect to the latter relationship an important role was played by intellectuals, as evinced by the works of Benda, Max Weber and Croce himself. The genealogy of the modern intelligentsia led again to Enlightenment. In the third part of the article Croce's position on this issue is discussed in the light of his historical researches on Enlightenment by reference to his correspondence with two young historians, Delio Cantimori and Franco Venturi.     

British national interest in the Gulf: rediscovering a role?

The British government is in the process of re‐energizing its relations with the Gulf states. A new Gulf strategy involving a range of activities including more frequent elite bilateral visits and proposals sometimes touted as Britain's military ‘return to east of Suez’ are two key elements of the overarching strategy. Such polices are designed to fall in line with British national interest as identified by the government‐authored 2010 National Security Strategy (NSS), which emphasizes the importance of security, trade, and promoting and expanding British values and influence as perennial British raisons d'etat. In the short term, the Gulf initiatives reflect and compliment these core interests, partly based on Britain's historical role in the region, but mostly thanks to modern day trade interdependencies and mutually beneficial security‐based cooperation. However, there is yet to emerge a coherent understanding of Britain's longer‐term national interest in the region. Instead, government‐led, party‐political priorities, at the expense of thorough apolitical analysis of long‐term interests, appear to be unduly influential on the origins of both the Gulf proposals and the NSS conclusions themselves. Without a clear strategic, neutral grounding, both the Gulf prioritization and the NSS itself are weakened and their longevity undermined.     

Martin Luther's Use of Rhetorical Masks for Jews,Princes, Clerics,and other Enemies: The Problem of Meaning in a Post Modern Age

In modern times, there is a common widespread and common misunderstanding of Martin Luther's views on Jews, Peasants, Clergy, Women, and Princes. An analysis of Luther's rhetorical use of “masks” as metaphors will help us understand that he was not the father of anti‐Semitism, or of political and social elitism. The purpose of this article is to explore and understand Luther's rhetorical intent in the context of early modern German culture. The central thesis of this article is that Martin Luther may have had in his use of rhetorical masks in his public discourse a hidden communicative strategy. Often his masks involved vulgar, crude, and violent words in his attempt to stimulate and persuade public opinion. Does language have consistent long‐term meaning regardless of context? Michael Giesecke, a professor of German linguistics, correctly argues that each cultural period develops its own ways of triadic perception that involves thinking, acting, and communicating. New ways of processing information as we now see in the electronic revolution holds true in the cultural shift in the sixteenth century fostered by the printing press. The new medium of printed works forces a new way of thinking in every affected age. Our problem is to understand the “new way.”     

Displacing Barthes: Self,Other and the Anxiety of Theory

This article explores the relationship between the other and the writing self in three of Barthes's works and shows how the anxious and changeable state of the ‘je’ unsettles conceptions of ‘theory’ and its analytical object. Barthes attempts to conceptualise cultural otherness in Mythologies, L'Empire des signes and Incidents, and, on one level, his fantasies of encounter serve to displace or unground the writing ‘self’. On another level, however, the theorist's persona in these works turns out to be disorientated and unnerved by these displacements, and he couples his jubilant self-dissolution with a longing for a sense of origin or ground. Barthes as a result remains undecided about his positioning within his own discourse, and his works demonstrate the necessary interpenetration of theories of alterity with the contradictory subjective and affective desires of the writing self. The aim of the piece is ultimately to argue that, for its very flaws and inconsistencies, Barthes's writing about otherness may help us to understand the challenges and deficiencies of postcolonial conceptions of cultural difference.     

Professor C.F.J. Muller as historikus

Joseph Booth's influence on the development of early Christianity in Malâwi has been exaggerated at the expense of the Africans actually involved. Around the turn of the century he introduced a number of industrial missions into the country, but his connection with them was short-lived. Almost as quickly as he set them up he was expelled from their ranks for reasons of financial mismanagement. This happened at least eight times during his missionary career. Money matters proved to be his undoing with Africans as well. Booth's false promises of financial aid to struggling Seventh Day Baptists resulted in an active campaign on their part to rid themselves of him. He also parted ways with John Chilembwe, Elliott Kamwana and Jordan Ansumba. Booth was a man full of contradictions. While preaching brotherhood he quarrelled with everyone; an advocate of Africa for the Africans, he demanded total sub-service from those around him. His anti-colonial message was blighted by taking advantage of a friendship with Harry Johnston to acquire large tracts of land from Africans for very little money. Joseph Booth was an emotionally troubled individual who did more to hinder the spread of Christianity in Central Africa than help it.     

Hobbes on the supernatural from The Elements of Law to Leviathan

Hobbes's unusual religious views in his classical work, Leviathan, are often seen as a product of his attempt to reconcile Christianity with his philosophical materialism. Yet given Hobbes's materialistic view in his earlier works too, this explanatory framework alone is not sufficient for grasping distinctive features of Leviathan. This article remedies this lacuna by paying close attention to an understudied aspect of the development of Hobbes's religious theory from The Elements of Law to Leviathan: his treatment of the supernatural and, particularly, of matters of faith known by supernatural revelation as opposed to natural reason. I argue that over time Hobbes developed an epistemological analysis of supernatural revelation and refined his argument about the sense in which matters of faith are supernatural and about the extent to which they are found in the Bible. It was not materialism per se but the more sophisticated analysis of the supernatural in Leviathan that enabled Hobbes to admit the sphere of the supernatural to a much smaller extent than in De Cive and to discuss in detail what he sees as a matter of faith and beyond the scope of philosophy in De Cive.     

Young Mr. Lincoln in Ford's Theater

In Young Mr. Lincoln, director John Ford and screenwriter Lamar Trotti engage an issue that is central to Ford's films and to Lincoln's political thought. That issue is the tension between individual greatness and the rule of law, a tension heightened in a democracy by the demos's passion for equality. In the film's portrayal of Lincoln, Ford and Trotti suggest a solution to this tension that is fundamentally consistent with the one Lincoln suggested in the Lyceum Address. To remain within the political community, the great man must hold a sincere reverence for the law and be willing to exhibit humility in declaiming his own superiority. In the context of these characteristics, greatness can be a force that preserves the law and protects the community from harm. The film depicts Lincoln as the paradigmatic combination of these characteristics and alludes to his mature leadership based on these commitments in his later career.     

Conservatism under Napoleon: The political writings of Joseph Fiévée

Antonio Genovesi (1713–1769) is known as the thinker who raised a whole generation of Southern Italian intellectuals, among them Francesco Pagano and Gaetano Filangieri. One of the most influential of his works was the notoriously difficult Diceosina, o sia della filosofia del giusto e dell’onesto (1766), a textbook destined for use in the universities. The Diceosina was a powerful, if controversial, attempt to mediate between the history of moral philosophy on the one hand, and the specific problems encountered by eighteenth-century commercial society on the other. In fact, it contained the greater part of Genovesi's political, philosophical, and economic thought; a synthetic guidebook for Neapolitan economic and social development. This essay explores the work's context, rich intellectual origins, and ultimate significance through its long and complicated reception. The cultural and political connotations of Genovesi's Diceosina become particularly evident through an engagement with the works of Ermenegildo Personè, one of the book's most arduous critics.     

Beyond the One-World Frame of Fiction: The Breakdown of Reality in Hushang Golshiri's Stories

The debate over political commitment in Iran was never limited to adjudicating content: it was frequently a debate over form as well. In the realm of fiction, this debate fixated on realism, the nature of mimesis, and the autonomy of art and the literary text. Within a few short years after forming the iconoclastic journal Jong-e Esfahan in 1965 with a group of likeminded colleagues, the writer Hushang Golshiri had become the preeminent modernist fiction writer in Iran. His critical essays represented a passionate defense of aesthetic autonomy at a time when realism and, particularly, socialist and “engaged” literature were powerful shibboleths in the Tehran literary scene. This paper begins with a look at Golshiri's critical interventions in this debate and then moves on to show how the short stories he produced in the Jong era were an even more integral part of his response to the mimesis question. By reading his stories with a methodology drawn from “possible worlds” theories of narratology, Todorov's fantastic, and Golshiri's own theories, we see how these works break down the “one-world” frame of reality that realism takes for granted, and require the reader to grapple with multiple, often contradictory, possible realities in its stead.     

The bishop and the monk: Desiderius of Vienne and the Columbanian movement

This paper analyses the uses made by hagiographers and chroniclers of the character of Desiderius of Vienne. Desiderius, a bishop in Merovingian Burgundy, was the protagonist of two seventh‐century Lives, and appears in numerous other hagiographical works and chronicles. Desiderius also figures prominently in works composed within the context of Columbanian monasticism, most notably Jonas of Bobbio's Vita Columbani. His appearance in these works paints a multifaceted picture not only of his own political activities, but also of the agendas of the hagiographers themselves, who exploited his literary image to further their ends. It is the contention of this paper that despite the frequent mentions of Desiderius in Columbanian compositions, he did not, in fact, play a part in the Columbanians' success.     

The Agathon Scene in Aristophanes’ Thesmophoriazusae

This article interprets Agathon's speech of self-justification in light of its dramaturgical functions within the prologue of Aristophanes’ Thesmophoriazusae. Agathon refutes Inlaw's charges of homosexual effeminacy by outlining a theory of poetic composition according to which the poet changes his nature to create in himself the qualities of his characters and plays. The speech simultaneously works against Agathon's self-justification by portraying the tragedian as an elite intellectual whose theories are only valid within his own isolation.     

Strategy and contingency

The determination that strategy should have a long‐term predictive quality has left strategy seemingly wanting when having to address what are currently called ‘strategic shocks’, such as the recent Arab Spring and the NATO commitment to Libya. The focus on grand strategy, particularly in the US, is responsible for this trend. Its endeavour to mitigate risk in the national interest is inherently conservative, rather than opportunistic, and it is favoured and probably required by powers that are committed to the status quo, that need to manage diminishing resources, and that are dealing with relative decline. Strategy as traditionally but more narrowly defined by generals for use in a military context, is much more exploitative and proactive. Precisely because it is designed to be used in war it presumes that its function is offensive, that it will have to deal with chance and contingency, and that its aim is change. Its task is to deal with the uncertainties of war, and to respond to them while holding on to long‐term perspectives. Clausewitz addressed the issue of ‘war plans’ in book VIII of On war, but the thinker who did most to inject planning into European strategic thought was Jomini. His influence has permeated much of American military thinking. The effect of nuclear planning in the Cold War was to ensure that strategy at the operational level became conflated with broader views of grand strategy—not least when the Cold War itself provided apparent continuity to strategic thought. Since 1990 we have been left with a view of strategy which fails to respond sensibly to chance and accident. Strategy needs context, and a sense of where and against whom it is to be applied. Its core task is to embrace contingency while holding on to long‐term national interests.     

Tradition as a governing theme in the writings of John Cassian

John Cassian has been criticized in recent scholarship for historical inaccuracy – but it is not self‐evident that his works were intended as histories in the sense that is supposed by that criticism. Instead, Cassian presents himself as the promoter of key traditions. This paper describes of Cassian's own thinking about ‘tradition’ as a key theme in his works. To that end, it aims to redress scholarly misgivings about the worth of Cassian's writings by taking them as the transmission of identifiable traditions into early to mid‐fifth‐century Gaul (rather than as documentary evidence for late fourth‐century Egyptian monasticism).     

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.     

Crustcrumbs in the carriage: a cognitive reading of Leopold Bloom in the “Hades” episode of Ulysses

This article investigates a commonly held critical conception of Leopold Bloom by questioning where his cognitive processes are situated. It argues that throughout Joyce's “Hades” episode, Bloom's mind seeps out into the storyworld, offloading onto his material setting. Bloom reflects on his dilemmas using different cognitive markers throughout his environment. As representational cues, they allow him to process his insecurities about his paternal and conjugal roles. A cognitive frame reveals how Bloom's kind acts often originate from his personal and familial preoccupations rather than what has been previously represented as genuine human sympathies. It shows Bloom as even more purposefully strategic than the Homeric parallels identified by most critics have traditionally conceived. Not only do we gain a greater depth of understanding about Bloom's character through an analysis of the situated mind; we also see thematic threads unfolding through objects and characters in ways previous scholarship has not seen. These thematic threads constitute substrata that further disclose the complexity and depth not only to Bloom's character but also Ulysses as a whole.