Secular Advice in Erasmus’s Sacred Writings

Research into Erasmus’s political ideas, notably his pacifism, should not be based on sources like Institutio Principis Christiani, Querela Pacis, or Dulce Bellum, which are rhetorical compositions and offer clichés rather than Erasmus’s personal opinions. At the very least, these sources should be checked against Erasmus’s theological writings, in which he presents specific and cogent arguments for his views and allows us to put them into their proper context.     

Johannes Althusius’ Politica : The Culmination of Calvin's Right of Resistance

Jean Calvin's writings on the resistance to a tyrannical ruler appear as an addendum to his Institutes of the Christian Religion, but despite their limited discussion, his followers based their own writings on his original discussion of resistance. The most celebrated of these Calvinist tracts on resistance was the Vindiciae Contra Tyrannos written as a result of the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre. This article argues that, whilst the Vindiciae is an important example of Calvinist resistance, an even more significant, but forgotten, Calvinist resistance theory can be found in Johannes Althusius’ Politica Methodice Digesta, Atque Exemplis Sacris Et Profanis Illustrata. Furthermore, the similarities in the social, political and religious position of both Althusius and Calvin, as well as their geographical location in Emden and Geneva respectively, allows Althusius’ work to be seen as the natural culmination of Calvin's original work on the right of resistance.     

“Genocide is Fascism in Action”: Aron Trainin and Soviet Portrayals of Genocide

ABSTRACT

This article examines the Soviet legal scholar Aron Trainin’s evolving writings on international law. Initially, Trainin formulated aspects of his concept of “crimes against peace” as a sort of Soviet alternative to Raphael Lemkin’s crimes of barbarity and vandalism. Crimes against peace both converged with the larger international movement to outlaw aggressive war, provided a Soviet alternative to proposed international crimes that they believed would threaten Soviet sovereignty, and provided a Soviet response to Lemkin’s proposals to outlaw mass killings. During World War II, Trainin articulated the Nazi extermination of the Jews as “crimes against peaceful civilians,” linking the Nazi atrocities to his concept of crimes against peace. Trainin’s concept of “crimes against peaceful civilians” encompassed the atrocities of the Holocaust while also asserting that the Soviet experience of the war – most notably Soviet sacrifice and suffering – meant that the Soviets should determine how international criminal law punished the war’s perpetrators. After World War II, when it became clear that genocide, rather than “crimes against peace” or “crimes against peaceful civilians,” was becoming the primary concept in international law to understand mass killings, Trainin portrayed the concept of genocide according to the perspective of Soviet propaganda, opposing an international criminal court for genocide, supporting the concept of cultural genocide, and portraying genocide as an inevitable outcome of capitalism. At the same time, Trainin and the Soviets never abandoned his concept of “crimes against peace,” portraying capitalism as inherently bound up with war and genocide. Trainin was the most significant genocide scholar in the Soviet Union, and his work exemplifies both the ways in which Soviet approaches to international law converged with other approaches, and the ways in which the Soviet Union diverged from non-Soviet international law.     

Introduction

Alberto Moravia was an ambiguous figure for the Fascists. His first novel, Gli Indifferenti, was an international success, and was praised by Bottai. His second novel, Le ambizioni sbagliate, ran into difficulties with Fascist censorship. His maternal uncle was a member of Mussolini's government. His paternal first cousins were Carlo and Nello Rosselli. This essay explores Moravia's relations with the regime in the light of archival evidence, contemporary ‘revisions’ of his reputation and recent controversy over his letters to Ciano and Mussolini.     

Erasmus’ ethnological hierarchy of peoples and races

No comprehensive research of Erasmus’ ethnological mind has been published, so far. Erasmus’ attitudes toward Turks and Jews were discussed analytically but not synthetically or comparatively. An attempt to widen the ethnological scope and to define and classify Erasmus’ attitudes toward different non-Christian groups is presented here. Christian Europeans (populus Christianus) were at the top of Erasmus’ echelon. Second to them were ‘half-Christians’, i.e. Turks, or Muslims in general. Below them were Jews, and lower in the hierarchy were black Africans (Aethiopes). Yet, no one was unworthy of conversion to Christianity, even barbarians of the third kind – according to Bartolomé Las Casas’ sort – the most inferior barbarians, slaves by nature, as defined by Aristotle. According to Las Casas, these barbarians were too low to ask for God and were not candidates for conversion to Christianity. Erasmus’ believed that Barbarians of any kind deserved Christianity without being brutally forced to accept it. Yet, in practice, converts from Judaism to Christianity were rated, even by Erasmus, as lower than Christians. This, in addition to the principle that Christian peace excludes war against the Turks, is the very essence of Erasmus’ pax et concordia.     

From Beyond the Grave and Across the Ocean: Washington Irving and the Problem of Being a Questioning American, 1809–20

This article is a reconsideration of Washington Irving’s early career between the productions of his first two major works: A History of New York (1809) and The Sketch Book (1819–20). His life and writings in that period are treated as a study in the individual problem of being a ‘questioning American,’ specifically a questioning American writer, in the new republic, and as a broader critique of the developing new nation. Specifically it places those writings in dialogue with the dominant Jeffersonian narrative of a glorious national future. It thus rediscovers Irving as a critical alternative witness to this important period in American history and the entwined attempt to critique his country and to come to terms with it as the central, underappreciated theme both in neglected writings (his contributions to the Analectic Magazine (1812–15)) and familiar tales (Rip van Winkle, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow).     

Giordano Bruno's Infinitely Numerous Worlds and ‘Lunar’ Literature

This paper analyses Giordano Bruno's dialogue De l’infinito universo e mondi (The Infinite Universe and Worlds), written during his stay in England (1583–85), in the context of his philosophical works and, particularly, within the context of scientific and imaginative writings such as Cyrano de Bergerac's Other Worlds (published posthumously in 1662) and Francis Godwin's The Man in the Moone (1638). The article also discusses the contemporary speculations of Galileo and Kepler regarding the existence of a plurality of worlds and the presence of creatures on the moon and their rapport with humans. Besides the imaginative, fantastic and pseudoscientific elements, attention is also given to religious implications and attitudes, especially in the case of Godwin, who, like his countryman John Wilkins—author of The Discovery of the Worlde in the Moone (1638)–was a bishop and therefore wanted to avoid any controversy with the church.     

Hobbes and Corneille on Political Representation

In this essay, I compare the meaning of political representation in Hobbes’ Leviathan and Corneille's Cinna. For both authors, a monarch is a “representer” and representation is a necessary condition of effective sovereignty. However, the term “representation” means something entirely different in Hobbes and in Corneille. For the former, it means acting and speaking in the name of a multitude and in its absence; for the latter, it means acting and speaking in the presence of a political public, with the intention to impress this audience. I would like to argue that our late modern (or postmodern) conception of sovereignty can be seen as being (unconsciously) based on the conjunction of Hobbes’ and Corneille's different notions of representation.     

The long road to religious toleration: Emeric Crucé predecessor of the enlightenment

ABSTRACT

Le Nouveau Cynée has been neglected and little cited by Anglo-American historians of political thought, and its author, Emeric Crucé, considered a secondary figure and nearly forgotten. Why is he largely ignored if his book offers the broadest notion of toleration of its time, along with new and original proposals to make peace and organize the world without distinction as to religion and race? Indeed, his peace plan compared with Sully’s, Saint-Pierre’s or Leibniz’s was the only one not addressed exclusively to Christians, but which incorporated all kinds of people, no matter what their religion was. And he did so at a time when the Turks were considered by Christian kings to be their natural enemies, since their threat to Christianity was constant. Besides, his concept of toleration goes beyond that of the so-called champions of toleration of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries such as Locke, Pierre Bayle, Voltaire, Rousseau or Kant. Thus, he can be regarded, along with Spinoza, as one of the most tolerant authors prior to Enlightenment.     

In Search of the Absolute: the Nouvelle Revue française,and Uses and Meanings of the Orient (1920–1930)

In the intellectual history of the interwar period, the Nouvelle Revue française (NRF) occupies centre-stage. Valéry's essay La crise de l'esprit (1919), published in the review following the Great War, announced a crisis of faith in Western values and traditions. As elsewhere, intellectuals in France looked to the East for new inspirations. This article traces the interest and attraction of the East for certain key NRF writers, including André Malraux, and the teacher and philosopher, Jean Grenier, whose essay Sur l'Inde was published in the review in 1930. The article is informed partly by the correspondence of Jean Paulhan, the editor of the NRF.     

Pebbles and Peregrinatio: The Taskscape of Medieval Devotion on Inishark Island,Ireland

SINCE 2008, the island of Inishark, Co Galway, Ireland, has been the subject of archaeological research by the Cultural Landscapes of the Irish Coast (CLIC) project, directed by Ian Kuijt of the University of Notre Dame. The CLIC project’s excavations have produced new evidence for the use of water-smoothed pebbles within monastic and pilgrimage practices on the island. Using a relational perspective centred on the concept of ‘taskscape’, this article traces the formation, acquisition, manipulation, and deposition of these pebbles by human and non-human agencies and suggests how the stones may have facilitated worshippers’ embodiment of penitential devotion — peregrinatio — by evoking the divine governance of hydrological forces. Relational theory, although inspired by non-Western indigenous perspectives, is shown to be effective in shedding light on the interplay of bodies, language, objects, and environmental phenomena in early medieval and medieval Irish Christian practice.     

Oswald Spengler,Technology, and Human Nature

Oswald Spengler (1880–1936) is a neglected figure in the history of European philosophical thought. This article examines the philosophical anthropology developed in his later work, particularly his Man and Technics: A Contribution to a Philosophy of Life (1931). My purpose is twofold: the first is to argue that Spengler's later thought is a response to criticisms of the “pessimism” of his earlier work, The Decline of the West (1919). Man and Technics overcomes this charge by providing a novel philosophical anthropology which identifies technology as the highest expression of human cognitive and creative capacities. The second is to suggest that in his later period Spengler presents an affirmatory account of modern technology as the final stage of human cultural evolution. I conclude that by providing a philosophical anthropology that reconciles technology with human nature, Man and Technics represents an important development of Spengler's theory of human culture.     

Negara Ubud: The Theatre‐state in Twenty‐first‐century Bali

In his book Negara: The Theatre‐state in Nineteenth‐century Bali (1980), Clifford Geertz argued that ceremonial display, rather than material power, was the real basis and indeed the purpose of pre‐colonial states in Bali, and by extension South East Asia. This article argues, on the basis of historical and ethnographic evidence from one of these kingdoms, that he was largely wrong about pre‐colonial Bali, but that, ironically and presciently, his model makes increasing sense in early twenty‐first century Bali. The article also discusses the reasons for this and finally suggests a more dynamic model based on Bourdieu’s metaphor of material and symbolic capital, which seeks to bring Geertz’s essentially static model to historical life.     

东京审判法官视角下的天皇责任——以韦伯庭长为例

在二战结束后的东京A级战犯审判中,裕仁天皇虽然没有成为被告,但其战争责任问题却留在法庭的视野中。随着庭审的推进,作为东京审判庭长的威廉·韦伯对这一问题的立场从最初的“天皇不应受审”转变为“天皇应责而未责”。但韦伯将天皇归为和平主义者,未将他与28名A级被告视作一个阴谋团体,进而影响了韦伯对被告在“共同谋议”侵略问题上的判断。从韦伯庭长在天皇责任问题上的立场及其形成过程来看,一方面体现了东京审判法官在司法上的独立性,另一方面也体现出东京审判作为一场国际性的大型司法实践的复杂性。     

The Aims of Knowledge: Emile Durkheim's Critique of American Pragmatism

The lectures on American pragmatism given by the French sociologist Emile Durkheim in 1913 in Paris were first published in French in 1955 and finally translated into English and published in 1983 as Pragmatism and Sociology. For obvious reasons they have attracted considerable attention from philosophers and sociologists, especially the latter, in both continental Europe and the English speaking world. Durkheim's motives in giving the lectures have been scrutinized, his interpretations of the pragmatists widely discussed and his criticisms of William James, John Dewey, and F. S. C. Schiller have met with mixed receptions. However, after years of scholarly discourse on his motives, interpretations and criticisms, there is no common agreement on the significance and meaning of Pragmatism and Sociology. We briefly address the disagreement over Durkheim's motives in the introductory section before turning to our interpretation in the body of the article. There we focus on his criticisms of the pragmatists’ views on the aims and nature of knowledge, which is a classic confrontation between French rationalism à la Durkheim and American pragmatism of the James/Dewey variant.     

Voices from the Kibbutz: Four Mothers,New Profile,and Women in Black

If there is any social organization that has provided a powerful illustration of the permeable boundaries between social politics—defined by Stephen M. Buechler as “forms of collective action that challenge power relations without an explicit focus on the state”—and social movements, and the role of collective identity in transforming either, as defined for women by Betty Friedan—it would be the Israeli kibbutz movement. The research presented here on grassroots Israeli women activists, a significant proportion of whom had grown up or had lived in a kibbutz, suggests that the social politics of everyday life on a kibbutz facilitated women's participation in larger social movements for peace, but also placed constraints on their activism. Many of these women had left or were in the process of leaving the kibbutz between 1989 and 1999, when this research was conducted. Those who had already left, and anchor women who organized urban demonstrations, saw the kibbutz as a conservative anti-woman force. Nonetheless, evidence gathered from qualitative interviewing with them suggests that the kibbutzim supported women who were politically active on national issues. Several women-led social protest movements illustrate how the kibbutz geared its members to think about the interplay of the moral and social orders in the small spaces of everyday life.     

Popular culture in seventeenth-century England

Carl Schmitt emphatically rejected intermediate formations between peace and war. Analysing Schmitt's oscillation between the domestic and the international, the article suggests that the notion of ‘intermediate state’ provides a vital route to the core of Schmitt's political theory. The concept emerges in Schmitt's analysis of the Rhineland crisis, recurs in his vehement critique of Weimar pluralism, and, finally, reappears in his theory of modern war from the Third Reich to the Cold War. ‘Intermediate state’ has both qualitative and temporal aspects; it connotes not only categorical confusion and impurity but also instability and limited duration. Despite his criticism, Schmitt himself utilised the ambiguity, polysemy, and normative ambivalence of the intermediate state in his argumentation, finally giving it an open theological reinterpretation in his later work. Schmitt's theory of political conflict, consequently, is problematically bound to the vague intermediate state of perpetual conflict that he sought to avoid, and to the metaphorical aspects of the notion of battle that he explicitly rejected.     

How God Disappeared from Europe: Visions of a United Europe from Erasmus to Kant

This article traces the development of European ideas of peace and unity from the time of Desiderius Erasmus to Immanuel Kant. The argument will be made that these ideas, which were initially strongly determined by Christian religious thinking, gradually changed, and from the seventeenth century onwards were put forward in more political and legal terms. Erasmus's way of reasoning about peace and war was still strongly influenced by his firm orientation on the New Testament and the teachings of Jesus Christ. Emeric Crucé, a French writer, was of the opinion that all human beings in the end had God in common, and so had to live peacefully together. Duc de Sully was one of the first not to argue as a religious man but as a politician: a system of balance of power could bring international stability. According to the English Quaker William Penn and the French Abbé de Saint-Pierre only the acceptance of international rules of justice could produce everlasting peace. Immanuel Kant finally directed attention to the form of government and to the founding of a federation of free republics. So God seems to have disappeared from Europe?…?but with what consequences for today?     

Pigments from the Zuiddorp (Zuytdorp) ship sculpture: red,white and blue?

SUMMARY: The Dutch East India Company ship Zuiddorp (also known as Zuytdorp) met its demise in 1712 at the base of steep cliffs along the Western Australian coast. Material from the shipwreck includes an extraordinary example of a caryatid herm from the ship’s stern counter. A recent study of this sculpture and the pigments found on its surface demonstrates Zuiddorp’s archaic stern construction and adornment, which is more of a late 17th-century, than an early 18th-century, Dutch Indiaman. This paper discusses the results of this study and emphasizes how the smallest pieces of evidence can broaden our understanding of contemporaneous regional Dutch East India Company shipbuilding practices.