‘Who Will Write the History of Tears?’ History of Ideas and History of Emotions from Eighteenth-Century France to the Present

Summary

The aim of this article is to shed light on the methodological relationship between the history of ideas and the history of emotions, starting from the conception of weeping in the eighteenth-century French reflection. This period was critical for the defining of the modern concept of emotion because it encompassed the development of a new aesthetic and moral code centred on the exasperation of sensitivity and an exaggerated use of tears. This study brings out, in terms of methodology, the importance that the analysis of tears assumed from two points of view: on the one hand, it places the problem in a framework determined by history and culture (the object of study for the history of emotions); on the other, it recognises the unavoidable axiological and moral element that characterised crying (the object of study for the history of ideas). After a brief reconstruction of the discussion of tears in the history of emotion—from the histoire des mentalités to the ‘emotional turn’—and in the history of ideas, respectively, the article outlines some potential areas for research in an interdisciplinary perspective.     

Doxographical or Philosophical History of Philosophy: On Michael Frede's Precepts for Writing the History of Philosophy

Summary

In a series of articles from the 1980s and 1990s, Michael Frede analysed the history of histories of philosophy written over the last three hundred years. According to Frede, modern scholars have degenerated into what he calls a ‘doxographical’ mode of writing the history of philosophy. Instead, he argued, these scholars should write what he called ‘philosophical’ history of philosophy, first established in the last decades of the seventeenth century but since abandoned. In the present article it is argued that Frede's reconstruction of the history of histories of philosophy is historically problematic.     

Crossing the Great Divides: Hans Aarsleff's Lessons for Nineteenth-Century Intellectual Historians

SUMMARY

This essay discusses Hans Aarsleff's long battle to demonstrate the importance of the French and British thinkers of the mid-eighteenth century to the development of modern linguistic thought. Contesting claims that German scholars were the first to develop historicised theories of language, Aarsleff, along with his Princeton colleagues Lionel Gossman and Anthony Grafton, helped pioneer longue durée studies of the history of philology and of historiography that cross national boundaries as well as the so-called Sattelzeit (stretching from about 1780 until 1820). Although the importance of his work was, for a long time, little appreciated by modern intellectual historians, this essay argues that it is time that we fully learned Aarsleff's lessons.     

Historiographical Foundations of Modern International Thought: Histories of the European States-System from Florence to Göttingen

Summary

The foundations of modern international thought were constructed out of diverse idioms and disciplines. In his impressive book, Foundations of Modern International Thought, David Armitage focuses on the normative idioms of natural law and political philosophy from the Anglophone world, from Hobbes and Locke to Burke and Bentham. I focus on parallel developments in the empirically-oriented disciplines of history and historiography to trace the emergence of histories of the states-system in the Italian- and German-speaking worlds, from Bruni and Sarpi to Pufendorf and Heeren. Taking seriously Armitage's remark that ‘the pivotal moments in the formation of modern international thought were often points of retrospective reconstruction’, I argue that the historical disciplines supplied another significant intellectual context in which the modern world could be imagined as ‘a world of states’.     

The Russian navy as Chartmaker in the eighteenth century

Abstract

The modern period of chart making in Russia began in the reign of Peter the Great. Peter created the country's navy, which became the main focus for cartography in the eighteenth century. In this paper the multi‐faceted duties of naval officers in the charting and mapping of seas, rivers, forest resources and other features important for ship building and the development of navigation, and essential to Russia's geo‐political interests, are considered. The history of the early stages of specialized naval education and the training of surveyors at the Moscow Mathematical‐Navigational School (from 1701) and the St Petersburg Naval Academy (from 1715) are outlined, and the first surveys in the Baltic and Caspian seas are described. Finally, special attention is paid to the hydrographical surveys and charting of the Aegean Sea during the Russian‐Turkish war of 1768–1774, the sources and methods involved, and the little‐known Atlas of the Archipelago (1788) which was created from the surveys.     

The Family and Demographic Behavior in Belgium,Germany, and Italy, 1700–1920: A Review Essay

Abstract

In the past decades, numeracy has taken an increasingly important place in the study of human capital formation, as well as in literacy studies and studies on formal education and book production. In order to understand levels of education, scholars have recently tried to develop new ways to measure the level of education, particularly because it has since become apparent that the measures of literacy historically have not always been very accurate. To measure numeracy, population surveys have been used to show that in the past respondents who were innumerate had a tendency to state their ages as round numbers, ending in 0 or 5. Finding suitable data in the pre-modern age to analyze numeracy via age heaping is a cumbersome task, however. In this article, the authors explore the possibilities of using art, especially individual portraits in which the age of the sitter is indicated on the portrait by means of the Aetatis suae formula, as a source to study human capital formation and numeracy. This article has two main objectives that contribute to different areas of economic history as well as art history. The authors first demonstrate which criteria should be taken into account when building a database, especially for artistic artifacts. Secondly, they use the dataset to contribute to the understanding of numeracy levels among the well-to-do in the Low Countries in the early modern period. The analysis will show that women's numeracy was often even higher than that of men. Notwithstanding the high overall level of women's numeracy compared to other countries in Europe, the authors will also test the recent hypothesis put forward by Peter Földvári, Bas Van Leeuwen, and Van Jieli Leeuwen-Li that when women's ages were mentioned, they were usually reported as part of a married couple and possibly adapted to the ages husbands reported.     

Does the History of Medicine Begin where the History of Philosophy Ends? An Example of Interdisciplinarity in the Early Modern Era

Abstract

A popular saying attributed to Aristotle states that ‘medicine begins where philosophy ends’—but this principle does not seem entirely valid for the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance, when medicine and philosophy were considered to be integral parts of the same branch of knowledge. For this reason, although today medicine and philosophy are clearly distinct disciplines, historians of ideas cannot study them entirely separately. Indeed, since the early modern era was a period of profound revision of knowledge, probably only a truly interdisciplinary investigation can identify the conceptual shifts and transfers capable of reinstating medicine in its fundamental role in the development of civilisation and modern thought, in particular as a model of a rational knowledge aimed at improving the social good through a fitting interpretation of experience. This article intends to offer arguments in support of such a historiographical approach, and to illustrate certain interesting methodological ideas that emerge from a study in which the history of philosophy and history of medicine cross-pollinate.     

Federal intellectual property policy and the history of technology: The case of NASA patents

This essay explores two closely entwined issues in recent history of federal R&D policy: (a) the disposition of the US government intellectual property (IP), and (b) how to best assess the effectiveness of federal patenting and licensing policies. It does so by examining two decades of patenting policy and practice at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). The essay concludes with observations on the limits of our current approach to collecting data on the disposition of federal IP, and an alternative framework for examining the role of IP in the history of modern technology.     

Predicament and responses: Discussions of history education in early modern China

ABSTRACT

Since the early modern era, following the abolishment of the imperial civil service exam and the rise of modern schools, the subject of history was included in education at all levels, from primary to tertiary. However, in comparison with traditional society, the degree of attention devoted to historical knowledge has in fact declined rather than improved. In the 1920s, many contemporaries vocally criticized and pondered the low level of historical knowledge among primary and secondary school students, and occasionally voiced dissatisfaction with history education at the university level as well. Critics primarily focused their discussions on the insufficient attention for history classes, imperfect standards formulated for history classes, poor history teaching materials, and lack of qualified, specialized teachers, forming a universal consensus among contemporaries on the failure of history education. However, the widespread opprobrium attached to history education was closely tied to two facts: first, the historians of early modern China had as yet failed to compile a general history of China acceptable to the majority, greatly disappointing many educators; second, historical resources failed to exercise the mobilizing effect on early modern Chinese society that contemporaries had hoped for, and history thus often became the scapegoat paying the price for practical setbacks and failures in the political arena.     

Analysis of Japanese influence on the three major historiographical trends in early modern China

ABSTRACT

This paper examines the intrinsic relationships between Japanese historiography and the three great historiographical trends of New Historiography, Debates on Ancient History, and Marxist historiography, from the macroscopic perspective of the transformation, development, and early modern growth of modern and early modern Chinese historiography, exploring how Chinese historical researchers selected, deviated from, and assimilated Japanese historiography, while also particularly focusing on how the recipients utilized Japanese historiographical methods and concepts as well as the achievements of Japanese scholars in researching Chinese history to construct their own interpretation of Chinese historiography, in a study of the academic trend of indigenization.     

The Diffusion of Sovereignty

Summary

The transmission of ideas about sovereignty and its related practices from one time, place, or intellectual context to another is sometimes characterised as a process of ‘diffusion’ or even ‘contagion’. Intellectual historians may use such metaphors but the explanations they provide are historical, not scientific. Sovereignty was transmitted when European states brought their forms of government to other peoples and when those peoples embraced such forms in declaring their independence from imperial rule. It was also transmitted when the idea of sovereignty was itself transformed in the course of these and other historical passages. In Foundations of Modern International Thought, David Armitage explores some of these historical passages, the outcome of which he sees as the world of sovereign states that defines the modern period and the disappearance of which would signal its end. In doing so, he illuminates the larger enterprise of writing the history of international thought or, as he prefers to call it, international intellectual history, inviting reflection on its relationship to other kinds of historical inquiry and the opportunities and dangers it poses.     

Challenging intellectual hierarchies. Hegel in Risorgimento political thought: an introduction

ABSTRACT

The introduction to this special issue rethinks Italy’s liberal tradition and nineteenth-century Italian political thought in transnational perspective, with particular focus on the role of Italian Hegelianism during the emergence of the modern Italian nation state. Starting from an attempt to recast the transnational dimension of the Risorgimento, this co-authored article relates existing studies of Italian Hegelianism to wider trends in intellectual history elsewhere in Europe. Introducing the different contributions to this special issue, our approach challenges notions of centre and periphery in the history of intellectual flows, and helps to free the history of the Risorgimento from self-incurred exceptionalism.     

The politics of disenchantment: Marcel Gauchet and the French struggle with secularization

ABSTRACT

This article looks at Marcel Gauchet’s major metahistorical statement, The Disenchantment of the World: A Political History of Religion (1985), and uses it to advance a series of claims about the place of secularization in debates within and about French politics, especially in relation to modern French history. The argument is put forward that Gauchet’s work is best understood as offering an alternative philosophy of history to Marxism that could serve to support a broadly republican realignment of French politics in the 1980s. Revisionist historiography concerning the French Revolution likewise played a role in this development, and served as a prerequisite of sorts to Gauchet’s broader historical project. The article also considers Gauchet’s work in light of postmodern skepticism of the utility of historical metanarratives.     

Byzantine History in late Ottoman Turkish Historiography

Abstract

The present Short Note is intended as a brief introduction to a subject which is part of a wider research project on Greek (ancient, Byzantine, and modern) as well as Roman history and culture as described and discussed in Ottoman literature, particularly in late Ottoman historiography. As an attempt to familiarise the reader with, at this stage, no more than a few aspects of the subject in question, the following sketch does not pretend to be exhaustive. It is hoped, however, that it will provide a general idea of the context, as well as of the relevant sources, some of which will be described in more detail. Our note is, in addition, intended to arouse interest, particularly from the point of view of Byzantine and modern Greek studies, and to invite comments.     

Promise and Blessing: Gen 12,1-3

ABSTRACT

Gen 12,1-3 is a text which plays an important part in the dis-cussion about the establishing of the modern state of Israel. The question is, whether this text defends this event in the 20th century’s history or if one should find the defence elsewhere. In order to find an answer to this question three classic German commentaries have been reread. The commentaries, written by Herman Gunkel (GHAT), Gerhard von Rad (ATD), and Claus Westermann (BKAT), are from different periods of the 20th century. The result is that the commentators find that the text is more interested in the blessing and the promise than in the history of the possession of the land of Canaan.     

Das problem der Apokryphen∗

Abstract

The Problem of the Apocrypha. In modern discussions of the problem of the Canon scholars are reluctant to talk about an early canonization of the Hebrew Bible and of the Scpluagint. In both cases it is rather a question of the history of text and history of tradition. Only in later rabbinic literature and in the patristic epoch do we meet with a notion of Canon similar to our understanding. The discussion of Scptuagint and the Apocrypha in the Greek and Latin Fathers, not least between Augustin and Jerome, is treated, and lines are drawn from here to the position given to the Apocrypha in the protestant churches. The weak position of the Apocrypha in these churches is hard to change, and modern suggestions to translate the OT as church‐Bible from the Septuagint do not seem to further the issue.     

Modern International Thought: Problems and Prospects

Summary

International intellectual history—the intellectual history of the international and an internationalised intellectual history—has recently emerged as one of the most fertile areas of research in the history of ideas. This article responds to eight essays inspired by my own contribution to this field in Foundations of Modern International Thought (2013). It engages with their positive achievements regarding the recovery of other foundations for modern international thought: for example, in theology, historiography and gender history. It addresses some of the methodological problems arising from the search for foundations, notably anachronism, presentism and diffusionism. It expands on others' arguments about the international thought of Hobbes and Locke and the limits of cosmopolitanism. Finally, it points the way forward for international intellectual history as a collaborative, interdisciplinary, transnational and transtemporal enterprise.     

From innovation to use: Ten eclectic theses on the historiography of technology

Abstract

The paper argues that most (Anglo‐Saxon) historiography of technology, including recent sociologically‐oriented work, is concerned with innovation rather than technology, and that there has been an unfortunate conflation between the two. Distinguishing innovation from use allows an engagement between the history of technology and history more generally, and is essential to the investigation of questions concerned with gender, race, and class in the history of technology. Moreover a focus on use allows us to make better sense of such terms as “technological determinism”. The history of innovation, while interesting and important, cannot address many issues which should be central to the history of technology, and cannot answer many of the questions historians of technology pretend to ask. A history of technology‐in‐use does so and, at the same time, opens up new areas for investigation, including the history of maintenance, repair and remodelling, as well as further developing accounts of innovation based on use. The paper deals largely with modern technology, and draws on a number of different, and all too often disjointed, traditions of thinking about the role of technology in history.     

On the Medieval and the Modern: Reading Nicholas of Cusa

ABSTRACT

In addressing not only the Conciliarist controversy of his day but issues of civil and ecclesiastical government and challenges to the Church, from reform movements to the division between Catholic and Orthodox traditions, Nicholas of Cusa (1401–64) continues to provoke responses. Some see him as the first modern; others view him as the last great medieval thinker. Demonstrating a breadth of interests, Nicholas of Cusa has come to be viewed as an important transitional figure who continues to provoke debate on the Western tradition and the history of political thought.