Mixed Constitutionalism and Parliamentarism in Elizabethan England: The Case of Thomas Cartwright

The Admonition Controversy (1572–1577), largely between Thomas Cartwright (1534/5–1603) and John Whitgift (1530–1604) has proven fecund ground for intellectual historians analysing the religious dimension to early-modern political ideas. This paper argues that the religious dimension of Cartwright's mixed constitutionalism needs better explanation, rather than just noting that his ecclesiastical mixed constitutionalism (Presbyterianism) mirrors his political mixed constitutionalism. This paper tracks Cartwright's progressive, dialogical unfolding of his mixed constitutionalism in response to Whitgift's attempt to derive episcopacy from the fact of English monarchy, effectively discrediting the Admonition to Parliament (1572). Furthermore, the essay outlines how the Cartwright–Whitgift debate led Cartwright to emphasise a parliamentarist mixed constitution when most of his contemporaries, especially the more famous mixed constitutionalist, Thomas Smith, portrayed the English parliament leaning noticeably towards the monarch. This analysis accepts that religious polemic was a major driving force in the normalisation of parliamentarism, yet seeks to show exactly how this worked out in one of the most important church–state disputes in Elizabethan England.     

John Hewitt's allegorical imagination

John Hewitt (1907–1987), the Northern Irish poet from Belfast, is most famous for advocating the Regionalist project he helped start in the 1930's. Regionalism demanded something more than kinship: an allegiance to the smaller unit of land within a nation. In his poetry, Hewitt's pursuit of this ideal necessitated a concern with sectarian issues and the religious and cultural impasses that attended them. Consequently, he often examines his own complicity in the unhealthy relations between divided neighbors, and this opens the door to a couple of criticisms that have commonly been directed at Hewitt: that his negotiations with place are outdated and that his craft and imagination were superseded by a self-conscious attention to denominational questions. To a large degree this essay means to explore how Hewitt manages to overcome such difficulties in his best work, especially The Bloody Brae and ‘The Colony’. In these and other poems, he imagines an alternative time and place; such settings allow the poet to dramatize philosophical and meta-ethical questions without being explicitly hortative. The worlds of these poems exist independently, untainted by contemporary fact, yet they often allude to the predicaments of his homeland. This technique of using a double focus inspires reflection on questions current in Hewitt's lifetime, at the same time as it shifts responsibility for answers from poet to reader. It also insists on the recall of visual experience, thereby promoting a regionally characteristic language.     

John Cheyne's classic monographs

John Cheyne (1777-1836), a Scotsman born in Leith, graduated at Edinburgh University but spent most of his career in Dublin. He was professor of medicine (1813-19) at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, physician to the House of Industry Hospitals and co-founder of the Dublin Hospital Reports in which his celebrated account of a patient with irregular breathing was described in 1818. His Essay on hydrocephalus acutus (1808) and Cases of apoplexy and lethargy (1812), important nineteenth-century contributions to neuropathology are considered here in detail. Towards the end of his life he was afflicted by depression and his posthumously-published Essays on the partial derangement of the mind (1843) was written as a therapeutic exercise.     

杜威的中国之行及其影响

五四运动前夕,美国实用主义哲学家和教育家杜威作为五四新知识界的嘉宾被隆重邀请到中国。在此后两年零两个月的时先里,杜威在中国各地巡回讲学,系统宣传了实用主义学说。由于该学说满足和适应了五四思想解放的时代需要,满足和适应了中国经济发展和教育改革的需要,理所当然成为广泛流行于思想化界和教育界的一股热潮,杜威也理所当然成为舆论界关注的焦点和受知识界比较一致欢迎的外国思想家和教育家。在实用主义热潮的推动下,相当一批学吸收了实用主义所包含的实证精神的营养,破旧创新,发展了中国现代实证主义哲学、中国现代史学等新型学术研究。同时通过对学制改革进程关键环节及新学制标准和内容的影响,杜威实用主义教育学说也成为新学制改革的灵魂。