Introduction: Between Morality and Anthropology—Sociability in Enlightenment Thought

Summary

This introductory article sketches out the evolution of the concept of sociability in moral and political debates from Grotius to the German Romantics, so as to elucidate the range and scope of the contributions to this special issue. The article argues that the concept of sociability serves as a bridge between moral theory, domestic politics and international relations, just as it also connects the jurisprudential mode of enquiry to subsequent Enlightenment enquiries into political economy, aesthetics, individual and collective moral psychology, forms of government and philosophical history. Particular attention is paid to sociability's relationship to moral scepticism, and to its position between morality and anthropology. The article highlights the central role of Rousseau in radically reformulating the debate and in sparking new controversies up to the nineteenth century.     

Unsociable Sociability and the Crisis of Natural Law: Michael Hissmann (1752–1784) on the State of Nature

Summary

This article studies the impact of the debate about human sociability on the crisis of natural law in the later eighteenth century examining the Untersuchungen über den Stand der Natur of 1780 by the Göttingen scholar Michael Hissmann. It makes the case that this crisis ensued from Rousseau's Discours sur l‘inégalité and a revival of neo-Epicurean trends in moral philosophy more generally. The sociability debate revolved around the question to what extent society was natural or artificial to man. This had important implications for the problem of whether distinctions between right and wrong or just and unjust were natural and inborn, or had developed at a much later stage of mankind's history, reflecting merely the respective needs and utility of different societies and cultures. Hissmann's essay summarises this European debate concisely. His point of departure is Rousseauian premises, yet his political conclusions turn Rousseau upside down. Here, Hissmann's essay opens up several questions regarding the allegedly radical political character of one-substance theories in philosophy.     

The evolution of strength,elasticity and rupture behaviour of birch tar made with ‘double-pot’ techniques during tar cooking

Birch tar was the first adhesive produced by humans. Its study has consequences for our understanding of human evolution and the development of specialised craftsmanship. One of the better-documented birch tar making methods is the ‘double-pot’ technique, where two containers are used, one containing bark, the other collecting the tar. Birch tar made with double-pots has low viscosity and bad adhesive properties. To obtain a usable adhesive, it must be reduced in volume by cooking. We investigate the evolution of tar’s mechanical properties during cooking. We use lap-shear tests to investigate strength, stiffness and failure behaviour. We found that tar must be cooked for 90 min to acquire adhesive properties. When cooked for longer, strength and stiffness increase over a 30 min lasting time span. Cooking for even longer, beyond this 30 min window, produced a substance that could no longer be used as an adhesive. The implications are that tar cooking requires a high level of skill because specific signs indicating the desired properties must be recognised during the process. Tar cooking constitutes a supplementary investment in time and resources and appears to be associated with a certain degree of risk.     

Luminescence dating of anthropogenic deposits from Tall Zarʿa in the Jordan Valley

This study uses quartz-based optically stimulated luminescence dating to determine when a massive fortification wall (W11186) was constructed in the archaeological site of Tall Zarʿa in the Jordan Valley. A total of 11 samples of sediments were taken from a trench on the north side of the wall (extramuros). The extracted quartz grains had good luminescence characteristics and were identified as well bleached by comparison with feldspar infrared-stimulated luminescence (IRSL) ages. The optical ages showed that the deposition against the wall occurred in two different periods. The first was around 3.20 ± 0.07 ka ago (Iron Age), and the second was around 2.28 ± 0.08 ka (Hellenistic period). Human activity was evident because of the intermixing of cultural material with the presumed naturally deposited units.