Diderot: Les Dernières Années, 1770–84

This article provides an account of the Enlightenment dispute over hermeneutical skepticism with particular reference to the idea of hermeneutical probability in the philosophical work of Christian August Crusius. The essay sheds new light on the hermeneutical issues addressed in the philosophical school of the so-called Thomasians based mainly in Leipzig in the first half of the eighteenth century (inter alia Rüdiger, Hoffmann, and Crusius). The paper deals with Crusius’ wide-ranging efforts to cope with the uncertain character of most parts of human knowledge and his attempts to construct a workable theory of hermeneutical probability. This raises points of central interest relating to probabilism in the methodology of textual interpretation and connects Crusius to contemporary discussions of hermeneutical skepticism.     

Draperie urbaine et draperie rurale dans les Pays-Bas méridionaux au bas moyen ǎge: une mise au point des recherches après H. Pirenne

H. Pirenne's thesis has for a long time determined the orientation of the studies on the textile industries in the medieval Southern Netherlands. Since around 1950 however, historians have accumulated much new knowledge. In this article, we recapitulate their five main points. 1° the diversity of wool used in the textile production; 2° the modified notion of the ‘marchand-entrepreneur’ who was said to have organized and dominated totally the urban cloth industry; 3° the confirmation of the omnipresent rural industry during the Middle Ages and of its corporative aspects; 4° the re-evaluation of the activities of the urban industry during the late Middle Ages; 5° the new conception of the town/countryside relationship in the cloth industry.All these new studies permit us to underline the complementary relations between urban and rural cloth industries. The new view-point seems to be a part of a more general recent tendency freeing of students of the economic history of the Middle Ages from Pirenne's dichotomous conception town/countryside.     

Power,ideology and economy cultural policy in China

Abstract: Relying on the institutionalist framework, much literature conflating the structures of public action in the field of culture has been produced (e.g. papers concerning the targets of cultural administrations, levels of action, ways of financing cultural policies). In this context, cultural institutions have been considered as something given, but the question of their origins and shape has hardly ever been at stake. In other words, institutionalist theories make comparisons possible, but they deny any form of inner life to cultural administrations. It allows one to make static comparisons, but it fails to explain why national cultural administrations differ from each other. Hermeneutic philosophy mixed with historical institutionalism could then be used to refine traditional models. My point will be made with references to the French and American case-studies.     

从解释学角度看《山海经》一书的性质

从现代解释学论证说明《山海经》的成书年代早于《禹贡》,说明该书为什么是一本原始社会的巫术百科全书,作为巫家"类书"的《山海经》特点。结论新颖,与一般地理学史的论述颇为不同。     

The anxiety of cultural authenticity in Turkish communitarian thought: Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar and Peyami Safa on Europe and modernity

The uneasy tension between ongoing disputes about Turkey's Europeanisation and an emphasis on cultural authenticity has characterised much of Turkish social and political thought over the last two centuries. This article explores conceptions of Europe, modernity and tradition contained in the writings of two twentieth-century Turkish writers, Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar (1901–1962) and Peyami Safa (1899–1961) whose writings express an anxiety of cultural authenticity. Varieties of communitarian thinking, coupled with an emphasis on a ‘synthesis’ between past and future, tradition and modernity, Turkey and Europe, had been invoked and advocated by many writers and scholars who sought to come to terms with the challenges surrounding Turkey's Europeanisation throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Tanpınar and Safa are widely considered to be among the most influential representatives of this deeply rooted communitarian tradition in modern Turkish social imaginary. By drawing on Tanpınar's and Safa's essays on politics, society, culture and the East–West distinction, this article demonstrates the radical divergences between their perspectives and draws out the political implications of their views of Europe, modernity and tradition. Although he appears to be one of the advocates of Turkey's Europeanisation and the idea of a civilisational synthesis, Safa's conservatism is based on a sketchy theory of radical particularity and cultural essentialism that reflects a repudiation of universalism and cosmopolitanism, and which shows a tendency bordering on a celebration of all collectivist self-assertions and struggles against liberal democracy. Tanpınar's communitarian vision, on the other hand, with its emphasis on ‘tradition’ and ‘continuity’, aims to reconcile the political ideals of European modernity with a restored cultural tradition. One of the primary purposes of this article is to fully work out the originality of Tanpınar's thought by highlighting the intimations of a distinctively hermeneutical dimension that figure prominently in his writings, and which have largely gone unnoticed.     

Reading In,Looking Out: Hermeneutics by Implication in an Early Fifteenth-Century Anthology

This article investigates aspects of mise-en-page in British Library Add. MS. 27261, an anthology of twenty-three texts on mixed subjects produced for Eskandar Soltān (d. 818/1415), grandson of Timur and self-styled ruler of territories in southern Iran during the early fifteenth century. It examines the juxtaposition of literary and scientific texts together with images in Add. MS. 27261, and explores the correlations that these juxtapositions create. It concludes that the London anthology should be seen as a coherent intellectual enterprise, and as an interpretative project designed to feed Eskandar’s experiments with different forms of knowledge.