THE CONTEST OVER CONTEXT IN INTELLECTUAL HISTORY

Recent articles critical of the use of context in contextual intellectual history have identified contextual method with the post‐1960s work of the “Cambridge School,” which is regarded as being grounded in a flawed theory of textual interpretation. Focusing on German cultural and political history, this article shows that a contextual historiography was already fully developed in seventeenth‐century ecclesiastical history, and a parallel version of this approach had developed in the field of constitutional history. The modern critique of context emerged only with the appearance of dialectical philosophical history in the first decades of the nineteenth century. The article argues that rather than representing a scholarly engagement with contextual historiography, the central plank of the dialectical critique of contextualism—the notion that contextual explication of thought is insufficient because context itself has transcendental conditions—is actually a cultural‐political attack on it launched on behalf of a hostile and incommensurable academic culture.     

客观世界与文本世界的交锋--对新理论形态的马克思主义历史观评论的评论

蒋大椿先生提出的“唯物辩证的以实践为基础的系统史观”．在马克思主义历史观发展史上．是一种全新理论形态的历史观。无论是对于马克思主义历史观的发展,还是对于新世纪中国历史学的发展来说,它都具有重要的理论价值和现实意义。但是,由于评论者悬置客观实在的现实社会和历史,沉溺于马克思恩格斯文本建构起来的文本世界,加上评论者和蒋大椿先生之间在探索的问题、言说的平台和所处思想时段等方面的差距,因此,他们没有能够发现蒋先生的真问题和《思潮与发展》一文所具有的理论价值与现实意义。综览目前公开的评论,只能说这是一场极不相称的客观世界与文本世界之间的交锋。     

徐一夔名号与被斩偏解辨正

天台徐一夔是元末明初的知名学者,一生以教书育人为业,是杭州府学声望卓著的教授。徐一夔传世的名字,是其官名,非其谱名,谱名已经轶失;近年研究徐一夔者或以始丰为其号,其实只是表示其乡里籍贯。稗史载徐一夔上表触怒朱元璋被斩,实系未成事实而被偏解作事实所致,系文人猎奇与发泄心理使然。     

On the Supernatural and Extraordinary Experience: Multiple Views and a Call for Synthesis

This review describes four disparate books that relate to the anthropology of religion. Each has a distinctive approach, ranges over a wide subject matter, and makes provocative claims. In summarizing and critiquing them most attention is paid to their perspectives on the natural and the supernatural. This leads to consideration of related work in the anthropology of extraordinary experience. It is argued that while our different approaches to the supernatural may reflect deep epistemological divisions within anthropology and, more broadly, in society, a form of semiotics that takes emergent complexity into consideration does provide opportunities for consensus.     

Tannery and Duhem on the Concept of a System in the History of Philosophy and History of Science

ABSTRACT

This article examines John Toland’s Reasons for Naturalizing the Jews (1714) by placing it alongside other elements of his engagement with Jewish history, Mosaic principles and wider “Hebraica” – specifically, an appendix to his Nazarenus (1718) and his Origines Judaicae (1709). Although Toland’s case for Jewish naturalization shows the strong influence of Locke’s case for political and religious toleration, and also of a general “mercantilism”, it is argued that one of its main characteristics is a philosophical naturalism, shown in its treatment of the human species as a whole. Furthermore, it is also argued that this same naturalism is evident throughout Toland’s engagement with Jewish history and Mosaic thought. Accordingly, when we “fold” these works into each other, we find each enhancing our understanding of the others – not just as examples of Toland’s treatment of “Jewish affairs”, but also as illustrations of a consistent conceptual materialism. To emphasize this, the article concludes by suggesting that the figure of Rabbi Simone Luzzatto, author of a 1638 plea for tolerance, provides an important clue in understanding the links between Toland’s political injunctions and the philosophical foundation on which they are built.     

Naturalism and its political dangers: Jakob Thomasius against Spinoza's Theological-Political Treatise. A study and the translation of Thomasius’ text

ABSTRACT

Jakob Thomasius was a well-known professor who in 1670 chose to address a new anonymous text in a faculty lecture. The text was Spinoza’s Theological-Political Treatise (TTP). Five years earlier, Thomasius had attacked libertine philosophers in two other faculty lectures, and now explicitly links those lectures with this critique of the TTP. This article examines the argumentative strategy and structure of Thomasius’ 1670 lecture, in the light of those 1665 lectures, to see what it was that upset the Leipzig professor. Thomasius’ text is a rarity in that it aims to critique the TTP primarily on political grounds, not religious, but this sees Thomasius’ fear of naturalism assume strongly political tones of fear of faction. This article assesses Thomasius’ version of moderate censorship, the link he draws between Hobbes and innovation, his debt to Comenius, and the coherence of his defence of moderate Lutheranism. This article also provides a translation of Thomasius’ heretofore untranslated text.