scholarly journals The Qur'an in Comparison, and the Birth of ‘scriptures’

2018 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 149-174
Author(s):  
Alexander Bevilacqua ◽  
Jan Loop
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
Hebrew Bible ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Comparative Concept ◽  
Ways Of Thinking ◽  
European Intellectual History

Early modern Europeans developed several ways of thinking about the Qur'an and the person whom they took to be its author, the Prophet Muḥammad. This article looks at two distinct traditions of reading the Qur'an as law and as literature and shows how these traditions intersected and eventually merged. Together, they made the Qur'an fruitful for ‘thinking with’ under a variety of headings. Philologists, not philosophes, advanced this long-term process, though prominent non-scholars such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) took advantage of its fruits and used the example of Muḥammad and the Qur'an in their work. The Qur'an made another contribution to what is now called the Enlightenment. Not too foreign and yet at an intellectually productive distance from Judaism and Christianity, it was a useful point of comparison for the Hebrew Bible. The reinterpretation of Hebrew Bible and Qur'an proceeded in lock step, often through bi-directional comparison, as both works came to be perceived through new aesthetic, rhetorical, and historical lenses. As a result, the two works converged as never before in European intellectual history. What is more, the study of the Qur'an helped to generate a new comparative concept: that of lowercase, plural scriptures.

Conclusion

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Randall
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
Fine Arts ◽  
James Madison ◽  
Modern Conception ◽  
Political World ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
History Of ◽  
Constitutional Thought

The changed conception of conversation that emerged by c.1700 was about to expand its scope enormously – to the broad culture of Enlightenment Europe, to the fine arts, to philosophy and into the broad political world, both via the conception of public opinion and via the constitutional thought of James Madison (1751–1836). In the Enlightenment, the early modern conception of conversation would expand into a whole wing of Enlightenment thought. The intellectual history of the heirs of Cicero and Petrarch would become the practice of millions and the constitutional architecture of a great republic....

Scholastic Approaches to Reasonable Disagreement

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rudolf Schuessler
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
General Framework ◽  
Reasonable Disagreement ◽  
Truth Claims ◽  
European Intellectual History ◽  
Early Modern Era ◽  
First Time ◽  
Modern Era

The scholastic controversy on probable opinions in the seventeenth century was one of the most extensive and acrimonious debates of the early modern era. Historiography has treated it as a quarrel over moral casuistry, but this underestimates its import. The scholastic preoccupation with the ‘use of opinions’ should be understood as a search for a general framework for dealing with reasonable disagreement between competent evaluators of truth claims (not only moral ones). In the early modern era, scholastic analyses as well as regulations concerning the prudent and legitimate use of opinions acquired an unprecedented scope and depth. For the first time in European intellectual history, detailed theories of reasonable disagreement emerged, based on explicit characterizations of competing probable opinions as reasonably tenable.

scholarly journals RETHINKING DEMOCRACY

2015 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 247-259
Author(s):  
RICHARD BOURKE
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
West African ◽  
Colonial Mexico ◽  
African Politics ◽  
Yale University ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Dutch History ◽  
Theory Of Democracy

In many respects these books, like their authors, are very different. John Dunn has spent his career as a professional political theorist calling into question the dominant idioms of his discipline. In addition to historical research on political thought and revolutions, and studies of contemporary West African politics, this enterprise has included exposing the assumptions of liberal and Marxist ideologies. Since the 1970s, running alongside this tremendous range of concerns, Dunn has also repeatedly returned to explore the history and theory of democracy. His latest book should be seen in the context of this extended preoccupation. It has its origins in the Stimson Lectures, delivered at Yale University in 2011, resulting in what the author describes as a compact study devoted to “a very large subject.” Herein lies the first contrast with Jonathan Israel's new book. Israel has produced a large-scale intellectual history, building on a series of studies of the European Enlightenment, which began to appear at the start of the new millennium. Before that, Israel had written on colonial Mexico, European Jewry, and early modern Dutch history. It was his work on the Netherlands that led him to the thought of Spinoza, which then drew him to the ideas of the Enlightenment. As an Enlightenment scholar his approach has been characterized by a certain obduracy: a fixed commitment to a morally charged thesis. This approach can again be contrasted with Dunn’s: while Dunn's book is a sceptical assault on moral complacency, Israel's is a more didactic performance, unflinchingly committed to the righteousness of its cause. As a result, ideology collides with dispassionate inquiry, arguably simplifying both.

Exorbitant Enlightenment

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexander Regier
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual History ◽  
Literary History ◽  
William Blake ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Nineteenth Century Literature ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
European Intellectual History ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Common Understanding ◽  
Century Literature

Exorbitant Enlightenment offers new ways to think about eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century literature and culture. It brings into focus a constellation of relatively unknown, pre-1790s Anglo-German relations in Britain, many of which are so radical—so exorbitant—that they ask us to fundamentally rethink the way we do literary and intellectual history, especially when it comes to Enlightenment and Romanticism. This polyglot book delivers two of the great, untold stories of the eighteenth century. The first story uncovers a forgotten Anglo-German network of thought and writing in Britain between 1700 and 1790. From this Anglo-German context emerges the second story: a set of radical figures and institutions that are exorbitant, they leave the specified tracks of literary history and present us with a literary history that explodes the difference between the Enlightenment and Romanticism. These figures and institutions include the Moravians in 1750s London, Henry Fuseli (1741–25), and Johann Caspar Lavater (1741–1801), but also the two most radical, notorious, and most exorbitant figures: William Blake (1757–1827) and Johann Georg Hamann (1730–88). Over eight comparative chapters, the book presents a constellation of case studies that show how these figures and institutions shake up our common understanding of British literary and European intellectual history. Exorbitant Enlightenment takes seriously, and pays particular attention to, the exorbitant dimensions of Blake and Hamann and how once we take them seriously, these exorbitant figures allow us to uncover and address some of our own critical orthodoxies.

scholarly journals Ingerid S. Straume (ed.), Danningens filosofihistorie (Oslo: Gyldendal Akademisk, 2013)

2014 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Geir Sigurðsson
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual History ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
European Intellectual History

‘Danning’ (Norwegian) or ‘dannelse’ (Danish) are derived from the German ‘Bildung,’ which was developed as a philosophical notion by prominent German thinkers during the Enlightenment period and beyond. The underlying idea, however, can be traced back to much earlier European intellectual history, most notably the ancient Greek paideia.

THE SEARCH FOR THE ORIGINS OF MODERN DEMOCRATIC REPUBLICAN POLITICAL THOUGHT IN EARLY MODERN SWITZERLAND

2011 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 647-658 ◽  
Author(s):  
MARC H. LERNER
Keyword(s):  
Political Culture ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Popular Sovereignty ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Political World ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Good Government ◽  
History Of

What are the debts that the modern world owes to the political culture of the Enlightenment? For historians of political thought this is a widely debated subject. Throughout Europe, the Enlightenment provided the critical lens for a widespread reassessment of the nature of political authority. Much of the intellectual history of the eighteenth century focuses on this reassessment and the debates over the nature of good government, liberty and sovereignty. The discussion of these issues is linked to the history of liberalism, democratic republicanism, popular sovereignty, and the nature of the modern political world itself.

The Folly of the Cross

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Viladesau
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Theology Of The Cross ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Modern Thought ◽  
Fourth Volume ◽  
The Cross ◽  
Satisfaction Model

This work surveys the ways in which theologians, artists, and composers of the early modern period dealt with the passion and death of Christ. The fourth volume in a series, it locates the theology of the cross in the context of modern thought, beginning with the Enlightenment, which challenged traditional Christian notions of salvation and of Christ himself. It shows how new models of salvation were proposed by liberal theology, replacing the older “satisfaction” model with theories of Christ as bringer of God’s spirit and as social revolutionary. It shows how the arts during this period both preserved the classical tradition and responded to innovations in theology and in style.

scholarly journals “Industrious Revolution” Revisited: A Variety of Diligence Derived from a Long-Term Local History of Kuta in Kyô-Otagi, a Former County in Japan

Histories ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 108-121
Author(s):  
Satoshi Murayama ◽  
Hiroko Nakamura
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Industrial Production ◽  
Industrial Revolution ◽  
Local History ◽  
The Self ◽  
Modern Times ◽  
Original Theory ◽  
Self Reliance ◽  
History Of

Jan de Vries revised Akira Hayami’s original theory of the “Industrious Revolution” to make the idea more applicable to early modern commercialization in Europe, showcasing the development of the rural proletariat and especially the consumer revolution and women’s emancipation on the way toward an “Industrial Revolution.” However, Japanese villages followed a different path from the Western trajectory of the “Industrious Revolution,” which is recognized as the first step to industrialization. This article will explore how a different form of “industriousness” developed in Japan, covering medieval, early modern, and modern times. It will first describe why the communal village system was established in Japan and how this unique institution, the self-reliance system of a village, affected commercialization and industrialization and was sustained until modern times. Then, the local history of Kuta Village in Kyô-Otagi, a former county located close to Kyoto, is considered over the long term, from medieval through modern times. Kuta was not directly affected by the siting of new industrial production bases and the changes brought to villages located nearer to Kyoto. A variety of diligent interactions with living spaces is introduced to demonstrate that the industriousness of local women was characterized by conscience-driven perseverance.

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