Magna Carta is one of the most important illustrations of the exceptionalism of English common law. Within a completely feudal framework it gave the clearest possible articulation to the concept of the rule of law and at the same time it also showed that there were certain basic rights which every freeman enjoyed without any specific conferment by the king. From English perspective, continental European law after the process of the reception of Roman law was commonly regarded to (...) be apart and different from the English legal tradition, as well as being perceived to pose a continual threat. The English Parliament constantly turned down royal attempts to emulate the continental reception of Roman law by characterizing it as something entirely foreign to English law. Roman law was supposed to promote an authoritarian and absolutist vision of the relationship between rule and subjection and this was expressed in the famous phrases 'princeps legibus solutus' and 'quod principi placuit legis habet vigorem'. Roman law was also anti-feudal, because one of its main principles that all power originated from one central source was the antithesis of the distribution of power over multiple centers, which was a crucial element of the feudal society. Many English historians have held the view that the English law is democratic, whereas the continental tradition is undemocratic and authoritarian, and this is why the Roman law succeeded on the Continent and failed in England. (shrink)

This unique publication offers a complete history of Roman law, from its early beginnings through to its resurgence in Europe where it was widely applied until the eighteenth century. Besides a detailed overview of the sources of Roman law, the book also includes sections on private and criminal law and procedure, with special attention given to those aspects of Roman law that have particular importance to today's lawyer. The last three chapters of the book offer an overview (...) of the history of Roman law from the early Middle Ages to modern times and illustrate the way in which Roman law furnished the basis of contemporary civil law systems. In this part, special attention is given to the factors that warranted the revival and subsequent reception of Roman law as the 'common law' of Continental Europe. Combining the perspectives of legal history with those of social and political history, the book can be profitably read by students and scholars, as well as by general readers with an interest in ancient and early European legal history. The civil law tradition is the oldest legal tradition in the world today, embracing many legal systems currently in force in Continental Europe, Latin America and other parts of the world. Despite the considerable differences in the substantive laws of civil law countries, a fundamental unity exists between them. The most obvious element of unity is the fact that the civil law systems are all derived from the same sources and their legal institutions are classified in accordance with a commonly accepted scheme existing prior to their own development, which they adopted and adapted at some stage in their history. Roman law is both in point of time and range of influence the first catalyst in the evolution of the civil law tradition. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This article offers a new reading of Carl Schmitt and his Nazi engagement by chronologically examining the changing uses of Roman law in his Weimar and Nazi thought. I argue that Schmitt’s different ways of narrating the modern reception of Roman law disclose, first, the Nazification of his thought in the spring of 1933, and second, the partial and apologetic de-Nazification of his thinking in the 1940s. While Schmitt’s Weimar-era works are defined by a positive use (...) of Roman imagery, ranging from Schmitt’s support to the Catholic Church to his endorsement of Benito Mussolini’s ‘total state’ in Italy, Schmitt’s Nazi writings from 1933 to 1936 describe the reception of Roman law as an anti-German virus that must be overcome by the Nazi movement. This shift mirrors Schmitt’s transformation from an authoritarian thinker sympathetic to Italian Fascism into a devoted Nazi. However, once Schmitt begins to see that Germany will lose World War II, he recalibrates his position. While Schmitt’s earlier Nazi writings offered a negative estimation of the historical school of Friedrich Carl von Savigny, in his 1943/44 book on European legal science, Schmitt portrays Savigny as the paradigmatic European, whose work opens the path for a renewed legal science. (shrink)

SUMMARYThe aim of this article is to analyse the complex roots of Carl Schmitt's theory on dictatorship in the classical world through the lens of classical receptions. It argues that Schmitt was deeply engaged with the classical tradition in formulating his theory on dictatorship. Knowingly or unknowingly, Schmitt legitimates his theory through a foundation in both the Roman idealisation of the virtuous dictators of the early Republic as well as the long tradition of the narrative of the (...) enlightened sovereign as a guarantor of law, present in both Greek and Roman antiquity and in the subsequent European tradition. Schmitt skilfully repurposed the Roman historical tradition on dictators but glossed over the traditional antipathy of Roman republicanism towards sovereign rule. The claim that this article is presenting is that even though it has been overlooked by earlier scholars, Schmitt was both directly and indirectly influenced by the classical tradition of dictatorship and utilised their mythical and symbolic dimensions in the later Roman and the subsequent European legal and political traditions. The reason for this omission was that Schmitt, like his contemporaries, belonged to one of the last generations to be groomed in the classical tradition of literature. (shrink)

This paper traces back the sources of our present legal system and of market economy to Medieval Europe which itself benefited from Hellenistic and Roman legal culture and commercial practices. Roman provinces placed Rome in the wider Greek cultural and commercial world. If Aristotle was already transcending the narrow polis-based conceptions of his predecessors, after him Hellenistic Civilization saw the emergence of a new school of philosophy: Stoicism. The legal thought in the Latin West will (...) hence be characterized by Cicero’s writings and its Stoic sources. The Roman legal system was similar to the later northern European customary law and the English common law; Roman law was evolutionary and customary. The rise of Western individualism, whether it dates back to St. Augustine in the fifth century, or to the two Papal Revolutions of Gregory I (establishing the nuclear family as the core of individualism) and of Gregory VII, also played a crucial role in shaping the western legal tradition. The paper describes the main forces that led to this second (Gregorian) revolution. Monasticism is one of them. Benedictine monasticism plaid a leading role in the Peace of God Movement. Hence collective oath-taking by groups in the name of peace was essential in the founding of cities and in the formation of guilds. Europe’s economic resurgence in the Eleventh Century was on the basis of the creation of the rule of law by the Peace of God movement. This movement also allowed for Europe’s agricultural economy to progress. Indeed, the European Middle Ages is one of the major periods of technological innovation in the history of the world. The Gregorian Revolution itself was supported and financed by the Commercial Revolution: Italian bankers sustained Papal reformers against the Emperors. The independence of the Italian cities and provinces reveals one of the most important consequences of the Gregorian Revolution: the polycentricism of Western Europe. This Revolution also witnessed the first large number of political pamphlets in European history; the Gregorian clergy emphasizing a compact theory of government. Soon after, the order of Cistercians was founded (1098) and underwent spectacular growth during the next two centuries. The Cistercians accepted no rents or labor services from feudal donors but would take only full possession of land to do with it as they wished.These monasteries were the most economically effective units that had ever existed in Europe, and perhaps in the world, before that time. Finally, the Magna Carta (1215) that will be so influential on modern political thought can be seen as a direct consequence of the Gregorian Revolution. (shrink)

The article is devoted to the historical analysis of teleological argumentation evolution in the legal interpretation. The ideas of ancient Greek and Roman orators, philosophers and lawyers, which served as the basis for development of the idea of teleological interpretation in the European legal tradition, are examined. The history of teleological interpretation method development in European legal theory from Medieval jurists to sociological legal approach of the late 19 th and 20 th centuries is (...) observed, as well the existence of two main approaches in understanding the teleological method of interpretation, namely subjective-teleological and objective-teleological, is ascertained. The author states that there is a direct correlation between the concept of law and the approach to understanding of the teleological interpretation method. In conclusion, the author insists on the more progressive nature of the objective-teleological method of legal interpretation. (shrink)

Legal humanism has become deeply entrenched in most modern works on European legal history from the 17th century onwards and has been accepted with such blind faith by many modern scholars that few have challenged it. As a result, it has been used to substantiate larger claims about the deathof Roman law, the separation between the golden age of a pan-European medieval ius commune and the fragmented reception of Roman law into the nation states of (...) Europe, and the relevance of 'dogmatic' Roman law as opposed to 'antiquarian' Roman law.Now, the traditional grand narratives of European legal history have begun to be questioned, to the extend that the nature and legacy of legal humanism now deserve closer scrutiny. Building on the groundbreaking work by Douglas Osler, who has been critical of the traditional narratives, this volumeinterrogates the orthodox views regarding legal humanism and its legacy. Fundamentally reassessing the nature and impact of legal humanism on the narratives of European legal history, this volume brings together the foremost international experts in related fields of legal and intellectual history to debate the central issues. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal 15.2 (2005) 211-218 [Access article in PDF] Bioethics, Biolaw, and Western Legal Heritage Susan Cartier Poland Bioethics and biolaw are two philosophical approaches that address social tension and conflict caused by emerging bioscientific and biomedical research and application. Both reflect their respective, yet different, heritages in Western law. Bioethics can be defined as "the research and practice, generally interdisciplinary in nature, which aims (...) to clarify or resolve ethical questions raised by the advances and application of biomedical and biological sciences" (II, Miller 2000, p. 246). Biolaw, on the other hand, is a legal philosophical concept that can be defined as "the taking of agreed upon principles and practices of bioethics into law with the sanctions that law engenders" (p. 246). Some see biolaw as hierarchical, either evolving from or devolving into bioethics (p. 245), while others think of bioethics and biolaw as a continuum or gradation (p. 246). Whichever view one takes, bioethics and biolaw are, at the least, intertwined (II, Loureiro 2000, p. 71).Although bioethics came out of the U.S. in the 1970s, the field is now considered Anglo-American (II, Kemp 2000a, p. 67). Biolaw emerged in the 1990s from the French biodroit and has become associated with continental Europe (p. 68). These distinctions, however, are based on geopolitical entities. Another way to distinguish bioethics from biolaw is to look at their legal heritage and understand the differences between the common law and the civil law.Bioethics and biolaw share a Western legal heritage, specifically roots in Roman law. When the Roman empire in the West fell to Germanic tribes in 476 A.D., the Romans had developed a sophisticated system of law that included flexible standards and abstract, rather than concrete, modes of thought. In 528, Justinian, emperor of the surviving Roman empire in the East at Constantinople, ordered a compilation and consolidation of Roman law. Despite the rise of seventh century Islam, the split of the Christian church into eastern and western branches in 1054, and the Norman conquest of England in 1066, Roman law survived through the courts of canon law and was revived later in the twelfth century at the University of Bologna in Italy. By 1500, what would later become France and Germany had [End Page 211] "received" or recognized Roman law, albeit in varying degrees. Not a single event, the Reception, or "direct acceptance of Roman law as a principal source of law," is the definitive turning point in Western legal history that eventually produced the common law and civil law strands (I, Von Mehren 1957, p. 10).England, however, did not participate in the Reception, although its influence was felt at Oxford University, where Vacarious taught its precepts in 1151, and in the courts of canon law (I, Von Mehren 1957, p. 10). William the Conqueror already essentially had established the common law tradition when he merged Anglo-Saxon law with Norman law and created a centralized system of justice administration for the single fiefdom known as England.Aside from historical development, the common law and the civil law differ from other legal families in terms of their modes of thought, institutions, sources, and ideology (I, Zweigert and Kotz 1977, p. 62). In the common law, Roman legal concepts were shaped by Christian ethics through the canon law courts. In the civil law, Roman law became the basis for a legal science centered in the universities and interpreted by various schools, such as the commentators, the glossators, and the humanists. The civil law uses a central text as the starting point for legal reasoning and analysis. The common law develops over time through case law, that is, by judges applying principles from preceding cases to resolve the issue at hand. One writer describes the common law as "anything that is not prohibited is permitted" and the civil law as "anything that is not permitted is prohibited" (I, Karambelas 2005, p. 28).The common law and the civil law are only two of the three traditions in Western law. The third is socialist law. All three are... (shrink)

Anthropologists have defined iconatrophy as a process by which oral traditions originate as explanations for objects that, through the passage of time, have ceased to make sense to their viewers. One form of iconatrophy involves the misinterpretation of statues' identities, iconography, or locations. Stories that ultimately derive from such misunderstandings of statues are Monument-Novellen, a term coined by Herodotean studies. Applying the concept of iconatrophy to Greek sculpture of the Archaic and Classical periods yields three possible examples in which statues (...) standing in Greek sanctuaries may have inspired stories cited by authors of the Roman imperial period as explanations for the statues' identities, attributes, poses, or locations. The statues in question are the portrait of the athletic victor Milo of Croton at Olympia, a bronze lioness on the Athenian Acropolis identified as a memorial to the Athenian prostitute Leaina , and the Athena Hygieia near the Propylaia of Mnesikles. Inscriptions on the bases of Archaic and Classical statues in Greek sanctuaries typically named the dedicator, the recipient deity, and the sculptor, but did not include the subject represented or the historical occasion behind the dedication. These “gaps” left by votive inscriptions would only have encouraged the formation of iconatrophic oral traditions such as the examples examined in this article. (shrink)

The paper provides an overview of the early considerations regarding the phenomenon of plagiarism – from Greco-Roman antiquity to the time when a thorough study examining literary theft in its textual, legal, and moral manifestations was printed, i. e. “Philosophical Dissertation on Literary Plagiarism” by Jacob Thomasius. Although the issue of plagiarism was very vital in ancient times, all the oldest considerations concerning the appropriation of other people’s texts were essentially pragmatic moves or reactions rather than purposeful theoretical (...) interpretations of the subject. However, in addition to the situational grounds of the accusation, they can reveal certain principles that, according to estimations of the time, could prevent or refute allegations of plagiarism. It was enough if the author stated, albeit generally but clearly, that the fragments of other people’s texts, whether altered or not, were used. It was also acceptable if the reader believed that the author considered his borrowings recognizable to educated readers. Another reason for the elimination of possible accusations was the factor of competition – the author’s desire to adapt the achievements of another cultural environment in his own one, significantly improving them. The medieval and early modern materials generally testify to the relevance of ancient views and reveal some new problems. This is, in particular, the incompatibility of new more formalized ideas about authorship and traditional educational practices, which encouraged the uncontrolled use of others’ texts. Some authors also emphasized that plagiarism was an obstacle to the development of science. The paper ends with examples that show how European ideas about the rules of using others’ writings may help interpret the writing methods of the early modern Ukrainian authors, including philosophers. (shrink)

Against the dominant trend in contemporary republicanism, which views Roman political theory as providing significant resources to contemporary emancipatory projects, this article reads the Roman legal and political theoretical tradition as revealing above all the capacity of Republican resources to be coopted in support of monarchic domination. It does so by tracing changes in doctrines of liberty, popular sovereignty, magistracy and majoritarianism from the period of the free Republic into the Principate and thence into the Justinianic (...) codifications, as well as their reception in twelfth- and thirteenth-century Italy. Along the way it urges a more nuanced view of the sources of the Republican tradition: an awareness both of when specific sources on Rome became available to late medieval and early modern thinkers and of the imperial origins of the major sources available before the sixteenth century. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to examine the process of deterritorialization of legal concepts embedded in international commercial contracts. Typically written in English, these contracts often incorporate concepts derived from common law jurisdictions, given that English is the language of expression for the common law tradition. This underscores the intrinsic interconnection between language and underlying legal concepts. While parties involved in contract drafting may sometimes mitigate this connection by using terms and clauses that do not immediately (...) evoke common law associations, the use of English as the medium for conveying concepts in international commercial contracts does not necessarily facilitate this process. Consequently, legal concepts rooted in specific traditions adapt to new contexts shaped by the linguistic, cognitive, cultural, and legal backgrounds of the contracting parties, those tasked with interpreting the contracts, and the law governing the agreements. This paper illustrates the dynamics of this process through examples drawn from international commercial contracts, focusing on both individual terms and entire contractual clauses. These examples highlight how legal concepts, as expressed in these contracts, evolve within new environments shaped by diverse linguistic, cognitive, cultural, and legal determinants. (shrink)

The article is concerned with D. Davidson\'s semantic views. The aim of the article is to explain some misunderstandings that have arisen in the course of reception of these views. The author tries to prove that according to Davidson semantic properties and relations do not come under classical definitions, but under contextual ones, like in L. Wittgenstein\'s semantics. Hence the interpretation presented by J. Kmita is incorrect, whereas that by R. Rorty is right. Causal explanation of semantics is out (...) of the question; hence Rorty\'s interpretation is false with respect to this point. Propositions talk about what they talk about, so Kmita is wrong. According to Davidson the concept of reference is permissible, so Putnam is wrong in his interpretation. Moreover, there is only one logic semantics and for all languages it is the same, hence Kmita is wrong when he says that Davidson\'s interpreter arbitrarily pushes foreign semantics into his own. He is also wrong when he puts in Davidson\'s mouth the conviction that non-determination of a translation does not consist in impossibility to cognize foreign semantics. (shrink)

Romantic, po st- Revolutionary French historiography can be described as "ancient verses on new ideas." The "new history" of this period, with its antiquarian nature, shared more with its predecessors than its practitioners acknowledged. Historical and legal scholars of the Restoration belonged to a long intellectual tradition of a shared hermeneutical "community of interpretation," based on common origins, though not necessarily goals. A belief in the historical grounding of knowledge and judgment united Restoration historians and legal scholars (...) to their predecessors. Debate over the origin of private property, the central human right advanced in the Napoleonic Code, united the two sorts of scholars, who examined the origins of the right of private property in the context of the history of laws, both Germanic and Roman. The establishment of private property proves to rest on the logic of feudalism, ironically overthrown in the Revolution while providing continuity in historiography before and after. (shrink)

This article deals with some phenomena of the Hungarian legal language from a historical point of view, with special regard to the terminology of private law going back to Roman law tradition. The author aims, on the one hand, to present the historical background of the current terminology of Hungarian private law by means of some representative examples. On the other hand, it is attempted at demonstrating that “false friends” and some further misunderstandings in the current terminology (...) of Hungarian private law can be led back to the historical determination of the concepts/terms in question. A certain Hungarian legal language existed already in the 16th c., however it reached the common European level by the middle of the 19th c. This development took place mainly under the influence of the Austrian and German law and legal science. Due to the translation of foreign legal terms to Hungarian since the 19th c. there emerged some “global” difficulties of legal terminology also in the Hungarian legal language. As the most important example, the reception of bona fides can be mentioned. It was an amendment of the Hungarian Civil Code in 2006 which tried to eliminate the misunderstandings as regards the principle of good faith conceived formerly by many Hungarian jurists exclusively in subjective sense. The history of reception of the German notions of Gültigkeit and Wirksamkeit in Hungary is extremely intriguing, too. Hungarian jurists did not follow the pattern of the German BGB but developed this pair created by Windscheid by drawing a clear distinction between the validity and effectiveness of legal transactions, similar to the Italian terminology. Sometimes the reception of German notions happened in a less successful way. Despite the important foreign, especially German impacts, the Hungarian legal language is an autonomous one having several remarkable features which deserve attention also in comparison with terminology of the Western legal cultures. (shrink)

Surrogacy is a type of medically assisted reproduction (MAR), which is considered to be a relatively simple medical procedure. However, psychosocially, ethically and legally, it is extremely complicated. There has been a significant increase in interest in the procedure lately. This is largely due to the fact that it is now available to groups of applicants other than traditional heterosexual couples of reproductive age. Its purpose is to examine various approaches to determining what is legally acceptable as parenthood after surrogacy. (...) Our conclusion is that the wishes and rights of the individual actors (intended parent(s), surrogate mother, future child, gamete donors and society as a whole) are incompatible and contradictory. None of the probable solutions suggested from different perspectives can ensure that the wishes and rights of all are fulfilled at the same time. (shrink)

Ellen Goodman uses extensive extracts from original writings to highlight the main themes of the Western legal tradition.The strength of the book is its clear ...

Paolo Beni da Gubbio (1553-1625) has been studied almost exclusively for his literary and rhetorical production. However, he finds an important place among the scholars of the Renaissance who developed a novel reading of Plato as an alternative to the predominant exegesis of Ficino and his followers. His writings represent a prime example of the interplay between exegetical discussions (both of literary and philosophical texts) and the emerging sciences. In the unpublished part of his commentary on Plato’s "Timaeus", Beni discusses (...) Platonic natural philosophy – cosmology in particular – in the light of the interpretations of other authors as well as the new scientific theories, mostly in relation to the Paduan scientific circles. From Galileo’s correspondence with Giovan Battista Manso, we know that Beni weas well-informed about Galileo’s astronomical observations and discoveries at the beginning of 1610, which were soon published thereafter in the "Sidereus Nuncius". Further, we have information concerning Beni’s active role in the circulation of these observations. We wish to cast new light on the reception of these novelties by an advocate of the classical tradition such as Beni. Beni’s praise of the new discoveries is testified by his unedited commentary to the Ciceronian "Dream of Scipio" (1610-15), in which he criticizes the Aristiotelian cosmological model, referring to the newly invented telescope and referring to Galileo’s astronomical observations. Echoes of new scientific and cosmological theories appear also in Beni’s commentaries on Tasso’s "Delivered Jerusalem". (shrink)

The Western Legal Tradition (WLT) is a child of the Cold War era. Originally conceived by the Harvard legal historian HJ Berman in his 1950 book on Justice in Russia, a work aimed at explaining to the West what laid beyond the Iron Curtain, this idea gives life to an account set out in an opposition in which the West and Soviet Russia are defined with the features missing to each other. In those pages is the blueprint (...) for his two well-known volumes published in 1983 and 2003, and for a third volume left unfinished. -/- The WLT grows from another legacy from the Cold War era: human rights history. While this theme entered public debate fuelled by the concern with human rights in the Eastern European countries during the Cold War era, this paper shows how the WLT absorbed this theme hijacking a core component of continental legal science (subjectives Recht) re-engineered by political theorists into the major identitary element of the WLT in an eternity history rooted in medieval canon law. (shrink)

This paper analyses the differing receptions of the Old French Partonopeus de Blois in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries by revisiting a little known text, a peculiar prolongation in the form of an Art d'aimer which has been added to a versified French translation of the Disciplina clericalis. This continuation exists in only one manuscript; recent advances in technology and new research have allowed the author to determine that quite large parts of this Art d'aimer have been borrowed from Partonopeus. (...) He analyses these borrowings, reassesses the judgments of his predecessors, and concludes that Partonopeus de Blois might have had a much greater literary impact on the authors of other Old French texts than has previously been thought. (shrink)

In his Inleidinge tot de Hollandsche Rechts-geleerdheid, Hugo Grotius wrote an accessible introductory overview of Hollandic law, in which he combined insights from the learned law (ius commune) with the particular law of Holland. The Inleidinge was read by generations of Dutch law students, and would thus become very influential in the Roman-Dutch tradition. This contribution studies how the topic of representation, especially in a business context, was treated in Grotius’s Inleidinge. On the basis of an analysis of (...) the Justinianic Corpus iuris, the medieval ius commune tradition and – especially – early modern scholarship from the Low Countries, it is argued that Grotius’s Inleidinge by and large followed the communis opinio among the learned scholars, although on one important point – namely the acquisition by a third party of a claim on the basis of a stipulatio alteri – Grotius went beyond that communis opinio and, thus, opened the way for a gradual wider legal acceptance of active direct representation. (shrink)

The ArgumentLittle has been written about religion vis à vis eugenics and, even less on Roman Catholicism and eugenics. A 1930 papal encyclical,Casti connubii, is usually held by historians to have been the official condemnatory view of the Catholic Church on eugenics, and the document is further supposed to have induced the only organized opposition to eugenic legislative efforts in several countries (especially France). In fact, the encyclical was not directly about eugenics but a general statement of the Catholic (...) doctrine on marriage.This article attempts to clarify the issue of a Catholic position on eugenics by re-examining the encyclical itself as well as its contemporaneous reception in Germany and France, where there was a strong Catholic presence.Casti connubiiintroduced a change in the prescribed hierarchy of the aims of marriage when, for the first time, relations between spouses took precedence over procreation. While condemning the means (abortion, sterilization, etc.), the encyclical did not condemn positive eugenics. In the broader context of the history of eugenics, the reception of the encyclical emphasizes the family as the third entity between the individual and society. Eugenics, as a “religious Utopia” of modernity, developed a hegemonic discourse over the family realm. As such it entered into competition with more traditional religious institutions such as the Roman Catholic Church. (shrink)

The confluence of different Jewish traditions in the Qumran library is evident. The Enochic traditions are not only counted as the oldest influences in Qumran, they also give it a certain theological unity. This is even more true in the case of demonology. Belial’s figure brings together a rich lexicographic heritage in which different traditions are integrated under the characteristics of the Watchers and Giants of the Enochic tradition (1 En 6—8). This study analyzes the theological characterization of the (...) demonological figures found in Qumran to specify the Enochic influence on it. (shrink)

Mitchell Franklin's contributions to American legal thought were in large part the result of his devotion to the study of the United States' Romanist legal heritage. A leading theme of his work is that the Roman legal tradition presents more promising prospects for progressive legal developments than the Anglo-American common law tradition. Thus, Franklin became an advocate of Roman-style codification of American law which began with the American revolution and has continued. His (...) Romanist position sharply distinguished Franklin from almost all American jurists of this century, even those considered liberal and progressive. Thus, Franklin criticized Holmes for his Anglophilic Humean1 conceptions of law and judicial hegemony. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Iambic Poetics in the Roman Empire by Tom HawkinsGideon NisbetTom Hawkins. Iambic Poetics in the Roman Empire. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014. xi + 334 pp. Cloth, $99.This stimulating and highly readable book explores the ancient afterlife of three famous literary bully-boys: Archilochus, Semonides, and Hipponax, the unholy Trinity of archaic Greek iambus. Tom Hawkins sets out to examine their reception, not among the classical (...) and Hellenistic Greek poets to whom they were living forebears (although the Callimachean intertext is a lively presence, e.g., 40–51, 146–49), or in the literary flourishing that they in turn inspired in late Republican and “golden” Augustan Rome, but amid authors of the Empire and Late Antiquity, extending into a recognizably Christian age. Only one of the six authors chosen (Babrius) adopts an iambic meter, and three—Dio, Lucian, and Julian—do not even compose verse (or not here). Hawkins’ choices are piquant. He has sought out the kinds of text that classicists generally skip: odd, minor works by the less reputable pagans, and by the type of early churchman we tend [End Page 180] gratefully to surrender to our colleagues in theology. Indeed, some are scarcely read at all (qua texts) but merely dipped into as a source of corroborating factoids, at least until now (142, on Gregory Nazianzen). Hawkins contends that an “iambic tradition” of sorts remains culturally alive and vital throughout these early centuries c.e.: a tradition not so much of metrical continuation or even necessarily of working closely with the archaic texts, but nevertheless retaining a definite sense of the constituent elements (e.g., animal-fable, a scruffy narrator) that, variously combined, let the reader or audience know they are in dialogue with an “iambic mode” (terms are defined in the introduction’s first footnote, 2).Authors and readerships of these centuries had at their command much more of the text of the archaic iambicists than is available to us moderns, provided they cared to read it and could understand what they read (28–29 suggests it was often otherwise). Today, Archilochus et al. are mere tattered ghosts, pieced together by editorial ingenuity out of citations and mentions, and latterly read in papyrus fragments gleaned from ancient rubbish heaps (the heroes of this scholarly epic of reconstruction include the late Professor Martin West, news of whose death came shortly before this review went to press). Some of the Imperial poets and prose authors studied by Hawkins envisage an ideal reader to whom archaic iambus is an open book, but the true constant is the ancient biographical tradition about Archilochus in particular (the stories told about the others are often recognizable knock-offs, but all three are names to conjure with; there are grounds for thinking that Archilochus had become literally proverbial for invective abuse even among non-readers, 27). Hawkins is very good at showing how these interwoven life-stories took on a life of their own and continued to grow in the telling (9), all the more so perhaps as actual familiarity with the texts waned. Over several centuries and numerous genres, the malleable myth of iambus—the slighted outsider, embracing abjection to shock a complacent Establishment and shame his nemeses—proved endlessly useful as a temporary vantage point when authors felt like taking a walk on the wild side.The iambic tradition tracked by Hawkins thus has “more to do with the sediment of cultural memory about iambic poets and their poetry than with historical realities, but once we get beyond a fascination with origins, such sediment becomes the only reality worth talking about” (8). In Hawkins’ readings of his chosen texts, this textual-biographical muck is fertile stuff. Iteration and generic migration turn the iambic life-story into a potent and versatile literary trope which usefully combines ironic distance (to be, or even make like Archilochus is an obvious non-starter in such a belated and grown-up age), and thus self-evident deniability, with the implicit threat that traces of iambus’ murderous power may yet remain. For Hawkins, the hint is if anything strengthened by repeated, name-checking recusationes that keep the iambic biopic in the... (shrink)

It has long been thought that Romans did not hunt before the time of Scipio Aemilianus because hunting was not an activity for respectable citizens. This article shows that this tradition arose from a nineteenth-century bias for hunting on horseback. The tradition was supported principally by Polybius' account of Scipio's hunting and a quotation from Sallust. Although we now recognize that Greeks and Romans in general hunted on foot, this bias has predisposed the discussion against the discovery of (...) evidence for the actual practice of hunting among the early Romans. The archaeological evidence from new excavations in Latium and previously uncited historical and legal evidence for hunting in the Republican period demonstrate that, precisely as we would expect, Romans from the earliest days hunted. Hunting as an aristocratic sport, as a communal activity associated with the military preparation of soldier-citizens, and as a practical means of survival for the poorer countrymen, were all present in Roman society. Further, Polybius' account of Scipio's hunting, contrary to what has been argued, indicates that the cause of disapproval was not the fact that Scipio hunted, but rather that he hunted instead of pleading cases in the forum. Supporting evidence from Cato the Elder, Ennius, and Plautus shows that hunting was a common and accepted activity among Romans of the mid-Republic. Finally, Sallust's criticism of hunting cannot be assumed to represent Roman views, since he condemns farming and hunting together, and we know Romans highly respected farming. No evidence supporting a negative view of hunting in Roman society is found, and the positive evidence in sum demonstrates conclusively that in all periods Romans did indeed hunt. (shrink)

In this article the survival of the sapphic fragments of the ancient times in Renaissance period is examined. More specifically the reappearance of the sapphic verses is presented concerning the first publications (editio princeps) and the most widespread texts of ancient authors during West Renaissance. These texts were the primary sources, on which the later publications of the sapphic work were based, while they also had a great influence on the reception of the ancient poet by the Renaissance writers.

The article reconstructs the premises of the reception of analytic philosophy in jurisprudence and shows that the development of a method for clarifying the meanings of legal concepts is not least connected with the problem of legitimizing law enforcement. The article analyzes H.L.A. Hart’s approach to the problem of correlation between the “letter” and “spirit” of the law in the process of interpreting legal norms. The article argues that the process of interpretation is determined teleologically. In its (...) limit, the interpretation of legal norms presupposes the re-creation of the desired image of society, the reconstruction of such social ontology that is most consistent with the ideal of achieving social welfare. The article examines the collision of the “ideal of order” and the “ideal of justice” as two regulations of law enforcement. The author believes that the interpretation of this collision within the analytical tradition was characterized by a gradual movement from the ideal of “mechanical” law enforcement, which minimizes the creative role of the interpreter, to the ideal of flexible interpretation focused on achieving legal goals in a changing environment. It is noted that, according to analytic approach, a theoretical solution to this conflict was proposed due to the development of the ideas of an “open texture” of law. The author demonstrates that the development of the analytic tradition in jurisprudence has shown that the criticism of language and the interpretation of meanings are not technical tasks, but it presupposes the construction of a metaphysics of law. In this regard, the author concludes: the development of the ideas of the analytic tradition in jurisprudence demonstrates that the thesis about the absence of a positive program in analytic philosophy, put forward in the first article of the discussion, can be challenged. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:What Did the Romans Know? An Inquiry into Science and Worldmaking by Daryn LehouxJohn M. OksanishDaryn Lehoux. What Did the Romans Know? An Inquiry into Science and Worldmaking. Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press, 2012. xii + 275 pp. 10 black-and-white figs., 2 tables. Cloth, $45.“Have we ever been modern?” Thus author Daryn Lehoux expresses one of the fundamental questions underlying the book under review, which seeks to (...) present a historicizing account of the various lenses through which elite Romans in the late Republic and early Empire understood and, importantly, expressed their understanding of our world. I say “our” world because, as Lehoux makes clear from the beginning of this fascinating, if sometimes challenging, monograph, continuity with our scientific forebears is as fundamental a key to accessing their ambitions, limits, and scope, as are our divergences from them. In this sense, What Did the Romans Know? provides a kind of study in the reception of Roman sciences, whose plurality, interdependence, and context-specific viability are emphasized throughout. For although (1) physical realities have per se not [End Page 343] changed since antiquity, and (2) how we regard and describe them has, Lehoux insinuates that our own laws of nature remain limited by specific ontological and rhetorical constraints—“blind spots”—that render our modern science in some ways comparable with the sciences that operated in antiquity. By first emphasizing various contexts (epistemological, ontological, etc.) and showing readers how the ancient sciences operated within them, Lehoux effectively shows us that ancient sciences did indeed work, even astrology. However, Lehoux ultimately reveals himself as a scientific realist: the contextual viability of the ancient sciences notwithstanding, he does not believe in a Lucretian “swerve” but in atoms, electrons, and other phenomena that he has never seen directly. That he waits until the ninth chapter (200) for this admission to materialize fully is surely purposeful, but it can sometimes make for disorienting reading. Equally disorienting is the book’s tendency to present ancient scientific terms with little or no explanation (e.g., equant, 68; synodic anomaly, 69), while terms whose specific valences will be well-known to many readers of this journal (e.g., religio, 26; pietas, 27) are glossed, sometimes simplistically. Despite this and a few other caveats, however, Lehoux has broadly succeeded at a very difficult task, i.e., presenting ancient science in a manner that is accessible and interesting to Classicists of various stripes, while simultaneously delivering classical texts to historians of science through an essentially new historicist lens.The first three chapters provide examples from and discussions of selected texts that show the Romans making links between nature and law in science, religion (especially divination), and in legal theories. We quickly learn that Lehoux’s is not a book about Romans who merely applied Greek theories in the interest of technology or about the ways in which slave-power made an ancient industrial revolution unnecessary at Rome (the so-called blocage question, discussed by Serafina Cuomo in Technology and Culture in Greek and Roman Antiquity [Cambridge, 2007]). Rather, this is a book about science as a reflection of, and participant in, the creation of Roman ideology and society. Any good discussion of Roman-ness at the end of the Republic inevitably involves a good deal of Cicero, who conveniently, and thus perhaps problematically, provides ample discussion of the kinds of topics in which Lehoux is interested, especially divination. Cicero’s apparently contradictory positions on the practice (Leg. 2.32 and Div. 2.74) are noted, as is the movement in the past thirty years away from the “naive” reading of De Divinatione as a “vigorous rationalistic protest” against a national superstition. Divination, for Lehoux’s Cicero, is neither an intellectual offense nor a politically expedient fiction; rather, it is a thoroughly Roman way of both seeing the world and doing business. Some of what is found here will not be new to classicists, and the chapter overall seems less interested in breaking new ground than in establishing, in deliberate fashion, the book’s foundational interest in seeing nature, law, and religion as legitimately connected. Divination and other phenomena reflect a Roman interest in a kind... (shrink)

This is the first study to assess in its entirety the fourth-century Latin commentary on Plato's Timaeus by the otherwise unknown Calcidius, also addressing features of his Latin translation. The first part examines the authorial voice of the commentator and the overall purpose of the work; the second part provides an overview of the key themes; and the third part reassesses the commentary's relation to Stoicism, Aristotle, potential sources, and the Christian tradition. This commentary was one of the main (...) channels through which the legacy of Plato and Greek philosophy was passed on to the Christian Latin West. The text, which also establishes a connection between Plato's cosmology and Genesis, thus represents a distinctive cultural encounter between the Greek and the Roman philosophical traditions, and between non-Christian and Christian currents of thought. (shrink)

In this paper it is argued that Grotius views on customary law are compatible with the concept of a ‘Grotian Moment’. However, the idea of accelerated customary international law is developed by Van Vollenhoven, who interpreted Grotius in a questionable way. Whereas Grotius qualifies as a thinker in the tradition of natural law, Van Vollenhoven should be seen as an interactionist. This is especially visible in his publications on adat law, in which he visibly belongs to a romantic, Germanist, (...) and rather pluralist tradition of law. The idea of a Grotian Moment also fits better with this starting point than with natural law. For this reason, the ‘Grotian Moment’ should be renamed ‘Van Vollenhoven’s Moment’. It is argued that this legal theoretical position explains some of Van Vollenhoven’s rather peculiar interpretations of Grotius. (shrink)

Media coverage and statements by various Catholic spokespersons regarding the case of Terri Schiavo has generated enormous and deeply unfortunate confusion regarding Church teaching about the use of life-sustaining treatments. Two weeks ago, for example, I received a letter from the superior of a community of Missionary Sisters of Charity, who operate a hospice here in the United States The Missionary Sisters of Charity are the community founded by Mother Theresa, the 20th Century saint whose primary ministry was to rescue (...) dying Untouch-ables from the streets of Calcutta and bring them into her convent where they were washed, sheltered, fed if they were able to eat, prayed for, and cherished. In other words, the sisters gave these poor souls the gift of a death with dignity. The order Mother Theresa founded has continued this ministry, running hospices in the United States and elsewhere for the homeless, the destitute, those dying of AIDS and poverty and drug addiction, and all those dying alone and otherwise unwanted. (shrink)

In the last forty years, Roman Catholic moral theology has been experiencing revolutionary tension and change. In this unique and thoroughly documented study, a distinguished Jesuit moral theologian examines the events, personalities, and conflicts that have contributed, from New Testament times to the present, to the Roman Catholic moral tradition and its contemporary crisis, and interprets the fundamental changes taking place in the subject today. Among the topics covered in this volume are papal infallibility, confession as a (...) sacrament, the legacy of Augustine, the dramatic change in attitude to "salvation outside the Church," and the continuing impact on moral theology of the 1968 papal encyclical on birth control and of the Second Vatican Council. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:FEEDING THE COMATOSE AND THE COMMON GOOD IN THE CATHOLIC TRADITION ROBERT BARRY, O.P. University of Illinois Ohampaign-Urbana, IlUnoi8 AA RECENT convention :sponsored by the Catholic Health Associaition in Boston, Laurence J. O'Connell, vice-president for ethics and theology, ma.de the following comments: I am concerned that some of those who are legitimately alarmed by the potential abuses associated with the public policy that authorizes the withholding and withdrawing (...) of mechanical means of nutrition and hydration are sometimes publicly misrepresenting the Catholic moral tradition. In other words, in their well-intentioned and perfectly legitimate efforts to avoid the slippery-slope-that is, the wrongful withholding or withdrawing of nutrition or hydration from vulnerable dasses of patients-those advocates are placing the Roman Catholic moral tradition itself on the slippery slope. It is mistaken to say it is the church's teaching that we may never withhold or withdraw artificial nutrition and hydration. It is mistaken to uncritically refer to the removal of medically engineered nutrition in all cases as starvation-that is, the willful withholding of nutrition as morally obligatory. It is mistaken to say that the ethical standards of a single Catholic hospital are necessarily coextensive with the ethical standards of the Catholic Church. Just because an individual Catholic facility, for whatever reason, uniformly refuses to allow the withholding or withdrawing of technological feeding, does not mean that the Church itself disallows such withholdings or withdrawals.1 It is not clear how the Catholic moral tradition can be put on the " slippery slope " by opposing certain forms of with1 "Church and State Overlap in Ethical Debate", American Medicai News. February 27, 1987. p. I. 1 ROBERT BARRY, O.P. drawal of feeding from specific classes of patients. Dr. O'Connell has misrepresented the thought of most of those who oppose the recent American Medical Association's new opinion which holds that artificially administered nutrition and fluids can be removed from terminally ill patients, even when they are not imminently dying.2 There are no Catholic moralists who claim that it is always and everywhere morally wrong to withhold or withdraw feeding from patients. However, there are a number of moralists as well as bishops who now hold it to be wrong to withhold or withdraw feeding in those cases where the withholding or withdrawal becomes the fundamental and underlying cause of death. O'Connell is p11obably correct in saying that the policies of one hospital do not necessarily deteJ1IDine the moral doctrines of the universal Church, but neither does one national organization such as the Catholic Health Association with only a loose affiliation with the magisterial hierarchy of the Church necessarily do this either. The debate over the provision of,aissisted feeding is a debate over whether iit is morally legitimate ito withdraw feeding so 1tihat.t:he primary and fundamental reason why the person dies is that withdrawal. It is a debate over whether those with a certain " quality of life " can be permitted to be killed by omission. It is a debate over whether feeding provided by routine nursing measures that can significantly sustain the life is a medical treatment that should he governed by the criteria governing other treatments, or whether it is an 2 "Withholding or Withdrawing Life Prolonging :Medical Treatment" adopted by the Council on Ethical and Judicial.Affairs of the.Amercian Medical.Association on March 15, 1987, In its pertinent parts, it stated: The social commitment of the physician is to sustain life and relieve suffering. Where the performance of one duty conflicts with the other, the choice of the patient, or his family or legal representative if the·patient to act in his own behalf, should prevail. Life prolonging medical treatment includes medication and artificially or technologically supplied respiration, nutrition or hydration. In treating a terminally ill or irreversibly comatose patient, the physician should determine whether the benefits of treatment outweigh its burdens..At all times, the dignity of the patient should be maintained.•. FEEDING THE COMATOSE 8 aspect of normal care, like protection from exposure or hygienic care, that is to be accorded to all patients. In this piece, I wish to review the thoughts of some... (shrink)

We all face death, but how many of us are actually ready for it? Whether our own death or that of a loved one comes first, how prepared are we, spiritually or practically? In Preparing to Die, Andrew Holecek presents a wide array of resources to help the reader address this unfinished business. Part One shows how to prepare one's mind and how to help others, before, during, and after death. The author explains how spiritual preparation for death can completely (...) transform our relationship to the end of life, dissolving our fear and helping us to feel open and receptive to letting go in the dying process. Daily meditation practices, the stages of dying and how to work with them, and after-death experiences are all detailed in ways that will be particularly helpful for those with an interest in Tibetan Buddhism and in Tibetan approaches to conscious dying. Part Two addresses the practical issues that surround death. Experts in grief, hospice, the funeral business, and the medical and legal issues of death contribute chapters to prepare the reader for every practical concern, including advance directives, green funerals, the signs of death, warnings about the funeral industry, the stages of grief, and practical care for the dying. Part Three contains heart-advice from twenty of the best-known Tibetan Buddhist masters now teaching in the West. These brief interviews provide words of solace and wisdom to guide the dying and their caregivers during this challenging time. Preparing to Die is for anyone interested in learning how to prepare for death from a Buddhist perspective, both spiritually and practically. It is also for those who want to learn how to help someone else who is dying, both during the time of illness and death as well as after death. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Constructing Literature in the Roman Republic: Poetry and Its ReceptionJoseph FarrellSander M. Goldberg. Constructing Literature in the Roman Republic: Poetry and Its Reception. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. xii + 249 pp. Cloth, $70.Just what forces in the earlier centuries of the Roman Republic gave shape to the literature of the late Republic and early Principate is an old question that has received new (...) interest in recent years. Sander Goldberg suggests that to put the question as I just have is to put things backwards. In this book he argues that it is not so much a matter of how earlier literature shaped later literature but rather of how scholars and readers in the late Republic converted the poetic remains of earlier centuries into "literature." For Goldberg, literature in the fullest sense did not exist at Rome before a sufficiently large and critically sophisticated reading public had emerged, and until the available texts had been collected, studied, and canonized; and this process, he believes, did not happen or at any rate was not complete until the time of Cicero and, especially, Varro. The latter, one of the heroes of Goldberg's story (and rightly so), was instrumental in (for instance) turning the scores of plays that traveled in his day under the name of Plautus into an authenticated oeuvre of the sort that defines literature: a corpus that can be owned, read and reread, studied, commented upon, argued over, and shared by a community of more or less like-minded, cultivated individuals. Literati, in fact.The idea is developed over a series of six chapters, plus an introduction and "Retrospective." The chapters are advertised as framing a continuous argument but also as capable of being read independently. They are arranged chronologically and bracketed thematically or imagistically by two arrivals: that of the Muse under the aegis of Rome's earliest poets and that of the one desired by Ovid, if not for himself back into Rome then for his works into the state-sponsored collection in the Palatine library. To my mind chapters 2 ("Constructing Literature") and 3 ("Comedy at Work") are the core of the book, as I have hinted [End Page 283] above and will explain further below; but subsequent chapters on tragedy (4, "Dido's Furies") and satire (5, "Enter Satire) offer novel commentaries on the history of these genres.In staking out his position, Goldberg distinguishes himself from two groups who already are rather at odds with one another. On the one hand there are those who think that Roman literature was indeed already literature from "the beginning"—i.e., from the time of Livius Andronicus. On the other are those who might agree with Goldberg that the Romans did not invent literature until the dying days of the Republic but who give credit (or blame) for this achievement mainly to a relatively small group of elite writers. So it will be fascinating to follow the reception of Goldberg's argument in both these camps. I, for my part, would not want to predict what effect the argument will have. Instead, I will mention what strike me as some of Goldberg's more salient points and will add a few comments by way of reaction.The decision to focus on readers strikes me as a positive contribution. Roman literary culture did not just happen, nor was it or could it have been created by writers alone. A public that wanted there to be a literature in Latin, one that was alive to ideas but also to the techniques that writers used to convey these ideas, was essential. Beyond this, scholars and teachers interested in the texts themselves and in showing readers what to do with them, scholars who were ambitious to create a culture of learning similar to the one that had for generations supported Greek literature, played an enormous role. Of course the writers are more visible to us, both as writers and as a peculiarly important audience for one another's work. But even in the smallest estimate of the literate population, there were many more readers than writers, and these numbers of readers are surely as important or more... (shrink)

This article analyses how the reception of Hobbes in Germany in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was determined within the context of the Holy Roman Empire. It argues that it is precisely this context that forms the peculiarities of the Hobbes reception in Pufendorf, Thomasius, and Hegel. It thereby offers a new way of viewing the development of the particular political theories of these three figures and their relationship to the English philosopher’s political thought.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Montaigne Among the Moderns: Receptions of the “Essais”Patrick HenryMontaigne Among the Moderns: Receptions of the “Essais,” by Dudley M. Marchi; xiii & 334 pp. Providence, Rhode Island: Berghahn Books, 1994, $49.95.This ambitious project is not a study of the Essais per se, but rather an analysis of their receptions from the seventeenth century to the present. Written by a comparativist with access to German, French, and English literature (...) and philosophy, it deals with authors from diverse backgrounds and time periods and pays careful attention throughout both to intertextuality and to the particular “horizons-of-experience” in which the Essais were received. “Reception” here does not mean some un-Mont aigne-like passive acceptance, but rather the assimilation and reactivation of the essayist’s concept of literature, writerly project, and theories of reading and writing in the works of later writers, mainly “premodernists” (Emerson and Nietzsche), “high modernists” (Pater and Woolf), and “postmodernists” (Butor, Chaillou, Sollers). In the most general sense, what Montaigne shares with all these authors is the need to make central in the form and substance of his work the paradox of a rupture with the pa st and its simultaneous continuation. Here modernism is less a period concept than a recurring literary phenomenon whereby the essayist not only influences the moderns and the postmoderns but is one of them. This enables us, finally, to perceive in the Essais a dialogical process that resists closure and reenacts the literary and philosophical debates of our own historical situation.Chapter One schematizes the history of the receptions of the Essais in France from 1580 to 1950 focusing mainly on the stylistic and religious readings of major figures in French literature. While much of this has already been done, Marchi syn thesizes well, makes his own original points, and offers us exceedingly interesting pages on the essayist’s covenant daughter and most active literary executrix, Marie le Jars de Gournay. Throughout he depicts how the shifting nature of the Essais’ textuality (their “hermeneutic undecidability” [p. 74]) allows them to assume various identities in the minds of different interpreters through the ages, thus problematizing the very act of reception and granting the reader a role in the production of me aning.The next chapters constitute the most original parts of the study and analyze the reception of the Essais in the works of Emerson, Nietzsche, Pater, Woolf, Butor, Chaillou, and Sollers. In Emerson and Nietzsche, we find reactivated the Montaig nean dialogue between the unique self and cultural tradition. Emerson read the Essais in the Cotton translation and wrote about Montaigne in Representative Men but only relied on the essayist to help him reach his own intellectual independen ce, finally moving from a more ego-centered position to the security of past models and rejecting skepticism in favor of dialectical resolution. Nietzsche read Montaigne in the original and knew him through Emerson. Marchi finds “an active inter textual Montaignean dimension” (p. 124) [End Page 140] in Nietzsche’s work and underscores their mutual preoccupation with radical skepticism, self-cultivation, self-portraiture, mutability, the instability of language, and the crisis of representa tion. He discovers two sides to Nietzsche’s reception of the Essais: the Apollonian “Socrantic optimism” and the Dionysian “libertine transgression” (p. 165) and indicates how the essayist’s concreteness and acceptance of human limitations tempered respectively Nietzsche’s propensity toward abstract metaphysics and Schopenhaurean pessimism.The third chapter unveils the aesthetic and thematic elements of the Essais in the critical and creative works of Pater and Woolf who went beyond the philosophical essaying of Emerson and Nietzsche, were the first to extend aspects of the E ssais in narrative works since Marie de Gournay, and created Montaigne the modernist “by insisting on the qualities of his textuality most akin to their own” (p. 186). The most interesting pages here delineate, on the one hand, Pater’s failed attempt to reconcile the religion of Pascal and the aesthetics of Montaigne and the essayist’s presence in Pater’s Gaston de Latour and, on the other, Woolf’s Montaigne-like essayistic techniques of weighing probabilities, suspending dogmatic judgment, and breaking of narrative sequentiality and her concomitant assimilation... (shrink)