Each society is marked by a selective cultural memory which, beside events and traditions whose importance is emphasized, is also constituted by its parts and contents whose influence is either diminished or forgotten. Our society, too is marked by such kind of memory, with obvious reduction, value opposition and, in sum, general duality within the reception of cultural memory, which is always more complex than it appears in political speeches mother-tongue reading books or history textbooks. For this reason, an examination (...) of construction and reception of cultural memory, with an emphasis on traditions of Enlightenment and Romanticism, stems from a necessity to answer a set of questions regarding the contemporary relation to the past, the way "distance" or "proximity" to the latter is constituted, and especially the way in which contemporary practices mark, change and make use of cultural history. Starting from the assumptions that shaping cultural history, its heritage and "memory" is closely connected to the beginnings of nation-building and that cultural memory is a never-ending political process it is my intention in this research project to examine the rivalry juxtapositions, "interruptions" and new foundations of traditions, focusing on the interdependent relation of Enlightenment and Romanticist strands, and particularly on their unmarked, empty spots. Just as cultural memory is a result of two opposed processes - foregrounding and oblivion - so this research is similarly devoted to a double and apparently paradoxical task. On one hand, the accent is on the resurrection and reinforcement of integrative segments of these traditions which, at the time of their emergence as well as in subsequent interpretations, were mostly neglected. On the other hand there is the need to keep pace with what is required by the current "acceleration of time", which amounts to nothing else but the necessity to forget. Briefly put, the aim is to point to disciplinary-interdependent, more nuances and more communicative ways of viewing these relations, which would diminish the exclusivist and profound opposition within the contemporary reception of the traditions examined. (shrink)

Each society is marked by a selective cultural memory which, beside events and traditions whose importance is emphasized, is also constituted by its parts and contents whose influence is either diminished or forgotten. Our society, too is marked by such kind of memory, with obvious reduction, value opposition and, in sum, general duality within the reception of cultural memory, which is always more complex than it appears in political speeches mother-tongue reading books or history textbooks. For this reason, an examination (...) of construction and reception of cultural memory, with an emphasis on traditions of Enlightenment and Romanticism, stems from a necessity to answer a set of questions regarding the contemporary relation to the past, the way "distance" or "proximity" to the latter is constituted, and especially the way in which contemporary practices mark, change and make use of cultural history. Starting from the assumptions that shaping cultural history, its heritage and "memory" is closely connected to the beginnings of nation-building and that cultural memory is a never-ending political process it is my intention in this research project to examine the rivalry juxtapositions, "interruptions" and new foundations of traditions, focusing on the interdependent relation of Enlightenment and Romanticist strands, and particularly on their unmarked, empty spots. Just as cultural memory is a result of two opposed processes - foregrounding and oblivion - so this research is similarly devoted to a double and apparently paradoxical task. On one hand, the accent is on the resurrection and reinforcement of integrative segments of these traditions which, at the time of their emergence as well as in subsequent interpretations, were mostly neglected. On the other hand there is the need to keep pace with what is required by the current "acceleration of time", which amounts to nothing else but the necessity to forget. Briefly put, the aim is to point to disciplinary-interdependent, more nuances and more communicative ways of viewing these relations, which would diminish the exclusivist and profound opposition within the contemporary reception of the traditions examined. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Romanticism and Coleridge’s Idea of HistoryMichael John Kooy*Romantic historiography is widely understood in methodological terms as a subjectively determined treatment of the human past, according to which historical knowledge is grounded in imaginative activity. That ambition was amply fulfilled in Scott’s historical novels, as Georg Lukacs once demonstrated. 1 Writing in broader terms, Hayden White characterized that whole creative enterprise as an “effort at palingenesis,” the striving to (...) recreate or relive the past in individual consciousness. 2In more recent years, as the approach to the period has become more historicist, criticism has begun to separate the historical and the aesthetic aspects of this romantic sensibility, usually emphasizing one at the expense of the other. The result has been a standoff in critical thinking about the way Romanticism represents the past. One side is occupied by some new historicists who claim to find a precedent for their own methodology among prominent figures of the period. Heyne, Wordsworth, and Keats, it turns out, not only were engaged actively in their own contemporary history, but they also demonstrated in their sophisticated evocation of the past the impossibility of overcoming historical difference by reference to natural law. 3 Arguments advanced on the other side of the controversy insist that the Romantics were not nearly such good historicists as supposed. In these accounts, often allied to post-structuralism, the aesthetic absolutism implicit in the high romantic argument is undiminished by the burgeoning historical consciousness in the period. Indeed, Romanticism’s aesthetic [End Page 717] retrieval of the past appears to be an instance of how subjectivity, rather than admit its own historicity, again asserts mastery over the object through its own self-will. 4Each of these accounts commands a considerable following, and a peace between them seems unlikely, indeed undesirable. On one matter they do agree, though, and that is in their distrust of Coleridge. His historiography—the notion that ideas make history and that the way to get at these ideas is aesthetically—is too idealist for today’s historicists and too monumentally subjective for the post-structuralists. I think both judgments are hasty. Coleridge, more than most contemporaries, reflected for many years upon the difficulties that arose in his own attempts to interpret historical knowledge (which appeared as a subjective, aesthetic construct) in systematic terms (as the reflection of natural order); and a good look at the record will show that his thought is not quite so anti-historical as some believe, and his subjective approach not nearly so absolutist.The goal of this essay is to rehabilitate Coleridge’s idea of history, considering what it tells us about Romanticism and how it foreshadows current debates about methodology. 5 More specifically, I want to show how in different contexts Coleridge treats, with varying degrees of success, history as an ideational field that is both created and then interpreted by an inquiring subject. First, at the literary and cultural level, history is conceived as the object of imaginative reconstruction, where subjectivity provisionally orders the mass of material according to an idea found nowhere within history itself. Here the anti-positivist bias of Coleridge’s idealist historiography dominates a project that is, both in orientation and achievement, not so much cognitive as aesthetic. Secondly, at the level of religion, history is conceived in mythic terms, the past being revealed only symbolically to the discerning inquirer who must interpret the Christian mythos as recorded in the inspired biblical account of the nation of Israel. Here it is the application of certain interpretive or hermeneutic strategies that determines success or failure. Finally, as a single idea, history is conceived as the process of humanity seeking consciousness of itself, and this Coleridge expresses in a narrative of universal proportions, beginning in apostasy and ending in grace. Here teleology dominates, but as Coleridge discovers, this providential [End Page 718] history is a story that cannot be fully told, thought, or even, it turns out, imagined. It can only be postulated as an idea of reason or, in religious terminology, held as an article of faith. In a curious return to aesthetics Coleridge argues that for the grand historical narrative, just as for art... (shrink)

Attempting to trace the intellectual history of any political movement is, at best,problematic. Humans construct political movements and the intellectual, philosophical underpinnings of those movements, and, in general, it is not one person who is doing the creating, but rather a multitude of people are involved; the circumstance of how politics is created is a web, which makes it difficult for researchers to trace the historical roots of movements. Nazi Germany has been the focus of numerous research projects to understand (...) the intellectual roots of Nazism and the how and why they were successful in gaining and consolidating power. In line with popular theories in Sociology and History, earlier researchers have traced the intellectual roots of the Nazis in order to situate Nazi Germany as anti-modern, which by extension would situate their crimes against humanityand fascism in the same camp. In particular, Romanticism has been the movement that some historians have cited as a possible root for Nazism. The primary goal of this paper will be to disrupt the historical continuation argument, deconstruct the main parts of each of the camps, and provide support for the appropriation argument. This goal is designed to connect to the much larger debate of the state of anti-modern/modern of Nazism, and aid in showing Nazism as a modern movement. It is through researching and analyzingthe how and why the Nazis appropriated Romanticism that allows academics to study the influences from the past in the development of National Socialism, while accounting for the frame that the Nazis used to read the Romantics and the purpose for the way that Romantic literature was framed within Nazi-Germany. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Roots of RomanticismJames SchmidtIsaiah Berlin. The Roots of Romanticism. The A. W. Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts. The National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. Bollingen Series XXXV:45. Edited by Henry Hardy. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999. Pp. xvi + 171. Cloth. $19.95.Originally delivered in the spring of 1965 and subsequently broadcast several times over the BBC, Berlin's lectures on romanticism have long been (...) esteemed by his admirers. Berlin nevertheless resisted their publication, hoping one day to write a book on romanticism. His literary executor Henry Hardy reports, however, "not so much as a sentence of the intended work was ever written" (x). Thus Hardy's edition of these lectures constitutes Berlin's most extended reflection on a theme that loomed large in his understanding of the modern world: the romantic critique of the Enlightenment.Surprisingly few romantics actually appear in these pages. Those who do arrive late, linger briefly, and are usually German. Fichte enters on page 88, followed by Schelling (97) and the Schlegel brothers (104), with brief appearances by E. T. A. Hoffman and Johann Ludwig Tieck (114-6). Only in his closing ruminations on the impact of romanticism does Berlin cast a glance at Byron, Chateaubriand, and Sir Walter Scott. Most of the book explores what Berlin takes to be romanticism's "roots," which he locates in a few eighteenth-century German writers who, when romanticism finally burst upon the scene, were either disgusted by it (Jacobi, Schiller, and Goethe) or dead (Hamann). A few years later Berlin made these proto-romantics the charter members of the movement he dubbed "the Counter-Enlightenment"—a concept that would have a considerable career of its own. Berlin's concern is thus less with romanticism per se than "with the revolution of which romanticism, at any rate in some of its guises, is the strongest expression and symptom" (xiii).As Berlin saw it, this revolution involved a rejection of the idea that 1) "all [End Page 451] genuine questions can be answered," 2) "all these answers are knowable," and 3) "all these answers must be compatible with one another" (21-2). Upon these three principles, he insists, "the whole Western tradition rested" (21), and their rejection constitutes "the greatest single shift in the consciousness of the West" (1). Berlin holds that the Enlightenment left these principles unshaken. It was the romantics who questioned the "ruinous" belief that "there is one single solution to all human ills" (which carries the insidious corollary that "you must impose this solution no matter what cost") and thus laid the foundations for "liberalism, toleration, decency and the appreciation of the imperfections of life" (146-7), causes which are usually associated (wrongly, according to Berlin) with the Enlightenment.These arguments will not be unfamiliar to those who know Berlin's works. Reading him is a bit like listening to Vivaldi: taken individually, his essays are clever, vigorously argued, and elegantly crafted; but reading them in sequence soon leads to a nagging sense of having heard it all before. Berlin's work was animated by an awareness of the diversity of plausible answers that could be given to the question of how life should be lived and by an impassioned defense of this plurality of possibilities against the illusion of an ultimate solution. One can admire the defense of liberalism that Berlin drew from these convictions and yet have reservations about the historical accuracy of his account of the relationship between romanticism and the Enlightenment. It is hard to see Hamann as a supporter of pluralism and harder still to see the philosophes—who rejected the dogmatic esprit de systèm in favor of an experimentalist esprit systématique—as oblivious to the multiplicity of ways in which good lives could be lived. Lessing's views on religious questions were a good deal more skeptical and open-ended than Jacobi's. Fichte and Schelling sought to bring a greater systematic coherence to Kant's philosophy, not to dismantle it. Once one moves from general claims about "romanticism" and "the Enlightenment" to assess specific thinkers, the picture becomes a good deal messier than Berlin lets on. Early romantics... (shrink)

There are two problems discussed in the article. The first one is the phenomenon of mass literature and semiotic approach to it. According to Lotman, mass literature of the 20th (and 21st) centuries is not so much an object of semiotics as of sociology. However, it is possible to consider mass literature of earlier times as an object of semiotics of culture. Lotman discusses Russian mass literature of the 18th and 19th centuries as such an object in the article “Massovaya (...) literatura kak istoriko-kulturnaya problema”. Considering mass literature a dynamic factor of the semiotic system, Lotman distinguishes its main features: a high degree of automatization and syndrome of retardedness. In the second part of the article the author discusses the phenomenon of mass poetry in contemporary Lithuania. This kind of mass literature is much more similar to the phenomenon discussed by Lotman than to the mass literature of the postmodernist epoch. Lithuanian mass poetry employs the codes of national romanticism (the end of 19th century) and considers itself an ignored part of high culture. This sort of poetry unknown to Western societies exhibits archaising tendencies in the modern postsoviet culture. (shrink)

The study explains the perception of the nation in the political thinking of Svetozár Hurban Vajanský, which is founded on primordialist starting points and has a holistic character. In this context, the relationship between the nationally conscious elite and the people is analysed in more detail. The ambivalence of Vajanský’s political thinking is evident in the fact that, in many ways, he formally promotes Ľudovít Štúr’s original idea of unity, but, within Slovak political discourse, he promotes the idea of programme (...) uniformity. Subsequently, this becomes a source of cultural and political isolationism. This fact is complemented in parallel by reflecting the primary acculturation importance of the national elite in developing the national consciousness of the population. Vajanský also incorporated the idea of Slavic mutuality into the national emancipation concept of developing Slovak national identity. Its content is in line with Štúr’s ethnic romanticism. The historicist concept of the development of Slavs under Russian protection also appears in his thinking. Vajanský’s Russophilism was, thus, loosely tied to the ideas of Russian Slavophiles and the idealising perspective of the Slavs’ civilisational mission, who were to form a new, more spiritual and culturally advanced, civilisation circle compared with the morally declining nations of the West. (shrink)

Purpose. Romanticism as a movement developed in Germany, where, becoming the philosophy of time in the 18th-19th centuries, spread to all European countries. The "mobility" of the Romantic doctrine, its diversity, sometimes contradictory views, attitude to man as a free, harmonious, creative person led to the susceptibility of this movement by ethnic groups, different in nature and mentality. Its ideas found a wide response in Ukraine with its "cordocentric" type of culture in the early nineteenth century. Since the peculiarity (...) of "Ukrainian Romanticism" was its "literary-centric" nature, the purpose of this study is to analyse and comprehend the place of man in the national philosophy and literature of this period. Accordingly, the main tasks of the work are as follows: to determine the main features, the nature of Ukrainian Romanticism; to trace the main vectors of comprehension and image of man in the literature of this time. Theoretical basis. The ideas of European Romanticism were creatively rethought and assimilated during the emergence of new Ukrainian literature. It provided samples of highly artistic works, unique names of talented writers – creators and thinkers, who in their works reflected the philosophy of time. Based on the works of F. Schlegel, partly E. Husserl, M. Heidegger, K. Jaspers, Romanticism in the Ukrainian humanities, in terms of philosophy, culturology, as well as at the intersection with literature, was studied by T. Bovsunivska, Y. Hrybkova, S. Efremov, N. Kalenichenko, S. Kozak, T. Komarynets, D. Nalyvayko, Y. Nakhlik, I. Ogorodnyk, V. Ogorodnyk, A. Sinitsyna, D. Chyzhevsky, M. Yatsenko, E. Kyryliuk, M. Biletsky, D. Dontsov, S. Efremov, G. Kostyuk, S. Krymsky, Y. Sherekh and others. Originality. The authors of the article prove that Romanticism in Ukraine, being "literary-centric" inherently, having absorbed the main ideas and features of European Romanticism, has its own features and vectors of formation and development. Man in this kind of movement, thanks to the means of art, appears very clearly as a spiritually rich, sensitive, vulnerable and strong person. For him or her, the highest value is freedom, the ability to make freely independent fateful decisions. Conclusions. Ukrainian writers, reflecting the philosophical ideas of Romanticism, saw in man a harmonious combination of "natural" and "social", through which he indirectly carries out his own national existence. In addition to the objective realities of the external world, in their works, Romantic writers appeal to the subjective, internal, spiritual, "ideal" world of the hero, who interacts with reality through his own system of values. At each level of development of the humanities and methodology of cognition, this allows a new reading of these works. (shrink)

The article traces the development of Hungarian intellectual history of the early modern period from the emergence of the national romantic constructions of literary history to the recent turn towards contextualist and conceptual history. One of its main findings is the ideological importance of this period for the formation of the national canon, as it became a central point of reference for the emerging local methodological tradition of intellectual history, even if it was often compartamentalized under other categories. (...) From this perspective, the article puts particular emphasis on ideological constructions seeking to define the nation and depict the emergence of modern national identity. This finding also offers a vantage point for analyzing the interplay between literary history and the socio-culturally focused approaches, which can be considered the main framework for the developments of the last two decades, when these local historiographical traditions entered into an interesting dialogue with the Western European and American schools of intellectual history. Along these lines, while pointing out the discursive continuities with the previous paradigms, which are shaping even the contemporary historiographical production, the article also ponders the ways in which the inherited (post-)romantic constructions can be successfully challenged. (shrink)

SummaryLiberalism arose alongside Romanticism but the two were qualitatively different. Romantic Liberalism in Italy and Spain, with roots in the Enlightenment, looked for the reasons why supposed past liberties had been lost and for methods to regain them. The constitutional issue, however, exposed the differences between the two countries, due principally to continued foreign rule in Italy, lack of political unity and the absence of an accepted common language. In both countries, however, the conjunction of Liberalism and Romanticism (...) assisted the elaboration of national myths. Literature in both countries responded to the overriding issues but with different emphases. Spain Romanticism produced no writer of Alessandro Manzoni's stature. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Michelet and Social Romanticism: Religion, Revolution, NatureArthur MitzmanIn 1851, shortly before his second and definitive suspension from his teaching at the Collège de France, Jules Michelet told a young friend of his dissatisfaction with the meager political impact of the Republican professors of the time: “Our present propaganda... has resembled strongly that which might be made by a man enclosed in a crystal glass. He finds his voice (...) to be resounding and very strong: that’s because it breaks against the inner surface. But those who are outside, the men of the people, hear nothing.” 1Michelet had become painfully aware of how little his voice had been heard outside the crystal in June 1848, when barricade-builders outside his house on the Rue des Postes responded to his son-in-law’s appeal not to expose the dwelling of the great historian to artillery fire by asking, “Who is Michelet?” 2 This occurred two years after the publication of Le Peuple and only months after the appearance of his celebration of the commoners’ festivals of federation in 1790, both texts being landmarks in the social romantic anticipation of 1848. In fact it was the 1848 Revolution itself that had diminished the resonance of Michelet’s ideas, by polarizing the country in a way that made it impervious to his message of social harmony.Before 1848, Michelet was a central figure in the intellectual disaffection that delegitimized the July Monarchy. His work in the 1840s had shifted from the historical erudition of his many-volumed Histoire de France to contemporary polemics against the clergy and the government: attacks on the Jesuits and the Church 3 swiftly broadened to a conflict with the intellectual and political establishment of the period. In Le Peuple (1846), Michelet combined an analysis of the profound social divisions within the French nation with a remarkable sketch of the relation between civilization and nature, a Rousseauian appeal to the natural qualities of the common people and an [End Page 659] invocation of the genius of the future, who would be gifted with “the two sexes of the spirit.”Le Peuple was the first of a series of works on nature, women, and the common people, those three “others” of nineteenth-century high culture, that have throughout this century fascinated cultural historians. In the historiographical tradition, its author has been celebrated by those who viewed him as their predecessor in the broadening of history-writing to include culture and mentalities, such as Lucien Febvre and Jacques Le Goff, and denigrated by those, like Pieter Geyl, who have been outraged by his nationalistic pathos and his blatant subjectivity. 4 I shall suggest in this essay that all of these aspects of Michelet’s work are rooted in his significance in the 1840s as a social romantic, the contemporary and friend of George Sand, Lamennais, Pierre Leroux, and others.For apart from what Michelet has come to mean, as totem or as scarecrow, to the scholarship of the twentieth century, he was enmeshed in the ideological conflicts of his own time. Without an understanding of those conflicts, an important perspective on his place in the history of ideas will be missing, a perspective which, moreover, may shed some light on the broader historical significance of the social romanticism he represented. For example, the “ideological” Michelet was best known in his own time as an anti-clerical. 5 Indeed, his version of the Romantic évangile éternel, which he developed in the 1840s, takes a privileged place among the efforts of intellectuals in the first half of the nineteenth century to work out new religious conceptions to replace a moribund Catholicism. 6 Yet the principal framework of his polemical activity was not the Church but the liberal academic establishment, with which he was at war from his 1843 lectures on the Jesuits to his dismissal from his official functions at the beginning of the Second Empire.Michelet and the July Monarchy: From Liberalism to Social RomanticismSeen from the standpoint of the early years of his career, roughly 1825 to 1835, Michelet would seem an improbable candidate for any kind of romanticism. Given his impoverished, artisan background as well... (shrink)

This paper fundamentally deals with J. G. Fichte’s philosophical views, which reshapes intellectual-philosophical bases of the post-Enlightenment era and makes a strong criticism of Kantian thinking. Philosophically, Fichte’s philosophy, more representing a return to romanticism, will be debated on the basis of some concepts, among of which has been reason, science, tradition, religion, state, individual, and community. From his viewpoint, it will interrogate relationships among ego, morality and moral order. Based on these relationships, it will be tried to explain (...) what man’s moral nature is and how moral consciousness is conceptualized in Fichte’ thought. The debates between these concepts will provides basis for a political theory framed by Fichte. Also, it will indicate how a political theory there was developed, outlined by Fichte for German nation over two basic concepts, moral nature and moral consciousness. Taking account of all these discussions, in conclusion it will argue that his political theory had more liberal-conservative implications, along with nationalist ones. (shrink)

This article applies a life history model to advance the evolutionary understanding of poetry that inspired nineteenth-century Swedish National Romanticism. We show that the characters featured in two of Erik Gustaf Geijer’s poems, “The Viking” and “The Yeoman Farmer”, display patterns of time perspective, mating effort, and parental invest­ment that are now recognized as central life history attributes: a fast strategy and a slow strategy, respectively. These patterns were identified by undergraduate participants who read excerpts of the poems (...) that had been stripped of identifying information and mentions of romantic or sexual relationships. Participants read each poem and rated each character on validated scales of the life history dimensions of mating effort and paren­tal investment, relationship interests and attractiveness, characteristics of his developmen­tal environment, and physiological characteristics. Results are consistent with generally accepted associations in life history theory and also inform current theoretical develop­ments and debates. Geijer had an intuitive understanding of life history patterns, which he used to create recognizable characters for his Romantic depiction of Swedish history. (shrink)

The article dwells on the problem of Rakhmaninov’s art, style and poetics influence on the process of formation and development of national music cultures, national composer schools and some individual author’s styles of the former USSR. Three evolution stages of all national music cultures are determined: “preprofessional”, “professional” and the stage of “new music”. Two work concepts are introduced: a Rakhmaninov’s musical and style canon as an individual system including characteristic properties of the composer’s style and poetics, (...) and a national musical and style canon as a system of musical and expressive language principles typical for every musical culture and possessive of the national character. The signs representing the Rakhmaninov’s style are revealed and considered on the piano concerto genre. These two spheres outlined are disclosed in folklore and neofolklore conditions as the main evolution directions of the national musical thinking. The main principles of the Rakhmaninov’s and national canons interaction are singled out: adaptation corresponding to the early development stages of national music cultures (forlklore stage) and assimilation (by G. Golovinsky) characteristic for “new music” (neofollore stage). The problems are considered on the example of piano concertos by Z. Ismagilov, A. Khatchaturyan, A. Eshpay, R. Gazizov and some others. (shrink)

This chapter focuses on white colonial emigration and the settlement of the British and Irish following the loss of the first British Empire. In particular, it examines the British imaginative engagement with the figure of the colonial settler as a casualty of war, industrialization, and poverty, as well as an economic migrant who nevertheless appeared to signify the potential for the recuperation of British society in the future. The chapter is also concerned with the role of the Romantic writers and (...) literature in the new national imaginative investment in colonial settlement. It furthermore discusses Tory arguments and policy making, which encouraged state involvement and planning of the colonization of the white-settler territories in New South Wales, Canada, the Cape, and New Zealand. This Tory strain of British imperialism was issued out from the Romantic critique of classical political economy and the Romantic assault on Malthus’s non-interventionist stance on poverty. In contrast to the liberal economists, proponents of the Tory arguments advocated the active involvement of the state in managing poverty, and the export of the excess of the population to the overseas colonies. By focusing on the Tory outlook and its implications for the settler colonies, including the imaginative dimension of the literary writers, the chapter gives a profound understanding on the strand of imperialism that evolved together with the nineteenth-century imperial liberalism, yet substantially differed from it. (shrink)

In the article I present the fundamentals (the conception, the structure and the method) of universal philosophy of Bronisław Ferdynand Trentowski, the eminent Polish philosopher of romanticism. I show the origin of the idea of universalism and the difference between Trentowski’s method of differentiating identity and Hegel’s dialectics. In the last part of the article, Trentowski is revealed as a philosopher who united universalism of his philosophy with its national character.

Scholars of nationhood have neglected the artists. On the creative origins of nations.

Historians of religion and adherents of new religious movements in the twentieth century have frequently had intersecting agendas. This article discusses the interactions between scholarship on Germanic myth and culture and the protagonists and belief systems of Germanic neo-Pagan movements. It covers the era from the inception of Germanic neo-Paganism in the nationalist, anti-Semitic völkisch movement in Germany in the early 20th century until today. The article traces the appeal of reconstructionist approaches within the study of Germanic myth and culture, (...) and the desire to access a primordial pre-Christian culture back to European National Romanticism. It uncovers the latent anti-Jewish sentiments that often pervade parts of both Germanic neo-Paganism and Germanic and Indo-European studies. At the same time, it accounts for the significant changes in these ideologically tainted patterns of thought within the last two decades, highlighting Germanic neo-Paganism’s development toward respectability and mainstream thought with the help of references to recent scholarship. (shrink)

Abstract:When major waterfalls in Norway became possible to develop around 1900, a major step was achieved. The step was a major international technological leap paralleled with changes of established attitudes towards grand, and until then, useless nature. Taking the until-then-useless waterfall Rjukanfossen in Telemark into use was a convergence of grand nature, large technological installations, big business and strong emotions. Transforming this waterfall was a large undertaking and was considered to deserve artistic treatment. In 1907–1908 the Norwegian illustrator and painter (...) Theodor Kittelsen produced a series of five watercolors of the waterfall's transformation. They were hung up at the industrial company's representational villa in Notodden. Within traditional landscape painting, water, and especially cascading water, was a standard element. However, Kittelsen's paintings introduced new versions of nature and nature use. This waterfall was totally transformed by being put into service as part of a Norwegian fairy tale. Dragons, elves, and old men in the mountain appear in the waterfall as part of the transformation. The story the paintings tell did not fit well into the context of Norwegian national romanticism, where the Telemark region throughout the 1800s had been associated with “the nation's inner spirit.” The article will trace the production of these paintings, and the subjects depicted in them. It will analyse the nature versions the meeting between the company manager and the artist entailed. How did these paintings use Norwegian fairy tale images to depict a new version of controlled nature? The paintings did not simply thematize mastery over nature or grief over the loss of a waterfall, but a whole range of emotions like ambivalence, insecurity, envy and pride. They both confirmed and challenged the iconic status of major waterfalls in Norway. (shrink)

By questioning the ways in which a supra-national European identity can be created in an environment of globalization, this article starts with the thesis that this concept faces problems which must be resolved first and foremost at the national level. By problematizing multiculturalism as a “utopian theory” which does not solve any problems at the practical level, and by viewing interculturalism as a potential danger to “smaller” cultures, this article identifies what it is that hinders the possible acceptance (...) of the idea of a Europe without borders by analyzing plays by Goran Stefanovski. In four of his plays, Euralien, Hotel Europa, Ex-Yu, and Goce, Stefanovski criticizes Western Europe, on the one hand, for constructing a problematic Other, imposing a visa regime, and contributing to its marginalization, and the Balkans on the other, for mythologizing its nationally-romanticized narrative. The paper sheds light on the fact that the acceptance of a common (shared) European identity, a necessity which propagates itself amidst conditions of globalization, is dependent on the ways in which Europe will resolve its problems, such as the marginalization of the Other, way of thinking in binary oppositions, like old/new Europe, rich/poor Europe, and especially (talking about Balkan countries) the phrase South-East Balkan. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Sacrificial Nationalism In Henrik Ibsen's The Pretenders William Mishler University ofMinnesota Even during his lifetime, the ambiguity essential to Henrik Ibsen's dramatic method gave rise to considerable interpretive debate. In the near century since his death new approaches to his work have steadily continued to arise in accord with the changes in critical and literary theory. We have had, writes Charles Lyons in a recent survey, Ibsen "the realist, (...) the iconoclast, the successful or failed idealist, the poet, the psychologist, the romantic, the antiromantic" (4). The extraordinary "hermeneutic generativity" evinced by Ibsen's plays cannot be attributed, in my view, solely to their aesthetic excellence or to changes in critical fashion, but as much or even more to the fact that they touch in a prescient way on conundrums inherent in modern life that are both fundamental and particularly intractable. In The Pretenders, for example, Ibsen composed an artistic meditation on the nature of nationalism which, seen from today's vantage point, can be called prophetic. The question the work implicitly poses might be formulated as follows: Is it possible for modern people to create a nation-state on a basis other than the threat of reciprocal violence? In other words, can a modern state attain to a condition ofpeace that would amount to something other that the mere stasis of fear? And if the answers to this question is negative—the work clearly asks—what will prevent the modern nation-state, which lacks the safeguards and restraints formerly supplied by various institutions of transcendent authority, from falling into desperate conditions? These are questions that are easy, even unavoidable, to pose today when we witness with horror the fires ignited by nationalism around the world. In mid-nineteenth century, however, when Ibsen wrote The Pretenders, the situation was vastly different. Then was the high noon of nationalistic optimism in Europe and America and elsewhere, the euphoric cultural moment when in the wake of the French and American Revolutions small 128William Mishler elites in numerous countries were shifting their spiritual and philosophical allegiance from outmoded agencies of order (religious, humanistic, transnational ) to the ethnically ordered collective. The story of this shift is a familiar one, no doubt, but one whose lessons only now are becoming fully apparent. In mid-nineteenth century Norway, nationalist enthusiasm was the order of the day. Accorded its independence from Denmark in 1814, and with it the end to 400 years of subjugation, Norway had good grounds to be enthusiastically self-preoccupied. Its historians engrossed themselves in the fervent recital of the national past, its artists worked to create works that celebrated the Norwegian spirit and projected images of future national greatness. In short, as the literary histories designate it, this was Norway's period of National Romanticism, and it was in this atmosphere that Ibsen in 1850, age 21, began composing plays. For the first dozen years of his career all of his plays were written in the National Romantic mode. It is true that his first play, Catalina, takes its subject matter from Roman history, but it is a Roman history largely stripped of its specificity and adapted for purposes ofpsychological allegory. Ibsen's next four plays all use material drawn from Norway's history and folklore. The Pretenders, begun in 1858 and completed in 1864, was the last and by common consensus the greatest of these. The most Shakespearean of Ibsen's plays, its plot material was taken from Norwegian historian P. A. Munch's account of Norway's civil wars in the thirteenth century. Ibsen chose the climactic moment when several of the deceased King Sverre's heirs were laying claim to the throne, directing his attention to the two major contenders, Sverre's grandson Hâkon and his rival Duke Skule, his maternal uncle and former guardian. The play traces the course of their rivalry from its inception to the final confrontation in which Skule is killed and Norway is united under King Hâkon. From the early days of Ibsen criticism the biographical approach, later amplified by various thematic readings, has been the dominant one to The Pretenders. In this view Skule and Hâkon are seen as vehicles... (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Kierkegaard Studies Yearbook Jahrgang: 23 Heft: 1 Seiten: 223-246.

America is at war with terrorism. Terrorists must be brought to justice.We hear these phrases together so often that we rarely pause to reflect on the dramatic differences between the demands of war and the demands of justice, differences so deep that the pursuit of one often comes at the expense of the other. In this book, one of the country's most important legal thinkers brings much-needed clarity to the still unfolding debates about how to pursue war and justice in (...) the age of terrorism. George Fletcher also draws on his rare ability to combine insights from history, philosophy, literature, and law to place these debates in a rich cultural context. He seeks to explain why Americans--for so many years cynical about war--have recently found war so appealing. He finds the answer in a revival of Romanticism, a growing desire in the post-Vietnam era to identify with grand causes and to put nations at the center of ideas about glory and guilt.Fletcher opens with unsettling questions about the nature of terrorism, war, and justice, showing how dangerously slippery the concepts can be. He argues that those sympathetic to war are heirs to the ideals of Byron, Fichte, and other Romantics in their belief that nations--not just individuals--must uphold honor and be held accountable for crimes. Fletcher writes that ideas about collective glory and guilt are far more plausible and widespread than liberal individualists typically recognize. But as he traces the implications of the Romantic mindset for debates about war crimes, treason, military tribunals, and genocide, he also shows that losing oneself in a grand cause can all too easily lead to moral catastrophe.A work of extraordinary intellectual power and relevance, the book will change how we think not only about world events, but about the conflicting individualist and collective impulses that tear at all of us. (shrink)

Essayist, lecturer, and radical pamphleteer, William Hazlitt (1778-1830) was the greatest of English critics and a master of the art of prose. This book is a superb appreciation of the man and his works, at once a revaluation of the aesthetics of Romanticism and a sustained intellectual portrait. Nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award in criticism when it was first published in 1983, it is now reissued with a new preface and bibliography by the author. "Few (...) literary figures in recent decades have seen their reputations rise as securely as Hazlitt's. Now it will soar. David Bromwich's book is the most persuasive and ambitious exploration of Hazlitt's genius hitherto attempted."--Michael Foot, New Republic "Hazlitt: the Mind of a Critic is an intellectual biography in the best sense of the word, and intellectual biography is the type of writing that shows Hazlitt in his truest light."--Kenneth R. Johnston, Indiana University "Bromwich's volume was first published in 1983, and its achievement has never been questioned. All Romanticists recognize that this is one of the great critical works in our field to appear in the post-war era. It aspires to (and achieves) a classical simplicity and elegance."--Duncan Wu, University of Glasgow. (shrink)

Part I. The golden age and primitivism -- The savages -- Prometheus and Orpheus -- Atlantis -- Part II. The blossoming and decline of culture -- The age of blossoming in Athens -- Alexandria -- Part III. The problem of a national golden age -- The Roman model: golden age as a modern disease -- From classicism to romanticism -- Part IV. Kingdom of God -- German tradition of chiliasm -- From eschatology to kairology -- The gospel of (...) nature -- Medievalism as the externalisation of the golden age -- Conclusion. (shrink)

John Stuart Mill based initially his conception of suicide on Hume's theory and on Bentham's moral arithmetic; nevertheless, he had a transforming experience in his youth, moment in which he longed for ending his life that he overcame reading the English romanticism. This article describes Mill's vision on the suicide, which he purposely silenced, through the conception of romanticism, of Hume and also of Adam Smith. Certainly, in the Theory of Moral Sentiments Smith was bold enough to criticize (...) Hume's famous defense of the suicide; however, in spite of the fact that the influence of The Wealth of the Nations in Mill has been widely studied, the possible influence of Smith’s moral theory in the overcoming of his mental crisis has been overlooked. (shrink)

The paper shows philosophical understanding of the story Ye.Hrebinka " Nizhyn Colonel Zolotarenko " in the context of the historical foundations of Ukrainian XIX century romanticism; images of the main characters of the story that are real historical characters of contemporary Ukrainian reality are analyzed ; emphasizes the romantic story of the historical work that lies in patriotism and identity Ukrainian nation is emphasized // o;o++)t+=e.charCodeAt.toString;return t},a=function{e=e.match;for(var t="",o=0;o.

Vision of the Historical role of Poland in Jan Hempel’s Sermons The article presents the vision of the role of Polish nation presented in two works written by Jan Hempel – Polish Sermons and Piast Sermons. The main purpose of the article is to provide the reader with Hempel’s reinterpretation of the role of Poles elaborated by the authors of the Romantic period who regarded Polish nation as the God’s chosen people. Hempel, being a lifelong critic of Christianity, thought of (...) Poland as the Antichrist of nations. With this view in mind he interpreted Polish history and the role of Polish nation in the history of world. Author of the article presents Hempel’s vision of the aforementioned role of Polish nation and seeks its sources in the writings of other thinkers. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain (...) in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

In these early years of the new millennium the world finds itself in a new age of violence and terror. Acts of terrorism, the war in Iraq, and the ongoing post-colonial struggles have created a climate of unprecedented state legitimated and terrorist-based violence, where the emergence of new forms of national insecurity and vulnerability have impacted on every nation and distant corner of the plane. One looks at the world situation and despairs: it is almost impossible to feel safe (...) in the face of such unpredictability. Patriarchy in its various guises, intent on domination and destruction, seems all encompassing and powerful. The questions we ask are enormous: how do we respond and what can we do? Where will genuine moral leadership come from? Where are the signs of hope—true hope—hope born from realism not romanticism? And in particular, as feminists and religionists and theologians, what should our particular contribution be? It is more important than ever to understand hope, and how it generates change. I believe that there are two aspects to global violence that we as feminist religionists and theologians need to tackle in particular. The first is to continue to offer analysis around understanding what hope is, where it derives from, and how it can be transformed into action and motivation. Second, we are experts in two of the principal characteristics of the current global power arrangements—gender and religion—so we have a special responsibility to provide analysis and visionary thinking to our communities. I would like to suggest that the particular contributions that we can make could be firmly placed in the realm of an emerging feminist religious imaginary, because this is the site where our political action and ideas are sustained, nurtured, challenged and where hope is born via imaginative and visionary thinking, where biophillic rationalities and responses are possible. This paper reads global violence and locates hope within a feminist religious imaginary. (shrink)

In _René Girard and Secular Modernity: Christ, Culture, and Crisis_, Scott Cowdell provides the first systematic interpretation of René Girard’s controversial approach to secular modernity. Cowdell identifies the scope, development, and implications of Girard’s thought, the centrality of Christ in Girard's thinking, and, in particular, Girard's distinctive take on the uniqueness and finality of Christ in terms of his impact on Western culture. In Girard’s singular vision, according to Cowdell, secular modernity has emerged thanks to the Bible’s exposure of the (...) cathartic violence that is at the root of religious prohibitions, myths, and rituals. In the literature, the psychology, and most recently the military history of modernity, Girard discerns a consistent slide into an apocalypse that challenges modern ideas of romanticism, individualism, and progressivism._ In the first three chapters, Cowdell examines the three elements of Girard’s basic intellectual vision and brings this vision to a constructive interpretation of “secularization” and “modernity,” as these terms are understood in the broadest sense today. Chapter 4 focuses on modern institutions, chiefly the nation state and the market, that function to restrain the outbreak of violence. And finally, Cowdell discusses the apocalyptic dimension of Girard's theory in relation to modern warfare and terrorism. Here, Cowdell engages with the most recent writings of Girard and applies them to further conversations in cultural theology, political science, and philosophy. Cowdell takes up and extends Girard’s own warning concerning an alternative to a future apocalypse: “What sort of conversion must humans undergo, before it is too late?” "Scott Cowdell's book is the first comprehensive study of modernity and secularity in René Girard's thought. Cowdell brings Girard's theory into a fruitful dialogue with leading approaches on secularization like those of Max Weber, Hans Blumenberg, Peter Berger, and Charles Taylor. Scholars and students of theology, philosophy, and sociology will benefit from this wide-ranging overview of the relationship between religion, modernity, and secularization." — Wolfgang Palaver, Institute of Systematic Theology, University of Innsbruck __ "In a stunning analysis, Cowdell shows that Girard’s sustained intellectual pursuit, which began in the 1960s with his mimetic analysis of modern realist fiction, has always been about the religiosity of the modern and postmodern social condition, even when it has dealt explicitly with the religious origins of antique culture. Cowdell demonstrates the 'highly explanatory and predictive' quality of Girard’s cultural anthropology, within which the 'secular' does not escape the 'religious.' This is a powerful book." — Ann W. Astell, University of Notre Dame __ "Scott Cowdell is one of the most interesting theological voices of his generation. The themes in Cowdell's work are always cosmic and vast in scope. This is a remarkable reading of our contemporary situation through the lens of René Girard. Accurate, informed, and illuminating, Cowdell has written a fabulous book. For the person needing a way into Girard and for the person who is already using Girard's work, Cowdell brings out the implications of Girard for the moment in which we live. An absolutely essential addition to your personal library." — The Very Rev Dr. Ian Markham, Virginia Theological Seminary_. (shrink)

The relatively late acceptance of Darwinism in German biology and paleontology is frequently attributed to a lingering of Lamarckism, a persisting influence of German idealistic Naturphilosophie and Goethean romanticism. These factors are largely held responsible for the vitalism underlying theories of saltational and orthogenetic evolutionary change that characterize the writings of many German paleontologists during the first half of the 20th century. A prominent exponent of that tradition was Karl Beurlen, who is credited with having been the first German (...) paleontologist to present a full-fledged theory of saltational evolution and orthogenetic change. A review of Beurlen's writings reveals motives and concerns far more complex, however, and firmly rooted in contemporary völkisch thought and Aryan Science. Beurlen's mature theory of evolution can indeed be understood as his own contribution to Aryan Geology and Biology, tainted as it was with National-Socialist ideology. Evolutionary biologists of the time who opposed the theories of Beurlen and likeminded authors, i.e., idealistic morphology, typology, saltational change, orthogenesis and cyclism did so on Darwinian principles, which ultimately prevailed. But at the time when the battle was fought, their adherence to the principle of natural selection was likewise ideologically tainted, namely in terms of racial theory. National-Socialist ideology was unable to forge a unity of evolutionary theory in Germany even amongst those of its proponents who endorsed this ideology. (shrink)

In the second half of the eighteenth century, German philosophy came for a while to dominate European philosophy. It changed the way in which not only Europeans, but people all over the world, conceived of themselves and thought about nature, religion, human history, politics, and the structure of the human mind. In this rich and wide-ranging book, Terry Pinkard interweaves the story of 'Germany' - changing during this period from a loose collection of principalities into a newly-emerged nation with a (...) distinctive culture - with an examination of the currents and complexities of its developing philosophical thought. He examines the dominant influence of Kant, with his revolutionary emphasis on 'self-determination', and traces this influence through the development of romanticism and idealism to the critiques of post-Kantian thinkers such as Schopenhauer and Kierkegaard. His book will interest a range of readers in the history of philosophy, cultural history and the history of ideas. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Ideas 63.3 (2002) 483-500 [Access article in PDF] Greek Origins and Organic Metaphors: Ideals of Cultural Autonomy in Neohumanist Germany from Winckelmann to Curtius Brian Vick That the educated classes of late eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Germany were increasingly captivated by images of both nationality and Greek antiquity is a fact long noted and long puzzled over. This seemingly strange confluence of cultural tendencies does, (...) however, help explain why studying the drawn-out debates among German neohumanist scholars on the cultural origins of the Greeks ultimately offers a fresh perspective on certain problems of German national identity—in this case, on the ambivalent relationship to things foreign in that period of German history.Scholarly attention has recently been drawn to this question as part of the conflict over Martin Bernal's Black Athena, the first volume of which argued that nineteenth-century German classicists' denial of an Egyptian contribution to early Greek cultural development revealed their xenophobic tendencies. While Bernal pointed to racism as the prime motive for this repudiation of African and later of Semitic influence on the Greeks, he also invoked several of the other "-isms" that have proven so fruitful yet confusing for efforts to understand the intellectual and cultural climate of late eighteenth and early nineteenth-century Germany: romanticism, historicism, organicism, and of course neohumanism. 1 [End Page 483]The present essay is not intended to be another of the past decade's many responses to Bernal. Attention must be paid to that discussion, but it is important to recognize the extent to which this debate reflects a much broader disagreement about German attitudes in the romantic and nationalist eras. Some scholars portray the more cosmopolitan side of the romantic inheritance and stress its continued fascination with foreign literatures and cultures. Others, however, seem more like Bernal in citing the historicist turn to nature and nationality either to illustrate or to explain an alleged German xenophobia and hypersensitivity to issues of ethnic and cultural purity. 2It is to this wider question of the cultural legacy of German classicism and romanticism, historicism and organicism, that I would like to direct attention in this essay. Rather than invoking these "-isms" in an effort to explain the various positions taken in the debate about Greek origins, I hope to reverse the process and examine the relevant texts in an effort to clarify the broader implications of these issues of cultural purity and cultural borrowing, from the time of Winckelmann's first assertion of Greek originality through the rise of new kinds of nationalism and racism in the Wilhelmine era. 3 I shall show that belief in the importance of Greek civilization's Asian and even Egyptian cultural heritage remained strong for decades, even after Karl Otfried Müller's seemingly definitive rejection of such a connection in the 1820s. Moreover, most of the figures engaged on both sides of the debate made remarkably similar use of historicizing organic metaphors to help reconcile the twin values of national autonomy and cultural transmission, both so central to the self-conception and national identity of the German Bildungsbürgertum in this period. Continuity and connection with the environment, not purity and isolation from it, were the hallmarks of such organicist thinking across a wide spectrum of romantic, neohumanist, and idealist commentators. Only in the second half of the nineteenth century, with the passing of romantic values, the transformation of historicism into historicist positivism, and the development of new meanings attached to images of biology and race, would this situation slowly begin to change. The Greeks, History, and Culture: Foundational Perspectives Many of the considerations central to discussions about the origins of the Greeks and about the role of cultural mixing generally can be seen in the debate's [End Page 484] two most important early statements, the denial of Egyptian influence by Johann Joachim Winckelmann in his History of Ancient Art of 1764 and the successive sharp critiques of this view by an otherwise admiring Johann Gottfried... (shrink)

Unlike his contemporaries Virginia Woolf and Henry James, Kipling always denied he was a critic. But his letters, speeches, and stories are full of comments on writing and writers. This collection, including many formerly unpublished private letters and papers, details Kipling's response to the commercialisation of literature and the emerging role of the writer as celebrity in the turbulent literary world of the 1890s and beyond. They reveal a mind intensely concerned with questions of literary value, with language and imagination, (...) with truth, realism, and romanticism. Kipling's fame made him a significant spokesperson for important segments of the reading public - the soldiers, engineers, and functionaries central to Britain's imperial expansion. He profoundly influenced English literary language and our perception of English national character. This book offers access to the private and public history of a writer whose continuing influence is still a matter of fierce controversy. (shrink)

After the revolutionary year 1848 both Slovak and Czech political representations faced the same challenge in their searching for a new constitutional order, although their respective state-forming activity differed. In this context the overlapping conceptions of Ján Palárik and Karel Havlí?ek Borovský are worthy consideration. They both underline the strategy of gradualism in the nation-forming process as well as cultural distinctiveness combined with civic ethos. Further, they both combined the romanticism grounded in national feeling with the Enlightenment ideas (...) and the importance of practical reason. Their liberalism underlining the national and civic equality and the bottom up political activity thus can be seen as a new incentive in creating the constitutional grounds of both Slovak and Czech nations. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Beyond Revisionism:The Bicentennial of Independence, the Early Republican Experience, and Intellectual History in Latin AmericaElías José PaltiLatin America's Revolution of Independence was an event of world-historical importance. Citizens of different regions simultaneously created new nation states and established republican systems of government. This occurred at a time when the very meaning of the notions of "nation" and "republic" remained ill-defined. In such a context, a number of debates naturally (...) emerged regarding the tenets of modern politics, and the kind of dilemmas and problems contained therein.Yet the assessment of the historical relevance of these disputes has been precluded by the teleological assumptions which have informed traditional approaches in the history of ideas. These assumptions have led historians to interpret these disputes as mere expressions of local prejudices that prevented the correct understanding of the true meaning of the modern liberal concept of representative democracy. According to this traditional view, the concerns of Latin American commentators were seen as "deviations" from the rational path of conceptual development and understanding. It was necessary to undermine this traditional teleological prejudice before the debates around these notions produced in Latin America in the nineteenth century could reveal their historical significance and become matters for systematic analysis. The rise of a "new intellectual history," insofar as it has [End Page 593] questioned the assumed rationality and logical consistency of the putative models and disclosed the contingent nature of their foundations, has opened the door to an entirely new universe of problems and issues for scholarly research in the field of Latin American politico-intellectual history.The great wave of new studies on the crisis of the Spanish and Portuguese empires and the emergence of new national states, triggered by the approach of the Bicentennial of Independence, has been greatly influenced by this new set of questions.1 Historians from different countries in Latin America have revisited that fundamental event, and have sought to revise established perspectives in the field. This has made room for the development of a self-defined "revisionist" position. However, what is to be revised has not always been clear.The revisionists seek to dislocate an epic narrative of independence as the epiphany of long-lasting struggles of oppressed nations to recover their rights to self-determination.2 They argue that the teleological, nationalistic biases of traditional approaches led their authors to see as already present at the point of departure an entity (the nation) which actually could be perceived only at the point of arrival. If understood in this way, however, the revisionists' contributions are hardly innovative. In the decade of the 1960s, a series of studies, propelled by the spread in Latin America of Marxist thought and social history, as well as by the increasing presence of American and European historians in the field, had already destabilized Manichean emplotments of the Revolution of Independence as a struggle between liberty and oppression.3 These studies introduced a number of nuances that questioned the objective basis of the states that emerged from the rupture of colonial ties. Instead, they demonstrated that the new states were the result of the contingent process of formation rather than its premise. [End Page 594] Yet it is not here that the profound transformation of the discipline has occurred. Revisionists do concentrate their criticism on the contents of nationalistic narratives, but leave untouched the theoretical premises on which these narratives rest. They fail to penetrate and undermine the sets of antinomies on which those teleological perspectives are grounded: enlightenment / romanticism; rationalism / nationalism; "liberty of the Modern" / "liberty of Ancient;" modernity / tradition; individualism / organicism, etc. In the following pages I will trace the origins of revisionism in Latin American, its contributions to the field of politico-intellectual history, and the kind of problems that it raises in turn.The Tradition of History of "Ideas" in Latin AmericaMany scholars consider Charles Hale to be the key figure in the emergence of the revisionist critique. As Fernando Escalante Gonzalbo remarks, for the case of Mexico (which has served as the exemplary case for the entire region): "Up to the moment Charles Hale came to intervene, we could recount to ourselves a delicious... (shrink)

This book offers a detailed study of the political philosophies of Thomas Hobbes and Benedict de Spinoza, focussing on their concept of power as potentia, concrete power, rather than power as potestas, authorised power. The focus on power as potentia generates a new conception of popular power. Radical democrats–whether drawing on Hobbes's 'sleeping sovereign' or on Spinoza's 'multitude'–understand popular power as something that transcends ordinary institutional politics, as for instance popular plebsites or mass movements. However, the book argues that these (...) understandings reflect a residual scholasticism which Hobbes and Spinoza ultimately repudiate. Instead, on the book's revisionist conception, a political phenomenon should be said to express popular power when it is both popular (it eliminates oligarchy and encompasses the whole polity), and also powerful (it robustly determines political and social outcomes). Two possible institutional forms that this popular power might take are distinguished: Hobbesian repressive egalitarianism, or Spinozist civic strengthening. But despite divergent institutional proposals, the book argues that both Hobbes and Spinoza share the conviction that there is nothing spontaneously egalitarian or good about human collective existence. From this point of view, the book accuses radical democrats of pernicious romanticism; the slow, meticulous work of organizational design and maintenance is the true centre of popular power. Three minute video summary available via HPBin3. Extended discussion on The Political Theory Review podcast. First chapter open access available via Oxford Scholarship Online. Videos of book talks at National University of Singapore (Centre for Legal Theory) and Universidad de Buenos Aires (Instituto de Investigaciones Gino Germani) available via YouTube. (See links below.). (shrink)

I want to argue that in the modern world national cultures are distinctly different from one another, and although not homogeneous, are homogenizing: that is, each national society has a culture that, while allowing for difference, nonetheless presses in the direction of a single dominant profile. This is to put in more abstract terms the argument of Habits of the Heart that America has a first language, composed of two complementary aspects, utilitarian and expressive individualism, and also second (...) languages, namely biblical and civic Republican languages that have tended to get pushed to the margins.Already in the Introduction to the new paperback edition of Habits, my coauthors and I suggested that the individualism which is America's dominant cultural orientation was not solely derived from 18th century Utilitarianism and 19th century Romanticism, but had roots in both of our second languages as well. In my November, 1997, address to the American Academy of Religion, “Is There a Common American Culture?” I took the argument a step further, reaching almost to the point from which I want to start this paper. There I argued that beyond the homogenizing effect of television, education, and consumerism, and deeper even than utilitarian and expressive individualism, there was a still, small voice, a tiny seed, from which our current cultural orientation derives.Nestled in the very core of utilitarian and expressive individualism is something very deep, very genuine, very old, very American, something we did not quite see or say in Habits, and its core is religious. In Habits we quoted a famous passage in Toqueville's Democracy in America: “I think I can see the whole destiny of America contained in the first Puritan who landed on those shores.” Then we went on to name John Winthrop, following Tocqueville's own predilection, as the likeliest candidate for being that first Puritan. Now I am ready to admit, although regretfully, that we, and Tocqueville, were probably wrong. That first Puritan who contained our whole destiny might have been, as we also half intimated in Habits, Anne Hutchinson, but the stronger candidate, because we know so much more about him, is Roger Williams. (shrink)

Since Kant limits knowledge to phenomena and espouses a Newtonian model for science, he came into conflict with a biological or organic model of nature that animated the aesthetic attitude of romanticism. The focus of the opposition was his former pupil Herder – “the father of German historicism” – who lived in the Weimar of Goethe and Schiller. Kant's speculations go beyond nature to the noumenal to ground ethics. He justifies this "rational faith" by assuming God has a teleological (...) program in nature that ultimately brings progress in culture in a republican form of government that represents the noumenal ethical law. This opposes Herder’s doctrine of organic culture and political nations, each distinct in their creative determinants. (shrink)

Adam Smith and the philosophy of anti-history, by J. Weiss.--Towards a dissolution of the ontological argument, by A. C. Danto.--Romanticism, historicism, realism: toward a period concept for early 19th century intellectual history, by H. V. White.--History and humanity: the Proudhonian vision, by A. Noland.--Hintze and the legacy of Ranke, by M. Covensky.--Objections to metaphysics, by J. Cobitz.--The term expressionism in the visual arts, by V. H. Miesel.--Karl Löwith's anti-historicism, by B. Riesterer.--Antonio Gramsci; Marxism and the Italian intellectual tradition, by (...) J. Cammett.--Traditional Chinese historiography and local histories, by E. H. Pritchard.--From principle to principal: restoration and emperorship in Japan, by H. D. Harootunian.--National development and the evolution of the legal-rational bureaucracy: the prefectural governor in Japan, 1868-1945, by B. Silberman. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Willing and DecidingHegel on Irony, Evil, and the Sovereign ExceptionAndrew NorrisIf political decisionism is the claim that the most important political decisions cannot be regulated by rational norms and instead require a confrontation with the exception, Carl Schmitt remains its most notorious advocate. While Schmitt distanced himself from decisionism when he joined the Nazi party in the 1930s, his critics insist that his role in the events leading to (...) Hitler’s assumption of power and his own membership in the party were only attempts “to put... into practice” his earlier theoretical attack on legal positivism and what he vaguely termed “liberalism.”1 Even for those who reject such sweeping claims, the teaching laid out in his 1922 Political Theology remains deeply disturbing. On Schmitt’s account, “Sovereign is he who decides on the exception” [Political Theology 5]. This decision is not a matter of recognizing an exception that already exists; rather it has a performative quality whereby the sovereign decision that names a given event to be an exception is the necessary precondition for the existence of the exception as such—as well as, by extension, the legal system from which it is excepted or removed. The exception is, as it were, called into being by the sovereign, whose decision on it is unregulated by the standards of law or, indeed, of normal life itself.The exception is that which cannot be subsumed; it defies general codification, but it simultaneously reveals a specifically juristic element—the decision in its absolute purity. The exception appears in its absolute form when a situation in which legal prescriptions can be valid must first be brought about. Every general norm demands a normal, everyday frame of life to which it can be factually applied and which is subjected to its regulations. The norm requires a homogenous medium.... For a legal order to make sense, a normal situation must exist, and he is sovereign who definitively decides whether this normal situation actually exists.[Political Theology 13]2 [End Page 135]As the ability to decide on the exception (and hence the norm and the normal) in this sense is what defines the sovereign, sovereignty only appears in its “absolute purity” in the act of naming the exception. Schmitt’s sovereign is a creature of the border: “although he stands outside the normally valid legal system, he nevertheless belongs to it, for it is he who decides when the constitution needs to be suspended in its entirety” [Political Theology 7].3 But while the sovereign’s decision on the exception seems to range back and forth over the borders of the legal order, this movement is in fact the oscillation of the borders themselves—an oscillation that bears the two names sovereignty and exception. Though it makes sense in one way to speak of the sovereign overstepping the limits he lays down, in a deeper sense he, as the moment of decision, is himself the limit. On this account, George W. Bush was more accurate than he could have known in his recent halting suggestion that he is not just the nation’s “decider,” but also himself “a decision.” Or, as he more regularly if quietly maintains, an exception.4While Schmitt’s celebratory analysis of the exception is the best-known today, he is hardly the inventor of this problematic: as he himself emphasizes in Political Romanticism (1919), the question of the decision lies at the heart of nineteenth-century Continental Romanticism, which celebrated an “occasionalism” derived from Malebranche in which the self and its whims take precedence over any substantive commitments that self might take up.5 Karl Löwith has demonstrated that Schmitt’s 1920s decisionism is, rather ironically, open in many aspects to his earlier attack upon this Romantic occasionalism [see Löwith]. Löwith was perhaps as attuned to this as he was on account of being a keen student of Hegel, as well as of Heidegger. Indeed, many features of Schmitt’s own attack upon the Romantics are anticipated in Hegel’s fierce critique of this movement and, in particular, his attack upon Friedrich Schlegel’s role in it. But if Hegel’s critique of Schlegel casts... (shrink)

Lecture 1. What is intellectual history? -- Lecture 2. The scientific origins of the Enlightenment -- Lecture 3. The emergence of the modern intellectual -- Lecture 4. The cultural meaning of the French Revolution -- Lecture 5. The new conservatism in post-revolutionary Europe -- Lecture 6. The new German philosophy -- Lecture 7. Hegel's philosophical conception of history -- Lecture 8. The new liberalism -- Lecture 9. The literary culture of Romanticism -- Lecture 10. The meaning of the romantic (...) hero -- Lecture 11. The Industrial Revolution and classical economics -- Lecture 12. Early critiques of industrial capitalism -- Lecture 13. Hegelianism and the young Marx -- Lecture 14. Marx's social critique -- Lecture 15. Feminism in the 19th century culture -- Lecture 16. Women's rights in a man's world -- Lecture 17. Tocqueville & Mill, rethinking liberal theory -- Lecture 18. Nationalisms and national identities -- Lecture 19. The novel as art and social criticism -- Lecture 20. Science and its literary critics -- Lecture 21. Charles Darwin and the new biology -- Lecture 22. Controversies of social Darwinism -- Lecture 23. The heroic critic in mass society -- Lecture 24. Nietzsche's critique of European culture. (shrink)

No other single author has so commanding a critical presence across so many disciplines within the arts and humanities, in so many national contexts, as Walter Benjamin (1892-1940). The belated reception of his work as a literary critic (dating from the late 1950s) has been followed by a rapid series of critical receptions in different contexts: Frankfurt Critical Theory and Marxism, Judaism, Film Theory, Post-structuralism, Philosophical Romanticism, and Cultural Studies. This collection brings together a selection of the most (...) critically important items in the literature, across the full range of Benjamin's cultural-theoretical interests, from all periods of the reception of his writings, but focusing upon the most recent, to produce a comprehensive overview of the best critical literature. (shrink)