This article offers a comparative study of the views of Alexis de Tocqueville and those of several Chinese thinkers of the late Ming dynasty (1368–1644)—primarily Gu Yanwu, Huang Zongxi, Wang Fuzhi—on the socio-political processes of centralization. My central claim is that their views of political centralization and of the decentralized polycentric society that preceded it in their respective countries exhibit a remarkable array of analogous structural features. More specifically, both Tocqueville and his Chinese counterparts perceive in centralization an inherent unsustainability (...) driven by its self-destructive nature: since the foundation and strength of statism depends on its social resources, the centralization of power inevitably results in the weakening of its own basis. I conclude that through their nuanced reinterpretation of self-interest, both parties advocate a “small-community-oriented communitarianism” instead of the increasingly centralized modern state. (shrink)

The word «history» can always be understood in two different meanings: as what happened in the past and as a story about the past. One and the same past can be described in different ways. The gap between historical events and representations of these events determines the diversity of historical discourses. Shifting the focus of the philosophy of history from identifying the con- ditions for the possibility of historical knowledge to the analysis of the process of historiography reflects (...) an understanding of the fundamental nature of historical discourses for the formation of pictures of the past. But the fascination with the subject of historical representation often overshadows what makes it possible in principle. Historical discourse is a modern narrative of the past. Thus, the condition for the possibility of historical discursiveness is the mediation of the horizons of the present and the past, which is a fundamental feature of the historicity of human existence. This article explains the discourses of memory and oppositional critical scientific history. Discourses of memory are considered as modern forms of manifestation of the historicity of human existence, because it is in them that the constant mediation of time horizons of the past and present becomes thematic. Critical history declaratively opposes the discourses of memory, but reveals the dependence of its methodological foundations on predetermined forms of under- standing the past presented in memory. The opposition between the discourses of memory and critical history structurally repeats the opposition of tradition and scientific history revealed in hermeneutics. The conceptual shift from tradition to memory reflects the fundamental changes in the modern understanding of historicity associated with the further detraditionalization and globalization of the world. Me- mory appears as a new form of understanding the past, associated with the fear of losing it, as well as understanding the distances and gaps in relation to it. Based on the differentiation of collective memory types, the corresponding types of dis- courses are distinguished. It is argued that historical discourses of identity cannot be identified with historical discourses of power, and historical-didactic and historical-aesthetic discourses are independent forms of modern attitude to the past. In an effort to separate critical reconstruc- tion from memory, scientific discourses become counterfactual to the taken for granted past, represented in the narratives of collective memory. (shrink)

This revised and expanded edition of A World History of Ancient Political Thought examines the political thought of ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, Israel, Iran, India, China, Greece, Rome and early Christianity, from prehistory to c.300 CE. The book explores the earliest texts of literate societies, beginning with the first written records of political thought in Egypt and Mesopotamia and ending with the collapse of the Han dynasty and the Western Roman Empire.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:...

This article is about an early period in the history of Adventism as a future world-class denomination. The activity of the most famous theologian scientists whose works influenced the formation of the foundations of Adventist doctrine is depicted. The formation of the organizational structure of Adventists in North America, as well as in other continents, is being scrutinized.

Roman Ingarden, one of Husserl's closest students and friends, ranks among the most eminent of the first generation of phenomenologists. His magisterial <I>Controversy over the Existence of the World, written during the years of World War II in occupied Poland, consists of a fundamental defense of realism in phenomenology. Volume I, which receives here its first complete and critical translation into English, initiates the grand project of refuting transcendental idealism, and begins by setting the foundations for an (...) elaborate and precise ontological system. This is Ingarden's greatest accomplishment, who is rather known as a theoretician of literature than an ontologist outside of Poland. The most important achievement of Ingarden's ontology is an analysis of the modes of being of various types of objects - things, processes, events, purely intentional objects and ideas. The three-volume <I>Controversy is perhaps the last great systematic work in the history of philosophy, and undoubtedly one of the most important works in 20th century philosophical literature. (shrink)

Katherine Clarke explores three authors who wrote about the rise of the Roman Empire - Polybius, Posidonius, and Strabo. She examines the overlap between geography and history in their work, and considers how pre-existing traditions were used but transformed in order to describe the new world of Rome.

Early communities and states -- Egypt -- Mesoptamia, Assyria, Babylon -- Iran -- Israel -- India -- China -- The Greeks -- Rome -- Graeco-Roman humanism -- The Kingdom of Heaven and the Church of Christ -- Themes : similarities and differences between cultures -- General conclusion.

Peter Adamson offers an accessible, humorous tour through a period of eight hundred years when some of the most influential of all schools of thought were formed. He introduces us to Cynics and Skeptics, Epicureans and Stoics, emperors and slaves, and traces the development of early Christian philosophy and of ancient science. A major theme of the book is in fact the competition between pagan and Christian philosophy in this period, and the Jewish tradition appears in the shape of Philo (...) of Alexandria. Ancient science is also considered, with chapters on ancient medicine and the interaction between philosophy and astronomy. Considerable attention is paid also to the wider historical context, for instance by looking at the ascetic movement in Christianity and how it drew on ideas from Hellenic philosophy. From the counter-cultural witticisms of Diogenes the Cynic to the subtle skepticism of Sextus Empiricus, from the irreverent atheism of the Epicureans to the ambitious metaphysical speculation of Neoplatonism, from the ethical teachings of Marcus Aurelius to the political philosophy of Augustine, the book gathers together all aspects of later ancient thought in an accessible and entertaining way. (shrink)

Review of Mark Buchanan, Ubiquity. The Science of History... Or Why The World is Simpler Than We Think, London: Weidenfeld & Nichols, 2000. ISBN 297–64376–2.

Douglass North is the hero of this project. He is an Americanist economic historian who was awarded the 1993 Nobel Prize in Economics "for having renewed research in economic history by applying economic theory and quantitative methods in order to explain economic and institutional change". Can it be that North has rescued scholars from the formalist/substantivist, modernizer/primitivist debates that have been distracting the study of the ancient economies for more than a hundred years? The editors of this volume tell (...) us that North has urged scholars of economic history to emphasize "the structure and performance of economies through time". By performance he means how much is produced, how stable that production is, how product and its costs are distributed. By structure he means the political, economic, and cultural institutions, the demographics, and the technology within which the performance is accomplished and measured. North provides guiding principles for this collection of first-class studies of aspects of antiquity's economies. Except where noted below, the emphases in the twenty-eight chapters, each about thirty pages and each successful in their own ways, are regularly production, distribution, and consumption, what I will call the Northian Triad. Many of the best chapters adhere to the editorial imperative that, if it can be measured, measure it. This means new approaches to especially the Greek materials, including new efforts at estimating populations and the effects of changing demographics on production and consumption. (shrink)

Fundamentally, Roman economic history is the study of how and why inhabitants of the Roman world produced, distributed and exchanged goods and services. By understanding the economic actions, events, institutions and products of the Roman world, Roman economic historians come to understand better the Romans themselves: their motivations, values, relationships and identities, among other things. With such a broad remit, today's Roman economic and monetary historians not only scour traditional sources for evidence (...) of Roman commerce, prices, labour, capital and contracts, but they now deploy an ever-broadening range of methodologies, theories and approaches – some of which originate well outside the disciplines of both history and economics. Some Roman economic historians, for example, create, investigate and run simulations, using massive digital archives of data gleaned from ancient evidence. Others compare micro-nutrients in ancient wheat varieties with their modern counterparts to gain a better understanding of diet, nutrition and economic prosperity in Roman cities. Increasingly, specialists in some aspect of the Roman economy find themselves members of internationally funded interdisciplinary teams seeking to understand what Arctic ice cores or North-American tree rings say about money production in the Roman principate. Roman economic historians’ scholarly sprawl has never been more challenging to describe, but I believe it is possible to group recent developments in the field into three overlapping areas: digitisation, particularisation and consilience. (shrink)

For modern Protestant theology there is a keen interest in eschatology, which, however, is interpreted not so much as the classical theological doctrine of the completion of history, which includes the theme of the church's takeover, the second coming of Christ and the millennial kingdom, as a teleological doctrine, focused on the questions of the final destination of reality, the achievement the world of its eternal purpose. Taking into account the fact that in modern Ukrainian religious studies there (...) is a lack of works devoted to the study of the transformation of eschatology in postmodern theology, the actual and timely implementation of the religious analysis of the process of rethinking the traditional Protestant eschatological dominant in the work of the main promoters of the new eschatological paradigm appears. So, the purpose of this article is to investigate the specifics of postmodernist readings of Protestant eschatology on the example of the emerging church, the theological and ecclesiological movement, which openly proclaimed its goal of adapting Christianity to epistemological and socio-cultural shifts of the postmodern period. Despite its short history, the movement has penetrated into numerous native church communities, theological schools and paratroopers, mostly in North America and the UK, to a lesser extent in other parts of the world. (shrink)

The development of the vital potential of the drama theater is in a continuous search for new forms of expression. Today, in an attempt to establish itself on the territory of a multicultural environment, as well as in an attempt to gain a unique method of communication with society, the theater as an art sphere expands the boundaries of its purpose. Going beyond the stage space turns out to be an important subject of research from the point of view of (...) the search for the artistic existence of the theater in the conditions of digital reality. This article discusses the issue of finding a place for a drama theater in a digital environment where the energy of human relations is significantly minimized and manifests itself in a specifically different way. The subject of the research for the author was the cultural and creative activity of the Tovstonogov BDT. The St. Petersburg Bolshoi Drama Theater does not need recommendations: it has a great history in the twentieth century, an attractive stage "today" for the audience and, undoubtedly, interesting prospects. In the practice of BDT under the leadership of Andrei the Mighty (2013-2023), there are such turns of dramatic action that are not directly connected with the stage and are almost out of place for the "repertory" theater. The phenomenon of the theater, as if removed from its ancestral roots, leaving the walls breathing tradition, is considered in the article as an experience of cultural and theatrical "exit" to the "stage" of digital reality. Among such experiments, the most significant are the social action "Help the doctors", as well as the experiments of "Minecraft" performances. In addition to the usual comparative historical method for art studies, others will be used, first of all, the formal method, which distinguishes the St. Petersburg school of theater studies. Scientific novelty is determined by the subject of research itself: BDT is considered as a phenomenon of a multi-genre cultural space, in which, as before, a special place is rightfully given to the actor, his role, as well as to the viewer who finds himself in the conditions of a new socio-cultural picture of the world. (shrink)

In the midst of a recrudescence of interest in the philosophy of Hegel in the United States and England, this polished translation of Hegel’s introduction to his Lectures on the Philosophy of World History is a timely and welcome addition to the English translations of the massive Hegelian corpus. At long last, Johannes Hoffmeister’s superlative edition of this accessible work is available in English twenty years after its publication in Germany. H. B. Nisbet presents Hegel’s lectures in italics (...) and intersperses the reconstructions of students’ notes in Roman type. Including Hegel’s first and second drafts of the first part of the "Introduction," the well-integrated lecture notes, an appendix on "The natural context or the geographical basis of world history," additions from 1826-7, Lasson’s "Notes on the Composition of the Text," and a chronological bibliography of writings dealing with the Lectures, this volume supersedes the previous English translations which were derived from Karl Hegel’s shorter edition. Duncan Forbes’ spritely introduction is a rapid fire counter-attack on a number of Hegel’s critics which charges that Hegel is misunderstood because of an inadequate grasp of the principle of identity in difference and the assumption that, for Hegel, the Absolute "absorbs" the contingencies, contradictions, and tensions in existence. Forbes appropriately stresses the "concrete universal" as the unity of the universal and the particular in history, a unity which preserves the particular as particular, the contingent as contingent. Even though Forbes overreaches himself at times, his defenses of Hegel’s interpretation of meaning in history are provocative and lively. This fine translation of Hoffmeister’s edition of the introduction to the lectures presents Hegel’s vision of history in a lucid, accessible form and captures the nuances of the thought of a philosopher who has been as often misunderstood as maligned.—G.J.S. (shrink)

A familiar theme in Greek philosophy, largely due to the influence of Plato's Cratylus, linguistic naturalism constitutes a major but under-studied area of Roman linguistic thought. Indeed, it holds significance not only for the history of linguistics but also for philosophy, stylistics, rhetoric and more. The chapters in this volume deal with a range of naturalist theories in a variety of authors including Cicero, Varro, Nigidius Figulus, Posidonius, and Dionysius of Halicarnassus. The result is a complex and multi-faceted (...) picture of how language and nature were believed to interrelate in the classical Roman world. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Eye of the Beholder: Deformity and Disability in the Graeco-Roman WorldThomas A. J. McGinnRobert Garland. The Eye of the Beholder: Deformity and Disability in the Graeco-Roman World. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1995. xviii + 222 pp. 64 pls. Cloth, $39.95.Recent years have witnessed increased attention among ancient historians in the subject of marginal types. What is new is not so much the unearthing of (...) evidence, most of which has long been available though not always easily accessible in the works of antiquarians, but the sophistication of method and the vigor of approach spurred by developments in the social history of more recent periods.An incomplete notice might include the studies devoted to gladiators (Wiedemann) and actors (Leppin, Ducos), Roman slaves (Bradley), so-called humiliores (Rilinger), leistai, mercenaries, and traders in fourth-century Greece (McKechnie), blacks in the Roman world (Thompson), and dwarfs in Egypt and Greece (Dasen).What is common to most or all of these efforts is a tight focus limited to one society, a narrowly-framed period of time, and/or a well-defined group. This narrow approach is not at all surprising, given the fact that the sources are scattered and composite, and demand a wide range of expertise in their treatment. A general study of the situation of the deformed and disabled in antiquity is then an all the more welcome addition to this trend in scholarship, though the true test of its usefulness will be its ability to confront successfully this central challenge posed by the sources.The book under review deserves praise for attempting to fill this need. There are undeniable advantages to the panoptic approach. The book calls attention to the value of evidence that is easily ignored: two prominent examples are the visual arts and physiognomy. Among its other virtues is a valuable demonstration of how ridicule is employed as a “marginalizing” device. The introduction is in some ways exemplary for its lucid emphasis on the difficulties of the enterprise. Unfortunately, such caution is fully justified by the result. This review argues two points: that a synthesis of this subject is as yet premature and that future studies should avoid wedding themselves as directly to modern concerns as this one does.A list of the chapter-headings shows that the book is organized thematically: “Survival of the Weakest,” “Half-Lives,” “The Roman Emperor in His Monstrous World,” “The Deformed and Divine,” “Deriding the Disabled,” “The Physiognomic Consciousness,” “Images of the Deformed,” “Medical Diagnosis and Treatment,” “Towards a Teratology,” and “Racial Deformity.” The chapters are bracketed by an Introduction and Conclusion, and followed by a Glossary, Notes, Bibliography, Index Locorum, and General Index. Plates with sixty-four illustrations complement the presentation of visual evidence in the text.The author sets himself a double aim (xii–xiii). One goal is to study the social [End Page 667] and economic conditions governing the existence of the deformed and disabled, and further to attempt to establish to what extent the ancients developed a teratology—the study of the causes of congenital deformity. The other purpose lies in the author’s desire to contribute a personal perspective, one avowedly shaped by the passage in 1990 of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).The forthright assertion of modern—and deeply personal—concerns is a hallmark of this work. As the title suggests, this is a subjective evaluation of the ancient evidence. It will come as no surprise that, when measured by the author’s standard, that of the ADA, the Greeks and particularly the Romans fall short of the mark. Unfortunately, the successful pursuit of this second goal spoils the fruits of the first. In brief, the author displays a pronounced inclination to moralize, which reduces the power of his work.In a similar way, the breadth of approach ultimately defeats its own purpose. The challenge of the sources—confronted with honesty by Garland in his introductory chapter—is exacerbated to an unacceptable degree by his refusal to define carefully what he means by “deformed” and “disabled” (see 5–7). There are also various infelicities of treatment, especially though not exclusively on the Roman side, which might have been avoided... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Literate Education in the Hellenistic and Roman WorldsGeorge A. KennedyTeresa Morgan. Literate Education in the Hellenistic and Roman Worlds. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. xviii + 364 pp. Cloth, $64.95. (Cambridge Classical Studies)This book is a study of the evidence for elementary education found in papyri in comparison with what is found in literary sources, especially in descriptions of teaching reading and writing by Quintilian, Plutarch, (...) and his alter ego, Pseudo-Plutarch. Although H.I. Marrou (A History of Education in Antiquity [New York 1956]) and others have cited exercises on papyri, much of the information is scattered and difficult for the nonspecialist, and Morgan performs a valuable service in reviewing it systematically. About four hundred exercises have been found on papyri, dating from the third century before Christ to the Byzantine period. They provide a record of practice in writing and evidence for what was read at an elementary stage in Greco-Roman Egypt. Morgan classifies them into copies of single letters, alphabets, syllabaries, word lists, gnomic sayings (the largest single group), short nongnomic quotations, scholia, grammatical exercises, rhetorical exercises, and other. The nongnomic quotations come chiefly from the Homeric poems (total 58), Euripides (20), and Menander (7). Rhetorical exercises are limited to rather simple narratives of myths, fables, chrias, and incidents from epic, with a very few historical subjects; there is no example of declamation or exercise in argumentation in the papyri.Morgan argues (pp. 71-72) for a "core" curriculum, consisting of methods of learning to read and write, with reading of gnomic sayings and of parts of the Homeric epics, and a "peripheral" curriculum, in which individual teachers experimented with other texts and other types of exercise. Students in Egyptian towns and villages were on the margins of Greek culture, and in many instances Greek was not their native language. Greco-Roman literate education gave them access, at varying social levels, to a world of culture and a route to power. "We can now begin to see how that culture is imparted," she says (103). "It [the education] begins by reducing the pupil to a reciter of nonsense, before feeding him, bit by bit, fragments of cultural information out of context." This is highly [End Page 331] authoritative: the pupil must accept what the teacher says before thinking or articulating anything originally, and this is repeated at every stage of education short of the schools of rhetoric and philosophy. The reference to "him" is necessary, for the papyri provide no evidence for the education of girls, and references to women in the exercises are almost entirely negative in tone.In a chapter entitled "Grammar and the Power of Language" (152-89) Morgan argues persuasively that formal grammar was not used in antiquity as a way to teach Greek to nonnative speakers; it was, instead, an initiation into a slightly higher level of education and taught the student how to recognize, and to a limited extent how to use, "correct" language. She speculates that it also provided a model of the relationship between the grammar of a sentence and what it represents in the world, "such that the grammatical accuracy of a sentence helps to guarantee the truth of the utterance" (188). However that may be, classicists need to understand how pervasive, all over the world, is the use of separate registers of formal language; to be taken seriously, speakers and writers everywhere have needed to employ the appropriate linguistic register as well as a number of other formal conventions (see my recent discussion in Comparative Rhetoric: An Historical and Cross-Cultural Introduction [Oxford 1997] esp. 64-68, 101-5, 125-27, 228).The following chapter, "Rhetoric: Art and Articulation" (190-239), attempts, as Morgan puts it, "to widen a little what we understand as the aims and effects of learning rhetoric" (197). Elementary rhetorical exercises as found in the papyri would not have produced a civic orator: "They teach pupils, most of whom are likely to use their literacy as bureaucratic middleman in a variety of posts, to read and analyse complicated texts, to articulate and pass on information in clear and concise form. The pupils who had learnt this much... (shrink)

In classical Latin, luxuria means 'desire for luxury'; it is linked with the ideas of excess and deviation from a standard. It is in most cases labelled as a vice which contrasts with the innate frugal nature of the Romans. Latin authors do not see it as endemic but as an import from the East in the aftermath of military conquests--and as a cause of fatal decline. Following these etymological and semantic origins, Roman Luxuria: A Literary and Cultural (...) class='Hi'>History discusses the influence of Greek culture on the Roman concept and the peculiar characteristics of Roman luxuria. It analyses Roman views on luxuria through close readings in historical order from Cato the Elder, who regards luxuria as the opposite of the ideal Roman way of life, to the Christian poet Prudentius, who represents it in an allegorical fight with Sobriety. The book attends both to key authors and to wider literary genres, such as historiography and satire. Particular consideration is given to the rhetorical device of personification, which can be traced from the first appearances of luxuria in Latin literature to those of late antiquity. Berno devotes detailed attention to Seneca the Younger, whose work is often preoccupied with this passion. Seneca both defends himself from the charge of luxuria and violently attacks it in others, describing it as the archenemy of a philosophical life. Along the centuries, the focus on luxuria shifts from the economic sphere (and the waste of money) to the erotic, to the extent that in the Christian world it becomes one of the Seven Capital Sins representing the vice of lust. (shrink)

Hailed by The New York Times as "tantalizing" and "learned," A History of Western Morals brings together an impressive range of knowledge of Western civilization. From the ancient cultures of the Near East, through the Ancient Greek and Roman worlds, to the Middle Ages, the Reformation, the Renaissance, the Age of Reason and the twentieth century, Crane Brinton searches human history for the meaning of ethics. A History of Western Morals raises controversial conclusions about the value (...) of religion in society, the practices of sex, the nature of crime and the possibility of progress. (shrink)

This book offers an interdisciplinary approach - historical, literary, art-historical and archaeological - to the topics of ideology and identity in the medieval East Roman world. The individual chapters explore ideological discourses and practices in various contexts. In particular, they focus on the content of ideas and their role in shaping different kinds of group attachments and identifications within the imperial social order. Moreover, they explore the various visions of community which different collective identity discourses projected within and (...) beyond the political boundaries of the empire. Including both top-down and bottom-up perspectives, and exploring both the empire's centre and its periphery, this collection offers new insights into ideology and identity in the Byzantine world. (shrink)

Since the late nineteenth century, studies of Ammianus’ audience have reached widely divergent conclusions. Research has focused on two opposed theses: while some scholars have seen the pagan senatorial aristocracy as the audience of the Res Gestae, others have assigned that role to the imperial bureaucracy. However, in thinking that a work could reach—or target—exclusively the members of a specific social group, the prevalent views on Ammianus’ audience contradict what we know about the circulation of books in the late (...) class='Hi'>Roman world. In contrast to previous research, this study proposes a new approach based on an analysis of the information available on book circulation in Ammianus’ time. This analysis shows that the audience of the Res Gestae was most likely socially diverse. (shrink)