Heterodoxy, sects and sectarianism seemingly belong to the sphere of religions; they obviously refer to doctrinal organizational and behavioral aspects of dissension within the frameworks of religions. It would, however, be wrong to think that their importance is confined only within such frameworks—broad and important as they are. The importance of heterodoxy and sectarianism is indeed much wider. It is much wider not only because the term sect has been often used—as Roger Caillois has demonstrated in his brilliant (...) essay on “L'Esprit des Sectes”—to refer to a much broader range of phenomena in the overall political and social order. The very possibility of using this term beyond its strictly religious connotation indicates that the developments of sectarianism, rooted as it is in the sphere of religion, are, potentially at least, of much broader implications.This was, of course, most clearly seen and elaborated by Max Weber who, in his classical essays on the comparative sociology of religions, was among the first to stress the place of dissent and heterodoxy, not only from the point of view of the doctrinal or organizational development of various religions, but from the broader point of view of the broader civilizational dynamics, of the innovative capacity of different civilizations. (shrink)

Despite his controversial reputation, Origen of Alexandria (185-253) was very much present in 17th- century religious debates. His official condemnation by the Church was a stain on his theological and exegetical reputation, yet his work remained a source of inspiration for some. For others, he was a heretic to be refuted. In Jean Le Clerc (1657-1736), a Swiss born Dutch Biblical scholar and literary journalist, we find elements from both camps although their opinions are not given equal weight, and he (...) made a clear-cut assessment of Origen's condemnation. As a member of the Arminian Church, Le Clerc had to defend his religious affiliation throughout his life, especially rejecting the predominating Reformed views on such hotly debated topics such as human freedom, divine agency and predestination. He also had to protect his theological reputation from other accusations of heterodoxy, especially Socinianism. Surprisingly, Origen became a key ally in Le Clerc's struggle, despite the fact that he had to utilise the Alexandrian's thought in nuanced ways and to communicate it with great care in order to discourage frontal attacks on himself based on Origen's reputation and work. (shrink)

The separation of science and religion in modern secular culture can easily obscure the fact that in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Europe ideas about nature were intimately related to ideas about God. Readers of this book will find fresh and exciting accounts of a phenomenon common to both science and religion: deviation from orthodox belief. How is heterodoxy to be measured? How might the scientific heterodoxy of particular thinkers impinge on their religious views? Would heterodoxy in religion create (...) a predisposition towards heterodoxy in science? Might there be a homology between heterodox views in both domains? Such major protagonists as Galileo and Newton are re-examined together with less familiar figures in order to bring out the extraordinary richness of scientific and religious thought in the pre-modern world. (shrink)

The historical significance of religious heterodoxies in the early modern age - both the forgotten and the subsequently influential - for the development of European thinking can hardly be overrated. In the context of these minority positions the values, norms, and anthropological notions systematizing and permeating the Enlightenment and still displaying a noticeable influence on the present stand out all the more clearly. The present volume is the fruit of a colloquium at the University of Passau and discusses a number (...) of aspects involved in this process in the early modern age. (shrink)

The separation of science and religion in modern secular culture can easily obscure the fact that in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Europe ideas about nature were intimately related to ideas about God. Readers of this book will find fresh and exciting accounts of a phenomenon common to both science and religion: deviation from orthodox belief. How is heterodoxy to be measured? How might the scientific heterodoxy of particular thinkers impinge on their religious views? Would heterodoxy in religion create (...) a predisposition towards heterodoxy in science? Might there be a homology between heterodox views in both domains? Such major protagonists as Galileo and Newton are re-examined together with less familiar figures in order to bring out the extraordinary richness of scientific and religious thought in the pre-modern world. (shrink)

Lockdowns and related policies of behavioral and economic restriction introduced in response to the COVID-19 pandemic are criticized, drawing on three sets of ideas and arguments that are organized in accordance with the likely degree of controversy associated with their guiding assumptions. The first set of arguments makes use of cost–benefit reasoning within a broadly utilitarian framework, emphasizing uncertainty, the role of worst-case scenarios, and the need to consider at least the medium term as well as immediate effects. The second (...) draws on assumptions about the political value of basic liberties. The third draws on ideas about the roles of different stages within human life. (shrink)

How could a philosopher who insists on the exclusion of women from citizenship and state office by virtue of their insuperable weakness be an inspiration for feminism? The puzzles over Spinoza’s egalitarian credentials pose a problem particularly if one understands feminism primarily or exclusively as a demand for equality with men. When feminism is seen as a subcategory of Enlightenment commitments, one may choose to see Spinoza’s misogyny as superficial and as a betrayal of the radical potential of the egalitarianism (...) yielded by his metaphysics. But if feminism is not understood exclusively as one strand of late modern orthodoxy, we might better understand the surprising companionship of Spinoza and feminism. Indeed, Moira Gatens finds the heterodoxy of Spinoza’s thinking with respect to the ruling ideas today to be what is most valuable for feminism. Feminist Spinozism does not add to the chorus of praise for egalitarianism, secular politics, or the authority of reason in contrast to power. The Spinozist feminism pioneered by Moira Gatens and Genevieve Lloyd finds resources precisely in Spinoza’s challenges to late modern common sense, including perhaps especially an ethics and politics grounded in the givenness of human equality. (shrink)

The question of ontological commitment in Plato’s Hippias Major has been important in disputes over the dialogue’s place in the corpus, its meaning, and its authenticity. But this question seems to have been settled—the Hippias Major is not committed to the ‘forms.’ Such an ontological conclusion has been vigorously defended, but its defenses rest on a problematic meta-ontological framework. This paper suggests a more adequate framework and brings more evidence to the evaluation of the question of ontological commitment in the (...) Hippias Major. It concludes that the dialogue is indeed committed to some kind of form. (shrink)

'the oldest biography of Spinoza', La Vie de Mr. Spinosa, which in the manuscript copies is often followed by L'Esprit de M. Spinosa. Margaret Jacob, in her Radical Enlightenment, contended that the Traite was written by a radical group of Freemasons in The Hague in the early eighteenth century. Silvia Berti has offered evidence it was written by Jan Vroesen. Various discussions in the early eighteenth century consider many possi ble authors from the Renaissance onwards to whom the work might (...) be attributed. The Trois imposteurs has attracted quite a bit of recent attention as one of the most significant irreligious clandestine writings available in the Enlightenment, which is most important for understanding the develop ment of religious scepticism, radical deism, and even atheism in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Scholars for the last couple of decades have been trying to assess when the work was actually written or compiled and by whom. In view of the widespread distribution of manu scripts of the work all over Europe, they have also been seeking to find out who was influenced by the work, and what it represented for its time. Hitherto unknown manuscripts are being turned up in public and private libraries all over Europe and the United States. (shrink)

The Jesuit mission to the Court of the Great Moguls Akbar (1542–1605) and Jahângîr (1605–1627) stands in need of a fresh examination in the context of an encounter between Muslims and Christians; not least because it manifests certain unusual characteristics.

Le procès du meunier hétérodoxe Menocchio dont les positions panthéistes, anti-ecclésiologiques et matérialistes amenèrent à sa condamnation à mort par l’Inquisition, donne à voir les mutations des formes de la croyance religieuse au tournant du Moyen Âge et de la Modernité. L’accès à « l’univers d’un meunier au XVIe siècle » présenté dans Le Fromage et les vers renseigne sur les conditions de production de l’hétérodoxie, conditions qui sont historiques, sociales, culturelles et intellectuelles. Les conditions de production de la croyance (...) peuvent ainsi apparaître : leur dimension profondément historique échappe à une analyse strictement philosophique d’une épistémologie de la croyance et rend nécessaire une anthropologie des croyances. (shrink)

Business Ethics, the Environment & Responsibility, Volume 31, Issue 1, Page 1-3, January 2022.

De Pierre Bayle, la tradition critique a longtemps voulu ne faire qu'un précurseur des Lumières. C'était trop négliger la personnalité et la pensée du théologien calviniste, et le considérer comme un auteur mineur. En 1964, Élizabeth Labrousse, directeur de recherches au CNRS et grande historienne du protestantisme, publiait son Pierre Bayle qui allait vite s'imposer comme l'ouvrage de référence sur le réfugié de Rotterdam. Grâce à ce livre en deux volumes, l'auteur du Dictionnaire Critique retrouvait enfin sa place de penseur (...) au coeur de la « crise de la conscience européenne », de théoricien de la tolérance, de théologien philosophe convaincu qu'avec le triomphe du cartésianisme la foi chrétienne abordait aux rives des temps modernes. (shrink)

The first edition of Thomas Robert Malthus’ Essay on the Principle of Population is best understood as an exploration of human nature and the role of necessity in shaping the individual and society. The author’s liberal education, both from his father and his tutors at Warrington and Cambridge, is evident in his heterodox views on hell, his Lockean conceptualization of the mind, and his Foxite Whig politics. Malthus’ unpublished essay, “Crises,” his sermons, and the the last two chapters of the (...) Essay reveal a pragmatic, compassionate side of the young author that was under appreciated by both his contemporary critics and modern historians. The Essay has been mischaracterized by David McNally as a “Whig response to Radicalism” and by Patricia James as a reaction by Malthus against his father’s liberalism. This article argues that when he wrote the first edition of the Essay on the Principle of Population, Malthus was himself a liberal dissenter and Foxite Whig rather than an orthodox Anglican or a Burkean defender of traditional class relations. (shrink)

Beginning by offering an overview on legal aesthetic humanisms as a specific embodiment of critical discourse, and discussing the ways the recreation of juridical experience, rationality, and culture underpinning such a criticism, leaving behind monolithic views on textuality, judgment, and subjectivity, positively contributes to unsettling the main assumptions underlying typical understandings of law’s autonomy—mostly those of formal specification of juridical “sources” and “scientific” isolation of legal thought—, this paper argues that simply reproducing aesthetic heterodoxy as the epitome of a (...) humanist ‘alternative to law’, without first debating the very orthodox-heterodox binomial, ends up overlooking the discursive and methodological specificity of law, as a particular experience of practical and normative validity. In this way, it introduces, from an axiological-normative and juridically oriented standpoint, a different—jusaesthetic—argument for re-examining the relationship between law’s praxis, nomos, and community. (shrink)

Self-righteousness and censoriousness are strong emotions. They exist in the claims of ‘orthodoxy’ as much as in the protests of ‘heterodoxy’. They lie behind claims of tolerance as often as behind displays of intolerance. These emotions should be disentangled in the motives of the men who make history, of those who write history, and of those who read history. The very designation ‘heterodox’ is both etymologically and conceptually structured in antithesis to ‘orthodox’. It is a word not only of (...) doctrinal description, but also of inherent condemnation. The structure and the intention of words such as Shī‘a , comprising the whole sweep from bid‘a to ghulūww , direct the attention back to an opposite concept which originates, defines and prejudges these words. One corollary of this is that the movements and doctrines defined as ‘heterodox’ are fundamentally related to the ‘orthodox’ and cannot be understood in isolation. Another is that this relationship, by its very definition in terms of vindication and repudiation, is one of tension. (shrink)

Business Ethics, the Environment & Responsibility, EarlyView.

Pierre Bayle can lay claim to having fathered the history of philosophy or the history of ideas. Marx at any rate said of his Dictionnaire that it "wrote the epitaph of philosophy." He was also the founder of the journal Nouvelles de la République des Lettres—one of the forerunners of the modern academic journal—in whose Preface he wrote: "il s'agit [ici] de Science: on doit donc mettre bas tous les termes qui divisent les hommes en différentes factions et considérer seulement (...) le point dans lequel ils se réunissent, qui est la qualité d'Homme illustre dans la République des Lettres." Mme. Labrousse devotes the first two chapters to an elucidation of the connection between Bayle's active interest in science and in the history of ideas, a connection all the more obscure because science for Bayle meant roughly Cartesian mechanism, and Descartes was notably anti-historical. While the author's observations are pertinent, it would seem that the connecting link is overlooked: the Discours de la méthode is itself a history. However that may be, this well executed work will serve as an appropriate introduction to the issues in the very extensive writings of one of the moving spirits of the Enlightenment.—H. C. (shrink)

Jeong Do-jeon 鄭道傳 is evaluated as a planner and hero of the founding of Joseon 朝鮮. In dramas and liberal arts books, Mencius’ theory of “revolution” is presented as the basis for justifying the founding of Joseon. For this reason, the justification for the founding of Joseon appears to have been proven, making it seem like a matter that no longer requires further discussion. However, when examining the literature dealing with the founding of Joseon, the existing Sambongjip 三峯集 does not (...) use revolution in relation to the founding of Joseon. Here, we can ask the following questions to the protagonist of the founding, namely Jeong Do-jeon. “How do you explain the series of events of the destruction of Goryeo 高麗 and the founding of Joseon?” and “How do you justify the founding of Joseon?” This is not limited to his thoughts, but also focuses on his work of justifying the founding of Joseon with documents. This article discusses Jeong Do-jeon’s arguments, made around the founding of Joseon, regardidng what scholar-officials needed to do for Confucianism to properly fulfill its role in Goryeo society. Next, I would like to look at the context in which Jeong Do-jeon asserts the legitimacy of the founding of Joseon. Through this, I would like to clarify that ‘establishing a country’ is justified by concepts such as “establishing the Eastern Zhou” (爲東周) in the Analects and “innovation” (維新) or “politics of innovation” (維新之治) in the Classic of Poetry (詩經). (shrink)

This paper studies the language of contractility in Burke's Enquiry, showing it to be closely related to types of heterodox medicine including the work of his father-in-law Christopher Nugent. Extensive connections are located between these medical ideas and questions of social and professional identity, including their visual aspects in contemporary portraiture. This essay finally examines the crucial significance of contractility as the discursive template upon which Burke's aesthetic ideas were modelled, and, accordingly, offers a new genealogy and a new definition (...) of the concept of the sublime as a radical ideal of extreme oppositions with important literary, epistemological and political implications. (shrink)

In the year 748 Pope Zachary, in a letter to St. Boniface, mentioned among other matters a complaint which he had received from the latter concerning an Irish cleric named Virgil, active at that time in Bavaria.

In this article, I intervene in a long-standing debate over the alleged assumption and teaching of Spinozist ideas by the Dutch philosopher and scientist Burchard de Volder (1643–1709). I discuss De Volder’s position with respect to three main topics (necessitarianism, substance monism, and biblical interpretation), as well as the use his student Jacob Wittich made of De Volder’s ideas in Wittich’s highly controversial De natura Dei (1711). Eventually, I argue that De Volder was certainly a sympathizer of Spinoza, accepted necessitarianism, (...) and considered Spinoza a reliable interpreter of Descartes in physics, even if he did not accept Spinoza’s monist metaphysics, nor his biblical hermeneutics. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThe present paper evaluates Davis’s analysis of the potential transformational change of current orthodoxy and his main proposition of the potential benefits that will arise from the involv...

Résumé Dans cet article, je discute de la manière dont le réalisme critique en économie peut contribuer à l’élaboration d’une théorie économique et sociale alternative. Les contributions de la tradition de Cambridge en économie, qui a également influencé le réalisme critique en économie, se révèleront précieuses dans ce contexte. Je ferai valoir que, même si une reprise précoce de l’économie politique classique dans la tradition de Cambridge se concentre sur la reproduction des structures économiques, le réalisme critique en l’économie s’est (...) intéressé, quant à lui, à la reproduction des structures sociales. Ce dernier permet ainsi la reprise d’un cadre qui existait au sein de l’économie politique classique, et qui fut porté à son stade le plus avancé par Marx. Ce cadre est axé sur la reproduction économique d’un surplus, et sur sa distribution (institutionnelle) à travers les différentes classes sociales sous une structure sociale. L’ontologie sociale du réalisme critique nous permet de comprendre pourquoi l’étude de la reproduction d’un système (relationnel) est le meilleur point de départ pour le développement de la théorie économique et sociale. (shrink)

in peirce and religion: Knowledge, Transformation, and the Reality of God, Roger Ward argues that the founder of American pragmatism was a rather traditional Trinitarian Christian throughout his entire life. Such an argument is notable because scholarship on Peirce often underplays the philosopher’s comments about religion while emphasizing his work on logic, mathematics, and other non-religious philosophical topics. Those who take his views on religion seriously tend to interpret Peirce more radically than Ward, placing Peirce’s philosophy of religion and personal (...) theological beliefs in line with modern trends that are critical of traditional forms of Christianity. The argument in Ward’s book stands out against... (shrink)

This paper starts with the observation that at least for the last century there has been an orthodoxy in the social sciences characterized by sui generis structures of various kinds but also (paradoxically) by the unique role of individuals in their ability to intervene in the flow of events. This paper argues that there is a commonality to a number of challenges to orthodoxy that dates back to the beginnings of the social sciences themselves with Vico. Although many connections have (...) been made between elements of these critiques (Latour’s connection to Whitehead, Deleuze’s connection to Tarde), this paper proposes to make such connections more explicit by focusing on a central commitment to or tendency towards a monism characterized by a univocal ontology. The implication is that these various alternatives perhaps have more in common than normally thought and can continue to learn from each other. Most importantly, they present a coherent and viable alternative to social science orthodoxy. (shrink)

이 글은 先儒들의 묵가에 대한 비판을 개괄하고, 이를 전제로 하여 고려말부터 시작하여 조선조 후기에 이르는 묵가 비판의 전개 양상을 고찰한 것이다. 우리나라 고려 이전의 문헌에서는 묵가나 묵자를 비롯한 제자백가를 명시적으로 배척한 사례가 보이지 않는다. 여말선초에 이르면 성리학의 수용과 더불어 맹자의 벽이단론의 관점이 부각되기 시작하면서 양주와 묵적에 대한 비판을 전제로 불교와 노자를 배척하기 시작하였다. 조선조 지식인들의 묵가에 대한 이해와 비판 양상의 특징은 묵가의 이념 자체에 대한 비판보다는 주로 다른 이념이나 부조리에 대한 비판의 도구로 활용되었다는 것이다. 여기에는 여말선초의 불교와 노자, 중후기의 문장학(과거학), (...) 서학(천주교), 나아가 관료들의 부패 등이 포괄된다. 내용면에서 본다면, 묵가의 십대 주장 가운데 「겸애」와 「절용」(절장, 비악)에 대한 비판이 주를 이루고 있으며, 조선 중후기에 이르면서 「明鬼」와 「天志」에 대한 비판이 포함되고 있다. 주목할 만한 점은 중국사상사에서와 마찬가지로 침략전쟁을 반대하는 평화 이념이 반영된 「非攻」이나 운명론을 부정하는 「非命」에 대한 비판은 보이지 않는다는 것이다. 이것은 유가의 인문주의적이고 현실주의적 측면에서 볼 때 적극적으로 비판할 여지가 없었던 데 연유하는 것으로 생각된다. 한편 묵가 이념과는 별도로 묵자 개인의 墨守와 관련된 행위에 대해서는 대체로 긍정적인 평가를 하고 있다. 또한 후기에 이르면서 묵자서는 이념서가 아니라 유교 경전 내용을 고증하기 위한 사료로서 활용되고 있음을 확인할 수 있다. (shrink)

An atavism is the ..reappearance of a lost character (morphology or behaviour) typical of remote ancestors and not seen in the parents or recent ancestors of the organisms displaying the atavistic character (Hall, 1984). In humans, hypertrichosis (extensive body hair), the presence of a tail and supernumerary nipples are often quoted as examples (Hall, 1995). However, Louis Bolk (1866–1930) explained these phenomena in another way. He considered human morphology as an unspecialized expression of the mammalian developmental pattern. The latter also (...) encompasses potentialities for unilateral or propulsive development pathways (specializations) that usually remain latent in humans, but can become expressed in other species. According to Bolk, the appearance of so-called atavisms in humans results from the occasional expression of these latencies in Homo sapiens; they do not recapitulate ancestral conditions. (shrink)

Recent pleas for more heterodoxy in explaining economic action have been defending a pluralism for economics. In this article, I analyse these defences by scrutinizing the pluralistic qualities in the work of one of the major voices of heterodoxy, Tony Lawson. This scrutiny will focus on Lawson's alternatives concerning ontology and explanation to mainstream economics. Subsequently, I will raise some doubts about Lawson's pluralism, and identify questions that will have to be addressed by heterodox economists in order to (...) maintain the claim of pluralism. (shrink)

There is persistent heterodoxy in the physics literature concerning the proper treatment of those quantons that are unstable against decay. Following a brief litany of this heterodoxy, I develop some of the consequences of assuming that such quantons can exist, undecayed and isolated, at definite times and that their treatment can be carried out within a standard quantum theoretic state space. This assumption requires hyperplane dependence for the unstable quanton states and leads to clarification of some recent results (...) concerning deviations from relativistic time dilation of decay lifetimes. In the course of the discussion I make some observations on the relationship of unstable quantons to quantum fields. (shrink)