Occasionalism and the Problem of Impenetrability

There were two main approaches to causal powers in the Latin Christian West. The first was pioneered by Peter Abelard, who linked causal powers with time and modality; this approach was developed in the succeeding centuries by philosophers like Robert Grosseteste, but eventually replaced by a new conception of modality and powers in John Duns Scotus. The second approach, pioneered by Anselm, linked causal powers with agency; in the late 13th century this led to a debate over causes and causal powers between Henry of Ghent and Godfrey of Fontaines, which was eventually resolved by John Duns Scotus, whose subtle analyses of causal powers, causes, and self-change became dominant. In the generations that succeeded Scotus, however, philosophical interest in causal powers, and causal explanation generally, seems to have declined.

The article examines the historical origins and development of the fundamental principles of European law, which have Roman law origins. The relevance of the topic is reinforced by the fact that Roman law principles still remain the foundation of the European legal tradition and the legal system of Ukraine, and their implementation is a necessary condition for successful European integration and sustainable development of the domestic legal order. The analysis of the influence of Roman law on the formation of the general principles of the Romano-Germanic legal family, the reception of these principles in the Middle Ages and their consolidation in the codifications of the Modern Age has been carried out. The reception of Roman law in Europe led to the formation of a common basis for continental legal systems. The Romano-Germanic legal family is characterized by the unity of basic concepts and principles, largely borrowed from Roman private and public law. As a result, by the 19th century. most of the principles developed by Roman law were integrated into the national legal systems of European states. The Romano-legal heritage, consolidated in the codifications, ensured the commonality of basic principles in the countries of continental Europe. The relevance of Roman legal principles for the modern European legal tradition and the legal system of Ukraine in the context of European integration is emphasized. The Constitution of Ukraine already enshrines the rule of law (Article 8), and the principles of equality, freedom, and justice are defined as fundamental for building a legal state. Ukraine’s European choice, recorded in strategic documents and amendments to the Constitution, provides for a deep harmonization of national legislation with EU law. This requires not only the implementation of the acquis communautaire norms, but also the assimilation of common principles prevailing in the European tradition. In practice, the rule of law serves as a criterion for assessing reforms (judicial, anti-corruption, etc.) during the implementation of the Association Agreement with the EU. It is concluded that legal harmonization based on common principles contributes to the stability and predictability of legal relations.

The author reconstructs the literary and historical context of the first printed Siberian translation, Pankraty Sumarokov’s Uchilishche lyubvi (School of Love) (1789), in order to reveal its place and status in Russian prose of the late 18th century. The article is polemicises against traditional interpretations of the book (V. Pavlov, V. Rak, and others). This article is the first attempt to consider the novel within the framework of contextual and structural-typological analysis against the background of the peculiarities and functions of translated literature. The author shows that both original and translated Russian texts existing in ‘the force field’ of the European novel (P. Tallemant, S. Richardson, J.-J. Rousseau, J. G. B. Pfeil, L.-S. Mercier) tend to distance themselves from it. This is revealed in a variety of ways, ranging from liberal translations and intertextual re-interpretations to creative polemics and rejection. However, this does not deprive them of characteristic features like the uniformity of genre poetics (the system of motifs, typology of the characters, literary space, and plot structure). The meeting place of European and Russian cultural traditions in School of Love is treated on the level of micropoetics: geographic images (England, France, and Spain), the plot of Circe and Odysseus, the biographical context of Sumarokov’s creative work, etc. Additionally, School of Love is analysed in the context of Sumarokov’s poetic works resulting from his reading experience of French literature (La Fontaine, Voltaire). The article characterizes School of Love as a quaint phenomenon of the Russian literature of the late 18th century: an ‘English novel’ which is a Russian translation of a French version of a German story. Simultaneously, it is a case study of P. Sumarokov’s individual creative strategy as shaped in the Irtysh, prevrashchayushchiysya v Ipokrenu, with the underlying idea of interaction between the Russian and European traditions, the meeting of ‘friend’ and ‘foe’. The article is based on unique texts of 18th-century Russian literature kept in the Library of the Russian Academy of Science (St Petersburg).

“Bohemia” can refer to the Kingdom of Bohemia proper or, as a shortened form, to the Bohemian Crown Lands (Czech Země Koruny české), a small but diverse and important group of lands in premodern Europe consisting of a number of constituent territories: the Kingdom of Bohemia, the Margravates of Moravia, Upper and Lower Lusatia, and the Principality of Silesia, all ruled by the Bohemian crown. Between the early 15th century, when a religious reform movement native to Bohemia evolved into one of the greatest social and political upheavals of the late Middle Ages, known as the Hussite revolution (beginning 1419), to the early 17th century, when an estate revolt in Bohemia (1618) expanded into the first all-European total war of the modern age, the Thirty Years’ War (1618–1648), Bohemia served as a microcosm, barometer, and focal point for change in central Europe and Europe as a whole. Despite Bohemia’s importance during this period, most of the key scholarship remains unknown and inaccessible to English-speaking readers. Two of the main reasons for this have to do with developments of the late 19th and 20th centuries. Specific aspects of state formation and national revival associated with the foundation of Czechoslovakia (1918), the successor state to the Bohemian Crown Lands, and the emergence of the liberal progressive narrative of European history relegated the history of the Bohemian Crown Lands to the margins of Western civilization. Communist rule throughout most of the second half of the 20th century reinforced the view that these lands were different and served to isolate Czech historians and Czech scholarship from Western historiography. However, since the fall of communism during the Velvet Revolution (1989) and the subsequent entry of the Czech Republic (one of two successor states to Czechoslovakia) into the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in 1999 and the European Union in 2004, interest has grown among western Europeans and North Americans in premodern Bohemian history, and dialogue has increased among Czech scholars, their neighbors in central Europe, and the broader historical community in western Europe and North America. The late 20th and early 21st centuries witnessed the fruition of efforts since 1989 to reintegrate the Bohemian Crown Lands in the Early Modern period into the central narrative of early modern European history. This is a core bibliography containing approximately 150 key works dealing with the history of the Bohemian Crown Lands from the aftermath of the Hussite Revolution in the mid–15th century to the late 18th century. Most of the works in this core bibliography are recent monographs and anthologies that provide access to earlier and wider scholarship, but a number of major articles are also included. Most of the works are in Czech, German, or English, which are the major languages of scholarship, but some works in French, Italian, and Dutch are also included, illustrating the connections of this relatively small central European society to other historical and historiographical traditions in Europe. Recent years have witnessed the anniversaries of some major events in Bohemian history, such as the 600th anniversary of the execution of the reformer Jan Hus by the Church Council of Constance (1415), the 400th anniversary of the Estate Revolt of 1618, and the battle of White Mountain (1620). These anniversaries served as occasions for a number of conferences and symposia and reassessments, which would have been greater in number if not for the COVID-19 pandemic (see Smrčka and Vybíral 2015 [cited under Conference Proceedings, Collected Papers, and Festschriften]) and Dosatík 2018, Uhlíř 2017, and Bůžek 2021 [all cited under the Estate Revolt of 1618, the Battle of White Mountain]).

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size NotesThe first four annual surveys have been published in the Modem Language Forum. Hereafter these bibliographies will appear in the Germanic Review.

Christmas is an “invented tradition” that amalgamates European heritage in the context of modern American. This paper delves into the background of Christmas formation in ancient Europe, its renaissance through transformations in modernity, and its evolution within the contemporary commercial milieu. Through this case study, insights into the metamorphosis of culture are garnered, highlighting its occurrences on a mass scale and within material domains. Initially, Christmas emerged during the Roman era, blending various traditions beneath the guise of Christian festivities. Throughout the Middle Ages, it retained characteristics of winter celebrations and faced prohibition by Puritans after the Reformation. However, in 19th-century New York, it experienced a revival by consolidating core symbols derived from European traditions, transforming into a family-centric occasion. Across the 19th and 20th centuries, it evolved within the material context of gift-giving culture, acquiring vitality through media, eventually developing into a globally celebrated holiday. Particularly, the formation process of the Santa Claus symbol exemplifies how Christmas fashioned sacred symbols for modern individuals within material conditions.

The research outlines the use of the word gvozdika (Eng. ‘carnation’, a species of Dianthus) in Russian poetry. The author takes the European tradition as a framework to describe and analyse diverse representations of the carnation in Russian, mainly poetic, texts of the 18th through 20th centuries, tracing the development and expansion of “carnation-driven” contexts and associations. Part One opens with a retrospective insight into the history of the carnation in European culture, debunking several popular misconceptions, related to the flower’s history and name, which had been uncritically repeated over many decades. The ubiquity of wild carnations has contributed to the belief that, like the rose and the lily, the carnation has a two-thousand-year cultural history. Thus, it might be assumed that the carnation’s beauty and spicy aroma should have set it apart from other flowers, so that it might gradually acquire various symbolic meanings. Indeed, researchers and writers have often noted the ancient symbolism of the carnation. Moreover, both popular and academic writings place the carnation in the limited and well-defined set of plants cultivated in Antiquity. The research into the historical significance of the carnation shows that its oft-postulated antiquity is nothing but wishful thinking: the cultural history of the carnation as well as its symbolic meanings cannot be traced back as a single process from Antiquity to the Present. Until the 14th century, the carnation was referred to by many different names; its literary and symbolic genealogy can only be traced back to the 15 th or 16th century, i.e. when it was introduced into horticulture and when stable designations for it appeared in the new European languages. Our analysis draws on comparative material from Spanish, Italian, French, German, and English poetry (poems by Luis de Gongora y Argote, Francisco de Quevedo, Joachim du Bellay, Remy Belleau, Pierre de Ronsard, and others) and employs numerous multilingual sources to shed light on the history of the carnation in European languages and literatures. In addition, we briefly trace the horticultural history of the carnation in Russia. The garden carnation, or the clove pink, has been known in Russia at least since the 17th century. It was among the plants bought in Holland by the Flower Office of Peter the Great. In the 18th century, the carnation was already widespread in Russian gardens: numerous detailed articles about the carnation, its varieties and cultivations are found in botanical directories and various indexes of the late 18th century. The Alphabetical Catalogue of Plants <...> in Moscow in the Garden of the Active State Councillor Prokofy Demidov, published in 1786, lists 52 varieties of the carnation. Yet, however popular the carnation was in everyday life, it rarely appeared in Russian literature of the 17th and 18th centuries.

As one of the newly planned capitals in the 20th century – like Islamabad, Canberra and Brazil –, Ankara represents an original case in planning history: from shaping a new town under the influence of early European urbanism to the control of a dynamic metropolitan form by structural planning approaches. Forming its urban core according to the initial planning perspectives between the beginning of 1930s and the mid-1970s, the city has entered a rapid phase of space production in its extensions for about the last thirty years. In the current period of development, highly fragmented urban peripheral formation has being occurred in Ankara. Since the existing trend on the dispersion of urban form lacking spatial coherence at different scale-levels causes the dominance of the private domain and a loss of urbanity, this trend might at first glance be considered as a break with the European tradition and the emergence of Anglo-Americanization in Turkish planning system in terms of looser development control approach on urban form. Before, coming to such a critical end-point, the paper prefers a closer look into the changing dynamics of master plans of the city. It is aimed to reveal the developmental logic of the city by means of master plan analysis. The comprehensive outlook – called plan matrix – is integrated into each master plan schema by correlating the basic components like main policy directions, depth of control, settlement typology, and city structure and form. Such a framework has a potential to be utilized for any kind of plan analysis at metropolitan scale for different cases. At the end of the analysis, the paper tends to address an alternative master planning approach for the similar types of developing cities striving for keeping its urban character within a fragmented urban body.

The early part of the 20th century saw the emergence of what became the dominant way of practicing philosophy in the English-speaking world, usually known as ‘analytic’ philosophy. Influenced by the preoccupations of the Vienna Circle of the 1920s and 1930s and the early philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein, the practice of philosophy became intimately connected to the analysis of language. Feminists have been in the vanguard when it comes to thinking differently about the ways in which the meaningfulness of religious practice and narrative might be understood. Of particular, significance for establishing alternative ways of shaping a philosophy of religion are the practices of the so-called ‘Continental’ European tradition. What passes for philosophical enquiry looks rather different when considered through this lens. While it is concerned with the application of critical thought, crucially it is also conceived to be a creative enterprise that involves engaging with a range of intellectual disciplines. Psychoanalytic theory, literature, sociology, and history all have their parts to play in an approach that seeks to model philosophy as engaged with the concrete experiences of human beings, located in specific historical and geographical locations.

“This receipt is as safe as the Bank”: Reading Irish Culinary Manuscripts

One of the most discussed figures in the context of the formation of the aesthetic worldview of the Polish artist of the first half of the 20th century, Bruno Schulz, is Adolf Arendt, a drawing teacher at the Drohobych Gymnasium named after Franz Joseph I. His name appears in the writer’s prose, particularly in Cinnamon Shops, and raises the question: was he Schulz’s real teacher, or rather a symbolic figure, the em- bodiment of initiation into figurative thinking? The purpose of the scientific investigation is to clarify the interpretative strategies of creating the figure of Arendt in the biographical and artistic world of Schulz in the context of modernist poetics and creative approaches to the formation of an artistic image (including an individual person), to trace the evolution of the reception of this image and its artistic transformation in Schulz studies of the 20th – 21st centuries, as well as to identify intertextual parallels of such creative transformations in the European tradition. In the research process, a complex of interrelated methods has been applied: the biographical meth- od; the hermeneutic method; the comparative method; the culturological method; the intertextual analy- sis; the literary analysis of the text. Four main interpretative strategies are analyzed: traditional biographical (J. Ficowski), critical-de- constructive (V. Panas), psychocultural / cultural-local (L. Kuibida; A. Sypek), and modern (culturalogical or memory studies). Ficowski considers Arendt to be a credible and important figure in Schulz’s biography, as the first drawing teacher who had a direct influence on the formation of the writer’s aesthetic orienta- tions. Based on a meticulous analysis of archival materials, Panas proves that Arendt’s teaching career and Schulz’s years of study do not coincide chronologically, which is why he interprets the scene of “Professor Arendt’s lesson” as a purely artistic construction. Kuibida and Sypek’s research approach is dual: the Lviv scholar interprets the figure of Arendt as both real and symbolic, and the professor’s lesson as an act of memory and transformation; the Polish researcher, using new documentary sources, rehabilitates the fig- ure of the drawing teacher as a real person, noting clear boundaries between the time of his professional activity at the Drohobych Gymnasium and the period of Schulz’s studies at this educational institution. In modern discussions, the figure of Arendt is mostly perceived as a key to understanding Bruno Schulz’s po- etics of memory, and connections and parallels are also announced between the image of Arendt and the motif of the Teacher in the European literary tradition of the 20th century. As demonstrated in the article, an important genre feature of biography is the retrospectivity of nar- rative strategies, the presentation of true, not fictional life collisions, their factuality, and the embroidery of life on the canvas of real historical events. What is important here is the dynamics, the display of the for- mation and change of the author’s inner world. However, artistic practice (as in the case of the figure of Ad- olf Arendt in Bruno Schulz) can be an example of how modernist artistic approaches to the creation of bi- ographical narratives can “devalue” the factuality and reliability of biographical facts and real images, and, expanding and deepening the boundaries of reality, mythologize and artistically transform them in artistic texts, thereby undermining the possibilities of interpretative strategies.

This article explores the use of objective observation, descriptive narrative, and physiological analysis in the prose of Vasile Alecsandri, highlighting the rich typology and characterological depth of his works. Alecsandri’s narrative style, rooted in realism and influenced by both Romanian and European literary traditions, captures a transformative period in Romanian society in the mid -19th century. His prose, often characterized as a “record of lives” in line with Balzac’s typological approach, serves as both a literary and historical document, reflecting a diverse range of human experiences and social realities. Through the analysis of Alecsandri's detailed character portraits and the exploration of the social milieu, the article emphasizes how the prose of the time blends artistic narrative with documentary value, offering insightful observations on human nature and societal evolution. The study argues that Alecsandri’s literary approach, blending historical reflection with emotional sensitivity, enriches the understanding of 19th century Romanian and European intellectual circles. His memoirs serve as acts of love and cognition, integrating personal experience with broader cultural narratives, while offering insight into Alecsandri’s own literary style, shaped by spontaneity, humour, and a deep connection to both folklore and European literary traditions.

The article is devoted to the problem of perception of elements of the European political tradition in Dagestan in the early 20th century. The source base of the study was the materials of the funds of the Central State Archive of the Republic of Dagestan, the National Museum of the Republic of Dagestan, published reviews of the Dagestan region, compiled by officials of the local statistical office. The methodological basis of the study is the conceptual approaches characteristic of the theory of modernization. The article shows that the socio-cultural environment of Dagestan did not create favorable conditions for the perception of the European political tradition. The bulk of the population lived in rural areas, the economy was predominantly agrarian, the level of urbanization of Dagestan was low. In the region, the press was virtually absent as a socio-political phenomenon: only the «Dagestan Regional News» was regularly published, which was of an official nature. This situation led to the fact that there was no basis for the emergence of branches of Russian liberal parties in the region, primarily the Constitutional Democratic Party (Cadets). The author proves that under these conditions the activity of the Russian intelligentsia became an important actor in the processes of modernization of the region. In the process of colonization of Dagestan it was gradually drawn into the socio-economic processes characteristic of the Russian Empire as a whole. A significant role was also played by the influence on Dagestan of political impulses that came from those cities of the Caucasus where the processes of modernization of society developed significantly faster (for example, Vladikavkaz and Baku). The political mood of the population of the region was also influenced by Moscow and St. Petersburg opposition newspapers and magazines distributed in Dagestan. All this led to the fact that in Dagestan new phenomena arose, albeit very slowly, contributing to the socio-economic and political modernization of the region.

The period between the mid-14th and the mid-17th centuries saw the consolidation of both major European legal traditions. One was based on Roman and canon law and held sway as a common law (ius commune) on much of the European Continent. The other was rooted in royal writs and judgments that constituted the “common law” of England. The Romano-canonical law was based on venerable texts, chiefly those of the Corpus iuris civilis, compiled at the behest of the Emperor Justinian in the early 6th century, and the Corpus iuris canonici, assembled in the course of the Middle Ages by legal teachers and popes, with the process of assembly ending in the early 14th century. These texts served as the basis for a highly sophisticated and technical education in law in the medieval universities of Italy and southern France, whose graduates spread throughout Europe. The establishment of new universities from the 14th century—in Italy but also spreading to Germany, Spain, and elsewhere—only served to foster the geographical reach of the Romano-canonical law. This was also the point at which the teaching methods in the universities changed from the logical elaboration of authoritative texts (the so-called school of the glossators) in the direction of contemporary issues and practices (the era of the post-glossators and commentators). The greatest exponent of this trend was Bartolus of Sassoferrato (b. 1313–d. 1357), whose influence was such that it was said that to be a jurist was to be a “bartolist” (nemo iurista nisi bartolista) (see Jurisprudence and Legal Methodologies). The English law consisted of royal writs, Parliamentary statutes, customs, and precedents set in courts. These became in some regards increasingly rigid by the 14th and 15th centuries, but flexibility was introduced by means of the Royal Court of Chancery, which drew to some degree on Roman law notions. This was the so-called law of equity. The influence of royal courts and their remedies led to the waning of manorial and other local courts. The trend toward legal centralization in England was further fueled by the Crown’s break with Catholicism. By the 17th century the common law tradition, including much of the intervening developments in equity, served as the bastion of those who would resist the pretensions of the Stuart monarchs, especially Charles I (b. 1600–d. 1649). Developments in the commercial economy of Europe, intellectual and cultural trends, and religious turmoil would all pose problems in areas such as property law, contracts, marital relations and family prerogatives, and judicial procedures, and would call forth adjustments to resolve them.

As one of the newly planned capitals in the 20th century – like Islamabad, Canberra and Brazil –, Ankara represents an original case in planning history: from shaping a new town under the influence of early European urbanism to the control of a dynamic metropolitan form by structural planning approaches. Forming its urban core according to the initial planning perspectives between the beginning of 1930s and the mid-1970s, the city has entered a rapid phase of space production in its extensions for about the last thirty years. In the current period of development, highly fragmented urban peripheral formation has being occurred in Ankara. Since the existing trend on the dispersion of urban form lacking spatial coherence at different scale-levels causes the dominance of the private domain and a loss of urbanity, this trend might at first glance be considered as a break with the European tradition and the emergence of Anglo-Americanization in Turkish planning system in terms of looser development control approach on urban form. Before, coming to such a critical end-point, the paper prefers a closer look into the changing dynamics of master plans of the city. It is aimed to reveal the developmental logic of the city by means of master plan analysis. The comprehensive outlook – called plan matrix – is integrated into each master plan schema by correlating the basic components like main policy directions, depth of control, settlement typology, and city structure and form. Such a framework has a potential to be utilized for any kind of plan analysis at metropolitan scale for different cases. At the end of the analysis, the paper tends to address an alternative master planning approach for the similar types of developing cities striving for keeping its urban character within a fragmented urban body.