Early Thought Research Articles

Hikmet YAMAN, Prophetic Niche in the Virtuous City: The Concept of Ḥikmah in Early Islamic Thought, E.J. Brill, Leiden-Boston, 2011, 316 p.

Hikmet YAMAN, Prophetic Niche in the Virtuous City: The Concept of Ḥikmah in Early Islamic Thought, E.J. Brill, Leiden-Boston, 2011, 316 p.

Civilization and Enlightenment: The Early Thought of Fukuzawa Yukichi (review)

Civilization and Enlightenment: The Early Thought of Fukuzawa Yukichi (review)

A Study of Martin Bucer’s Christology in His Early Thought

A Study of Martin Bucer’s Christology in His Early Thought

“Not Heaven-Endowed to Run the World”: The British Empire in the Early Thought of George Grant

This essay argues that scholars have exaggerated the extent to which political philosopher George Grant was influenced by the anti-American and pro-British sentiments of his ancestors. Drawing evidence from his Second World War correspondence, the author shows that Grant in fact began the war with a favourable opinion of the United States of Franklin D. Roosevelt. What changed his thinking was America’s entry into the war in 1941, which forced Grant to reckon with the prospect of a postwar world dominated by what he described as an expanding American liberal empire. For a brief period at the end of the war, Grant’s distress over this prospect moved him to look for an alternative model of world order in a revitalized British Empire. Grant, however, had to suppress too many of his own misgivings about English imperialism to hold onto this idealized vision for long, and soon after the war he abandoned it altogether.

Civilization and Enlightenment: The Early Thought of Fukuzawa Yukichi (review)

Civilization and Enlightenment: The Early Thought of Fukuzawa Yukichi (review)

Civilization and Enlightenment: The Early Thought of Fukuzawa Yukichi (review)

Civilization and Enlightenment: The Early Thought of Fukuzawa Yukichi (review)

原始仏教思想研究における欲望について

原始仏教思想研究における欲望について

A Clearly Democratic Religious-Zionist Philosophy: The Early Thought of Yeshayahu Leibowitz

AbstractIn his early teaching, from the 1920s through the 1950s, Yeshayahu Leibowitz (1903–1994) stands out as one of the most fascinating religious Zionist thinkers. He strives to establish a Jewish democratic state whose democratic aspects will be channeled toward the establishment of an exemplary society, one that can express its religious roots within a modern democratic context.Leibowitz thus attaches enormous importance to democracy in terms of both its political components and its modern Orthodox aspirations. In this respect, he is the most radical spokesman of the Neo-Orthodox notion of Torah with Derekh Eretz, as translated into religious-Zionist terms.

World and Life as One: Ethics and Ontology in Wittgenstein's Early Thought, by Martin Stokhof

World and Life as One: Ethics and Ontology in Wittgenstein's Early Thought, by Martin Stokhof

Early Christian Life and Thought in Social Context: A Reader ? Mark Harding

Early Christian Life and Thought in Social Context: A Reader ? Mark Harding

(Re)Inventing the Past: Essays on French Early Modern Culture, Literature and Thought in Honour of Ann Moss

Edited by Gary Ferguson and Catherine Hampton. (Durham Modern Language Series). University of Durham, 2003. 331 pp. In its breadth and scope, this book is a fitting tribute to the career of Ann Moss. The contributor list is impressive and if the range of subjects is large, clusters of themes emerge from the organization of the chapters by the editors. Both well-established and little-known texts and authors are covered in this collection, emphasizing an inclusive approach to the sixteenth-century canon, and offering new ways of reading these texts in their intellectual and cultural contexts. Literary origin and precedent, mythological strands, and early modern reading practices are investigated. Included in the volume is a transcript of Moss's inaugural lecture that explores one of her latest research interests, choice of language and conceptions of truth, ending on a consideration of Montaigne's bicultural, bilingual position from which he essays the French language and enjoys a considerable ‘cognitive flexibility’. Two contributions on reading and writing with commonplaces follow (from Terence Cave and Neil Kenny), engaging with the early modern practice of thinking and creating within the commonplace framework. Three chapters then explore the classical tradition in sixteenth-century France: Richard Cooper on the Priapea, Alison Saunders on the repackaging of the classics in emblem-books, and Gary Ferguson on the translation of the Iliad. Michel Magnien and Philip Ford both offer contributions on unfamiliar authors: a Latin art of poetry by Jean de la Fosse and vernacular epigraphs by Camille de Morel. Two contributors explore topics of intertextuality: French and Italian sixteenth-century pastoral (Jean Braybrook), and the theme of metamorphosis in the poetry of Belleau and Ponge (François Rigolot). Themes of rhetoric, self-representation and reflexive constructions in Ronsard are addressed by Malcolm Quainton and John O'Brien, and Catherine Hampton also explores self-expression in her analysis of the exemplary genre of the roman sentimental. Gillian Jondorf considers the representations of the Roman in early modern theatre, while Ingrid De Smet completes the volume with an exploration of the generic ambiguity of the seventeenth-century voyage galant and its humanist models. These chapters are of high quality and are extremely diverting excursions into some sixteenth- and seventeenth-century themes. In investigating the theme of translation — or transportation — from one language to another, from one genre to another, one idiom to another or one context to another, they also offer a rich exploration of the difficulties and fascination of reading early modern culture today.

Jane Geaney, . On the Epistemology of the Senses in Early Chinese Thought. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2002. viii+267 pp. $20.00 (paper).

Jane Geaney, . <i>On the Epistemology of the Senses in Early Chinese Thought</i>. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2002. viii+267 pp. $20.00 (paper).

Mencius and Early Chinese Thought

Mencius and Early Chinese Thought

Early Modern Philosophy and Biological Thought

The essays collected here address a variety of topics in biological thought as they appear in the writings of Descartes, Gassendi, Regis, Malebranche, and Leibniz.1 Why consider the views of early modern Continental philosophers on biology-related topics? Historical analyses of such topics in this period have tended to focus instead on medical writers and practicing scientists—for example, Paracelsus, van Helmont, Spallanzini, Harvey, and Malpighi. Given the historiographical record, it is reasonable to ask about the added value of speciacally philosophical thought in this domain. These essays suggest at least two possible answers. First, the methodological and metaphysical discussions among philosophers of that era yield insights on the running biological questions and competing responses. Second, we may better grasp emerging early modern notions of science—something these philosophers all consider quite explicitly—by including their writings on biology along with more familiar texts. It is

The Early History of Greed: The Sin of Avarice in Early Medieval Thought and Literature

The Early History of Greed: The Sin of Avarice in Early Medieval Thought and Literature

World and Life as One: Ethics and Ontology in Wittgenstein's Early Thought

This book explores in detail the relation between ontology and ethics in the early work of Ludwig Wittgenstein, notably the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus and, to a lesser extent, the Notebooks 1914-1916. Self-contained and requiring no prior knowledge of Wittgenstein's thought, it is the first book-length argument that his views on ethics decisively shaped his ontological and semantic thought. The book's main thesis is twofold. It argues that the ontological theory of the Tractatus is fundamentally dependent on its logical and linguistic doctrines: the tractarian world is the world as it appears in language and thought. It also maintains that this interpretation of the ontology of the Tractatus can be argued for not only on systematic grounds, but also via the contents of the ethical theory that it offers. Wittgenstein's views on ethics presuppose that language and thought are but one way in which we interact with reality. Although detailed studies of Wittgenstein's ontology and ethics exist, this book is the first thorough investigation of the relationship between them. As an introduction to Wittgenstein, it sheds new light on an important aspect of his early thought.

Exploring the Genesis of Early Arabic Linguistic Thought: Qur'anic Readers and Grammarians of the Baṣ Tradition (Part II)

Exploring the Genesis of Early Arabic Linguistic Thought: Qur'anic Readers and Grammarians of the Baṣ Tradition (Part II)

Bakhtin and Religion: A Feeling for Faith by Susan M. s&gt; Felch Paul J. Contino (review)

730 SEER, 8o, 4, 2002 long-overdue acknowledgement by British readers of Nabokov's place in twentieth-century Western literature. For those new to Nabokov it offers a valuable point of departure, particularlyto those daunted by Brian Boyd's two-volume biography, or frustratedby Nabokov's highly selective autobiography , Speak, Memorg. At the very least, Grayson'sstudy conveys the essence of Nabokov's creative spirit,his undinting curiosity,his artisticintegrity,and his unfailingsense of mischief. School ofSlavonic andEastEuropean Studies BARBARA WYLLIE University College London Feich, Susan M., and Contino, PaulJ. (eds).Bakhtin andReligion: A Feeling for Faith.Rethinking Theory. NorthwesternUniversity Press,Evanston, IL, 2001. Xiii + 252 pp. Notes. Index. $79.95; $27.95. THE religious dimension to the thinking of Mikhail Bakhtinwas a discovery made relativelyrecently in the West, but the delay has if anything been more than compensated for by the recent upsurge of the creative engagement on the part of Western scholars with this aspect of his thought. The present meticulously produced volume, with its nine major contributions, demonstrates this amply; furthermore the inclusion, as an Appendix, of L. V. Pumpiansky's notes on Bakhtin's Leningrad lectures of the mid-twenties, prepared with an introduction by N. I. Nikolaev, and here translatedwith notes by Vadim Liapunov, make this book essential reading for anyone seriously interested in Bakhtin as a major twentieth-centuryphilosopher of the human predicamentin the spiritualaswell as the culturalsense. Why has it taken so long? The first wave of Bakhtinian reception in the early eighties fell on to a world of Westernliteraryand culturaltheorywhich was generally indifferent, if not actively hostile, to matters of religion. A decade wasto passbeforeBakhtin'searlyworks,wherethereligiousdimension is most discernible, were translated into English, and even then, to the scholarly mind trained in theory, Bakhtin'sway of writing theology, with its fluid intimations, concern with primary human relationships, and a near absence of conceptual abstractionsor system,was hardto grasp,even to those prepared to attempt to do so. Bakhtinwas inventing a new language, which his readers needed to take a leap of faith in order to understand. A pathbreaking and essential work in this respect was Ruth Coates's Christianity in Bakhtin.GodandtheExiledAuthor (Cambridge, I998) with itsscrupulousanalysis of the use of Christiantermsin the Bakhtiniancorpus. Coates's contributionto the presentvolume, 'The Firstand Second Adam in Bakhtin's Early Thought' follows the same methodology of close textual reading. Other contributorsset Bakhtin'sthought against wider contexts, or offerinterpretationsof Bakhtin'steaching:AlanJacobs, forinstance ('Bakhtin and the Hermeneutics of Love'), interpretsBakhtin'sChristianethicsthrough his notions of 'I-for-myself'and 'I-for-another',seeing Bakhtinas a continuer of St Augustine and contrasting his approach with that, for instance, of Simone Weil,on the groundsofBakhtin'sspecialinsistenceon the 'responsibility ' and 'self-activity'of the selfin its uniqueplace in life. Severalwritersmake REVIEWS 731 the point that Bakhtin'swritingson religion need to be approached not from a Protestantworld-view, but through the prism of Orthodoxy: Charles Lock ('Bakhtin and the Tropes of Orthodoxy'), for instance, and Alexandar Mihailovic ('Bakhtin's Dialogue with Russian Orthodoxy and Critique of LinguisticUniversalism')both examine in depth Bakhtin'sthinkingin relation to the formulariesof the FourthEcumenical Council of Chalcedon in AD 451, namely that concerning the two natures of Christ human and divine and the idea of unity and separateness,'non-merging',that this implies. Lock places Bakhtinin the patristictraditionof St Gregory of Nyssa with its stress on the incarnate logosand the sanctificationof the created world. Mihailovic draws out this idea with an illuminating comparison of Bakhtin'slinguistics with that promoted by his older contemporary, N. Iu. Marr. Randall A. Poole's 'The Apophatic Bakhtin'discussesBakhtinin relation to Kant, to SergeiBulgakovand the Orthodox stresson personhood and growthinto God (theosis). Graham Pechey's original reading of 'Authorand Hero in Aesthetic Activity' ('Philosophy and Theology in Aesthetic Activity'), argues that Bakhtin'snew concept of 'aesthetics'was to drawinto itself'allthose impulses of community and intersubjectivity that modern thought had effectively driven into the exile of theology and a specialized spiritualexperience'. Paul J. Contino and Susan M. Felchprovide a helpfulIntroductionto the volume, and CarylEmersona thoughtfulAfterword('Plenitudeas a Formof Hope'). It is good that Sergei Averintsev's magnificent critique of Bakhtin on Rabelais ('Bakhtin,Laughter and Christian Culture', I988) is also included...

The Early History of Greed: The Sin of Avarice in Early Medieval Thought and Literature (review)

The Early History of Greed: The Sin of Avarice in Early Medieval Thought and Literature (review)

Political Ideas in Early Islamic Religious Thought

(2001). Political Ideas in Early Islamic Religious Thought. British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies: Vol. 28, No. 2, pp. 151-164.