European Intellectuals Research Articles

Technocratic totalitarianism: Gunnar Kaiser and dissident discourse in pandemic-era Germany

This article examines the ideas, reception and social role of Germany’s most prominent cultural critic of lockdown politics, Gunnar Kaiser. In contrast to the majority of European intellectuals, Kaiser took an early public stand against the naive adoption of science as a social authority and the unprecedented overturning of core democratic principles. He argued that without vigorous, open debate, the worldwide state of emergency threatened to usher in a fundamentally new (bio)political era, in which liberal democracy would be replaced by an increasingly totalitarian technocracy. Yet despite his voluminous philosophical output, which included a highly creative and increasingly professionalised YouTube channel as well as two best-selling books, Kaiser found himself largely excluded from mainstream German discourse. Crew analyses the full range of Kaiser’s interventions while also situating him within the broader landscape of European dissent.

Louis-Joseph Janvier & “Os detratores da raça negra”: Crítica antropológica

Abstract Ideas of hierarchy, inferiority and racial inequality predominated in the work of certain European intellectuals of the 18th and 19th centuries on the idea of ‘races’. The Société d’Ethnologie de Paris (SEP) and the Société d’Anthropologie de Paris (SAP) are two French institutions that had intellectuals who participated in the consolidation of these conceptions. Since the 18th century there have been criticism by black intellectuals; however, with the emergence of the First Black Republic of the modern era in Haiti, these criticisms gained new contours. Many Haitian intellectuals in the first and second half of the 19th century dedicated themselves to combating hierarchical ways of thinking, demonstrating their inconsistencies. In this article, based on bibliographical research, we consider the anthropological work of the Haitian Louis-Joseph Janvier (1855-1911), highlighting his contribution to struggles toward deconstructing the imaginary of racial inferiority attributed to black people and used to legitimize their domination and exploitation. Discussing the racial issue in Janvier’s thinking is relevant as it continues to be a dilemma and a challenge in the contemporary world.

Mobility, Change, and A Shared History

It was only in 1727 that the first Turkish‑Muslim printing house was established by Ibrahim Müteferrika with the support of Sultan Ahmed III. It came into existence in Istanbul at the beginning of the eighteenth century during a peaceful interlude known as the Tulip Era – a brief period characterized by increasing consumerism, religious tolerance, interest in philosophy and openness to the West. Many reasons have been put forward for this late adoption: Sultanic firmans, opposition from scribes, lack of a market for printed texts, and the difficulty in printing Arabic script. What forms of mobility in print material and technology existed before 1727 in the Ottoman Empire, and how did they interact with the creation of a Turkish‑Muslim printing press during the Tulip Era? It was Rabbi Jacob ben Asher’s incunable of 1493 – "Four Rows" – that marked the inauguration of printing of any type in the Ottoman Empire. This text will be briefly analyzed, along with the ensuing centuries‑long Hebrew and Ladino print traditions, and finally their continuation through the Tulip Era. This article will frame the historical development of Jewish print culture in Istanbul and the Ottoman Empire from the fifteenth century to the eighteenth century while situating it within the international marketplace. The exchanges between the intercontinental Jewish print culture, the first Turkish‑Muslim printing house, and European intellectuals emphasize interconnectedness as well as the reimagination of the Tulip Era not as the initial thrust of Ottoman "modernization" but rather the amalgamation of previous technological and socioeconomic forces. Using Ottoman Jewish printing as a comprehensive example, "modernization" in the Ottoman Empire is shown to have occurred over many centuries, with its achievement the result of a blending of different coexisting cultures and trends.

“DASMAN” - “MANKURT” - “IXROD”: CRISIS OF MODERNITY IN THE LATE PERIOD OF CHINGIZ AITMATOV’S ART

The article is devoted to the historical and philosophical analysis of the work of the Kyrgyz humanist writer of the Soviet period, Chingiz Aitmatov, whose early work is characterised as a fascination with the “Soul of Faust.” (Spirit of Faust) The result of this was the writer’s earlier works, where he fervently perceives the ideas of progress, socialism, and enlightenment, in other words, the main ideas of the modern era. Later, under the huge influence of Russian classical literature, as well as active study of traditional Kyrgyz culture, he spoke on such fundamental metaphysical topics as people, personality, fate, morality, etc., thereby trying to get rid of the “Soul of Faust” (Spirit of Faust), more and more asserting himself as a traditional humanist. But despite these attempts, the writer still retained some ambivalence: on the one hand, he acted as a staunch critic of modernity, and on the other, he perceived the modernization process as an objective development of history that needs to be perceived and comprehended. The results of the writer's later ideas are new concepts such as “Mankurt” and “Ixrod” usually used to describe the consciousness of a person who became possible at the junction of modernity with tradition. To a certain extent, these concepts are identical to the idea of “DasMan” by M. Heidegger. This indicates that after the Second World War, a critical understanding of the ideals of modernity reigned among European intellectuals, to which Chingiz Aitmatov also adjoins.

Relevance of Hermann Hesse: a systematic review of different perspectives

During the first decades of the 20th century, many European intellectuals were developing negative responses to modernity. Hermann Hesse was aware of the moral and social difficulties plaguing Europe at that time and dealt with these problems in his writing. Despite being a German author, he is well read even today, and his characters' quests and journeys of self-discovery captivate young people worldwide. This study aims to bring out the relevance of Hesse by analysing the historiography of the studies on Hesse's works and interrogating the significance of different perspectives on him, which will open doors for future studies in health humanities and memory studies. The authors systematically analyse 100 studies on Hesse and his works from journals indexed in the Web of Science. It is concluded that Hesse’s literary world, comprised of novels, poems, and autobiographical reflections, is deeper and bigger than what has been discovered.

After Sir William Jones: British Linguistic Scholarship and European Intellectual History

After Sir William Jones: British Linguistic Scholarship and European Intellectual History

Postwar Intellectuals and the Concept of European Literature: Exile, Memory, Reparation

This article focuses on the concept of European literature—its invention in Western cultural history, as well as the meaning and value attributed to it as a form of a supranational identity in warring Europe. It addresses the contributions of key European intellectuals of the interwar period and the postwar years, such as Victor Klemperer, Paul Valéry, Thomas Mann, Edmund Husserl, Ernst Robert Curtius, Jean Guéhenno, Karl Jaspers, and Erich Auerbach. The article discusses the important and often obscured similarities between the two periods and holds up the cultural assumptions and representations of these intellectuals’ collective discourse alongside their later critical reception by scholars like Edward Said, Armando Gnisci, Franca Sinopoli, and Magdi Yousef. Through this critical review of postwar intellectual thought, the article analyzes the ideological and affective charge of the idea of European literature as it is perpetuated through schooling and the paradigm of literary history. It demonstrates how, even though it was used as a defense against barbarism after the two world wars, the notion of “European literature,” like that of “tradition,” became a highly vulnerable construct after the advent of post-structuralism.

Протистояння чоловіка й жінки в публіцистиці Ольги Кобилянської та Елізи Ожешко

In the second half of the 20th century, works appeared in Ukraine and Poland devoted to the problems of the position of women, the role of men, their education, upbringing, place in society. It was at this time that the gender problem was outlined as topical in the positivist press. The heroines of many works of those years are depicted surrounded by books, they strive for knowledge, work for the benefit of society. The works of Eliza Ozheshko, Boleslav Prus, Mariia Sheliha, Yan Zakhariasevich and others are especially rich in such characters. The conservative press, as a rule, did not approve of such heroines.In her artistic works, Olha Kobylianska pays maximum attention to the creation of the image of a new woman — self-sufficient, with pronounced personal qualities, educated, intelligent. Her heroines are endowed with features of European intellectuals, full of inner aristocracy. They do not want to repeat the fate of their peers: just get married and limit their livesonly to communicating with their husbands and raising children. These heroines long for the freedom to choose their own life path, true mutual love, self-realization — the same thing that Olha Kobylianska dreamed of. When creating female characters, Olha Kobylianska relies on the philosophical teachings of that time, in particular, on the thoughts about the place of women in social life expressed by Friedrich Nietzsche. Female and male characters created by Olha Kobylianska in publicistic works are extremely colorful. A woman is a person with a strong character, devoid of excessive romanticism, full of new ideas, capable of challenging society.Eliza Ozheshko felt from her own life experience how difficult it is to remain without the support of her husband. Widowed at a young age, she faced the problem of managing the estate on her own. It was difficult to do. That is why Polka’s publicistic works are imbued with autobiographical features. She was aware of the enormous responsibility that mothers bear, although she had never had children and did not know the joys of motherhood. Eliza Ozheshko was convinced that the fate and future of the nation is in the hands of mothers.

Emulating Empires: Caribbean Free Ports, Economic Dualism, and European Imperial Rivalry, c. 1670s–1760s

ABSTRACTWhen the Dutch West Indies Company (WIC) established the free port of Willemstad, Curaçao after 1674, they launched a model for economic competition that other European empires would emulate. Within a century, the Danish, Spanish, British, and French all established their own Caribbean free ports. Emulation, however, was not replication. This article argues that while the expansion of free ports into different Caribbean empires generated similar forms of economic dualism (prohibitive commercial systems in certain locales with more-open ones in others), they all served varying purposes. The Dutch and Danish maintained or expanded their free-port systems and utilised strategic neutrality to remain active players within an increasingly competitive economic arena. Britain wanted to extend its commercial empire by making foreign realms dependent on its trade. France sought to pacify recalcitrant planters desperate for reliable provisioning. Finally, Spain enacted free ports in Santo Domingo to supply and encourage settlement in a region threatened by French encroachments. Thus, although these empires all established free ports in strategic locales and jealously emulated each other, they did so with unique political-economic aims in mind. Meanwhile, merchants, enslaved Africans, sailors, settlers, and European intellectuals employed Caribbean free ports to accomplish their own ends as well.

A Voice for Surrealism: Suzanne Césaire and the Tropiques Group

Abstract: In the mid-1940s, Martinican writer Suzanne Césaire published her text “1943 Le Surréalisme et nous” in the cultural journal Tropiques . In it, she addressed the potential of the avant-garde movement as a weapon in the Caribbean intellectuals struggle for freedom. Her arguments were developed in other articles published in the same journal where she encouraged the use of poetry to reveal the ambiguous reality of colonialism. However, her role in the exchange between local and European intellectuals has been overshadowed by the studies of the more prominent part her husband Aimé Césaire had. This article aims to place Suzanne Césaire at center stage in the exchange between Surrealism and the Tropiques group. It documents the impact of her ideas and writings on Surrealism’s support for decolonization during and after World War II, as well as the influence of her thought in contemporary discussions about decolonial culture.

ʻAbd al-Rahim Talebof’s Promotion of Nationality and National Sociopolitical Reform in Kitab-i Aḥmad (1890–1894)

Abstract Scholars of Persian literature approach ‘Abd al-Rahim Talebof’s Kitab-i Aḥmad (1890–1894) either as a pedagogical treatise exemplifying his stance on the importance of modern education for Iranian children or as an informative text presenting modern European-style scientific advances and discoveries to Iranians. Moreover, they look at contemporary European intellectuals and intellectual thought informing Talebof’s work, especially Jean Jacques Rousseau’s Émile, ou de L’Éducation (1763). In this way, they overlook the role of the contemporary Iranian intellectual discourse in forming Talebof’s work and thought. This article demonstrates that Talebof wrote his book in conversation with the works of both his eminent Iranian intellectuals and their European counterparts. Building upon the current scholarship, this article argues that in Kitab-i Aḥmad, Talebof, in addition to promoting his educational mission and informative goals, lays out his most developed social philosophy, in particular, his theorization of “nationality” (millīyat) or allegiance to an imagined nation. Talebof espouses the idea that Iranians need to own moral and religious commitment to a national community and posits “nationality” as the essential framework within which modern educational and sociopolitical reforms can be implemented.

The Museum of the Osservatorio Vesuviano: inviting the public to explore the geoheritage of the world’s first volcano observatory

The Osservatorio Vesuviano (OV) is the oldest volcano observatory in the world having been founded in 1841 by the King of the Two Sicilies Ferdinand II of Bourbon. The historical building, located on the western slope of Vesuvius, hosts a museum with important collections of remarkable scientific, historical and artistic value, including pioneering instruments, rocks and minerals, photos and films of Vesuvius’ eruptions and many other memorabilia. Visitors discover this heritage through permanent exhibitions, and a multimedia path, across the history of Vesuvius and the origin of volcano monitoring. The museum lies within the protected area of Vesuvius National Park, established in 1995. The park’s network of trails allows visitors to enjoy the geodiversity of Somma-Vesuvius, whose activity has been intertwined with that of humans from Bronze Age to modern times, as testified by many important archaeological sites around the volcano, the most famous among them being Pompeii and Herculaneum. The “Grand Tour” was the cultural journey undertaken in the eighteenth century by European intellectuals, in which Italy was an essential destination; we consider the Museum of the OV an essential stop in a modern “Vesuvius Grand Tour”, a journey through the geological and archaeological heritage of Vesuvius territory. Since 2001, the OV is the Naples section of the Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia (INGV), which is primarily tasked with monitoring the three active volcanoes of the Neapolitan area—Vesuvius, Campi Flegrei and Ischia—through an advanced surveillance network.

Paparrigopoulos on Continuity, Constantine, and the Council of Nicaea

Konstantinos Paparrigopoulos was the “father” of modern Greek historiography, and his monumental Ιστορία του ελληνικού έθνους (History of the Hellenic Nation) was for its time a comprehensive and controversial achievement, an imaginative and learned tapestry of Greek history from antiquity to the present, woven with the golden thread of Hellenism. Against the prevailing views of European intellectuals, Paparrigopoulos understood the history of the Greek nation, people, culture, and language as unbroken—certainly subjected at times to the rule of foreign powers—but always enduring. To link ancient, medieval, and modern Greece into a single story, he developed a narrative of continuity in which Greece was guided by Providence toward a teleology that was realized in the fusion of Hellenism and Christianity and a polity of church and empire whose institutions were simultaneously, and paradoxically, democratic and monarchic. Two critical historical events made this possible: the reign of Constantine and the Council of Nicaea.

The Serbian and Yugoslav Reception of Werner Sombart (1895-2022)

Following the publication of voluminous works such as Socialism and the Social Movement, German Economic Life in the 19th Century and Modern Capitalism, Werner Sombart (1863-1941) became one of the most prominent, most widely read and most translated European intellectuals of the first half of the 20th century. Sombart became very popular not only in Germany but also in other countries in Europe and beyond (particularly in Italy and Japan). As Reiner Grundmann and Nico Stehr have observed, the period after Sombart’s death in 1941 was marked by great changes in European and global sociological and economic thought. Consequently, Sombart was gradually marginalized and removed from the ranks of mainstream authors. Although he was held in high regard by, among others, Fernand Braudel and Joseph Schumpeter, Sombart’s work was neglected due to the paradigm changes in economics and sociology, with priority given to authors who based their research on traditions opposed to German historicism and Marxism.
 The history of this author’s reception among the Serbian and Yugoslav public is characterized by disontinuity and, compared to Max Weber and Karl Marx, insufficient comprehensiveness in its approach. It can be argued that the Serbian academic community has followed the trends in European scholarship from the late 19th century to the present day. In all analyses to date, Werner Sombart’s extensive oeuvre has been reduced to certain aspects (capitalism, social pluralism, a critique of his conceptions).
 Werner Sombart had a significant presence up until 1941. Even in these circumstances Serbian scholars, unlike Croatian ones, devoted more attention to ideas about the twilight and crisis of capitalism, the relationship between the state and the economy, the role of luxury and spending by the rich in the genesis of modern economic life. During communism Sombart’s work was completely marginalized due to ideological factors, a change of paradigm and a negative perception of his role in Germany’s political life. Also, Serbian sociology and social sciences more generally followed the trend of according great recognition to Max Weber, which, until the collapse of communism, had been limited, but following the breakup of Yugoslavia and the beginning of transition, increasingly overt and widespread, replacing the absolute dominance of the Marxist paradigm.
 And while Sombart has been completely neglected by the Croatian public, in Serbia there has been a revival of interest thanks to the recent translations of the study Luxury and Capitalism (2011) and the wartime pamphlet Traders and Heroes (2018). New research has drawn attention not only to the geopolitical aspects of Sombart’s thought, but also to his wartime engagement and the genesis of his ideas, which can be situated within the traditions of reactionary modernism.

Film Literary Criticism and Image Aesthetics: Around Film Criticism

Film criticism has been carried out in the form of activities since its inception, in which many outstanding intellectuals and artists have participated.Especially in this respect, European intellectuals can contrast with American intellectuals, who have long held films in contempt. “In Europe, intellectuals have been fascinated by filmmaking since the beginning of their media,” writes Tim Bewart and Thomas Szobak.It is not surprising, therefore, that in the 1920s, throughout Europe, Paris, Berlin, Moscow, a group of intellectuals dedicated to all corners of the art and other artists on the same basis as art, came together to discuss and write about film. “Unlike the U.S., where movies were excluded from intellectual reflection until the late 1950s, film criticism was a battleground for intellectuals in France.

От мифа к Просвещению и обратно: как развивалась просвещенческая картина мира на примере гонений на колдунов в средневековой Англии

Social crises create an atmosphere of uncertainty: established institutions, rules, and social norms disintegrate. When a crisis is structural in nature, this uncertainty can lead to a radical shift in the worldview of certain societies. The conventional foundations of social life become unstable, and in the vacuum that ensues, something new emerges, often co-opted by various political forces for their own interests. In this article, we will explore how, using the perception of witchcraft and witches in medieval and early modern England as a case study, one dominant myth was replaced by another, and the social consequences that arose from this shift. This case illustrates the historical evolution of attitudes towards witches, from uncertainty to power struggles and eventual exclusion from the public sphere. The main actors in this narrative were not the witches or sorcerers themselves, but European intellectuals who inadvertently became the tools of local politicians. These politicians seized the opportunity to solidify their political dominance using the instruments of civil science and political philosophy. By examining the case of medieval witchcraft and English political thought of the 11th and 12th centuries, we will demonstrate how dominant worldviews shifted during times of crisis and the factors that influenced the success of one narrative over another. Based on this material, we will illustrate the transfer of ideas from the academic realm to the political, and then how they trickled down to everyday life. Additionally, we will delve into contemporary research on myths, fairy tales, and urban legends, highlighting the differences and similarities between the Enlightenment and other prevailing myths across different historical periods.

Post-structuralism

The article draws a conceptual distinction the (French) structuralism of the 50’s–60’s and the post-structuralism of the 70’s, which are discussed as overlapping in their intellectual paths; their mutual dynamics is defined as a reaction of the intelligence to the pressure of depersonalized unified schemes within the logic of structuralism against free improvisation and loose interpretation instead of total explanations in the post-structuralism interpretation. The article establishes a conceptual identity of the paradoxical nature between post-structuralism (and deconstructionism, which is homogeneous and identical thereto in a number of aspects), on the one hand, and constructionism with its specific process of language dismantling – social/ideological languages, social group dialects, on the other hand, which naturally leads the authors to the analysis of the paradoxicality principles, defined by post-structuralism (five principles of paradoxicality of Gilles Deleuze – paradox of regress, paradox of sterile reiteration, paradox of neutrality, paradox of absurd, paradox of Levi-Strauss); poststructuralists’ paralogisms are examined through paradoxical denotation; the late Roland Barthes’ phenomenon of paradoxicality, becoming a plot-forming principle of narration, is analyzed. Poststructuralism is conceptualized in the article as the first decisive step of post-modernism; the affinity of post-structuralist and postmodernist commitment to parody, game and irony is stated; the theory of language games in post-modern interpretation is explored; one of those games – a game of carnival – is explored within the diachronic retrospective; the affinity of parody and carnival tradition of post-structuralism and post-modernism to the romantic irony of the XIXth century and its inconsistency with the popular culture of laugh is established. The genesis of poststructuralism and post-modernism is connected with the ideological restart of the Western society before the “very end” of the Resistance ideas and the disappointment of the left European intellectuals in the “great legends” and illusions of Marxism. The blurred concepts of relativism are connected with the mutual disproportion of different layers of historical experience.

Western European Intellectual Practices of a New Type in Russian Everyday Life at Early 18th Century (case of Feofan Prokopovich)

The focus of this study is the views of Feofan Prokopovich, a unique Orthodox thinker whose world outlook was shaped by an obvious influence of the ideas of the Protestant and Catholic Enlightenment. Talking about the Enlightenment, modern historiography focuses on the versatility of the phenomenon, preferring to talk about the Enlightenment, including the religious or confessional Enlightenment, aimed at rethinking the role of religion and the church. The Religious Enlightenment was a pan-European phenomenon that embraced Protestantism, Catholicism, Judaism, and Orthodoxy, and grew out of the desire to create an intelligent religion free of superstition and serving society. The intellectual movement of the religious Enlightenment sought to reconcile the natural philosophy of the 17th-18th centuries with a religious worldview, while trying to overcome the extremes of religious fanaticism, on the one hand, and nihilism and godlessness, on the other. The process of forming a new intellectual environment is marked by the coexistence and mutual influence of the most diverse, sometimes poorly compatible traditions, their transformation and modification. Comprehensively arguing the need for unlimited autocracy in Russia, Feofan Prokopovich, nevertheless, actively used the discourse of the Enlightenment in his writings, discussing the problem of the origin of the state, the mode of government, the boundaries of the power of the monarch, the rights and duties of subjects. On the example of Feofan Prokopovich, we can talk about the emergence and rooting of intellectual practices of a new type in Russian everyday life. The integration of Western European ideas and practices into Russian culture was ambiguous, multifaceted and depended on their adaptation to the socio-political space of Russia. Being well acquainted with the works of European authors of the 17th early 18th centuries, he rather took on the formal side of their discussions on socio-political topics, adapted a conceptual glossary that was new for the Russian educated public, which opened up opportunities for talking about politics in a new way.

Through the Looking Glass of Madame Butterfly: Narrative Gender Transition in the Writings of Angela Carter

Abstract This article situates Angela Carter’s Japanese writings in the context of multiple interconnected discourses in the 1960s and 1970s: on the one hand, anti-imperialism, postcolonialism, and feminism among European intellectuals and, on the other hand, “self-orientalism,” anti-Western nationalism, and global capitalism in postwar Japan. As a white woman in Japan, Carter was not only, as previously argued by scholars, doubly objectified as woman and foreigner, but “subjectified” in a patriarchal/colonialist discourse and made aware of her complicity in objectifying, emasculating, and exploiting the native. Carter’s Japanese and post-Japan writings reflect a newly acquired awareness of gender in a colonial context, demonstrated by her conscious use of male pronouns and gender transitions, effectively problematizing the othering tendency of European orientalists and the Japanese self-orientalist exploitation of it.

Progress across empire: entanglements between Indian and European reformers before the First World War

Abstract This article argues that the field of social reform was a flourishing sphere of encounter between progressive Indian and European intellectuals in the years leading up to the First World War. By building personal networks, sharing intellectual reference points and exchanging information in internationally oriented journals, reformers could develop the sense that they belonged to a globe-spanning vanguard of like-minded intellectuals who, by identifying and addressing social issues in a local context, were allied to a range of analogous initiatives abroad. The expectation of a mutually beneficial bridging of ‘East’ and ‘West’ stimulated the personal entanglements of these intellectuals, yet they would become harder to maintain after the mechanized violence of the First World War cast doubts on the civilizing offensive.