Intellectual Context Research Articles

Collecting Coins and Medals in 18th-Century Sweden

During the 18th century, collections of coins and medals were familiar sights. The collectors ranged from scholars to amateurs, men and women and the collectables tempted collectors for various reasons: they signified wealth and knowledge, they rendered historical events or current politics in material form, or they were miniature artworks and financial investments. Also, the visual and material culture that involved collecting coins and medals consisted of cabinets and numismatic publications. But how were numismatic collections amassed, and how were they used? What did it mean to own a coin and medal collection? This article discusses the practices of collecting numismatics in 18th-century Sweden through various case studies concerning private and public collections, such as the Uppsala University coin cabinet or the possessions of politician Carl Didric Ehrenpreus, numismatist Elias Brenner, medal artist Arvid Karlsteen, and merchant-wife Anna Johanna Grill. These cases illuminate the diverse motivations behind collecting, from intellectual curiosity to social status. These case studies include immaterial facets such as witty discussions and international networks and material aspects such as coins, medals, cabinets, letters, and publications. Based on contemporary written sources, this article sheds light on how numismatic objects were bought, sold and circulated, highlighting the market dynamics of collecting. Furthermore, the examples examine how numismatic publications were used next to the objects, contributing to hermeneutic study and the collecting process. The written records provide insight into the scholarly discourse surrounding these collections, offering a glimpse into the intellectual context of the time. Finally, the article will add to the understanding of values and ideas attached to the practices of collecting coins and medals in early modern Europe. It elucidates the role of numismatics as a collecting practice, as well as how it shaped cultural perceptions, underscoring the intricate interplay between material and visual culture, society, and the production of knowledge during this period.

GENEALOGY OF UNIVERSITY ETHNOGRAPHY: DEPARTMENT, PERSONALITIES, TRADITION TRANSMISSION (TO THE 100th ANNIVERSARY OF THE BIRTH OF PROFESSOR G.E. MARKOV)

The article is a tribute of respect to the memory of Gennady Evgenyevich Markov, a major Russian ethnologist, archaeologist and historian of primitive society, doctor in history, professor of the Department of Ethnology, Faculty of History, Lomonosov Moscow State University. The authors provide a detailed analysis of the scientific contribution and life path of the outstanding Soviet/Russian scholar and place their narrative in a broad socio-cultural and intellectual context of the country and society. G.E. Markov's biography is closely connected with the history of the Department of Ethnography/Ethnology at the Faculty of History, Moscow State University and serves as a serious basis for reconstructing the genesis of university ethnography and its dynamics over the course of nearly 85 years. Such a long period of existence of the university department and its sustainable effectiveness in training professional staff were essentially ensured by the high qualification of scientific and pedagogical staff, reliance on solid theoretical and methodological foundations and interdisciplinarity, a combination of conservatism with flexibility and adaptability to the challenges of the time, the ability to preserve disciplinary continuity and ensure the transmission of the scholarly tradition. All these components of the successful development of university ethnology are subjected to a comprehensive and balanced examination in the article. G.E. Markov's biography in all its typical and special manifestations forms the semantic core of the analysis and presentation. The authors offer their view on complex and sharply debatable issues of professional self-determination, the logic of scientific discovery, the correlation between field and desk research, the influence of ideology and politics on scientific thought. The article presents the authors' vision of the prospects for the development of the Department of Ethnology, based on a harmonious combination of ethnological and anthropological approaches to understanding the disciplinary framework, unconditional reliance on scholarly tradition and its authorities, the need to improve the methods of training in terms of instrumentality and practice-oriented nature, which will allow graduates of the department to be in demand and stay in the profession.

Entropy’s Critical Translations

It is, according to Serres, the ‘greatest discovery of history that entropy and information are connected’ – a line of thought he takes throughout epistemological questions, aesthetics, cultural analysis, and a theory of matter. By following Serres’s work, one finds negentropy, entropy, chaos, local orders, the ‘soft’, and the ‘hard’ almost everywhere in his writings. The intellectual context and sources that Serres draws on are an important support to understand the way in which the coupling of informational and thermodynamic entropy takes place, and how it becomes a key operator of entropic differentiation. This text draws a combinatorial map of how Serres connects understandings of entropy across a range of areas of knowledge. In this specific context, Serres’s path of translation harnesses the so-called ‘hard’ and the ‘soft’ forms of entropy in looking at literature and arts, yet also to discuss social phenomena and the formations of societies. By drawing attention to the negative spaces in Serres’s connective path of translating entropies, and in the course of reading his work in context with other philosophies of entropy, this section aims to explore Serres’s translations in the way it both connects and leaves gaps. Approaching Serres’s criticality in this way brings one to the critical, difficult, icy landscapes of the North-West-Passage and the role it plays in his work. The North-West-Passage epitomises a ‘method’ to conceive the difficult path between the natural sciences and the humanities – exactly the kind of path that ‘entropy’ often meanders on. In fact, entropy itself plays an important role in regard the icy landscape’s ecology, e.g. to the degree to which the passage is melted or frozen, and thus, to the possibility of the passage as such. By bringing these multi-layered aspects of entropy as a material, aesthetic, and critical factor together, this contribution places Serres’s take on entropy as an eco-critical path in the face of the melting of icy landscapes.

Useful Animation: Iconography, Infrastructure and Impact

This article defines and explores the history of ‘useful animation’. Animation has found frequent application as a powerful practical and conceptual tool in professional fields requiring a versatile instrument for a variety of representational needs, from science and medicine to education and advertising. Today, forms of useful animation populate our television news, social media and urban environments in ways that are no less consequential for their having become second nature. But how did we get here? This tradition is distinct from entertainment or art and its investigation requires a revision of existing animation history, prompting new research questions and methodologies. This article presents such a framework for further work in this field. In doing so, it has three main aims. First, the authors establish the intellectual context and consider the historiographic implications of prior research in this area. Second, they ask three key theoretical research questions that can guide the investigation of the history of useful animation: How did useful animation build upon existing graphic traditions? What were the professional and institutional contexts for useful animation and how did these develop? and What impact did animation have on professional fields and their understanding of the world? Finally, the authors present three case studies from the first decades of film history that illustrate how these questions can be answered, and they suggest methods and research resources available to scholars of useful animation. These address Jean Comandon’s public health films in post-WWI France, animated maps made by the Austro-German Institut für Kulturforschung in the inter-war period and the animated film Unemployment and Money made in Britain illustrating Michael Polanyi’s economic theories in the 1930s. This article provides a basis for future research into this topic.

The Forgotten Father: Freedom and its Foes in Karl Jaspers’ Post-war Writings

Largely forgotten today, Karl Jaspers was one of the foremost public figures in post-war Germany to champion the idea of liberty, offering a unique blend of paternalist and populist politics. Freedom for Jaspers was both ideal and real, tied closely to the depths of existential being yet made concrete through the actions and choices of thinking individuals. Alongside developing this multi-layered conception of freedom, Jaspers also set out a number of ways that a culture of freedom could be fostered on both a national and an international level. A nationwide political education, guided by both paternalist great statesmen and by the people themselves, was to form the bedrock of Germany’s transition to democracy. Internationally, Jaspers believed that a decentralised system of cooperation, one which rose above the world’s increasingly irrelevant nation states, was the only means to stave off the dangers of totalitarianism. By placing Jaspers in his historical and intellectual contexts and comparing him with his contemporaries, we can shine new light into the tensions behind the polemics of this philosopher turned political pundit and highlight his important role as one of the Bundesrepublik’s intellectual fathers.

A Verdant Ethnography: Henry Green, Navajo Poetry, and Dialogical Ethnopoetics

The endeavour here is to write an ethnography with a sense of living. Using the literary work and theories of Henry Green, as well as concerns with dialogical anthropology, a discourse-centred approach to language and culture (conjoined here as a dialogical ethnopoetics), and Navajo rhetorical practices, I present an aggregate of transcripts from several conversations with Navajo poets over the years. It is the transcripts that give life to ethnography. The first part places this endeavour in an intellectual context; the much longer second part gives the verdant ethnography. A verdant ethnography is predicated on an empirical foundation (transcripts), but also on an obliqueness as well (the stuff of talk).

Scientific Modernity vs. Cultural Tradition in Imperial Russia

Abstract The emergence of modern science in Russia was a belated and rather abrupt development, unfolding rapidly in the 1860s and significantly challenging Russian traditional culture rooted in the Orthodox religion. As in Western Europe, the spread of scientific ideas that increasingly undermined the religious worldview was controversial and unsettling to many conservative thinkers. In Russia, however, controversy around the religious implications of science was more ideologically charged and complex because it involved the old, waxing question of Russia’s relationship with the West. While Dostoevskii’s attitude towards science has been a subject of long-standing debate, many questions remain overlooked and some are highly controversial. Dostoevskii’s reaction to J. S. Mill (mediated by Strakhov) is one important aspect that has been overlooked in current historiography. Mill’s Logic, widely known to European readers, played a significant role not only in creating the modern philosophy of science but also in stimulating the debate on the relationship between science and religion. By placing the views of Strakhov and Dostoevskii into a European intellectual context, this essay offers a re-evaluation of the theme of science in the works of the two most prominent conservative thinkers in nineteenth-century Russia.

Mapping the history of public economics in the twentieth century: an introduction to the special issue

The papers in this issue deal with the transformation from public finance to public economics at a theoretical and philosophical level in the mid-twentieth century. Our introduction situates these papers within their intellectual context. To do so, we provide a broad outline of the trajectory of the field beginning with the transformation of welfare economics. Acknowledging the structuring role of Richard Musgrave and James Buchanan for the field, the papers highlight the key role also played by Paul Samuelson in the transition to public economics. Moreover, they underscore how ethical issues were formalised into normative economics at this critical juncture.

Making Sense of Diseases and Disasters: Reflections of Political Theory from Antiquity to the Age of COVID

Making Sense of Diseases and Disasters: Reflections of Political Theory from Antiquity to the Age of COVID

“A Sign We Are”: A Poetical Theology of Passing in Hölderlin’s “Rousseau” and Other Late Poems

The birth of modern aesthetics cannot be separated from the emergence of a new, non-dogmatic conception of religion and theology. Friedrich Schlegel advocated ‘art as new religion’ while Friedrich Schleiermacher developed a vision on religion as a deeply aesthetic experience. In this rich intellectual context, one author stands out as deeply steeped in this field of innovative dialogues between philosophy, religion and art (against the backdrop of profound historical transformations) and as a singular figure beckoning towards a future (and a future language) that was still to come: Friedrich Hölderlin. In his later work, Hölderlin’s poetic voice retreats into a process of meticulous reading and writing, a complex score of traces and signs that articulate difference, not-yet-presence and potentiality, which is nothing other than the experience of finite time. In doing so, Hölderlin retraces the divine in history and in human existence: its retreat and expected arrival. In this article, we present readings and interpretations of Hölderlin’s later poetry, with a specific focus on the Winke or hints of the gods, and the vocabulary of nods and signs (Zeichen) signifying the experience of time’s passing as the announcement of an unthinkable future. By involving Jean-Luc Nancy’s rethinking of the Winke as intersections of the divinity of humanity and the humanity of divinity, we will arrive at a new understanding of Hölderlin’s emblematic figures of modernity: the stranger and the passer-by as receivers and transmitters of these Winke.

What is Evagrian ΓΝΩΣΙΣ?

Abstract: Evagrius famously characterises divine nature as γνῶσις οὐσιώδης, ‘substantial knowledge’. In the Alexandrian, Cappadocian, and other intellectual contexts informed by Platonic, Aristotelian, and Philonic thought, characterisations of God as a noetic or intellectual being are fairly common. However, these traditions concur in using the term νοῦς rather than γνῶσις. How can we explain that Evagrius deviates from the metaphysical mainstream? In this paper, I review this question from an historical and systematic point of view. I propose to examine ancient theories of Mind about the function and structure of the νοῦς, compare them to the Evagrian theory, and identify a possible explanation for the substitution of γνῶσις to the νοῦς. Since God is the key element in Evagrius's metaphysics, a clearer vision of the divine essence will help us appreciate the whole system more fully.

Młody Abramowski i kwestia kobieca. Część II: Ukontekstowienie. Rekonstrukcja i interpretacja

This article closes a series of papers analysing Edward Abramowski’s early thought as expressed in his collected works written up to 1896. It focuses on the following questions: What might Abramowski – writing at a specific time and place, with a specific audience in mind – have wanted to communicate? Is there supra-historical content in Abramowski’s views? This involves tracing the relationship between Abramowski’s ideas and their social and intellectual context. The study uses the methodology of the history of ideas to gain new knowledge about Abramowski’s thoughts. It fits indirectly into the studies on the history of Polish socialism and the dispute over the emancipation of women.

A Letter that Killeth: Gregory of Nyssa on How (Not) to Read Scripture, Platonically

AbstractIn this essay, I explore the emergence of multicolumn Bibles in late antiquity, with a particular emphasis on Origen's Hexapla and its use by Gregory of Nyssa. I contextualise Gregory's use of multicolumn Bibles within the Origenian tradition and show that, in this intellectual context, multicolumn Bibles functioned as hermeneutical rather than text‐critical devices. I argue that the best explanation for Gregory's use of multicolumn Bibles comes from the hermeneutical theory of the Phaedrus as it was developed in later Neoplatonism. I demonstrate how the adaptation of the Phaedrus‐hermeneutics to Scripture can animate the biblical text, revealing hidden elements of discursiveness in it. I conclude by arguing that the Christian adaptation of the Phaedrus, as exemplified by Gregory, is distinguished by originality from Neoplatonic hermeneutics. My argument shows that in Origen and his school the use of multicolumn Bibles should not be theorised in terms of ‘exegetical maximalism’ but in terms of ‘dialectical hermeneutics’. The difference between the two approaches lies in the shift between modern and late ancient approaches to text and Scripture: while modernity is characterised by the pursuit of the authentic text, Origen's literary world is characterised by textual plurality, orality, and vocality. As a result, while the modern reader expects to find the meaning of Scripture in the text, the Origenian reader expected to find the meaning of Scripture in the discourse that lies latent in between the text.

Kant and the French Revolution

Like the French revolutionaries, Kant defended individual rights and a republican constitution. That he nonetheless rejected a right of revolution has puzzled scholars. In this article I give an overview of Kant’s rejection of a right of revolution, compare it to the German intellectual context, and use it to explain Kant’s view of the events in France. In Kant’s nuanced account of the revolution’s two central phases, he refined a distinction between legitimate political transition and lawless popular rebellion.

Editor’s Introduction: Rediscovering Early Phenomenological Aesthetics

ABSTRACTRecent years have witnessed a surge of interest in the early phases of the phenomenological movement. However, early phenomenological aesthetics has so far received very little attention in the current “Renaissance” of early phenomenology, albeit that the early phenomenologists made significant contributions to aesthetics and even argued for a special affinity between aesthetics and phenomenology. They also took part in the exceptionally lively debates of early 20th-century German aesthetics, which in general has remained all too underappreciated in today’s research. This special issue of the Journal of Aesthetics and Phenomenology aims to kindle new interest in early phenomenological aesthetics and its wider intellectual contexts. In this introductory article, I will first provide a short overview of early phenomenology and then describe the main topics, proponents, and publications of early phenomenological aesthetics, setting them in the context of early 20th-century German aesthetics.

Peranan Muslimat Nahdlatul Ulama dalam Pemberdayaan Perempuan pada Bidang Sosial Keagamaan

Stereotypes that think women are weak, very dependent on men, and cannot be independent are still widely found today, including in Papungan Village, Pitu District, Ngawi Regency. This study aims to determine the role of Nahdhatul Ulama Muslims in Papungan Village in empowering women in the socio-religious field. This study uses a qualitative approach. Data analysis is based on the concept of Milles and Hubberman, namely data reduction, data presentation, and conclusion. The results of the first study, the role of Muslimat Nahdhatul Ulama in empowerment is by educating, guiding, training, and directing through yasinan, tadarus al-Qur`an, banjari al-Barjan, and recitation activities. Second, the supporting factors that influence empowerment are the support from the village head, the spirit of participation from members, and infrastructure. While the inhibiting factors are the lack of optimal motivation, time discipline, situations and conditions as well as differences in backgrounds. Third, the impact of the Muslimat movement in the spiritual context, the changes experienced by the community, which can increase the faith of piety and make it easier for mothers to read the Koran. Whereas in an intellectual context, adding new knowledge, and optimizing talent in banjari and al-Barjan activities. Whereas in the economic context, activities that can shape changes in mothers are increasing income through bisyaroh when there is an offer of hadroh and leading yasinan.

Естественные добродетели, «истинный разум» и степени познания в мистико-аскетическом учении старца Артемия Троицкого

In the present article I study a few fundamental aspects of mystical and ascetical teaching of starets Artemius of the Trinity contained in his 14 extant letters. Examination of these aspects is followed by the new identified sources of Artemius’s texts. I also pay an attention to the Slavonic translation of patristics (especcialy, to the ascetic genre) in order to show the intellectual context of Artemius working and to clarify some unclear moments of his views. The first aspect is his teaching on natural virtues, wich I consider for the first time. Artemius believes that human essence includes such virtues among the other properties of essence and, thereof, considers them to be put in essence originaly by the Creator. The corruption of the virtues is a consequence of the fall and the following replacement of virtues by non-essential passions. The second aspect is Artemius teaching on istinnyi razum (true knowledge, comprehension, reason), wich had been studying by scholars for a long time. I distinguish the philosophical (knowledge of beings), mystical (knowledge and contemplation through the exercise in virtues, love and faith) and Christological (knowledge and union with Christ) way of understanding of the istinnyi razum. The especial focus on the Christological way allows us to reveal the new sources of Artemius understending of istinnyi razum such as Corpus Areopagiticum and Gregory the Sinaite’s works and not to restrict them to the treatises of Isaac the Syrian. Finally, the third aspect is the hierarchy of the three states (grades) of man (flesh, state of soul and spiritual) from the point of view of the spiritual, incorporeal comprehension. I explain that flesh state is the beast-like state, as Artemius puts it; state of the soul is the grade, which indicate a Christian making the spiritual journey from wich he can stray. If we speak on hightest, spiritiual knowledge we should focus on the transtion from the comprehension of intelligible entities (the angels and the paradigms in the mind of the God) through bodily symbols to the direct comprehension of the spiritual world, which is belong to the such grade, as Artemius believe.

Disraeli and the Bible

Abstract Benjamin Disraeli has often been represented as a mercurial self-fashioner who adopted various expedient personae over the course of his public life. The biographical emphasis on his eccentric personality has caused many historians to distance Disraeli from his nineteenth-century intellectual contexts in their analysis of his thought. Disraeli wrote within a literary culture that remained invested in the Bible as an important narrative authority. The poetry and fiction of the period inflected, transformed, and challenged this authority, but it also remained in purposeful conversation with the Bible as it forged new moral and literary territory. Disraeli participated in this discourse throughout his fiction, especially in two of his works: Alroy (1833) and Tancred (1847). In these novels Disraeli drew considerably on biblical patterns of kingship and nationhood and often used language from the King James Bible. In surfacing his interest in Scripture, this article suggests that Disraeli represented the Bible’s ancient wisdom as an important bulwark against some of the fast-paced social and political changes of his time and particularly against the ‘Whiggish’ tendencies of his political opponents.

Under Shannon’s Bandwagon. Rethinking the Reception of Information Theory in Thermal Physics, 1948-1957

Abstract In this paper I analyze the historical case of how Shannon’s theory of information, among other alternative theories, began to be applied rapidly and systematically within thermal physics in the 1950s. After evaluating this theory and the intellectual context in which it is inserted, I argue that it was not the formal-conceptual features of Shannon’s theory but the particular motivations of influential scientists such as von Neumann, Weaver and Wiener that properly made it possible for information science to become deeply rooted in thermal physics during the 1950s, as shown by the proposals of Brillouin and Jaynes.

Acknowledging Inspirations in a Lifetime of Shifting and Pivoting Standpoints to Construct the Past

In this Perspective article, I am able to draw the various strands of my intellectual thinking and practice in archaeology and European prehistory into a complex narrative of changing themes. In this narrative, I draw attention to the inspirational triggers of these transformations to be found in works and words of colleagues and events within and outside my immediate discipline. A group of events between 1988 and 1993 disrupted (in a good way) the trajectory of my professional life and provided a convenient anchor around which my themes pivoted and regrouped with very different standpoints. But some trends in my way of working remained constant and contributed, I hope, to a career of cumulative knowledge. Along the way, I show the significance, in terms of my personal intellectual context as well as archaeological practice in general, of my published works as well as more obscure and some unpublished works that are cited here for the first time.