Intellectual Life Research Articles

Review of America's Philosopher: John Locke in American Intellectual Life by Claire Rydell Arcenas

Review of America's Philosopher: John Locke in American Intellectual Life by Claire Rydell Arcenas

Concluding essay: imperial humanism and challenge of defining the nature of the state

AbstractThis concluding essay reflects on the relationship between intellectual life and state building as elucidated by the essays in this special issue on Humanism in Greater Venice. Drawing comparisons with Asian empires and the Hispanic Monarchy (often called the ‘Spanish Empire’) in the Americas and elsewhere, it argues that we must be alive to the precise nature of the state championed by humanist writers and to eschew value‐laden terms that are not actor’s categories, e.g. commonwealth. It ends with a call to avoid either whitewashing the actions of states or creating new Black Legends, in the Renaissance or any other period.

Martin Ludwig Rhesa’s Prutena: Between Vaterland (Fatherland) and Heimat (Homeland)

Martin Ludwig Rhesa’s (Lith. Martynas Liudvikas Rėza, 1776–1840) original work, the two-volume collection of his German poetry Prutena (1809, 1825), became available to Lithuanian readers approximately two hundred years later, when Antanas A. Jonynas translated it into Lithuanian (2023). This fact opens up the possibility not only to get to know Rhesa’s literary abilities, but also to delve into the world of East Prussian intellectual life, to which the poet undoubtedly belonged. Rhesa’s duality, his belonging to two cultures – German and (Prussian) Lithuanian – is clearly visible in his understanding of the concept of ‘homeland’. The dual concept of ‘homeland’ in German, Heimat and Vaterland, is already evident in the titles of the collections and in the distribution of emphasis in the texts themselves. The poetic works described by the adjective vaterländisch imply an attachment to German cultural values: the Prussian government, the king, the official Evangelical Lutheran Church, while prutenisch would refer to the way of life and the culture of the ancestors of the Balts – the Prussians and the Lithuanians of that time – in their own homeland, Prussian Lithuania. The concept of a small homeland or fatherland is evident in some poems and ‘folk songs’. In Prutena, Rhesa adopted a Herderian strategy, since Herder published folk songs of various nations alongside poems by specific authors (Volkslieder, 1778/1779). In Rhesa’s work, the majority of the poems are his own, while ‘(folk) song texts’ account for only a quarter of the genre. Rhesa gives different genre descriptions to his German texts with the addition of ‘song’. He refers to poems such as ‘Der versunkene Brautring’ (The Sunken Ring), ‘Mila’ (Mila), ‘Elwa und Selmis’ (Elwe and Selmis), ‘Des fernen Schiffers Lied’ (The Sailor’s Song), and many others simply as eine littauische Daina (A Lithuanian Song). In the second volume, several texts have Volkslied in their title, such as ‘Der Lindentanz. Samländisches Volkslied’ (Lindententen Dance. A Sambian Folk Song), ‘Winter-Mai und Sommer-Schnee. Lith. Volkslied’ (Winter May and Summer Snow. A Lithuanian folk song) and ‘Der Hirtenknabe. Litth. Volkslied’ [The Shepherd. A Lithuanian folk song]. It seems that such a distinction by Rhesa is not accidental. His Prutena ‘songs’ are simply his own compositions, since here we find characters already familiar from other poems, such as Elma or Elwa and Selmis. At the same time, the poems with the prefix Volkslied can be seen as a free translation of folk songs. The ‘Lithuanian’, ‘Sambian’, or ‘Warmian’ songs may simply be the Prussian place names from which Rhesa drew his motifs. Rhesa’s double concept of homeland is well illustrated by his 1812 ode ‘An das Vaterland’ (To the Fatherland) (PRUTENA, II), which reveals all the components of Rhesa’s patriotism. The author recounts the history of the Prussian land and the peaceful and tranquil life of its inhabitants before the conquest. The ‘sons of Toiskon’, the Germanic Crusaders, turned the wheel of history in another direction. New denominations, the consolidation of Luther’s teaching in the Duchy of Prussia, the merits of the University of Albertina, the bright personalities of the land, the kings, the battlefields, and the sound of the longed-for victory over Napoleon – this is the history of the land and the homeland, the story of an enlightened priest, scribe and poet of Lithuanian origin.

A Ramsey Witness to Aimo’s Life of Abbo of Fleury (BHL 3–4)

Abstract The significance of Abbo of Fleury’s time in England to the intellectual life of tenth- and eleventh-century Ramsey is widely appreciated. Less well understood is what English monks knew of Fleury’s claims of Abbo’s sanctity. The present article explores knowledge of Abbo’s cult in England through a close study of Oxford, Bodleian MS Lat. misc. c. 75, a twelfth-century witness to Aimo’s Vita et miracula s. Abbonis of which the Life’s editors were unaware. The manuscript is introduced, its textual relationship to the Vita’s other witnesses is examined and a stemma for the Vita’s textual transmission is proposed. Textual interpolations made at Ramsey are then analysed for the additional information which they provide about Abbo’s legacy there before a possible context for the Vita’s transmission to Ramsey is proposed. An appendix of variants between the Ramsey witness and the Vita’s printed edition is also provided.

French socialism in the Argentine Partido Socialista: political dimensions of an uncomfortable presence (1890–1915)

Abstract The presence of French socialism in the Argentine Socialist Party is something of a paradox: the cultural weight of France in Argentina’s intellectual and artistic life from the nineteenth century until the first decades of the twentieth century had no equivalent impact on Argentine socialism. This is even more striking if we consider the intensity of personal exchanges, including a visit by Jean Jaurès to Buenos Aires in 1911. Of course, Francophilia was not unknown to these socialists, but their main leaders adopted a mostly critical approach towards French traditions, and later towards the Section française de l’Internationale ouvrière (SFIO), at least when compared to the Belgian and German socialist parties. This difference becomes even more perceptible when we compare the Partido Socialista (PS) in Argentina to other socialist parties from the same region. The thesis of this article is that the influence of French socialism served, in the early years of the PS in Argentina, to feed the leftist currents that opposed the leadership, promoting a revolutionary attitude on its part instead of its integration into the political system. At the same time, Jaurès’ immense international status as a socialist meant that his 1911 visit would facilitate the eventual integration of the Argentine party into the political system.

Rajaratnam in London: Writing, race, and capital in Singapore’s intellectual history

Abstract Dominant historiography in Singapore celebrates Sinnathamby Rajaratnam as one of the city-state’s founding national fathers, and the intellectual superintendent of state-sponsored multiculturalism in what has been characterized as an ‘illiberal democracy’. Little attention, however, has been paid to the extensive periods of Rajaratnam’s life in which he was not in governance with the People’s Action Party, and thus had considerable intellectual autonomy. This article examines the first of these periods—his sojourn in London from 1935 to 1947—marked by connections with overlapping communities of anti-colonial intellectuals drawn from Africa, the Caribbean, and East and South Asia. Close reading of Rajaratnam’s London lifeworld, his published fiction and journalism, and the many annotations he made in the books he read reveals a very different intellectual history than the one that we think we know, and allows us to better understand his lifelong uneasiness with capitalism and racial governmentality. Re-reading Rajaratnam as an autonomous intellectual disembeds his early intellectual life from the story of the developmental state, enabling a focus on the role of affect and form in his writing. The process also offers new insights into Singapore today, where the legacies of state-sponsored multiculturalism are increasingly challenged, and where citizens, residents, and migrants seek new forms of solidarity in and across difference.

Chiang Yee and His Circle Chinese Artistic and Intellectual Life in Britain, 1930–1950. Edited by Paul Bevan, Anne Witchard, and Da Zheng

<i>Chiang Yee and His Circle Chinese Artistic and Intellectual Life in Britain, 1930–1950.</i> Edited by Paul Bevan, Anne Witchard, and Da Zheng

The Ideology of Reform and Historical Criticism Between Secular Islamic Thought and Fundamentalist Islamic Thought (Ahmad Amin, and Sayyid Qutb) Model

Reform is a call for renewal and modernity, therefore. Much study and refutation were attributed to it, in comparison with others, it always needs to be set and defined, that’s not for its difficulty but it’s connected to its concept with the ideologies of its advocates and their projection of its connotations and meanings on the contents of their projects and visions. For this reason, reform advocates had a dilemma in defining this concept accurately. This dilemma has dimensions that made it more obvious, by shedding light on the Ideology of reform and historical criticism. The research focused on two great thinkers with different ideologies. Ahmad Amin began his journey through research and exploration of the historical, religious, and intellectual life of the Arabs and produced several historical writings that reflect his ideology in the field of reform and historical criticism. But Sayyid Qutb had a classical fundamentalist tendency that was later translated into Qutbist thought, which was adopted by some Islamic groups, and from whose texts they took ideas for building their structure. The different vision between secular, &amp;quot;rational&amp;quot; Islam and fundamentalist, &amp;quot;extremist&amp;quot; Islam lies in the reformist and critical visions of each of the two trends. It can be said that historical reform and criticism of Ahmad Amin had a character that relied on reason before transmission and sifting through historical and classical texts. As for reform in Sayyid Qutb, it was a longing for the era of early Islam and a view of society as ignorant and far from monotheism, and that it must be reformed by reviving faith in it once again. Qutb showed this clearly in his writings and followed this approach in the process of historical criticism.

Glosa do biografii Anny Wyczółkowskiej

This article seeks to enhance the biographical portrait of Anna Wyczółkowska (1853–1929), a pioneer of experimental psychological research, a social activist and publicist, and an outstanding figure in the intellectual life of Polish emigrants in the United States. Wyczółkowska was one of the first women to obtain a doctorate in philosophy from the University of Zurich (1893). She then developed her career in the United States, collaborating with, among others, John Watson, the founder of behaviorism. Her biography reflects the experiences of the generation of women from Central and Eastern Europe at the turn of the 20th c. However, Wyczółkowska did not gain wider recognition and was completely forgotten after her death. This text considers the trajectory of her scientific career and the development of her worldview through interactions with the scientific authorities of her era, as well as with writers, artists, and social activists both in Poland and abroad. The article highlights an important yet lesser-known aspect of her activity – her editorial contributions. Source analysis has revealed that Wyczółkowska’s journalistic style significantly enriches certain biographical threads, outlines the social dimension of her scientific achievements, and illuminates the cultural context of her life experiences

Nasri, A. (2021). Skin for skin

The book by the modern Iranian philosopher Amir Nasri, Skin for Skin, is devoted to the study of Dostoevsky’s novels in an interdisciplinary context. Dostoevsky’s oeuvre exercises an enormous influence on the cultural life of Iranian intellectuals. The book opens with the chapter ‘Russia against Westernism,’ which contains a history behind Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment [Prestuplenie i nakazanie]. The second chapter deals with the influence of Balzac’s novels on Dostoevsky and compares Dostoevsky’s and Pushkin’s ideas. The third chapter focuses on the characters of Crime and Punishment. Nasri emphasizes that Dostoevsky’s ‘metaphysical realism’ aligns well with existentialist ideas. The book’s title, Skin for Skin, is a reference to the Book of Job. According to the philosopher, the meaning of the expression ‘skin for skin’ is an appropriate summary of the idea behind Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment

The Revival of Confucian Philosophy Through Its Interaction with Daoism: The Case of Sixth-Century Master Liu (Liuzi)

This paper offers the first English-language philosophical treatment of Master Liu (Liuzi 劉子)—a treatise that gives a unique insight into the intellectual life of sixth-century China. Most probably written by Liu Zhou (d. 565) and known at the Tang court, the work was later neglected due to its eclectic label. This article argues that Liuzi integrated Confucian moral philosophy with selected Daoist ideas and responded to post-Buddhist transformations of key categories of Chinese thought in a manner that anticipates many solutions characteristic of neo-Confucian lixue. This includes an innovative understanding of such categories as spirit (shen) and heart-mind (xin), feelings (qing) and desires (yu), and, finally, reliability (xin) and balancing (quan).

Autonomy and Church Membership: Resolving Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Dilemma through John Zizioulas’s Ecclesiology

Abstract This article explores the theological implications of being a church member in a contemporary context that highly values individual autonomy, by engaging with John Zizioulas’s ecclesiological framework. Initially, the article elucidates the notion of the ‘autonomous self’, drawing upon the intellectual contributions and life experiences of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. It posits that Rousseau’s dilemma of losing self or suffering from loneliness represents the challenge faced by those holding this autonomous anthropological assumption. The article subsequently employs John Zizioulas’s constructs of ontological personhood and communion ecclesiology as counterpoints to this quandary. It contends that Zizioulas’s trinitarian-informed theological anthropology offers an ecclesial means to surmount this existential dilemma, arguing that church membership is an act of participating in divine and familial communion.

Apprehensive vigilance: Martin L. Davies, philosophy, and the ecological imperative of knowledge

ABSTRACT This essay discusses what I describe as the ecological imperative of knowledge underpinning the work of Martin L. Davies in light of some well-known developments in the history of European philosophy. It also offers some observations that seek to elucidate his view of intellectual life through clarifying his approach to the social and cognitive activities that define it. It ends, in tribute, with some personal recollections of him and his work prompted by his death in late 2021.

In the Belly of the Beast: Service and the Future of the Public Humanities

Abstract In this piece we argue for the revolutionary power of collective and collaborative work through the most maligned aspect of academic labour: service. The co-authors are the heads of academic units at Concordia University, who in fall 2023 organized a coalition of unit heads from across their university who worked collecitvely to push for greater budget transparency. Their experience challenges the false paradigm that would identify the “public humanities” exclusively with academic research and teaching, to show how service to one’s unit, faculty, and university is an important site of resistance, activism, and struggle. Done with intention and by modelling democratic and collective processes, service is not only a form of resistance to the erosion of any thinking and doing that is not under the thrall of capitalism, but it is also a way of enacting the public humanities themselves, through thinking, writing, talking and working out ideas together, a potential site for creating intellectual life by co-opting bureaucracy to creative and political ends.

Pendekatan Kepemimpinan Kependidikan Al-Ghazali dan Ibnu Khaldun: Relevansi dalam Manajemen Agile Modern

Leadership is an individual's personal ability that plays an important role in bringing the organisation to its goals. The complexity of the environment of modern society, along with the pressure of competition between educational institutions, the increasing expectations of parents and the need to introduce changes in the process of working in Islamic educational institutions led to a great deal of interest in agile management methods. Al Ghazali and Ibn Khaldun are great figures who pay great attention to the world of education, including the concept of educational leadership. The presence of leaders in facing these conditions is absolutely necessary so that Islamic educational institutions can still exist to contribute to the intellectual life of the nation. The purpose of this research is to examine the concept of educational leadership of Al-Ghazali and Ibn Khaldun and explain the relevance of these concepts in the context of agile management. This research uses the Library Research method. The author searches for literature sources in the form of books and journals. The analysis used is comparative analysis. The conclusion of this research is the relevance of the concept of educational leadership of Al-Ghazali and Ibn Khaldun in the context of agile management, namely working to achieve the pleasure of Allah swt, holding fast to the goals of Islamic education, having leadership skills, involving customers in educational projects, involving customers in educational projects, teamwork and collaboration, new work processes, regular reflection and continuous quality improvement.

What Literary Universals Are and What Culture Is Not: The Example of Descriptive Ethics

ABSTRACT Most of us would like to think that our ideas and commitments develop in a purely “objective” manner, as if they were the product of simple chains of evidence and inference. But that would be wrong. Our intellectual lives are more contingent and personal than that. In keeping with the biographical background of our intellectual engagements and commitments, the following article begins with a sort of memoir treating some key features of the author’s theoretical and scholarly development. This leads to a discussion of one prominent concern that has been a recurrent focus of Hogan’s research and writing—literary universals, especially story universals. Isolating and explaining universals is a project that is mostly ignored by literary theorists today. Insofar as it is not ignored, it is widely misunderstood. This article attempts to correct some of this misunderstanding. Rather than anything universal, humanists today are particularly enthusiastic about the idea of culture, despite its vagueness and (at best) limited explanatory value. As knowledge about culture is widely seen as undermining the study of universals, the article then turns to some criticisms of culturalism. It concludes by treating the example of how story universals bear on and illuminate the descriptive study of ethics.

Misquoting the ancients

Abstract The Kangxi zidian 康熙字典 [Kangxi Dictionary] was without doubt the most influential and widely used dictionary in China during the past three centuries, and its impact on education, scholarship, and intellectual life in general, cannot be overstated. The dictionary’s compilation was a major step in the development of Chinese lexicography, and it has been at the foundation of all large dictionary projects ever since. This paper addresses the editors’ tendency to misquote and misattribute quotations, which has been among the most commonly criticized issues. My aim here is not to identify further mistakes but to document the patterns of misquotations, as these can help understand the process of the dictionary’s compilation. One noteworthy find is that in many cases members of the editorial team quoted their sources indirectly, relying on more recent encyclopedias and miscellanea.

Fame, Embodiment and Sexuality in Nineteenth-Century Women’s Poetry

ABSTRACT This article examines the ways in which three women poets of the long nineteenth-century – Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–1861), Emily Brontë (1818–1848) and Charlotte Mew (1869–1928) – represent fame in their work in terms of a tense sexualised dynamic of attraction and repulsion, variously modelled as femme-fatale-like seduction, repressed lust and the activity in, and consequences of, what Mew terms the “tossed bed” (“Fame”, l. 19). The focusing of fame through the ideas of sexuality and embodiment enables these writers to reflect, explicitly or implicitly, upon the gendered nature of literary creation, public voice and visibility, and thereby to negotiate, at least in part, the complex legacies of the “poetess”. In deploying innovative experiments with structure, form and language, Barrett Browning, Brontë and Mew repeatedly reveal fame’s double-edged nature, as something which may be alluring and enthralling in terms of desire, yet simultaneously silencing and threatening to the intellectual and creative life of the poet. The poems examined here consequently demonstrate that succumbing to fame is something which must be resisted at all costs in order to maintain personal and poetic integrity.

Proweniencje kapituł – katedralnej płockiej i kolegiackiej w Pułtusku – zaginionego zespołu inkunabułów Biblioteki Seminaryjnej w Płocku

The cathedral chapter in Płock and the collegiate chapter in Pułtusk, were among the most important institutions of religious and intellectual life of the Płock diocese. Their role in the development of religious and intellectual life in the Middle Ages is evidencedby the preserved incunabula, kept until the Second World War in the Seminary Libraryin Płock. In total, by 1939, fourty-four incunabula had the provenance of the cathedral chapter, while other – of the collegiate chapter. They found their way into the chapter collection thanks to donations or legacies. The most frequent donors were bishops or canons of both chapters. The analysis of the books’ content allows us to conclude that the possessed incunabula, donated to the chapters, reflected the mindset of their owners, their intellectual interests and often helped them in their pastoral work.

Intellectual autonomy as the aim of critical thinking

Critical thinking is often nominated as a graduate attribute, a learning outcome, and is even offered as a discrete subject in schools and universities. Therefore, it is important to gain clarity about the fundamental goal or purpose of critical thinking education. What should instructors be aiming at when they seek to instil critical thinking in their students? In this paper, we argue that the aim of critical thinking is the achievement and maintenance of intellectual autonomy. In setting out our argument for this conclusion, we investigate the three most plausible candidates for the goal of critical thinking practice. The first such candidate is successful inquiry: inquiry that succeeds in obtaining epistemic goods such as knowledge, true belief, or empirically adequate explanation. The second candidate is epistemically virtuous inquiry, i.e. inquiry that exhibits the full range of epistemic virtues, including the skills and capacities needed to support them. The third candidate is intellectual autonomy. We develop an account of intellectual autonomy as a form of self-respect attached to one’s epistemic and intellectual life and argue that only intellectual autonomy in this sense does full justice to the practice of critical thinking.