Twentieth-century Commentators Research Articles

The Idea of Art Music in a Commercial World, 1800–1930 ed. by Christina Bashford and Roberta Montemorra Marvin

Reviewed by: The Idea of Art Music in a Commercial World, 1800–1930 ed. by Christina Bashford and Roberta Montemorra Marvin Julian Onderdonk The Idea of Art Music in a Commercial World, 1800–1930. Edited by Christina Bashford and Roberta Montemorra Marvin. (Music in Society and Culture.) Woodbridge, Suffolk: The Boydell Press, 2016. [xv, 350 p. ISBN 9781783270651 (hardback). $115.] Illustrations, index. One of the most frequently encountered ideas in Western literate culture is that art and commerce are fundamentally incompatible. Ironically, the notion gained general currency in nineteenth-century Europe precisely at a time when the old patronage system was breaking down and the consumption of art was being placed on a new commercial footing. Few seem to have noticed; if they did, they conveniently ignored it. Thus in music, Ludwig van Beethoven scorned money as the antithesis of Art even as he drove a hard bargain for his compositions and, somewhat unscrupulously, sold works to multiple publishers at once. Robert Schumann, likewise, repudiated the "philistine" public while making a living peddling ideas of artistic purity to that very same public in the pages of his newspaper, Neue Zeitschrift für Musik. Eventually, "art for art's sake," the default mode of the fin-de-siècle, was enshrined in the complex of ideas understood by the word modernism, as formulated by twentieth-century commentators such as Theodor W. Adorno and Carl Dahlhaus. It is this last development—the lodging of these ideas in musical scholarship—that is the main source of the trouble. Whereas students of the Renaissance or Classical periods, say, have habitually relied on payroll accounts, employment contracts, bills of sale, and other business-related materials to help guide their critical assessments, those of nineteenth- and twentieth-century art music have generally ignored such things, in a kind of vacuum, focusing instead on the intrinsic value of the works themselves. As scholars of this repertory internalized the romantic aesthetics informing the music—notions of self-expression and artistic integrity, where money matters are seen as banal despoilers of the numinous—they made these aesthetics the basis of their own valuations. Never mind that the antimaterialist rhetoric arose as a direct response to an increased material prosperity that was itself a consequence of stupendous advancements in technology and communications under a growing industrial capitalism, or that the rising demand for "high art" emerged as a means to confer respectability and taste on the middle and upper reaches of a society eager to distance itself from the masses. Focused mainly on the form and expression of art, mainstream musicology has missed the mundane and often messy conditions that fundamentally explain it. As a corrective to these widespread historiographical trends, The Idea of Art Music in a Commercial World, 1800–1930 seeks to uncover this forgotten commercial orientation. It contains thirteen essays, touching on Italian, German, [End Page 647] French, British, and American topics and covering approximately 130 years of cultural history, organized thematically into five parts ("Publishers," "Personalities," "Instruments," "Repertoires," "Settings"). The neatly-chosen headings provide largely accurate descriptors of each section's subject matter and angle, but what really unites the essays is a focus on materialism—not only as the root cause and simultaneous consequence of a rapidly developing nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century industrial economy, but also as the means, the actual stuff, by which art music was marketed and promoted. Newspapers, magazines, and other manifestations of the print culture so fundamental to the age naturally loom largest here, and it comes as no surprise that they are the special focus of three different essays. Foremost is Jann Pasler's examination of the sheet music published in everyday French newspapers and magazines ca. 1870–1920, a groundbreaking survey that makes striking suggestions about the role of the popular commercial press in canon formation. No less interesting is Catherine Hennessy Wolter's study of advertisements for pianos (including player pianos) in American magazines printed between 1914 and 1917, which tells us much about technological history, patterns of amateur music-making, and contemporaneous attitudes toward class, gender and family life. In contrast, Jon Solomon's mostly descriptive overview of the American response to archeological discoveries, ca. 1875...

Wharton, Sex, and the Terrible Honesty of the 1920s

Abstract Reading Wharton's novels The Mother's Recompense and Twilight Sleep in relation to a broader cultural conversation about the supposedly new nature of honesty, “Wharton Sex, and the Terrible Honesty of the 1920s” interrogates one central tenet of this concept: that youth were understood to be more profoundly invested in honesty and its shocking provocations than were their elders. Warner Fabian's 1923 best seller, Flaming Youth, for example, proposes that part of the shock of the modern was youth's tendency to voice disconcerting, uncomfortable truths of the type Ann Douglas has explored and which early twentieth-century commentators such Fabian, Ben Lindsey and Wainwright Evans, and Frederick Lewis Allen presented as characteristics of a generation. Yet Wharton's vision disrupts this generational narrative by highlighting the younger generation's provocative postures of honesty, even while they engage in surreptitious affairs, display a willful blindness to troubling events, and exhibit self-denial in regard to their deepest desires. In all, youth of Wharton's 1920s fictions appear less than forthright about the most significant aspects of their lives, thereby complicating a central narrative that would divide generations via the matter of truth.

Wharton, Sex, and the Terrible Honesty of the 1920s

Abstract Reading Wharton's novels The Mother's Recompense and Twilight Sleep in relation to a broader cultural conversation about the supposedly new nature of honesty, “Wharton Sex, and the Terrible Honesty of the 1920s” interrogates one central tenet of this concept: that youth were understood to be more profoundly invested in honesty and its shocking provocations than were their elders. Warner Fabian's 1923 best seller, Flaming Youth, for example, proposes that part of the shock of the modern was youth's tendency to voice disconcerting, uncomfortable truths of the type Ann Douglas has explored and which early twentieth-century commentators such Fabian, Ben Lindsey and Wainwright Evans, and Frederick Lewis Allen presented as characteristics of a generation. Yet Wharton's vision disrupts this generational narrative by highlighting the younger generation's provocative postures of honesty, even while they engage in surreptitious affairs, display a willful blindness to troubling events, and exhibit self-denial in regard to their deepest desires. In all, youth of Wharton's 1920s fictions appear less than forthright about the most significant aspects of their lives, thereby complicating a central narrative that would divide generations via the matter of truth.

Theophilus of Alexandria and the First Origenist Controversy: Rhetoric and Power.By Krastu Banev.

The presentation of the title of this monograph on its cover gives a perhaps misleading impression of the overall content or flavour of the volume. The reader approaches it expecting an analysis of the attitudes of the fourth-century bishop of Alexandria Theophilus towards the by-then discredited Origen. While this is nominally the primary thread of the study, it is the ‘rhetoric’ of the subtitle that features most prominently throughout. Banev spends a good two-thirds of the volume reviewing the importance of the rhetorical tradition in the ancient world, for Christians and pagans alike. He devotes an entire segment of the book to a review of the classical tradition of rhetoric and the Christian appropriation of this tradition in the process by which a discourse of power was developed by proponents of the new religion. While Banev continuously links this back to his chosen subject, Theophilus, it is perhaps difficult to see what is new in the conclusions he arrives at: the importance for the Church Fathers of understanding and using the tools of classical rhetoric to win over new audiences and hold their attention in the face of constant distractions is not a new topic of study. Banev does make a point that there is a lack of appreciation for rhetorical skills among twentieth-century commentators as a means of justifying his approach, but I’m not sure this premiss is ever sufficiently demonstrated to warrant his revisiting of the tools and traditions of this classical skillset in such exhaustive detail. Nevertheless, Banev attempts to have us ‘hear’ Theophilus’s writings rather than read them, arguing that this oral context sheds new light on the bishop’s reactions to the Origenist controversy.

“There was something very peculiar about Doc…”: Deciphering Queer Intimacy in Representations of Doc Holliday

This article discusses representations of male intimacy in life-writing about consumptive gunfighter John Henry “Doc” Holliday (1851–1887). I argue that twentieth-century commentators rarely appreciated the historical specificity of Holliday's friendships in a frontier culture that not only normalized but also actively celebrated same-sex intimacy. Indeed, Holliday lived on the frayed edges of known nineteenth-century socio-sexual norms, and his interactions with other men were further complicated by his vicious reputation and his disability. His short life and eventful afterlife expose the gaps in available evidence – and the flaws in our ability to interpret it. Yet something may still be gleaned from the early newspaper accounts of Holliday. Having argued that there is insufficient evidence to justify positioning him within modern categories of hetero/homosexuality, I analyze the language used in pre-1900 descriptions of first-hand encounters with Holliday to illuminate the consumptive gunfighter's experience of intimacy, if not its meaning.

Ezekiel's Awkward God: Atheism, Idolatry and theVia Negativa

AbstractCan a biblical text be idolatrous? Ezekiel's God has always been theologically awkward and difficult to handle. For early Jewish and Christian readers of the book the most troublesome (and indeed dangerous) parts of the text were the prophet's initial vision of the divine glory and its subsequent reappearances. Voltaire was perplexed and revolted by God's command that Ezekiel eat bread cooked with dung.1For some twentieth-century Protestant commentators, Ezekiel's God is altogether too concerned with ritual at the expense of ethics.2But for contemporary readers it is the unrelenting harshness, violence and especially masculinity of Ezekiel'sYhwhwhich proves most problematic. My aim in this article is to examine some of the theological implications of this divine awkwardness. In what follows I will attempt three things. First, I will offer a brief examination of the problems Ezekiel's God poses and a few recent Christian responses. Second, I will outline Roland Boer's proposal that Ezekiel 20 (along with 16 and 23) tends towards a kind of ‘anti-Yahwism’ or ‘protest atheism’: a vision of God so appalling as to be impossible to accept. Finally, I will explore the value for theological interpretation of taking seriously such an apparently unpromising conclusion, and suggest that the apophatic tradition may provide resources for embracing such radical negativity within scripture.

COWLEY'S LEMMON: SECRECY AND INTERPRETATION IN THE MISTRESS

Abraham Cowley's reputation as a writer of love lyrics has declined steadily since the early eighteenth century. Twentieth-century commentators have tended to concentrate on biography and on details of textual accuracy. This article discusses the formal innovations and interpretive challenges of key poems from Abraham Cowley's 1647 volume The Mistress, setting their tactics of amorous persuasion in the context of contemporary debates about privacy, secrecy, and textual encoding. These debates are traced, in particular, through the publication of Charles I's encoded correspondence, seized at Naseby by Parliament's army in 1645. Through close reading, Cowley's steganographic method and ‘mixt wit’ are clarified for the contemporary reader as techniques indebted to Cowley's duties in managing a secretive Royal correspondence and writing at the exhaustion point of a courtly genre.

Augustinian and Thomist Engagements with the World

Neither Augustine nor Aquinas can accept a political order in which religious doctrine as such is barred from serving as an explicit basis of political, legal, and economic norms. Certain twentieth-century commentators indebted (wittingly or not) to Kantianism or to other Enlightenment ideologies ignored this fact, or minimized its importance. Aquinas was misread as a forerunner of modern liberal democracy; Augustine was portrayed, with equal injustice, as seeking to dissuade Christians from participation in the political arena. In reality, the political philosophy of each is consistent with a robust Christian presence in the public square, and is incompatible both with theocracy and with the modern secular state. A better understanding of the distance separating these philosopher-theologians from some of their prominent twentieth-century commentators may shed light on the history of the reception of Vatican H's Gaudium et spes.

The Jacksonian Makings of the Taney Court

Many twentieth century commentators regard the willingness of Taney Court majorities to declare laws unconstitutional as proof that the justices on that tribunal adjured Jacksonian partisanship upon taking the bench. Old Republicans during the 1820s fulminated against judicial review of state legislation and sought to repeal Section 25 of the Judiciary Act of 1787, but they were apparently frustrated by a Taney Court which continued imposing contract clause and dormant commerce clause limits on state power. This paper demonstrates that Jacksonians in office supported judicial power. Jacksonian animus was more directed at McCulloch v. Maryland than either Marbury v. Madison or Fletcher v. Pack. Jacksonians wanted a stronger federal judiciary that would limit national power to regulate economic life and prevent northern states from assisting fugitive slaves. The more interesting question about the Taney Court is why they never overruled McCulloch, given that the judicial majority was on record as opposing that decision, then why then never limited Marbury.

Speed

Speed

The Johannine Letters: A Commentary on 1, 2, and 3 John

The Johannine Letters: A Commentary on 1, 2, and 3 John, by Georg Strecker. Hermeneia. Minneapolis: Fortress, 1996. Pp. xliv + 319. $46.00. The late Georg Strecker's Meyer (KEK) commentary on the Johannine Letters (1989) now appeared in English translation. Like its predecessor in that series, Rudolf Bultmann's commentary (1967; ET 1973), it becomes the Hermeneia Commentary on these three letters. Strecker's work is more than twice as long as Bultmann's and is a fuller, richer commentary. In its demonstrations of genuine erudition and technical competence it is a worthy successor in the tradition of the Kritisch-exegetischer Kommentar. Strecker's chief discussion partners, aside from Bultmann, are, appropriately, R. E. Brown and R. Schnackenburg; and there are frequent references to other twentieth-century commentators such as C. H. Dodd, S. Smalley, A. E. Brooke, and H. Windisch. Strecker expresses great respect for Bultmann, who was one of his first teachers of NT (p. xiii; but not his Doktorvater, as the editorial note on p. vi erroneously indicates), and refers frequently to his commentary. Yet he disagrees on major issues of criticism and interpretation. For example, he frequently indicates his disagreement with Bultmann's source and redaction theories, which parallel the latter's proposals about the Gospel of John (e.g., pp. 6-7, 39). Few exegetes have actually agreed with Bultmann in this matter, so Strecker's demurral is scarcely original, although I think it entirely warranted. Moreover, Strecker is also wisely reluctant to embrace a pre-Christian gnosticism as an important component of the milieu of the Johannine literature despite the antidocetic position of 1 John (pp. 26-27). The Letters' and the Gospel's sacramentalism and apocalypticism, which Bultmann sloughed off upon later ecclesiastical redaction, Strecker regards as quite important and original in both (p. 234 n. 7). In fact, apocalyptic eschatology was of fundamental importance at the beginning of the Johannine school. Sacramentalism was an important element in the opposition to docetic Christians, who, as Ignatius testifies, tied their deficient Christology to neglect of the Lord's Supper. In his depiction of the development of the Johannine school, Strecker again departs from Bultmann, who, with most commentators, takes the Letters to be later than, and dependent on, the Fourth Gospel. Rather, Strecker argues that 1 John and the Gospel are independent, presumably more or less contemporary, expressions of the Johannine school. In his view, the shorter letters, 2 and 3 John, are earlier. In fact, the earliest document of this school is 2 John, which according to Strecker was written at about the end of the first century by the same Elder John who is mentioned by Papias. The same author wrote 3 John soon thereafter. (The Gospel and 1 John are then dated, rather generally, in the first half of the second century.) That Papias was a chiliast supports the position that the Elder John was as well. This in turn fits and supports Strecker's interpretation of what is for him the crucial statement of 2 John 7 about Jesus' coming in the flesh (first put forward in his article Die Anfange der johanneischen Schule, NTS 32 [1986]: 31-47). The present participle erchomenon must, Strecker contends (pp. 233-34), have a present or future meaning; it cannot be translated has come. By way of contrast, the similar statement of 1 John 4:2, which insists on the confession that Jesus Christ come in the flesh, the perfect participle. Strecker argues that 2 John 7, unlike 1 John 4:2, should be construed as pointing to the future coming of Jesus, his parousia, not his incarnation. …

Theatrical History in the Croxton Play of the Sacrament

Theatrical History in the Croxton Play of the Sacrament Michael Jones According to one early, and somewhat dyspeptic, twentieth-century critic, the Croxton Play of the Sacrament “has absolutely nothing to recommend it. It is without dignity, pathos or dramatic power, and its incongruous humour is of the lowest kind.” 1 Late twentieth-century commentators, employing a different set of critical coordinates, have been more charitable. While it is true that the play may never appeal to any genteel canons of taste, some contemporary medievalists have found that it can give purchase on such matters as historicism, periodization, the body and punishment, and medieval anti-Judaism. 2 In short, some have found that it has much to recommend it—provided one’s critical coordinates are the appropriate ones. This essay will touch on some of the more recent readings en route to its claim that the historical palimpsest that is the Croxton Play of the Sacrament is a pivotal document in the history of anti-Judaism and the history of drama in England and, furthermore, a fulcrum for many of the debates current in contemporary Medieval studies. As the play seems to generate certain readings, or to choose the critical coordinates by which it is read, it might be possible to view it as a kind of meta-text for this generation of methodologically self-conscious medievalists. In 1926, in the century’s first extended study of the Play of the Sacrament, a Ms. F. E. Barnes wrote: “It is a cosmopolitan product—this Croxton play—drawing freely from the history, lore, and literature of the Middle Ages.” 3 In recent years, the play has been the focus of renewed attention and most commentators have apparently proceeded from a different premise. Nearly all of the discussions have been resolutely etiological in purpose and emphasis: invariably seeking to account for the play’s curious farrago of doctrinal argument, sanguinary stage effects, and anti-Judaic legend by invoking a purely doctrinal framework, reconstructing a context of late Medieval religious controversy and anti-Lollard propaganda, and annexing it to one particular time and place on the basis of the existence of one or two place names in the manuscript. 4 This essay will concern itself more with function [End Page 223] than with origin, and more with reception than with production. That is to say, the essay is concerned with the function of theatricality within the play and within its original cultural, civic context of somewhere around the 1480s and, as it survives only in a sixteenth-century manuscript, the function the document might be said to have in the religious controversy of the 1530s. 5 In fact, if the play’s origin can be tied to a particular time (the 1480s) and a particular community (Bury St. Edmunds in Suffolk) as some scholars have maintained, then its very existence in sixteenth-century manuscript is evidence of an original recontextualization that this essay seeks to emulate. As some Tudor correspondents wrote of the early to mid-sixteenth century, “many of the popish ceremonies were still tolerated, but [] new significations were put on them.” 6 Much the same might be said for fifteenth-century plays. 7 More recent work suggests that attempts to establish the play as a work of considerable artistic achievement on the one hand, or as a piece of crude propaganda in a historically specific polemic on the other, fail to do justice to the radical eclecticism noted all those years ago by Ms. Barnes. 8 It should be no surprise if a play which tropes on that most overdetermined cluster in late Medieval England—Jews and the corpus—should be somewhat overdetermined itself. Besides, the play as play demonstrates the same transgression of boundaries—generic, cultural, historical—as it thematizes in its own plot. To which genre can it be said to belong? Is it medieval or early Modern? Philo- or anti-Judaic? Catholic or Reformist? Such a creative elision of boundaries seems to be enlisted in the service of what we might call stigmatization. This designation can bear both its literal and metaphorical senses: the branding of the body with infamy using the manifold tools of torture, and the...

Phantom Formations: Aesthetic Ideology and the Bildungsroman

Redfield, Marc. Phantom Formations. Aesthetic Ideology and Bildungsroman. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1996. 220pp. $35.00 hardcover. For Redfield has an exemplary status in exhibiting-and thus exposing-the claim to a referential basis of literature. For insofar as content of a narrative is taken to be Bildung-the formation of human (42)-this very idea is derived from form that narrative as text, as aesthetic construct, provides. Robert Musil succinctly formulated paradox: every true experience a cultured man educates himself. This is organic plasticity of man. In this sense every novel worthy of name is a Bildungsroman (cited 42). But it is not only specificity of as genre that is at issue. Redfield extends his argument to a wide-ranging critique of aesthetic emerging from German Idealism and Romanticism. His claim is that is not in first instance a genre (such as lyric) but the genre of aesthetics (65). In Bildung inherent paradox of autopoesis-the self-constitution of a subject on a model that already presupposes that very subject- is played out in a scenario that draws on career of Hegelian World Spirit as filtered through a number of twentieth-century commentators. There is endlessness of a process that can never find its telos, pain and alienation of a constantly unfulfilled striving, erection of highly restricted models-- church, state, an elite community-the lapse or degradation of ideal-as melancholy or irony, as authoritarian politics, as mere aestheticism. These are branchings of a narrative that draws on Georg Lukacs, Paul de Man, David Lloyd, Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, and Jean-Luc Nancy, and Redfield weaves them together with considerable skill. He asks us to view literature in its post-Romantic, modern guise as institutionalization of a process whereby historico-critical debate perpetually works over a substance, a referent that, one presumes, has a kind of primal, originating status. What is at stake here is perhaps most interestingly developed in sections on history and fetishism in chapter devoted to Flaubert's L Education sentimentale. At one level this chapter-like those on other novels treated, Goethe's Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre and Wanderjahre, George Eliot's Middlemarch, Daniel Deronda, and The Lifted Veil-is an exercise in deconstructive reading: work in question is designed to serve as an instance (figure or trope) of a basic narrative, disruption (171) or exposure of language's aspiration to meaning. …

Time, Morality, and Humanity in Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony

While Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony exhibits the underlying four-movement framework and other familiar hallmarks of eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century symphonies, in other respects it more closely resembles programmatic symphonies of the same period, particularly in the continuity between its concluding movements and the unusual structure of its storm. Its mixture of symphonic and programmatic practices serves to dramatize the effects of time on pastoral idylls and the role of morality therein. The work can be interpreted as a confrontation with these fundamentally human issues rather than-as many twentieth-century commentators have assumed-the representation of a mythical or prelapsarian paradise.

The Text of Revelation 22.14

There are two well-attested readings of Rev 22.14, the seventh and final blessing in the book. The reading accepted in the UBS 4th edition is , ‘Blessed are those who wash their robes’ (RSV). Most twentieth-century NT editions, including Nestle-Aland, and most commentators agree with the UBS. But, in my view, the original text is the other well-attested reading, , ‘Blessed are those who do his commandments’ (footnote in RSV). The manuscript attestation and versional evidence is not decisive for either reading, but patristic references, literary analysis, and consistency with the worldview in Revelation all favour the reading .

Hume's Natural History of Religion

Hume Studies Volume XXI, Number 2, November 1995, pp. 255-274 Hume's Natural History of Religion MICHEL MALHERBE Even though The Natural History of Religion has been said to be one of the first books in the history of religions, it is not much studied for interpreting Hume's philosophy taken as a whole. Nevertheless, its structure is quite clear: after specifying the purpose of the work by distinguishing between the question of the foundation of religion in reason and the question of its origin in human nature, Hume goes over the story of the evolution of religion, from polytheism—its primitive form—to theism (sections I-VIII). He then develops a comparison between these two kinds of religion, evaluating them from several points of view, and closes with a rather whimsical conclusion emphasizing the necessity of scepticism in these matters. The Natural History is written in an easy style and the reader enjoys its progression. Hume uses the same method of composition as the one he had tested with success in several of his Essays: a claim is put forth; then the proof is provided, which mixes some historical material with more abstract arguments ; finally, several general considerations are stated, which are supposed to be profitable to the public. But if we try to understand the text more systematically and attempt to rationalize its composition or its argumentation, we cannot help feeling at a loss to determine Hume's real intentions and to precisely evaluate the Natural History's general import. Of course, it could be said that we ought not overestimate the meaning of the Natural History nor look for more than what could be appreciated by an eighteenth century reader, i.e., look for more than what can be expected from Michel Malherbe is at the Département de Philosophie, Université de Nantes, 44036 Nantes, Cedex 1, France. 256 Michel Malherbe an essay which tries to catch the attention of the public, borrows a large part of its content,1 and follows lines of argument which were not uncommon at that time. But we are twentieth century commentators: we have read the Dialogues, and we can consider Hume's philosophy as a whole. Besides, the subject is religion, and nobody is indifferent to religion, and, we should add, nobody in the eighteenth century was dispassionate concerning religion. Several questions about the work arise at once: What is the scope of the preliminary foundation/origin distinction? Why does Hume associate a doctrine bearing on historical facts with a comparative evaluation? How are we going to understand a conclusion so little consonant with the rather dogmatic development of the work? I do not intend to provide a systematic analysis of the Natural History, but rather to catch some of its difficulties by concentrating on its title, which not only tells us the object (religion), but also designates a certain scientific or philosophical genre, and thus should reflect Hume's method, if not his intention. How can such a text qualify as a natural history? Can we not, by commenting upon this appellation, define the method employed by Hume? And since method is the way towards some end, could we not thus try to delineate the real aims of the text? Except for the foundation/origin distinction, a distinction that he also does not comment upon, Hume offers no clue to the understanding or to the justification of his method.2 The reader is committed to his own appreciation. Therefore, I would like to take up an indirect line of proceeding: using a comparative method, I will offer three definitions of natural history, or rather, three main meanings which are more or less consistent parts of this rather intricate and plainly polysémie concept3 in the eighteenth century. I will then assess the applicability of each of these definitions to Hume's work. The oldest meaning of "natural history" is the one derived from Aristotle and renewed by Bacon; it is still valid and viable in 1750, even if its epistemological import and its philosophical sense are changing. The second meaning takes into account one of those invisible, but real, changes: we are at a time when a historical...

Rousseau on the education, domination and violation of women

Abstract This article argues that Rousseau's endorsement of male domination and his illiberal views of rape, punishment and the education of women have been seriously underestimated by twentieth century commentators who tend to produce expositions of his work that evade, ignore or marginalise this ‘darker side’ of his educational philosophy.

Rousseau on the Education, Domination and Violation of Women

Abstract This article argues that Rousseau's endorsement of male domination and his illiberal views of rape, punishment and the education of women have been seriously underestimated by twentieth century commentators who tend to produce expositions of his work that evade, ignore or marginalise this ‘darker side’ of his educational philosophy.

The Divine Simplicity in St Thomas

In the Summa Theologiae ‘simplicity’ is treated as pre–eminent among the terms which may properly be used to describe the divine nature. The Question in which Thomas demonstrates that God must be ‘totally and in every way simple’ (1.3.7) immediately follows the five proofs of God's existence, preceding the treatment of His other perfections, and being frequently used as the basis for proving them. Then in Question 13 ‘univocal predication' is held to be ‘impossible between God and creatures’ so that at best ‘some things are said of God and creatures analogically’ because of the necessity of using ‘various and multiplied conceptions’ derived from our knowledge of created beings to refer to what in God is simple for ‘the perfections flowing from God to creatures… pre–exist in God unitedly and simply, whereas in creatures they are received divided and multiplied’ (1.13.5). In line with this, in the De Potentia Dei the treatment of analogical predication is integrated into that of ‘the Simplicity of the Divine Essence’ (Q 7). Moreover, it lies at the root of Thomas's rejection of any possibility of a Trinitarian natural theology such as, for instance, St Anselm or Richard of St Victor had attempted to develop, on the grounds that ‘it is impossible to attain to the knowledge of the Trinity by natural reason’ since ‘we can know what belongs to the unity of the essence, but not what belongs to the distinction of the persons’ (1.32.1). Even modern minds sympathetic to Thomas have clearly found it difficult to understand his concern for the divine simplicity: in his Aquinas Lecture Plantinga speaks for many in stating that it is ‘a mysterious doctrine’ which is ‘exceedingly hard to grasp or construe’ and ‘it is difficult to see why anyone should be inclined to accept it’. Not surprisingly, therefore, some of the most widely read twentieth–century commentators on Aquinas have paid little attention to it. Increased interest has recently been shown in it, but a number of discussions pay insufficient attention to the historical context out of which Thomas's interest in the doctrine emerged, and consequently tend to misconstrue its nature.

Romulus Tropaeophorus (Aeneid 6.779–80)

A general consensus has emerged among twentieth-century commentators on the Aeneid that pater ipse…superum must be taken together and understood as referring to the father of the gods and not to Mars, sire of Romulus. What remains a subject of debate is the meaning of honor here and its particular association with Jupiter. Does it betoken the abstraction itself or a concrete manifestation of it? Austin, following Donatus, opts for the former alternative (‘probably no more than “majesty”’), Norden and R. D. Williams for the latter. Of these the first finds a reference to the Zeus-given sceptre of kings, the second to Jove's thunderbolt.The language of the passage argues in favour of metonymy for two reasons. First, we expect Anchises, when showing off Romulus, to adhere to the pattern he has already set in the two portions of his parade which have preceded. In the case of the initial hero, Silvius, we attend largely to genealogical background (760–6). The second segment, a group made up of Procas, Capys, Numitor and Aeneas Silvius, elicits from Aeneas' father a series of exclamations on the valour of their res gestae (767–77). Yet each also has a tangible symbol of martial virtus that distinguishes him.