Showing papers on "Intellectual history published in 1970"

The sense of power; studies in the ideas of Canadian imperialism,: 1867-1914

Abstract: Prior to the publication of The Sense of Power most studies of the Canadian movement for imperial unity focused on commercial policy and military and naval cooperation. This influential book demonstrated that the movement - which held that Canada could only become a great nation within the British Empire - was significantly influenced by its leading advocates' belief in nationalism. Carl Berger explores the emotional appeal and intellectual context of this belief, arguing that these advocates' support of imperial unity can be grasped only in terms of their commitment to certain conservative values and in relation to their conception of Canada. The Sense of Power was commended by the Toronto Star when it was first published as "entertaining as well as brilliant," and in 2011 Ramsay Cook noted that "few first books, or for that matter few books, have made as marked an impact on the interpretation of a major theme in Canadian history." This second edition brings to life the work's incisive analysis and its important contribution to Canadian intellectual history.

Christianity and Symbolic Realism

Abstract: l7here is probably nothing more important than intellectual history to help us understand how our culture has become so fragmented and dissociated that we find it almost impossible to communicate the integrated meaning our young people so passionately require of us. Aware of my lack of competence in intellectual history I must nonetheless venture into it in order to deal with one central aspect of this fragmentation, namely, the split between theological and scientific (and here I mean mainly social scientific) language about Christianity or more generally the split between religious man and scientific man in the West. Without going back before the seventeenth century one can perhaps say that from that time almost to the present the dominant theological defense of Christianity has been what may be called "historical realism." The roots of this historical realism can be traced back to biblical historicism, Greek rationalism, and the new awareness of scientific method emerging in the seventeenth century. The figural and symbolic interpretation of scripture which was characteristic of medieval thought was almost eliminated by Reformation and counter-Reformation theology. Modern consciousness required clear and distinct ideas, definite unambiguous relationships, and a conception of the past "as it actually was." The proponents of "reasonable Christianity" worked out a theology which seemed to fit these requirements. It is true that some of the most significant theological minds-Pascal, Edwards, Schleiermacher, Kierkegaard-don't quite fit this formulation. Nevertheless for broad strata of educated laymen and above all for the secular intellectuals it was this understanding of Christianity that was decisive. Lest anyone think this kind of Christian thought is dead let him pause for a moment to consider the recent popularity of apologists who have argued that "Christ must have been who he said he was or he was the greatest fraud in history." There have always been those willing to pick up the gauntlet with that kind of argument. Particularly in the eighteenth century many secular intellectuals argued that Christ or, if not Christ, certainly the priests were indeed frauds. Meeting Christianity on the ground of historical realism they rejected it. When faced with the inevitable question of how something clearly fraudulent and indeed absurd could have been so powerful in human history they answered that religion was propagated for the sake of political despotism, maintained by an unholy alliance of priestcraft and political despotism. This argument was a species of "consequential reductionism," the explanation of religion in terms of its functional consequences, which in cruder or subtler form has

Toward Restoration: The Growth of Political Consciousness in Tokugawa, Japan

Abstract: H.D. Harootunian has provided a new preface for the paperback edition of his classic study "Toward Restoration", the first intellectual history of the Meiji Restoration in English.

Underlying themes in the witchcraft of seventeenth-century New England.

Abstract: IT is faintly embarrassing for a historian to summon his colleagues to still another consideration of early New England witchcraft Here, surely, is a topic that previous generations of writers have sufficiently worked, indeed overworked Samuel Eliot Morison once commented that the Salem witch-hunt was, after all, "but a small incident in the history of a great superstition"; and Perry Miller noted that with only minor qualifications "the intellectual history of New England can be written as though no such thing ever happened It had no effect on the ecclesiastical or political situation, it does not figure in the institutional or ideological development"1 Popular interest in the subject is, then, badly out of proportion to its actual historical significance, and perhaps the sane course for the future would be silence This assessment seems, on the face of it, eminently sound Witchcraft was not an important matter from the standpoint of the larger historical process; it exerted only limited influence on the unfolding sequence of events in colonial New England Moreover, the literature on the subject seems to have reached a point of diminishing returns Details of fact have been endlessly canvassed, and the main outlines of the story, particularly the story of Salem, are well and widely known There is, to be sure, continuing debate over one set of issues: the roles played by the persons most directly involved Indeed the historiography of Salem can be viewed, in large measure, as an unending effort to judge the participants-and, above all, to affix blame A number of verdicts have been fashionable at one time or another Thus the ministers were really at fault; or Cotton Mather in particular; or the whole culture of Puritanism; or the core group of "afflicted girls" (if their "fits" are construed as conscious fraud)2 The most recent, and in some ways most so-

The history of embryology as intellectual history. [Essay review].

Abstract: Jacques Roger, Les Sciences de la vie dans la pense'e frantaise du XVIIIe siecle, la ge'neration des animaux de Descartes a l'Encyclopedie (Paris: Armand Collin, 1963). Howard B. Adelmann, Marcello Malpighi and the Evolution of Embryology, 5 vols. (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1966). Elizabeth Gasking, Investigations into Generation, 1651-1828 (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins Press, 1966). Jane M. Oppenheimer, Essays in the History of Embryology and Biology (Cambridge, Mass.: The M.I.T. Press, 1967). The Interpretation of Animal Form, Essays by Jeifries Wyman, Carl Gegenbauer, E. Ray Lankester, Henri Lacaze Duthiers, Wilhelm His and H. Newell Martin, 1868-1888, translations and introduction by William Coleman (New York and London: Johnson Reprint Corporation, 1967).

The Social Composition of the Royal Economic Society and the Beginnings of the British Economics 'Profession', 1890-1915

Abstract: During the past decade or so, there has been a substantial increase of research on the development of higher education and the professions, but as most of this work has been concerned with the post-i1945 period' it has been largely ignored by social historians. This is unfortunate, because the antecedents of recent developments are intrinsically interesting and recent studies of the economics and sociology of higher education and the professions may suggest new hypotheses and approaches of value to those primarily concerned with social and intellectual history. This paper is a preliminary report of an investigation of the educational background, occupations, and social class of the early members of the Royal Economic Society, which has been undertaken as part of a broader study of the development of the economics 'profession' in the United Kingdom.2 Attention has so far been concentrated on the period I890-I1915 because this can be regarded as a watershed dividing the predominantly amateur tradition of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries from World War I, when the professionalization of economics began to gather momentum. As is well known, the professional scientist, both in the natural and the social sciences, was just beginning to emerge in Western society towards the close of the nineteenth century,3 and during the period under review the academic and institutional foundations were being laid for the rapid expansion of the number of trained economists which has taken place since that time. The British Economic Association (from 1902, the Royal Economic Society) was founded in I890; its periodical, The Economic Journal, first appeared in 1891, together with The Economic Review, published in Oxford; and during the 900oo's the first full degree courses in economics and commerce were inaugurated in London, Birmingham, Cambridge and Oxford.4 The Association (hereinafter referred to as the R.E.S.) was,

Interpretations of Pietism in the Research of Contemporary German Church Historians

Abstract: Time and again theologians of various schools have tried to place Pietism into a framework of theological and intellectual history. It is here impossible to pay tribute to every interpretation; this study will consider only the most important interpretations of the last century. 1

Anti-séparatisme et messianisme au Québec depuis 1960

Abstract: Anti-separatism and messianism in Quebec since 1960Confronted by a political debate now omnipresent in Quebec society, observers have naturally focused their attention – academic or not – on the content and proponents of the “separatiste” solution to the current Canadian dilemma. Our contention is that it takes two sides to have a debate and that some light could be thrown on the intellectual history of French Canada by reversing the perspective and focusing instead on those who oppose independence for Quebec: the anti-separatists.Although widely diversified as to the specifics of their opposition and as to their own solution to the problem, anti-separatists nevertheless share certain ideological traits in their portrait of the French-Canadian Homus and in the characteristics and roles which they assigned to the French-Canadian collectivity. Individually, French Canadians are judged to be weak, unstable, verbose, and un-democratic; as a collectivity they are perceived as fulfilling all the requirements of a “chosen” people whose mission it is to reconquer Canada through the strength of their intellect and to show the world an example of binational co-operation.This schizophrenic vision of French Canada is hypothesized to be a secularized version of the traditional nationalist vision first enunciated by Garneau and Parent and later developed by Groulx, Barbeau, and others. The persistence of this messianic orientation in the intellectual history of French Canada is tentatively explained through the contributions of the sociology of utopia (French Canada as an aborted utopia) and of the sociology of colonial development (French Canada as a colonial society).

Limits of Nonconformity in the Enlightenment: The Case of Simon-Nicolas-Henri Linguet

Abstract: It has become a truism of intellectual history, and indeed a virtual necessity in any reasonably coherent pursuit of that complex discipline, that in every definable historical period there have been certain clusters of ideas and intellectual approaches which have been characteristic of that time. The historian of ideas must see basic patterns of thoughtstyle across the ages, however many the exceptions and hesitancies within each grand pattern. Certainly analyses of the French Enlightenment have not escaped these fruitful yet dangerous patterning techniques: every student of the period is familiar with such outstanding threads in the Enlightenment pattern as the concepts of nature and reason, or the inconclusive contest and unstable collaboration between reason and empiricism. Yet the diversity of the twentieth-century scene has encouraged an awareness of the vast variety within enlightened French thought; general histories and special studies of the age-at least those above the most simplistic popular level-have increasingly recognized the surprising convolutions of eighteenth-century thought. Not unexpectedly, it has usually been the greatest philosophes, such as Diderot and Rousseau, who have been subjected to the most thorough reexamination, and who have yielded the most striking evidence of the ultimate richness and diversity of their century. Less fortunate in the concern of posterity have been many of the lesser liberal thinkers, and still more forgotten have been the great numbers of conservatives, or antiphilosophes. Admittedly most of the latter amply merit the oblivion into which they have fallen, and the shelves of the world's great libraries are laden with dusty, dreary expanses of

Arthur Hugh Clough: The Growth of a Poet's Mind

Abstract: Arthur Hugh Clough (1819-1861), poet, skeptic, friend of Emerson and of Matthew Arnold, was a man concerned with the religious, political, and social issues of the turbulent times in which he lived. In this fresh examination of Clough, Greenberger traces the intellectual development of a poet who was considered a brilliant failure in his own day, a reputation that still persists despite the fact that Clough is now attracting considerable critical attention. Her study contradicts this traditional view of him as ineffectual and uncommitted and reveals instead a complex figure whose varied interests enriched his prose and poetry. Greenberger has made a thorough study of all of Clough's prose on contemporary issues written between 1837 and 1853. These largely neglected writings, many of which remain unpublished, enable her to follow the poet's development through religious doubts and conflicts and to trace his political metamorphosis from naive idealism through radicalism to a final disenchantment with utopias. Having placed the poet's work in its proper historical context, the author goes on to reveal the great extent to which Clough succeeded in making the issues of his day viable subjects for poetry. Greenberger, thoroughly versed in the intellectual history of the Victorian period, vividly depicts the English social and economic scene and contemporary life at unreformed Oxford. She suggests new insights into Clough's relations with Emerson, the influence of Carlyle upon the poet, and his reactions to the America of the early 1850's. The author concludes that the techniques Clough developed for presenting his ideas in poetic form and the concerns that pervaded his thinking make him a precursor of twentieth-century literature. In the last chapter she relates her findings to Clough's three major poems. She includes in an appendix a number of new poems and other material by Clough found in manuscript during her research.

Philosophy and History — An Introduction

Abstract: The specific aim of this study is to explore the significance of the philosophy of history. My own concern with this issue arose from and returns to the question of what is philosophy itself. Such a question might seem to be posterior to philosophizing as an activity, but in fact we must see it as a constant and necessary question for philosophy. The question what is philosophy is not a question about philosophy but is philosophy itself. It is philosophy itself and no super-science that asks this question.