The Twisted Paths of Faith and Reason: Recent Problems in The
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
Load more
Recommended publications
-
Catherine the Great and the Development of a Modern Russian Sovereignty, 1762-1796
Catherine the Great and the Development of a Modern Russian Sovereignty, 1762-1796 By Thomas Lucius Lowish A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in History in the Graduate Division of the University of California, Berkeley Committee in charge: Professor Victoria Frede-Montemayor, Chair Professor Jonathan Sheehan Professor Kinch Hoekstra Spring 2021 Abstract Catherine the Great and the Development of a Modern Russian Sovereignty, 1762-1796 by Thomas Lucius Lowish Doctor of Philosophy in History University of California, Berkeley Professor Victoria Frede-Montemayor, Chair Historians of Russian monarchy have avoided the concept of sovereignty, choosing instead to describe how monarchs sought power, authority, or legitimacy. This dissertation, which centers on Catherine the Great, the empress of Russia between 1762 and 1796, takes on the concept of sovereignty as the exercise of supreme and untrammeled power, considered legitimate, and shows why sovereignty was itself the major desideratum. Sovereignty expressed parity with Western rulers, but it would allow Russian monarchs to bring order to their vast domain and to meaningfully govern the lives of their multitudinous subjects. This dissertation argues that Catherine the Great was a crucial figure in this process. Perceiving the confusion and disorder in how her predecessors exercised power, she recognized that sovereignty required both strong and consistent procedures as well as substantial collaboration with the broadest possible number of stakeholders. This was a modern conception of sovereignty, designed to regulate the swelling mechanisms of the Russian state. Catherine established her system through careful management of both her own activities and the institutions and servitors that she saw as integral to the system. -
The Enlightenment Revisited: Sources & Interpretations. Learning Activities
DOCUMENT RESUME ED 406 276 SO 027 048 AUTHOR Donato, Clorinda; And Others TITLE The Enlightenment Revisited: Sources & Interpretations. Learning Activities. INSTITUTION California State Univ., Long Beach. SPONS AGENCY National Endowment for the Humanities (NFAH), Washington, D.C. PUB DATE 92 NOTE 121p.; This publication resulted from a 1992 summer institute at California State University, Long Beach. PUB TYPE Guides Classroom Use Teaching Guides (For Teacher)(052) EDRS PRICE MF01/PC05 Plus Postage. DESCRIPTORS *Eighteenth Century Literature; *European History; Foreign Countries; *French Literature; Literary History; Neoclassicism; Secondary Education; Social Studies; Teaching Guides; *World History IDENTIFIERS *Age of Enlightenment; France ABSTRACT This resource book provides 26 learning activities with background materials for teaching about the Enlightenment. Topics include:(1) "What Was the Enlightenment?";(2) "An Introduction to the Philosophes";(3) "Was the Enlightenment a Revolt Against Rationalism?";(4) "Were the Philosophes Democrats? A Comparison of the 'Enlightened' Ideas of Voltaire and Rousseau on Democracy and Equality";(5) "What is the Significance of the Term Enlightenment in the Context of the 18th Century?";(6) "Were the Philosophes Atheists?"; (7) "How was French Society Portrayed in the 'Encyclopedie?'";(8) "Were the Philosophes True Philosophers, or Illogical Extremists?"; (9) "Did the French Philosophes Inspire the French Revolution?"; (10) "The Salon' as a Center for Enlightenment in the 18th Century"; (11) "Reader's -
The Minor an Eigliteentli-Centuryfarce By
The VO Russian and East European Studies Center is proud to present The Minor an eigliteentli-centuryfarce by Denis Fonvizin HedopoCJlb ,[I;eHHca <POHBH3HHa :9Liapteaby Ju[ia Nimirovs~aya 'With Songs by'Yu[ii 1(jm fJ)irector~ 9{ptes Russia in the 18th century was known as a "woman's kingdom." During the course of almost 70 years there was a woman on the throne. Longer than any other ruled the most powerful, the most clever and educated of them all-Catherine the Great. Many Western philosophers, such as Voltaire and Diderot, considered her a truly enlightened monarch. Denis Fonvizin was the secretary of her personal enemy, Count Panin. Fonviziil wrote his most famous comedy The Minor in 1782; it is one of the 10 most famous Russian plays in the canon and one of the most frequently produced. Contemporaries read it as a criticism of female dominance and a satire on Catherine's reign, with the message that a strong woman is worse than a tyrannical man. The play's other goal was to show the audience that education improves people morally, while ignorance allows them to degrade and become mere beasts (thus the pig-loving Skotinin). In this comedy, all the educated people are kind and good, and all the uneducated people behave like animals. Of course, according to the laws of classical comedy, light and goodness con~er darkness and malice. It was not always this way in the 18t century-goodness did not always win. But we remember this century as a time of brilliant individualities, when strong personalities, eccentrics, and other talented people made their mark. -
Peter the Great and His Changing Identity Emily Frances Pagrabs Wofford College
Wofford College Digital Commons @ Wofford Student Scholarship 5-2016 Peter the Great and His Changing Identity Emily Frances Pagrabs Wofford College Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.wofford.edu/studentpubs Part of the European History Commons, and the Slavic Languages and Societies Commons Recommended Citation Pagrabs, Emily Frances, "Peter the Great and His Changing Identity" (2016). Student Scholarship. Paper 17. http://digitalcommons.wofford.edu/studentpubs/17 This Honors Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by Digital Commons @ Wofford. It has been accepted for inclusion in Student Scholarship by an authorized administrator of Digital Commons @ Wofford. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Peter the Great and His Changing Identity Senior History Honors Thesis May 11, 2016 Emiley Pagrabs Pagrabs 1 Introduction Well aware of the perception that foreigners held of him, Peter the Great would never apologize for his nationality or his country. A product of his upbringing, Peter did have some qualities that many foreigners criticized as barbaric and harsh. Said Peter: They say that I am cruel; that is what foreigners think of me, but who are they to judge? They do not know what the situation was at the beginning of my reign, and how many were opposed to my plans, and brought about the failure of projects which would have been of great benefit to my country obliging me to arm myself with great severity; but I have never been cruel…I have always asked for the cooperation of those of my subjects in whom I have perceived intelligence and patriotism, and who, agreeing with my views, were ready to support them.1 Essentially, Peter I was simply a Russian. -
BETWEEN PHILOSOPHIES: the EMERGENCE of a NEW INTELLECTUAL PARADIGM in RUSSIA by Alyssa J. Deblasio Bachelor of Arts, Villanova
BETWEEN PHILOSOPHIES: THE EMERGENCE OF A NEW INTELLECTUAL PARADIGM IN RUSSIA by Alyssa J. DeBlasio Bachelor of Arts, Villanova University, 2003 Master of Arts, University of Pittsburgh, 2006 Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the School of Arts and Sciences in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of Pittsburgh 2010 UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH School of Arts and Sciences This dissertation was presented by Alyssa J. DeBlasio It was defended on May 14, 2010 and approved by Tatiana Artemyeva, Professor, Herzen State Pedagogical University (St. Petersburg, Russia), Department of Theory and History of Culture Vladimir Padunov, Associate Professor, University of Pittsburgh, Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures James P. Scanlan, Emeritus Professor, The Ohio State University, Department of Philosophy Dissertation Advisor: Nancy Condee, Associate Professor, Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures ii Copyright © by Alyssa J. DeBlasio 2010 iii BETWEEN PHILOSOPHIES: THE EMERGENCE OF A NEW INTELLECTUAL PARADIGM IN RUSSIA Alyssa J. DeBlasio, PhD University of Pittsburgh, 2010 This dissertation takes as its primary task the evaluation of a conflict of paradigms in Russian philosophical thought in the past decade. If until the early nineties Russian philosophers were often guilty of uncritically attributing to their domestic philosophy a set of characteristics that fell along the lines of a religious/secular binary (e.g. literary vs. analytic; continuous vs. ruptured), in recent years the same scholarship is moving away from the nineteenth-century model of philosophy as a “path” or “special mission,” as it has been called by Konstantin Aksakov, Aleksei Khomiakov, Ivan Kireevskii, and later, Nikolai Berdiaev, among others. -
Mikhail Shcherbatov Introduction.Pdf
French in the education of the nobility: Mikhail Shcherbatov’s letters to his son Dmitrii Introduction Prince Mikhail Shcherbatov Prince Mikhail Mikhailovich Shcherbatov (1733-90) was a member of a large and ancient noble family that claimed to be descended from Riurik, the Norseman who, according to the Russian chronicles, had founded the Russian state in 862. One of Mikhail’s forebears, Ivan Andreevich Shcherbatov, who happened to become his father-in-law (and who also features in this corpus of primary source texts), had served as a diplomat in London in the reigns of Anne and Elizabeth. Mikhail’s father had seen military service in the wars of Peter I (the Great) against the Turks and the Swedes and had risen to the rank of Major-General. Mikhail himself, as a deputy elected by the nobility of the District of Iaroslavl, played a prominent role in the deliberations of the Legislative Commission set up in 1767 by Catherine II (the Great) with the supposed aim of drawing up a new code of laws and, even more ambitiously, fundamental political laws informed by the ideas of western thinkers of the Age of Enlightenment, above all Montesquieu.1 Resentful of the recent elevation of commoners such as Peter’s favourite, Prince Aleksandr Menshikov (1673-1729), Shcherbatov insisted on the pre-eminence of the high nobility of ancient lineage and made every effort to halt the rise of the newer service gentry. He accordingly opposed the meritocratic principle which is embodied in the Table of Ranks that Peter introduced in 1722 and which was favoured as a criterion for admission to and status in the nobility by many notable Russian writers and thinkers of the eighteenth century, including the satirist and diplomat Antiokh Kantemir and, in Shcherbatov’s own age, the dramatist Denis Fonvizin (1744 or 1745-92). -
Russian Theater
HUMANITIES INSTITUTE Ayse Dietrich, Ph.D. RUSSIAN THEATER Overview Until the 11th century the early Russian people had primitive forms of entertainment, mostly ritualistic ceremonies, pagan shows with dramatic recitations of fables, tales and proverbs, and singing and dances, performed by skomorokhi, traveling minstrels. While in the past the rigid rules of the Orthodox Church made the development of a truly national theater impossible, and theaters suffered partial destruction and the persecution of performers, during the Soviet period theaters had to conform to the rigid frames of ideological dictatorship. ANCIENT PERIOD Pagan ceremonies in which tales, proverbs and fables were recited, together with the songs and dances of itinerant jesters, known as skomorokhi, laid the foundation for the development of Russian theater. POST CLASSICAL PERIOD Skomorokhi: The Skomorokhi, based on Byzantine models, appeared around the middle of the 11th century in Kievan Rus and were performers who played musical instruments, sang, danced and even composed the scores for their performances. The skomorokhi were not universally popular in Kievan Rus, and were described in pejorative terms in the Primary Chronicle. Both the ruling authorities and the Orthodox Church viewed the skomorokhi as being in league with the devil, and persecuted them for maintaining what they regarded as pagan traditions. A major reason for the skomorokhi’s unpopularity with both the secular and religious leaders was the nature of their art. The skomorokhi’s performances were aimed at ordinary people, and often were in opposition to those in power. As a result the clergy and feudal rulers viewed the skomorokhi as useless to society at the very least, and politically and religiously dangerous at the very worst. -
The Russian Transition Challenges for German and American Foreign Policy
THE RUSSIAN TRANSITION CHALLENGES FOR GERMAN AND AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY Washington, DC Conference Report Conference Report 9-10 June 1999 American Institute for Contemporary German Studies The Johns Hopkins University Conference Report THE RUSSIAN TRANSITION CHALLENGES FOR GERMAN AND AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY Washington, D.C. 9-10 June 1999 American Institute for Contemporary German Studies The Johns Hopkins University The American Institute for Contemporary German Studies (AICGS) is a center for advanced research, study, and discussion on the politics, culture, and society of the Federal Republic of Germany. Established in 1983 and affiliated with The Johns Hopkins University but governed by its own Board of Trustees, AICGS is a privately incorporated institute dedicated to independent, critical, and comprehensive analysis and assessment of current German issues. Its goals are to help develop a new generation of American scholars with a thorough understanding of contemporary Germany, deepen American knowledge and understanding of current German developments, contribute to American policy analysis of problems relating to Germany, and promote interdisciplinary and comparative research on Germany. Executive Director: Jackson Janes Research Director: Carl Lankowski Development Director: Laura Rheintgen Board of Trustees, Cochair: Steven Muller Board of Trustees, Cochair: Harry J. Gray The views expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) alone. They do not necessarily reflect the views of the American Institute for Contemporary German Studies. ©1999 by the American Institute for Contemporary German Studies ISBN 0-941441-45-8 This AICGS Conference Report paper is made possible through grants from the German Program for Transatlantic Relations. Additional copies are available at $5.00 each to cover postage and processing from the American Institute for Contemporary German Studies, Suite 420, 1400 16th Street, NW, Washington, D.C. -
A New Perspective in Russian Intellectual History: Russian Political Thought in Early Modern Times
Вивлioѳика: E-Journal of Eighteenth-Century Russian Studies, Vol. 7 (2019): 119-123 119 __________________________________________________________________________________ A New Perspective in Russian Intellectual History: Russian Political Thought in Early Modern Times Derek Offord The University of Bristol [email protected] ___________________________________________________________________________ G. M. Hamburg, Russia’s Path Toward Enlightenment: Faith, Politics, and Reason, 1500– 1801. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2016, 912 p. ISBN: 9780300113136 ___________________________________________________________________________ Gary Hamburg’s erudite and thoughtful survey of early modern Russian thought began its life as part of a more general study of Russian thought up until the revolutions of 1917. As originally conceived, this study would have built upon the author’s already substantial corpus of work on nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Russian history and thought, most notably his monograph of 1992 on Boris Chicherin and his volume of 2010, co-edited with Randall A. Poole, on freedom and dignity in Russian philosophy from 1830 to 1930. As work progressed, however, it became clear that thinkers active from the early sixteenth century to the end of the eighteenth demanded more attention than Hamburg had anticipated; in fact, they came to merit a book all to themselves. The resulting 900-page product of his reflection on the prehistory of modern Russian thought enables him to straddle what are generally perceived as two great divides: First, the supposed divide between Muscovite and Imperial Russia and, second, that between the traditional religious and the secular enlightened forms of Russian culture. The enormous volume of material that Hamburg presents in this monograph is organized in three parts within a broadly chronological framework. -
Durham Research Online
Durham Research Online Deposited in DRO: 08 February 2017 Version of attached le: Accepted Version Peer-review status of attached le: Peer-reviewed Citation for published item: Ivleva, Victoria (2016) 'Social life of the caftan in eighteenth-century Russia.', Clothing cultures., 3 (3). pp. 171-189. Further information on publisher's website: https://doi.org/10.1386/cc.3.3.1711 Publisher's copyright statement: Additional information: Use policy The full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that: • a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in DRO • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders. Please consult the full DRO policy for further details. Durham University Library, Stockton Road, Durham DH1 3LY, United Kingdom Tel : +44 (0)191 334 3042 | Fax : +44 (0)191 334 2971 https://dro.dur.ac.uk VICTORIA IVLEVA Durham University The Social Life Of the Caftan in Eighteenth-Century Russia ABSTRACT This article explores the ‘cultural biography’ of the caftan, a garment, which underwent significant changes as a part of Peter I’s urban clothing revolution. The article discusses the evolution of the caftan and changes in its functions and meanings, its historical, social and literary modes of circulation, and the semiotic value it acquired in the eighteenth-century clothing system, and more broadly, in eighteenth-century Russian culture. -
1 Peter the Great: the Evolution of His Image in Russian History And
1 Peter the Great: The Evolution of His Image in Russian History and Thought A Thesis Presented for the Bachelor of Arts Degree University of Florida Sydney Disdier May 2019 2 Acknowledgements There are so many people to thank for helping me during this last semester. So many have made this process a lot easier that I thought it was going to be. It is therefore my honor to express my deepest thanks to those who have made this thesis possible. First, I would like to thank Dr. Galina Rylkova for her guidance, encouragement, and patience over the last semester. Thank you so much for encouraging me to continue with my research. Your support was essential to my success here. I am deeply indebted to my respected teachers and other members of the Russian department for their invaluable help in preparing this thesis. My sincerest thanks go to my friends for their continuous support during this project. My joy knows no bounds in expressing my cordial gratitude to my best friend Sarah Larson. Her encouragement and moral support were a great help throughout the course of this research. I could not have done it without you. Lastly, I owe my deepest gratitude to my mother Sandra Disdier. You worked so hard to help me achieve my dreams, and for that I thank you so much. Without you, none of this work would have even been possible. 3 Abstract Every nation has its historical figures who rose to the status of mythological heroes. In our remembrance of them, these people have been given praise and the chance to live forever in the image of their work. -
Mystical Enlightenment in Late Eighteenth-Century Russia
Mystical Enlightenment in Late Eighteenth-century Russia Author Berg, Andreas Published 2017-06-28 Thesis Type Thesis (PhD Doctorate) School School of Hum, Lang & Soc Sc DOI https://doi.org/10.25904/1912/302 Copyright Statement The author owns the copyright in this thesis, unless stated otherwise. Downloaded from http://hdl.handle.net/10072/370747 Griffith Research Online https://research-repository.griffith.edu.au MYSTICAL ENLIGHTENMENT IN LATE EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY RUSSIA Mr Andreas Berg Bachelor of Arts with Honours School of Humanities, Languages and Social Science Griffith University Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy 28.06.2017 THESIS ABSTRACT This thesis will examine the thought of G.S. Skovoroda (1722-1796), M.M. Kheraskov (1733-1807) and I.V. Lopukhin (1756-1816) as constitutive of a Mystical Enlightenment in Russia. Anglophone, and to a lesser extent, Russian literature has often conceived of the Russian Enlightenment as a single project of predominantly rational orientation. However, increasing attention to the presence of multiple Enlightenments in Western Europe and of the importance of religious debates in the formation of various reform movements, necessitate a reconsideration in the role of spirituality in Eighteenth-century Russia. For this reason, this thesis contributes to the recent re-evaluation of the ways in which Russia appropriated foreign discourses, and provides thereby a more detailed account of the extent to which mysticism was able to radically redefine religious, personal and ethical organisational forms. Specifically, this thesis offers an analysis of normative arguments based on three inter-linked concepts of ecclesia, personhood and ascetic ethics.