INTELLECTUAL HISTORY: STUDIES, CHALLENGES, POSSIBILITIES

3rd Annual Workshop of the Intellectual History Working Group

Friday 22 February 2019

Sala del Camino, Villa Salviati, EUI

ABSTRACTS

PANEL 1

Eduardo Fernández Guerrero (EUI), Notes on early modern prophetic discourse and the Apocalypsis Nova

Over the last twenty years, scholarship on Late Medieval and Early Modern prophetism has increasingly tackled prophecy together with either millenarianist expectations or the divination of future events. Without denying the close links of prophecy with millenarianism and divination, reducing the first to a mere vehicle of the latter has turned the prophetic phenomenon into a passive category, the product of a particular set of social circumstances, usually moments of crisis and/or unusually rapid social and economic change. I argue that prophecy, on the contrary, was articulated into a set of discursive practices that proved extremely productive to intervene in intellectual and political debates between the Late Middle Ages and the early modern period. For this, I will comment on the intellectual history of prophecy while discussing recent scholarly contributions to this topic.

Johannes Huhtinen (Abo Akademi University), The Reformation of imagination: John Foxe and the construction of Protestant Mythology

The subject of this paper is the creation of Protestant myths. In England, as elsewhere in Europe, the newly invented printing press made images available to the larger public. Unleashing the powers of mind in the form of verbal and visual images was never an unproblematic form of activity. In fact, the faculty of imagination formed a major dilemma to the Protestant and Catholic thinkers alike: it was a source of error (false consciousness) and idolatry (false worship). While visual images were potentially fuel for errors, they were simultaneously –as classic theorists of rhetoric tell us– a potent way for reaching people. This paper looks at the most superstitious imaginings of the mind: myths, and stories that do not draw meaning from a rational logic. More particularly, it considers the role of creative imagination in the texts of the most important Protestant historiographer John Foxe and seeks to expose the visual and verbal imagery he constructed to win over his readers. Between the 1550s and 1590s, when the making of Protestant iconography was still an ongoing process, the scope of imagination altered dramatically and the categories of the real and the imagined took a new direction. A crucial aim of this paper is to reassess the concept of mythology and its coverage, as well as to demonstrate that myths are an inseparable part of human thought. It aims at answering why and what kind of myths writers constructed from the late sixteenth century onwards.

Thomas Ashby (EUI), Islamic Representations in the Patriarcha controversy: Locke, Sidney, Tyrrell

The posthumous publication of Sir Robert Filmer’s Patriarcha (1680) generated much critical debate when it emerged, arguing for absolutist and patriarchal monarchy based on principles of divine right and passive obedience. Responses included the first of John Locke’s Two treatises on government (1689), Algernon Sidney’s Discourses concerning government (1698), and James Tyrrell’s Patriarcha non monarcha (1681), all three of which were composed, even if unpublished, in the early 1680s. Throughout the responses of Locke, Sidney, and Tyrrell we find various representations of Islamic regimes, people, and politics, both historical and contemporary, which are used to not only undermine Filmer, but to contest his own use of Islamic representation. It should be noted that I use the term ‘Islamic’ here to broadly refer to a host of peoples and states associated with Islam that are commented upon, often in the collective, by English and European contemporaries. To this end a variety of differing categories, terminologies, and constructs are utilised in contemporary vocabularies, some of which are more general (such as ‘Mahometan’ or ‘Saracen’), some specific (such as ‘Algerine’ or ‘Mameluke’), and others that are more flexible, used generally or specifically (such as ‘Turk’ or ‘Moor’). This paper will seek to demonstrate what these authors were doing with these representations, both in terms of challenging Filmer, but also in terms defining their own politics and identities in contrast with the Islamic ‘other’. Moreover, exchange can also be witnessed, with Sidney, for example, citing the work of Leo Africanus (born al-Hasan ibn Muhammad al-Wazzan al-Fasi) and making mention of the Moroccan embassy to London, led by Mohammed ben Hadou, in 1681-1682. The goal of this research more broadly, therefore, is to highlight the overlooked role of Islamic sources, histories, representations, and exchanges in the Eurocentric, when not Anglocentric, history of political thought.

PANEL 2

Muireann McCann (EUI), Revolutionary priests? Students of the Collège des Irlandais

From the middle of the sixteenth century onwards Irish and British Catholics sought education abroad resulting in the founding of Irish, English and Scottish colleges across Europe. Throughout the course of my research I have been struck by the changing reactions to continentally educated Irish priests in Britain. Common stereotypes of such priests, particularly those educated in the Collège des Irlandais in Paris, were that they were disloyal and potentially even agents of subversion infected with a revolutionary spirit from their time in France. This fear of the subversive priest persisted into the nineteenth century. By the middle of the century, however, the target had changed. Those who had been educated in the remaining Catholic colleges were now held up as well-educated and well-behaved. There was a more pressing perceived threat, the rebellious priests of St Patrick’s College, Maynooth, characterised as politically dangerous supporters of the campaign for the repeal of the Act of Union. The source of fear had changed but the suspicion of priests infected with revolutionary ideas persisted during the period. This paper will demonstrate how international and domestic developments altered perceptions of the role of continentally educated Irish priests in Britain and Ireland.

Vuk Uskokovic (EUI), Women and Episcopal Authority in Early Modern Montenegro

This paper explores the presence of women in the acts and correspondence of 18th-century bishops of Montenegro, in particular focusing on how protective intercessions on behalf of individual women before Venetians authorities were essential in constructing and projecting episcopal authority. For the bishops, it is argued, identification with the poor and the oppressed, and the advocacy of their causes, was a source of spiritual authority and influence, on which rested the bishops’ political role as intermediaries between the communes of Montenegro and the Venetian provveditori in Cattaro. The discourse the bishops used in advancing the claims of their spiritual daughters—which reflected their political, ecclesiastic, and personal concerns—provided the framework within which were preserved the few voice of the actual women of early modern Montenegro, and is thus of immense importance for the reconstruction of their position.

Daniel Banks (EUI), Microhistory and the circulation of ideas: reflections on transnational approaches to democratic radicalism in the second half of the 19th century

The aim of the proposed presentation would be to reflect on certain elements which trouble the early stages of my doctoral research project, with the hope of clarifying certain methodological points which might help inform my first trips to the archive. The project examines how radical democratic and republican ideas and practices circulated in the Western Mediterranean basin between the post-1848 moment and the mid-to-late 1870s, when it seems that radical liberal-democracy had lost the primacy of antagonist politics to the International Workingman’s Association (IWMA) in all three of the European countries (Italy, France, Spain) bordering the Western Mediterranean’s shores. I propose to adopt a micro-historical approach to the topic: by following particular actors in their trajectories of political activism and intellectual production in various different times and spaces, I hope to flesh out the outlines of a vibrant and heterogeneous political culture which is often treated only as a variant of 19th century liberalism or as an antagonist of early internationalism. In this sense, the research project also aims to question the relationship between radical democrats and early Internationalism, following the idea that Internationalism was not as radically opposed to earlier political projects as might seem. A question which is harder to answer is that regarding whether there was a certain specific and different radical democratic political culture in these countries bordering the Western Mediterranean. The proposed presentation would first offer a reflection on these and other considerations relative to the construction of a theoretical and methodological framework through which to carry out this research project, before going on to discuss the microhistorical approach per se, by providing an outline of recent propositions in favour of ‘micro-spatial history,’ and considering how these might benefit such a study on the circulation of ideas.

PANEL 3

Marius Ostrowski (All Souls College, Oxford & Visiting Fellow, EUI), Socialism’s heart of darkness: the origins of ‘Eurafrica’ in dissident Social Democracy, 1916-32

Over the last decade, the concept of ‘Eurafrica’ has experienced an incremental return to prominence in theoretical and policy discourse around the future of the ‘European project’. ‘Eurafrica’ denotes the aspiration to achieve cross-continental strategic alignment and integration between Europe and Africa, ultimately by crafting them into a single political unit. During the 1990s and 2000s, Eurafrican logic animated attempts to present a ‘Euromediterranean partnership’ with North African states as a ‘southward’ alternative to ‘eastward’ EU territorial enlargement. Since then, the emergence of new pressures on European-African relations—e.g., the post-2015 ‘migrant crisis’ and increasingly truculent European border control and integration policy—has led to urgent calls for a Eurafrican dimension to Europe’s geopolitical future. As a concept, Eurafrica has a long pedigree. Historical scholarship has begun to uncover connections between the first proposals for European unification and integration and a presumed reliance on colonial exploitation of the African continent. This scholarship has mainly focused on Eurafrican tendencies in conservative thought—not least because, of all the competing ideological visions for Europe that emerged after WW1, it was the Christian-democratic right that ultimately won out in the formation of actually- existing European institutions. But these were not the only, or even the first treatments of Eurafrica in early-C20th Europe—and focusing only on them loses sight of the cross-ideological appeal that Eurafrican thinking had in the interwar years. This article brings to light underexamined strands of Eurafrican thought circulating within the socialist left during WW1 and the interwar period, focusing on the contributions of the German social-democratic periodical Sozialistische Monatshefte. It identifies three major themes that characterise socialist Eurafricanism, and differentiate it from the familiar right-wing conceptions: its view of the future relations between Europe and its global rivals; its account of the connection between Eurafrica and European integration; and in its model for future European-African relations.

Elzbieta Kwiecinska (EUI), How to write a global intellectual history of Eastern Europe? The concept of the ‘civilizing mission’ as a cultural encounter in East-Central Europe, 1840-1921.

The concept of the ‘civilizing mission’ has been mostly associated with colonial politics of Western metropolises towards their colonies. The main argument of my thesis is that the appropriation of the concept of the ‘civilizing mission’ in East-Central Europe has been a way to challenge their ‘peripheral’ position in Europe. By proving that a stateless ‘small nation’, of East-Central Europe had or has a ‘civilizing mission’ to another nation, the authors aimed to prove their nations’ power and belonginess to a ‘superior’ Western world. As a result, to refrain from Eastern ‘backwardness’ and identify themselves as ‘Western’, Polish, Ukrainian and Jewish intelligentsia constructed their own ‘Easts”: in their Eastern neighbours (Poles in Ukraine, Habsburg Ukrainians and Poles in Russia) or in the peoples of the same ethnic origin (Poles in the Polish peasants, Ukrainians in the Ukrainian peasants, assimilated Jews in the orthodox Jewry). That is, they became both agents and subjects of the ‘civilizing mission’. I will show how German ‘civilizing mission’ to Poland and Slavdom was transferred and reinterpreted into Polish ‘civilizing mission’ to Ukraine and Polish ‘civilizing mission’ into ‘Ukrainian civilizing mission’ and how Polish ‘civilizing mission’ to kresy (‘frontier’: Lithuania, Belarus, Ukraine) shaped the Zionist ‘civilizing mission’ to Palestine. Poland became ‘East’ for Germany the same as Ukraine did in relation to Poland and Russia for Ukraine and Poland. In other words, in East-Central Europe there has been a chain of ‘civilizing missions’ which went across state boundaries from the West to the East.

Juha Haavisto (EUI), Does Intellectual History need Digital Humanities?

While digital methods have had a real impact on humanities in general since the 1950s intellectual history is still lagging behind in adopting new methods. To some extend this is due to the types of techniques developed in digital humanities and partly to problems of adaptation on behalf of the intellectual historians. It could be argued that heretofore digital humanist methods have not proven themselves as beneficial for intellectual historians but it is also imperative to notice the fast development and institutionalization of digital humanities as Mark J. Hill (2016) has recently argued. In this presentation I will focus on two separate digital humanist methods that I think will prove to be of great benefit to intellectual historians in general. First is a method to point out differences in text between different editions and volumes. Second, perhaps a more sophisticated one, relates to identifying passages and arguments used by other authors authors. Even if these two methods do not completely revolutionize the research field, they have a potential to make the research more efficient and accurate in comparison to performing the tasks by hand.

PANEL 4

Bert Drejer (EUI), Althusius on natural law: theology and politics

The aim of this paper is to examine the view of the law of nature espoused by Johannes Althusius (1563- 1638), particularly as he presents it in his most famous work Politica, methodice digesta (“Politics methodically set forth”) that first appeared in 1603. Since the nineteenth-century legal historian Otto von Gierke stressed the importance of Althusius in the history of European political thought, scholars have understood Althusius to base his vision of politics entirely on natural law. Despite this consensus, however, the Politica’s pivotal chapter on “the law” remains in need of adequate contextual analysis. Althusius is usually assumed to have taken his concept of natural law uncritically from one of the existing traditions, such as the Thomist School of Salamanca (Reibstein 1955), the legacy of Philip Melanchthon (Scattola 1999) or reformed theology (Grabill 2006). I will reconsider Althusius’ view of the law of nature by highlighting how his argument relates to that of the authorities to whom he refers. In this way I attempt to indicate not merely what he derives from these sources but also what he does not accept about the role of natural law in politics. The authorities to whom Althusius refers are primarily theologians who claim that the law of nature governs all parts of human knowledge. I shall begin my paper by tracing the way in which these theologians see natural law at work in human, and especially civil life. I will then try to show how Althusius navigates between the different theological conceptions of the law of nature, and where he departs from theological lines of thought. By way of conclusion I briefly consider the implications of Althusius’ argument about natural law for his understanding of politics.

Elisavet Papalexopoulou (EUI), Working outside the canon: the case of female Greek intellectuals (1776-1830)

In the period after the Russian-Ottoman war and the signing of the treaty of Kuchuk Kainarji, the Christian, Greek speaking populations in the Ottoman Empire received a set of privileges that, among other things, led to a surge of intellectual production. Many women took part in the discussions that arose about ‘enlightened’ ideas, education and Greekness, but have been largely ignored by Greek historiography. Since these female thinkers have been excluded from the philosophical canon the obvious task ahead is to somehow reinstate them. This is a common theme. The relatively new scholarly domain of women’s intellectual history has occupied itself during the late 90’s and 00’s with rectifying omissions and discovering female thinkers of the past. However, since the omission of women was not an oversight but rather a question of how philosophy has been construed, women’s intellectual historians had to undertake a more complicated task. Thus, the field has been faced with questions about the subject matter of intellectual history and the reconceptualization of knowledge. By using the work of Greek female thinkers in the long 18th century as a case study, I will engage with these questions especially as they are related with notions of value and originality.

Elias Buchetmann (EUI), Hegel and the Debate about Bicameralism

Hegel’s embracing of a two-chamber system has hardly been problematised in the existing literature, that is to say questioned and subjected to elaborate scrutiny rather than merely accepted as a given. Maybe that is due to the unassuming way in which §312 of the Philosophy of Right establishes that ‘the assembly of estates will therefore split into two chambers’. Perhaps we are also rather too much used to considering the representative system with two chambers an obvious choice. In Hegel’s lifetime (1770-1831), however, this was far from self-evident. The years immediately preceding the publication of his main work on politics in 1820 was the first time the two-chamber system was introduced in any German state, and the question of whether popular representation should be organised in one single or two separate bodies was in fact hotly contested. Hegel’s apparent offhandedness on the matter thus conceals the fact that he distils but the main arguments of one side in a heated controversy while excluding counter-arguments and ideas of alternative mechanisms in circulation at the time. In this paper, I will reconstruct some of the arguments passionately advanced then, both in favour of a two-chamber system and in opposition to it, and argue that Hegel’s acceptance of bicameralism must be understood as taking a stance in the constitutional debate of post-Napoleonic Germany. Clarifying Hegel’s intellectual allegiances and recovering the arguments he rejected, I demonstrate that he did participate in a broader discourse on the constitutional question and that his embracing of the two-chamber system was a conscious choice. This kind of contextualisation will result in heightened historical awareness and an enriched understanding of Hegel’s institutional theory, thus encouraging renewed reflection on crucial questions about the nature and practice of political representation.

LECTURE

Cesare Cuttica (Université Paris-8), The Intellectual Historian Facing Anti-Democracy in Early Modern England: Ideas in Context and Reflections on the Here and Now

This lecture has two main purposes: to show the key importance of anti-democratic language and ideas in England in the period ca.1570-1642 and to illustrate the unexpectedly rich variety of debates about the government of the people and the place of the ‘many-headed multitude’ in it. Both goals are carried out through a close textual analysis of sources often neglected in the history of political thought and by way of a contextual approach to Elizabethan, Jacobean and Caroline history. The aim is to demonstrate that the early modern period is far more relevant to the development of democratic concepts and practices than has hitherto been acknowledged. In particular, the lecture re-evaluates the role of religion and cultural factors in the history of democracy. The study of treatises, sermons, pamphlets and official documents will highlight the multifarious ways in which democratic opinions, procedures and people were dealt with, attacked or, occasionally, positively perceived in a panoply of different discursive moments. The latter involved not only politics, religion and morality, but also the metaphysical, economic, linguistic and natural domains. Such criticism was encompassing because it reflected a deeply-seated fear of homo democraticus and of a broad spectrum of elements entailed by democratic life. Anti-democratic criticism was a withering and pervasive attack on a form of economic, social, moral and intellectual life. The chief point is thus to place the issue of democracy/anti-democracy at the centre of historiographical work on early modern England and its political thought, whilst also providing a platform for discussing the legacy of ideas that are currently the object of much vehement debate (especially, in light of the election of Donald Trump, the Brexit referendum and the growth of so-called ‘illiberal democracies’).

Contact: Thomas Ashby ([email protected]) and Bert Drejer ([email protected])