Progress and tradition in medieval Ashkenaz

Intellectual historians have identified differing attitudes toward the notion of progress among the churchmen of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries in western Europe. The present study aims to trace the views of rabbinic figures in medieval Ashkenaz during this period. Tosafists such as Isaiah di Trani, Samson of Sens, and Asher b. Yehiel felt that subsequent teachers and decisors could progress beyond the formulations and rulings of their predecessors, while Rashi and Rashbam believed that progress within the post-Talmudic period, at least with respect to legal rulings, was virtually impossible. At the same time, there was a consensus that the spirituality of earlier generations was greater, and that certain prerogatives in ritual matters which were accepted in the earlier period were no longer valid. As in the Christian world, those who were partisans of progress were criticized by others for their stance. Within the Sefardic orbit, Maimonides was virtually alone in his view that the ``decline of the generations' was not an inexorable process. Those Tosafists who agreed with this position were his nearest contemporary allies. The application of dialectic by the Tosafists to justify existing Ashkenazic practices that appeared to be contrary to Talmudic law parallels the activities of canon lawyers, as do their efforts to deal with new technologies. Even the more conservative group of Ashkenazic rabbinic thinkers looked upon the idea of newness itself quite favorably. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Competing Perspectives on Legal Decision Making in Early Modern Ashkenaz

The respective roles of jurists and judges in the decision-making process offers a valuable perspective on judicial practice and the delivery of justice in early modern Ashkenazic communities. This essay is concerned with differences in the approaches of poseqim (jurists) and dayanim (judges); it suggests that these distinctions were reflections of the institutional settings in which they worked, the size of their communities, and regional factors. Data unearthed from communal records and rabbinic responsa offer important evidence of disparities between the offices of early modern dayanim and poseqim, their distinct personae, and their respective views of how judicial rulings are decided. Moreover, these differences were related to the slow transition to fixed rabbinic-communal courts in western and central Europe that was a product of forces peculiar to the resettlement of Jews in the west, the deliberate development of communal traditions, and the role of the enlightened absolutist state. The impact of the growing recourse to non-Jewish courts, especially as it evinced differences between eastern and western/central European history and culture, was also a factor. Clearly, regional forces influenced the distinct legal efforts and perspectives of judges and jurists, as did the discrete functions they were assigned, their particular training, and the institutional standing of rabbinic courts. These differences became more glaring in the two centuries prior to the collapse of the ancien régime, as structural changes in western Ashkenazic communities contributed to a new Jewish legal culture.     

Mechanism and materialism in early modern German philosophy

ABSTRACT

The paper focuses on the gradual separation between materialism and mechanism in early modern German philosophy. In Germany the distinction between the two concepts, originally introduced by Leibniz, was definitively stated by Wolff who was the first to provide a definition of the new philosophical term Materialismus, and of the related philosophical sect. In the first part I describe the initial identification of mechanism and materialism in German philosophy between the last decades of the seventeenth century and 1720. Mechanism is here mostly conceived within a monistic metaphysics of body, which refers mainly to Hobbes and to some (unfaithful) interpretations of Spinoza’s pantheism. This tight connection between a mechanical explanation of nature and the Deus sive natura issue leads to a negative judgement on mechanism and its materialistic implications, both charged with a form of more or less explicit atheism. In the second part I describe the gradual emancipation in Germany of mechanism from materialism according to the distinction between a ‘good’ and a ‘bad’ materialism. In the third and final part, I sketch the first appearances of the entry ‘materialism’ in the philosophical encyclopaedias of early modern Germany, pointing out the by-then clear distinction between this metaphysical issue and the mechanical claim.     

Individual differences in early adolescents' beliefs in the legitimacy of parental authority

Adolescents differ in the extent to which they believe that parents have legitimate authority to impose rules restricting adolescents' behavior. The purpose of the current study was to test predictors of individual differences in legitimacy beliefs during the middle school years. Annually, during the summers following Grades 5, 6, and 7, early adolescents (n = 218; 51% female, 47% African American, 73% in 2-parent homes) reported their beliefs regarding the legitimacy of parents' rules that restrict and monitor adolescents' free time activities. Cross-lagged analyses revealed that legitimacy beliefs were bidirectionally associated with independent decision making, psychological control, antisocial peer involvement, and resistance to control. Legitimacy beliefs declined more rapidly during the middle school years for boys than for girls and for adolescents who were older relative to their classmates. More independent decision making in Grades 5 and 6 predicted larger than expected declines in legitimacy beliefs in Grades 6 and 7. In sum, legitimacy beliefs weaken developmentally, and weaker legitimacy beliefs relative to same-grade peers are anteceded by premature autonomous experiences, psychological control, and adolescent attributes.     

Varieties of early modern materialism

ABSTRACT

This paper discusses how early modern materialism can be defined and delineated, before turning to a brief survey of the main philosophical resources early modern materialist theories draw on. Subsequently, I discuss competing overall narratives concerning early modern materialism, and conclude with a defence of the controversial view that material soul theories belong to materialism proper.     

Marriage Before the Bench: Divorce Law and Litigation Strategies in Thirteenth-Century Ashkenaz

Scholars regularly refer to independently operating Jewish courts as prime evidence of Jewish autonomy and self-rule in medieval Christian Europe. Yet few have focused on the largely anonymous individuals who populated these forums, despite the vital role that litigants played in fueling the judicial system. This article joins a growing body of research devoted to a bottom-up examination of the institutions of law and justice in premodern Europe, highlighting the activities of those who made use of the courts rather than the structures that authorized them. Specifically, it considers a divorce suit adjudicated in the mid-thirteenth century by the rabbinic court of Rabbi Hezkiah b. Jacob of Magdeburg as a lens onto the legal knowledge of lay litigants, their expectations of the judicial system, and the litigation strategies they developed. The reactions of R. Hezkiah and his colleagues to these tactics demonstrate that litigation in the Jewish courts not only reflected current legal trends but could also affect them.     

早期现代哲学中的语言问题

The view of language is greatly changed from early modern philosophy to later modern philosophy and to postmodern philosophy. The linguistic question in early modern philosophy, which is characterized by rationalism and empiricism, is discussed in this paper. Linguistic phenomena are not at the center of philosophical reflections in early modern philosophy. The subject of consciousness is at the center of the philosophy, which makes language serve purely as an instrument for representing thoughts. Locke, Leibniz and Descartes consider language from a representationalist point of view. To them, language itself is idealized and represents thought as if it were thought representing itself. Like the structural linguist Saussure, the founders of phenomenology and analytical philosophy give much attention to the logical or static structure of language, and stick up for the representationalism of early modern philosophy. However, their successors refuse to accept this attitude, meaning the final collapse of representationalism. Translated by Cui Zengbao and Yang Dachun from Zhexue Yanjiu 哲学研究 (Philosophical Research), 2007, (8): 62–67     

Writing the nation and reframing early modern intellectual history in Hungary

The article traces the development of Hungarian intellectual history of the early modern period from the emergence of the national romantic constructions of literary history to the recent turn towards contextualist and conceptual history. One of its main findings is the ideological importance of this period for the formation of the national canon, as it became a central point of reference for the emerging local methodological tradition of intellectual history, even if it was often compartamentalized under other categories. From this perspective, the article puts particular emphasis on ideological constructions seeking to define the nation and depict the emergence of modern national identity. This finding also offers a vantage point for analyzing the interplay between literary history and the socio-culturally focused approaches, which can be considered the main framework for the developments of the last two decades, when these local historiographical traditions entered into an interesting dialogue with the Western European and American schools of intellectual history. Along these lines, while pointing out the discursive continuities with the previous paradigms, which are shaping even the contemporary historiographical production, the article also ponders the ways in which the inherited (post-)romantic constructions can be successfully challenged.     

Jews, Christians, and the endtime in early modern Germany

This paper examines some of the ways in which early modern German literary culture portrayed Jewish visions of the endtime. Christians employed notions of Jewish deceit to undermine the meaning of Jewish messianism, reshaping the signs of the endtime to carry a far more sinister meaning. Christian writers transformed Jewish messianic claimants into predictable precursors of the Antichrist and mocked Jewish beliefs as the delusions of a nation of deceived deceivers. Notions of Jewish deceitfulness complicated Christian expectations concerning Jewish conversion at the end of time. The Christian perception of Jews as inherently deceitful encompassed all components of the early modern views of Jews and the Jewish religion. Early modern German literary works devoted to the theme of vain Jewish messianic expectations combined with the literature of the Antichrist, turning the demonic Antichrist who would appear at the endtime into the person the Jews expected as their messiah. Failed Jewish messianic movements played right into Christian literary and theological discourse on the Jewish endtime and provided historical confirmation for what would have otherwise seemed like an absurd polemical exaggeration. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Women as authority figures: The use and nonuse of authority

This paper reports the results of two experiments designed to investigate the effect of sex-role stereotypes on evaluations of authority figures. Female and male subjects read short accounts of various situations in which an authority figure confronted a subordinate who had transgressed in some way and then evaluated the authority figure on a variety of dimensions. Sex of the authority figure and of the subordinate were varied factorially. In Experiment 1, where the authority figure took a hard line with the transgressing subordinate, it was found that a female authority figure being firm with a male subordinate was evaluated most negatively. In Experiment 2, where the authority figure was lenient with the subordinate, it was found that a female authority figure being lenient with a female subordinate was evaluated most negatively. Implications of the results are discussed.     

Externalism and first-person authority

Externalism in the philosophy of mind is threatened by the view that subjects are authoritative with regard to the contents of their own intentional states. If externalism is to be reconciled with first-person authority, two issues need to be addressed: (a) how the non-evidence-based character of knowledge of one's own intentional states is compatible with ignorance of the empirical factors that individuate the contents of those states, and (b) how, given externalism, the non-evidence-based character of such knowledge could place its subject in an authoritative position. This paper endorses a standard strategy for dealing with (a). The bulk of the paper is devoted to (b). The aim is to develop an account of first-person authority for a certain class of intentional states that is capable of explaining (1) why knowledge of one's own intentional states is peculiarly authoritative, and (2) why such authority is compatible with externalism.     

Work and authority in Marcuse and Habermas

Conclusion I have argued that Marcuse's notions of the merger of work and play and of the possibility of nondominating organizational rationality and authority fly in the face of the mainstream Weberian tradition which venerates the labor-leisure dualism and the bureaucratic coordination of labor. I have further argued that this Weberian current is reappropriated by Jürgen Habermas in his own recent work on the epistemological foundations of social science. The counterpoint between Marcuse and Habermas reveals a split within modern critical theory. This split could be characterized as the split between radicalism and incrementalism. Marcuse takes the more radical viewpoint, arguing that if work and leisure are dialectically merged and if that work is organized democratically through workers' control, then social labor will be experienced, in Marx's early sense, as creative praxis—a type of self-externalizing activity which is both productive and recreative. Habermas, in his reformulation of Weberian sociology, endorses an incrementalist position (contra Marcuse's radicalization and deepening of early Marx's theory of praxis) which rejects the possibility of transforming labor into praxis, arguing instead for greater communicative democracy as a way of redirecting (what Habermas contends is categorically immutable) social labor toward more constructive ends such as the economic levelling of the capitalist welfare state.