Cultural and Intellectual History

_The Physiology of Love and Other Writings_ is the first English annotated collection of Mantegazza’s selected works. In my extensive introductory essay, Mantegazza’s hybrid contributions from fiction, travel-writing, and ethnography to physiology, medicine, and politics are reevaluated as instances of a proto-cultural-studies approach attuned to the cross-fertilization of disciplines and the circulation of ideas in a period of European intellectual history that defied the notion of specialization.
Table of contents:
The Physiology of Love
And Selections from:
On The Hygienic and Medicinal Virtues of the Coca Plant and on Nervine Nourishment in General
One Day in Madeira
A Voyage to Lapland with my Friend Stephen Sommier
India
Epicurus: Essay in a Physiology of the Beautiful
The Neurosic Century
The Tartuffe Century
Head: Or, Sowing Ideas to Create New Deeds
Political Memoirs of a Foot Soldier in the Italian Parliament
The Year 3000: A Dream
The Psychology of Translation

Dorji Wangchuk,  “On the Identity and Authenticity of the *Sarvadharmacaryopadeśābhisamayatantra: A Tantric Scripture Associated with the Vikramaśīla Tradition." In Relationship between Tantric and Non-Tantric Doctrines in Late Indian Buddhism, edited by Norihisa Baba. Oriental Culture 96. Tokyo: Institute for Advanced Studies on Asia, The University of Tokyo, 2016, pp. 95–106.

This chapter traces the relations between the words 'historicism' and 'positivism' and underlying epistemological ideas associated with them since the 1880s. By retracing the encounters between historicism and positivism specifically in the social sciences, the chapter encourages modern scholars to renew their interest in what modern historicism had to offer as a counterbalance to the persistent pressure of positivism.

http://www.centropgm.unifi.it/cache/quaderni/44/0216.pdf An unpublished speech of Alberico Gentili to the Oxford scholars in defence of jurisprudence. Several manuscripts of Alberico Gentili (S. Ginesio 1552 - London 1608) are conserved in the Bodleian Library in Oxford. In 1580 the Italian jurist, exiled for his adherence to the Reformation doctrine, arrived in England where in 1587 was appointed regius professor of civil law at Oxford University. Here, after the publication of Dialogi (1582) and Lectiones et epistolae (1583-1584), he ran into a number of problems, initially with Jean Hotman and the humanistic circles and later with the theological-puritan ones. The speech - which is published here in Appendix - is conserved in the Collection D'Orville 612 and has been written after 12 March 1594, at the end of a bitter controversy with the puritan theologian John Rainolds. The controversy had developed between 1593 and 1594 and it was about the competence of the jurist and the theologian. In it Gentili, besides defending himself from the accusation of being trico italicus, machiauelicus et athaeus, he also protects the good reasons of the iurisprudentia in the light of its long history and the merit of those who, over the centuries, had professed legal science. Un discorso inedito di Alberico Gentili agli accademici di Oxford in difesa della "iurisprudentia". Nella Bodleian Library di Oxford sono conservati numerosi manoscritti di Alberico Gentili (S. Ginesio 1552 – Londra 1608). Il giurista italiano, esule per la sua adesione alle dottrine della Riforma, giunge in Inghilterra nel 1580 dove, nel 1587, viene nominato regius professor of civil law. Qui, dopo la pubblicazione dei Dialogi (1582) e delle Lectiones et epistolae (1583-1584) incontra numerose difficoltà, dapprima con Jean Hotman e con alcuni ambienti umanistici, e successivamente con quelli teologici puritani. Il discorso che qui si pubblica in Appendice, è conservato nel Fondo D’Orville 612, e viene scritto dopo il 12 marzo 1594, al termine di un’aspra polemica con il teologo puritano John Rainolds, che si era sviluppata fra 1593 e 1594 circa le competenze del giurista e del teologo. In essa Gentili, oltre a difendere sé stesso dalle accuse di “trico italicus, machiauelicus et athaeus”, difende le buone ragioni del diritto alla luce della sua lunghissima storia e del valore di coloro che, nel corso dei secoli, avevano professato la scienza giuridica.

http://www.centropgm.unifi.it/cache/quaderni/44/0216.pdf

An unpublished speech of Alberico Gentili to the Oxford scholars in defence of jurisprudence.
Several manuscripts of Alberico Gentili (S. Ginesio 1552 - London 1608) are conserved in the Bodleian Library in Oxford. In 1580 the Italian jurist, exiled for his adherence to the Reformation doctrine, arrived in England where in 1587 was appointed regius professor of civil law at Oxford University. Here, after the publication of Dialogi (1582) and Lectiones et epistolae (1583-1584), he ran into a number of problems, initially with Jean Hotman and the humanistic circles and later with the theological-puritan ones. The speech - which is published here in Appendix - is conserved in the Collection D'Orville 612 and has been written after 12 March 1594, at the end of a bitter controversy with the puritan theologian John Rainolds. The controversy had developed between 1593 and 1594 and it was about the competence of the jurist and the theologian. In it Gentili, besides defending himself from the accusation of being trico italicus, machiauelicus et athaeus, he also protects the good reasons of the iurisprudentia in the light of its long history and the merit of those who, over the centuries, had professed legal science.

Un discorso inedito di Alberico Gentili agli accademici di Oxford in difesa della "iurisprudentia".

Nella Bodleian Library di Oxford sono conservati numerosi manoscritti di Alberico Gentili (S. Ginesio 1552 – Londra 1608). Il giurista italiano, esule per la sua adesione alle dottrine della Riforma, giunge in Inghilterra nel 1580 dove, nel 1587, viene nominato regius professor of civil law. Qui, dopo la pubblicazione dei Dialogi (1582) e delle Lectiones et epistolae (1583-1584) incontra numerose difficoltà, dapprima con Jean Hotman e con alcuni ambienti umanistici, e successivamente con quelli teologici puritani. Il discorso che qui si pubblica in Appendice, è conservato nel Fondo D’Orville 612, e viene scritto dopo il 12 marzo 1594, al termine di un’aspra polemica con il teologo puritano John Rainolds, che si era sviluppata fra 1593 e 1594 circa le competenze del giurista e del teologo. In essa Gentili, oltre a difendere sé stesso dalle accuse di “trico italicus, machiauelicus et athaeus”, difende le buone ragioni del diritto alla luce della sua lunghissima storia e del valore di coloro che, nel corso dei secoli, avevano professato la scienza giuridica.

This volume on the relationships between decadent literature and anthropology in late 19th- and early 20th-century Europe studies the unnoticed connection between, on the one hand, a purposeless and ephemeral beauty, and, on the other hand, the disinterestedness and the spontaneity ascribed by anthropologists to the ceremonial expenditure of “primitive” civilizations. The book highlights how, in those two apparently opposed discourses, prodigality and uselessness challenge the Western cult of profit by working in two directions: beauty is a form of lavishness, and lavishness is a source of beauty. An innovative theoretical and cultural framework at the crossroads of aesthetics, anthropology, and philosophy allows me to reexamine the works of O. Wilde, G. D’Annunzio, and J.-K. Huysmans, and to claim the crucial role of neglected authors like Paolo Mantegazza and Vernon Lee in what I trace as the emergence of a proto-theorization of gift-exchange in the European fin de siècle culture. The pervasiveness of symbolic economy in those writers establishes a new dynamic relationship between decadence and modernism, and also exposes the limits of the allegedly disinterested forms of expenditure that will soon lure the modernists to go “primitive”.

The articles in this volume offer interventions in the history of encounters between new worlds and the intellectual traditions inherited from and informed by classical antiquity, in the period roughly spanning 1450-1850. Ranging in scope from medical treatments to devil-worship, from cosmography to climate theory, from rhetorical colloquies to the interpretation of widow-burning, they show how early modern scholars, artisans, and travelers drew on multiple cultural traditions within Europe, as well as on indigenous knowledge networks in Asia, Africa, Oceania and the Americas, in their attempts to incorporate new information into their existing world-views.

The history of science has often been viewed from the perspective of separating the logical and reasonable explanations of our world from supernatural, occult and superstitious views of nature. In a very real sense, part of the progress attributed to the rise of science has come as the result of an endeavor to winnow superstition out of the human worldview as well as culturally and philosophically limit all the other qualities, events and phenomena associated with the supernatural and occult. Within this context, there have been lesser skirmishes as well as greater periods of open warfare between science and religion, especially in those cases where various religious practices still propagate superstition and the supernatural. However, there is growing evidence that some aspects of the scientific and religious worldviews are converging and that trend is highly evident within the realm of valid scientific studies of the paranormal.

Scipio Sighele, _The Criminal Crowd And Other Writings on Mass Society_
Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by Nicoletta Pireddu
Translated by Nicoletta Pireddu and Andrew Robbins
Foreword by Tom Huhn

The so-called “age of crowds” still evokes primarily the late nineteenth-century French context, with the fearful popular uprising leading to the Paris Commune, the numerous disturbing images of masses in novels by Balzac, Sue, Maupassant, Zola, Huysmans, and Adam among others, and Gustave Le Bon’s renowned volume The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind (1895).
Yet, four years before Le Bon, Italian jurist, sociologist, cultural and literary critic Scipio Sighele (1868-1913) had published La folla delinquente. Saggio di psicologia collettiva [The Criminal Crowd. An Essay on Collective Psychology], to be followed by other pioneering explorations of group behavior and of the power of suggestion upon collective crime.
This volume offers the first English translation of Sighele’s seminal book and of excerpts from his subsequent works in the domains of sociology, psychology, law, politics, and literary criticism: La coppia criminale [The Criminal Couple], La delinquenza settaria [Sectarian Delinquency]; L’intelligenza della folla [The Intelligence of the Crowd]; La donna nova [The New Woman]; Eva moderna [Modern Eve]; Letteratura tragica [Tragic Literature]; Nell’arte e nella scienza [In Art and in Science]. An extensive introduction by Nicoletta Pireddu contextualizes Sighele’s overall contribution as a public intellectual negotiating between tradition and modernity in the European fin de siècle, able to grasp both the destructive and the constructive power of masses.
This collection draws the multifaceted portrait of a provocative and problematic thinker who, by participating in crucial international debates, brings to post-unification Italy a new outlook on paramount issues like the role of urbanization in the development of criminality, the unstable borders between individual and collective accountability in mass society, the legal and ideological constraints in the education and emancipation of women, the social and institutional challenges to the care and upbringing of children, and the responsibility of literary representation in the relationship between aesthetic standards and ethical norms.

Report documenting the dangers to many of Syria's heritage sites.  The 20-page report features a comprehensive look at the threats and conservation work being done at 12 endangered sites. It includes links to each site’s GHN profile, as well as a number of valuable maps and images.

The history of ideas is most prominently understood as a highly specialized group of
methods for the study of abstract ideas, with both diachronic and synchronic aspects.
While theorizing the field has focused on the methods of study, defining the object of
study – ideas – has been neglected. But the development of the theories behind material
culture studies poses a sharp challenge to this narrow approaches. It both challenges
the integrity of the notion of abstract ideas and also offers possibilities for
enlarging the scope of the ways in which we can study ideas historically. It is proposed
here to regard ideas as mental relations deeply connected to human communication by
both thinking and doing. This connection of ideational thought to human production
and behavior is a deep foundation for the history of ideas as an interdisciplinary historiographic means of understanding moral life.
http://booksandjournals.brillonline.com/content/journals/18722636/advance
https://doi.org/10.1163/18722636-12341371

This study compares Augustine’s remarks on language acquisition in the Confessions with those of Stoics, Epicureans, and Pyrrhonists and assesses the similarities and differences of the respective accounts. It studies a specific issue in Augustine’s philosophy of language—language acquisition—which so far and in connection with ancient theories has received only passing attention.

I examine the “science of human nature” of David Hume, Francis Hutcheson, Adam Smith, and other British moralists and writers, and show how this “science” is expression of the 18-century new way of looking at aesthetic and moral sentiment, passion and perception.  The “science of human nature”, which  may be (and commonly is) considered an ancestor of our philosophy and psychology, is in fact a radically historical form of knowledge, whose truth comes from history and whose notion of experience is that of a collection of human types and cases.  Its producers and intended readers were from the “conversable” and polite society -- that is, groups of non-philosophers, non-psychologists discussing people and life in moralistic and mechanistic terms.

Reading the Suffering of Others The Ethical Possibilities of ›Empathic Unsettlement‹ The confrontation with another person's suffering at the hands of someone else is the ultimate ethical situation, asking us to respond to both the one person's vulnerability and the other person's cruelty. When we are reading about a fictional character in a literary work being beaten, tortured, raped, or humiliated, however, the ethical question becomes troubled. This literary fictional ›situation‹ differs from the actual confrontation with the suffering other in two crucial aspects: 1. being a representation, the fictional situation does not call for action, 2. being a work of art, the fictional situation is aestheticized. 1 These elements can increase our ›actual‹ distance to the fictional suffering other. On the other hand, it could be argued that the emotional distance to the fictional literary other is smaller than to actual suffering. The combination of our actual distance and the aestheticized vividness of the representation may make it easier for us to feel for others made of ink and paper than for others made of flesh and bone (cf. Keen 2007). Moreover, we chose to be confronted with the fictional situation by starting and continuing to read. Whether literary texts portraying cruelty and suffering ›should‹ promote or obstruct our feelings for this fictional other is an ethical question. As Wayne Booth has argued in The Company We Keep, the portrayal of immoral events in a literary work does not exclude ethical reflection, on the contrary (1988, 79). ›Ethics‹ thus needs to be distinguished from ›morality‹: the latter refers to prescriptive notions on what is right and what is wrong within a given society (norms and values), while the first refers to critical enquiry into moral claims (cf. Hakemulder 1998, 13; Korthals Altes 2008, 3). In that sense, works containing ›immoral‹ notions can be particularly ethical, but that ethical potential is only realized by the reader. 2

I decenni centrali del XIII secolo rappresentano un periodo particolarmente fecondo per lo sviluppo dell’ars dictaminis nell’Italia centro-meridionale. I dictamina retorici di quel periodo e di quella zona presentano connotazioni talmente caratterizzate, da spingere gli studiosi (dall’inizio del XX secolo) a considerarli come il prodotto di una “scuola”, definita “capuana”. In effetti, però, quella “scuola” non fu legata a Capua, ma la sua diffusione fece perno soprattutto su Montecassino; e, in realtà, non fu nemmeno una vera e propria “scuola”, bensì l’espressione di un ceto professionale radicato nel territorio della Terra di Lavoro. Attraverso gli scambi epistolari e i certamina retorici, quei notai-dictatores (attivi indifferentemente nella cancelleria papale o in quella imperiale) trasmettevano non solo tecniche retoriche e insegnamenti, ma anche “senso di appartenenza” a un gruppo sociale, che superava finanche le barriere del violento scontro politico che si stava consumando in quegli anni.

Brojni ključni koncepti moderne teorije prevođenja postojali su mnogo pre naučnog utemeljenja te oblasti. Iako nije moguće tvrditi da je bilo ikakvih pokušaja da se uspostave teorijsko-metodološki pristupi prevođenju u arapskom srednjem veku, intenzivne prevodilačke
aktivnosti u tom periodu sasvim su izvesno podstakle pojavu određenih gledišta u vezi sa različitim teorjiskim pojmovima u ovoj oblasti, iako to nije bilo propraćeno odgovarajućim instrumentarijumom translatološke terminologije. Cilj ovog rada je da skrene pažnju na glavne translatološke pojmove koji su se javili kod arapskih srednjovekovnih mislilaca koji su se bavili ovom temom. Modernom terminologijom iskazano, bavićemo se najpre: prevodnom ekvivalencijom, prevodivošću, negativnim transferom, prevodilačkim kompetencijama, doslovnim i slobodnim prevođenjem, a u okviru tih tema kulturnom transpozicijom i ponovnim prevođenjem. Svaki od navedenih pojmova ćemo zasebno opisati i analizirati, onako kako su bili predstavljeni u spisima dva „teoretičara”
Džahiza (776–868) i Majmonida (1135–1204), kao i najčuvenijeg praktičara, Huneina ibn Ishaka (809–873). Ova tri autora su imali različita neposredna iskustva sa prevođenjem, kao i različite perspektive.

Eric J. Hobsbawm ha scritto che "il secolo XIX fu una gigantesca macchina per sradicare campagnoli". In qualsiasi modo lo si voglia guardare, quel complesso di fenomeni energetici, tecnologici e demografici che hanno interessato l’Europa nel XVIII e XIX secolo e che si è convenuto di chiamare “rivoluzione industriale” va interpretato come una profonda e rapida trasformazione delle strutture economiche e un più lento, ma non meno incisivo, mutamento dei costumi sociali e culturali. L'industrializzazione è uno dei fenomeni-corollari di quella grande, immensa e travolgente trasformazione che si suole chiamare "modernizzazione". Un altro suo corollario, per certi versi una sotto-conseguenza dell'industrializzazione, è il fenomeno dell'urbanizzazione. Se ne tenta qui una prima riflessione tra lo storico e il politico-culturale.

The first English book on contemporary Italian writer Claudio Magris, this study examines the connections between space and individual, national and European identity in his works. Magris invites us to cross the borders that enclose private and public spheres in order to discover the otherness within ourselves and reject the fanaticism of self-sameness. Through the recurring image of temporary homes, the book explores Magris’s ceaseless search for meaning and values, aiming at a habitable life, where diversity and tolerance can prevail over all fundamentalisms. With a sophisticated theoretical framework, this innovative analysis involves Magris’s entire fiction and non-fiction writings, down to his most recent, still untranslated collections. With what Pireddu calls “geography of domesticity,” Magris addresses the crucial question of the return to humanism that is moving literature and theory beyond the alleged death of the subject, and confirms the enduring value of the humanities as a critical and constructive tool.

In the framework of contemporary ecocritical and posthumanist theories, this comparative analysis of works by Paolo Mantegazza, Ouida, and Vernon Lee focuses on the conflictual relationship of proximity and differentiation at stake in the human-animal distinction in a post-Darwinian context dominated by the rise of experimental sciences. A discussion of vivisection and animal taming prompted by anthropocentric works as Mantegazza's _Fisiologia del dolore_ and _Upilio Faimali_ in tension with pro-animal essays by Ouida and Vernon Lee shows how the animal, caught between pure inert materiality and idealization, emerges as an intrinsic lack that the human fills with contending rational, utilitarian, moral, and affective motivations.

Hisham Sharabi (d. 2005) is best known to English-language readers for his work in history, politics, social theory, and cultural critique. Among Arabic-language readers he may be best known as a writer of memoirs. Al-Jamr wa-l-Ramad; Dhikrayat Muthaqqaf 'Arabi [Embers and Ashes: Memoirs of an Arab Intellectual] covers the politically tumultuous 1940s and was first published in 1978. It is his best known work of memoirs. It was translated into English by Issa Bullata (Northhampton, MA: Interlink Publishers, 2007).

«Allora si sedette su un mondo in rovina una giovinezza inquieta. Tutti questi ragazzi erano gocce di un sangue ardente che aveva inondato la terra; […]»: così scriveva nel 1836 Alfred de Musset, offrendo un quadro ineguagliabile della travagliata età post-napoleonica. Avvalendosi della metodologia della Cultural History, l’autrice propone un’avvincente rilettura del byronismo - fenomeno storico finora trascurato e di cui è ricostruita la genesi - con l’intento di metterne in luce la polivalenza, felicemente compendiata nella definizione “Io-romantico in azione”. Il volume indaga sulle complesse interconnessioni ravvisabili tra il processo risorgimentale italiano e la cultura romantica europea, formidabile espressione di una «generazione perduta» che, combattuta tra la Sehnsucht goethiana e il besoin de la fatalité di matrice alfieriana, guardò a Lord Byron come a un’icona non solo estetico - letteraria, ma anche politica.

Scholars of pre-Tanzimat Ottoman Islamic intellectual life have shied away from exploring the explicitly political role of the ulama. This is largely a function of the modernist assumption that the pre-Tanzimat Ottoman Empire, particularly its Arab provinces, was mired in social, economic, and intellectual decline. During the last decades, social and economic historians have painstakingly revised this dismal view. However, the notion that the ulama devoted themselves primarily to the inculcation of an unchanging Islamic tradition remains well entrenched. The career of the 17th- and 18th-century Syrian scholar Abd al-Ghani al-Nabulusi demonstrates that, in fact, the pursuits of members of the ulama were often inspired by the social and political currents of their time. Nabulusi, for one, was a tireless defender of the mystical philosophy of Muhi al-Din Ibn Arabi and of popular religious practices against their fundamentalist detractors. He was often at odds with Ottoman officialdom and expressed loyalties, such as Arab ethnic solidarity, which had significant political implications. He was chosen to be Hanafi mufti of Damascus by popular acclaim only to be unseated by officials in Istanbul within a year. That a member of the ulama like Nabulusi expressed the social and political concerns of his day has significant implications for our understanding of the continuities between pre-modern and modern history, particularly as they touch upon the social role of the intellectual.

This article begins by reopening the Third Great Debate which established division lines between mainstream (realist/liberal/constructivist) and Critical (neo-Marxist/neo-Gramscian) theories of International Relations based on their different assumptions about the nature of the international system: anarchy and hierarchy, respectively. The first half of the article argues that adopting common definitions of these concepts makes the anarchy-hierarchy debate theoretically irresolvable and further demonstrates that mainstream and Critical theories do not share an understanding of these terms neither between, nor within, their own traditions. The second half of this article challenges and aims to correct the interpretation of three key political thinkers, Halford J. Mackinder, W. E. B. DuBois and Norman Angell as appropriated within the inter-paradigm debates of International Relations. It argues that the respective associations of these thinkers with early realism, critical theories and early liberalism are intellectually misguiding because their works exhibit a common understanding of the 'international' across macro-and micro-dimensions, which is uncharacteristic of '-isms'. This shows that popular interpretations of pre-1919 works through post-1919 paradigms can obscure more than they reveal. These findings do not seek to present new ideas but to produce a reflexive critique of IR which illuminates some, perhaps unintended, counter-productive systemic effects that inter-paradigm divisions can have on the discipline.