bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Tocqueville and the Protestantism of His Time
Authors: Jaume Lucien
Published: November 2017

For Tocqueville, Protestantism was the historical and cultural source of modern political democracy, He believed that, in social terms, it contributed to the exercise of individual judgment that is political democracy's indispensable complement. Yet his recognition of Protestantism's due did not lead him to accept the sociological axioms or epistemology of such leading Protestant writers as Alexandre Vinet and Benjamin Constant. This chapter considers examples of texts from the two Swiss authors, who, despite being Swiss, influenced the way in which Democracy in America was read because all cultivated French readers were familiar with them. In 1828, Vinet received a French award for an essay on freedom of religion from the Société de la Morale Chrétienne. By contrast, Constant rattled his audience and seemed to confirm that “Coppet liberalism” was a foreign import.
Tocqueville’s Relation to Jansenism
Authors: Jaume Lucien
Published: November 2017

This chapter considers the supposed Jansenist leanings of Tocqueville. For generations, scholars have been arguing that Tocqueville had deep sympathy for Pascal and perhaps for Jansenism. However, it remains to be seen what effects meditation on Pascal had on Tocqueville's writing. Furthermore, we cannot speak of “Jansenism” without examining what the public image of Jansenism (one of the most controversial schools of thought in French intellectual history) was in the 1830s and 1840s. And finally, we will need to say something about Tocqueville's stance with respect to that image. The chapter argues that Tocqueville was neither devout nor militant. He had no intention of publicly advocating a religious dogma, although he was in favor of publicly censuring materialism. For those who would like to enlist Tocqueville in the cause of religious revival, a letter to Kergorlay will set things straight. In it he explains that, from the standpoint of civic virtue, a book like L'Imitation de Jésus-Christ is useless and even dangerous.
Conclusion
Authors: Jaume Lucien
Published: November 2017

This chapter summarizes key themes and presents some final thoughts. This book has attempted to show that what sharpened Tocqueville's perception of the ever-present perils of democracy was his aristocratic culture, which he translated into the structuring myth of Democracy in America: namely, the return of the despot. In this light, it is possible to reconsider a problem with which students of Tocqueville have long grappled: Is the “soft” tutelary despotism described at the end of volume 2 incompatible with the view of American democracy set forth in volume 1? Are there in fact “two democracies” and indeed two distinct books, one in conflict with the other?
Introduction
Authors: Chen Janet Y.
Published: November 2017

This introductory chapter briefly illustrates what life was like for the urban poor in Republican-era China. It also traces the changes in attitudes about “poverty” and the policies enacted for its alleviation, which took place in the early decades of the twentieth century in China, a critical historical juncture when new possibilities emerged for imagining the relationship between government authority and the people. The chapter reveals new insights into the lives of the urban destitute and discusses the various sources used in the course of research. Its analysis illuminates how people detained under these circumstances responded to the disciplinary project of making them into “citizens,” and how they coped with destitution in a period of deep social dislocation. Finally, the chapter concludes with a brief overview of the entire volume.
Exporting American Dreams
Authors: Dudziak Mary L.
Published: November 2017

This book tells the little-known story of Thurgood Marshall's work with Kenyan leaders as they fought with the British for independence in the early 1960s. Not long after he led the legal team in Brown v. Board of Education, Marshall aided Kenya's constitutional negotiations, as adversaries battled over rights and land—not with weapons, but with legal arguments. Set in the context of Marshall's civil rights work in the United States, this transnational history sheds light on legal reform and social change in the midst of violent upheavals in Africa and America. While the struggle for rights on both continents played out on a global stage, it was a deeply personal journey for Marshall. Even as his belief in the equalizing power of law was challenged during his career as a Supreme Court justice, and in Kenya the new government sacrificed the rights he cherished, Kenya's founding moment remained for him a time and place when all things had seemed possible.
Pillars of Prosperity
Authors: Besley Timothy , Persson Torsten
Published: November 2017

“Little else is required to carry a state to the highest degree of opulence from the lowest barbarism, but peace, easy taxes, and a tolerable administration of justice; all the rest being brought about by the natural course of things.” So wrote Adam Smith a quarter of a millennium ago. Using the tools of modern political economics and combining economic theory with a bird's-eye view of the data, this book reinterprets Smith's pillars of prosperity to explain the existence of development clusters—places that tend to combine effective state institutions, the absence of political violence, and high per-capita incomes. To achieve peace, the book stresses the avoidance of repressive government and civil conflict. Easy taxes, the book argues, refers not to low taxes, but a tax system with widespread compliance that collects taxes at a reasonable cost from a broad base, like income. And a tolerable administration of justice is about legal infrastructure that can support the enforcement of contracts and property rights in line with the rule of law. The book shows that countries tend to enjoy all three pillars of prosperity when they have evolved cohesive political institutions that promote common interests, guaranteeing the provision of public goods. In line with much historical research, international conflict has also been an important force behind effective states by fostering common interests. The absence of common interests and/or cohesive political institutions can explain the existence of very different development clusters in fragile states that are plagued by poverty, violence, and weak state capacity.
The Rise and Fall of Meter
Authors: Martin Meredith
Published: November 2017

Why do we often teach English poetic meter by the Greek terms iamb and trochee? How is our understanding of English meter influenced by the history of England's sense of itself in the nineteenth century? Not an old-fashioned approach to poetry, but a dynamic, contested, and inherently nontraditional field, “English meter” concerned issues of personal and national identity, class, education, patriotism, militarism, and the development of English literature as a discipline. This book tells the unknown story of English meter from the late eighteenth century until just after World War I. Uncovering a vast and unexplored archive in the history of poetics, the book shows that the history of prosody is tied to the ways Victorian England argued about its national identity. Gerard Manley Hopkins, Coventry Patmore, and Robert Bridges used meter to negotiate their relationship to England and the English language; George Saintsbury, Matthew Arnold, and Henry Newbolt worried about the rise of one metrical model among multiple competitors. The pressure to conform to a stable model, however, produced reactionary misunderstandings of English meter and the culture it stood for. This unstable relationship to poetic form influenced the prose and poems of Robert Graves, Siegfried Sassoon, Wilfred Owen, W. B. Yeats, Ezra Pound, and Alice Meynell. A significant intervention in literary history, this book argues that our contemporary understanding of the rise of modernist poetic form was crucially bound to narratives of English national culture.
The Early Republic
Authors: Crowe Justin
Published: November 2017

This chapter examines the establishment of the federal judiciary from the beginning of George Washington's first term as president in 1789 to the end of Thomas Jefferson's first term in 1805. It considers three questions about the tumultuous politics of institutional design that followed the ratification of the Constitution: first, why judicial institution building was pursued; second, how it was accomplished; and third, what it achieved. It also discusses the three stages in which judicial institution building during this era occurred: stages: the policy compromise of 1789, the stalemate preventing large-scale judicial reform in the 1790s, and the flurry of policy and political initiatives of the early 1800s. The chapter concludes with an assessment of how Oliver Ellsworth's political entrepreneurship paved the way for a landmark, precedent-setting episode of judicial institution building that extended judicial power and expanded the judicial apparatus beyond simply the Supreme Court.
A Christian Millennium
Authors: Herrin Judith
Published: November 2017

This chapter focuses on the period when Greece was essentially a minor province of the Christian Roman empire of Byzantium. During “The Dark Ages,” there was a very slow and uncertain shift from a society organized according to the principles of the ancient world—a world of half-autonomous cities—to one dominated by the Byzantine Empire. The chapter first describes the upheavals that disrupted the empire during the first half of the seventh century before discussing how it regained stability during the late seventh and eighth centuries. It then considers the disastrous results of the Fourth Crusade for the empire and the emergence of Byzantium as a theocracy. It also examines how Byzantium reclaimed the provinces of Greece and how the Slavs were integrated into Byzantine society. It concludes with an overview of Byzantine economy, society, and culture during the period as well as the legacy of the Byzantine Empire.
From Bread and Circuses to Soup and Salvation
Authors: Herrin Judith
Published: November 2017

This chapter examines how charity came into existence under the Byzantine Empire. It discusses three stages in the development of Byzantine charity: the first, from Apostolic times to the ending of imperial persecution (313); the second, from the endowments of Constantine I to those of Justinian (527–65); and a third, from the Christian patronage of Justin II (565–78) to that of Herakleios (610–41). It considers the transition from the form of imperial largesse (symbolized by bread and circuses) to a different but also imperial form (soup and salvation, supported and often financed by Christian rulers). It shows that Christian charity totally replaced ancient philanthropy in the seventh century, sanctioned by the state–church alliance forged by Herakleios.
Ideals of Charity, Realities of Welfare
Authors: Herrin Judith
Published: November 2017

This chapter examines the ideals of charity and the realities of welfare under the Byzantine Empire by focusing on the philanthropic activity of the Byzantine church. While ecclesiastical philanthropy grew and changed over centuries, the earliest Christian experience remained an important model that was often reasserted in an effort to imitate the direct charitable activity of Christ and the Apostles. This duty to assist has two outstanding features, love and charity, summed up by Jesus' instructions to his followers to love one another and to sell all they had and give to the poor. The chapter considers two aspects of the development of Byzantine charitable institutions: the mechanisms by which welfare was administered, and the underlying theory of good works. It shows that the theory of good works provided a major impetus to the practice of all Byzantine philanthropy.
Book Burning as Purification in Early Byzantium
Authors: Herrin Judith
Published: November 2017

This chapter examines book burning as a form of purification, designed to protect readers and listeners from inaccurate or downright misleading material, during the early Byzantine period. Throughout the fourth and fifth centuries, when Christianity was struggling to define its theology more closely, every official condemnation was followed by ritual destruction. Decades after the decree of AD 528 that barred pagans from state office, Justinian ordered a persecution of surviving Hellenes, accompanied by the burning of pagan books, pictures, and statues. In the mid-sixth century, active persecution in Constantinople probably destroyed many ancient texts. The chapter considers two canons, issued by the Council in Trullo in AD 692, that shed light on book burning and destruction, purification, and the status of written texts in early Byzantium.
Self-dual Poincaré Metrics
Authors: Fefferman Charles , Graham C. Robin
Published: November 2017

As an application of the formal theory for Poincaré metrics, this chapter presents a formal power series proof of a result of LeBrun [LeB] asserting the existence and uniqueness of a real-analytic self-dual Einstein metric in dimension 4 defined near the boundary with prescribed real-analytic conformal infinity.
“Femina Byzantina”
Authors: Herrin Judith
Published: November 2017

This chapter examines what the late seventh-century canons can tell us about “femina byzantina.” In 692 the Council in Trullo, convened by Justinian II, met in the same domed hall of the Great Palace where the Sixth Ecumenical Council had been held ten years earlier. More than two hundred bishops from most parts of the empire under secure imperial control assembled in Constantinople to fulfill their given role: to issue disciplinary canons necessary to protect and secure correct observance of the Christian faith. Ecclesiastical concern about women can be observed in three distinct but overlapping areas: church services, monastic life, and society at large. Such concern was of course constant in medieval societies. But at the end of the seventh century it was intensified by many different regulations, all directed toward the promotion of suitable Christian behavior.
Political Power and Christian Faith in Byzantium
Authors: Herrin Judith
Published: November 2017

This chapter examines the issue of whether women could rule in Byzantium. It does so by concentrating on the period when Empress Irene was officially at the head of the imperial government, as regent for her young son from 780 to 790, and later as sole ruler. In the five years from 797 to 802 Irene ruled alone, an unprecedented event in the history of Byzantium. Irene was selected to marry Leo, the eldest son of Emperor Constantine V in 769, when both bride and groom were in their teens. Fifteen months later she gave birth to their son, named Constantine after his grandfather. In 780 Leo died, and Irene assumed a more prominent role as the empress-mother who formed the regency with the patriarch and other members of the administration. For the next decade she appointed officials to lead the armies, to govern and tax the empire's regions, to run the civilian administration and conduct diplomatic relations with foreign powers.
Introduction
Authors: Hall John A.
Published: November 2017

This introductory chapter provides an overview of civility. Civility does not stand in the way of truth and moral development but is rather a precondition for them. Nor is it the case that civility is tied in some essentialist way to the class-bound eighteenth-century world in which it first reached something of an apogee. On the contrary, civility is important because it allows disagreement to take place without violence and regularizes conflict so that it can be productive. This initial characterization should be taken merely as an orienting device for all that follows. A good deal of light will be cast on the nature of civility by describing the concerns of its enemies, by those who respond to diversity in different ways.
Sympathy and Deception
Authors: Hall John A.
Published: November 2017

This chapter examines the nature of capitalism by recalling in the simplest terms the sophisticated sociology of Adam Smith, so often ignored and so very far removed from contemporary economic theory. There are two essential presuppositions to Smith's basic model of commercial society. The first is that economic success results from the way in which the division of labor enhances productivity. The second is that human beings have a natural disposition to “truck, barter and exchange,” and this must be let loose before the division of labor can bring its benefits to mankind as a whole. Based on these two principles, Smith constructs his argument. Smith was one of the earliest theorists of comparative advantage, that is, of the theory that all nations can enter a positive sum game by specializing in those products or industries in which they are specially gifted.
The Problem with Communism
Authors: Hall John A.
Published: November 2017

This chapter examines communism. Communism in premodern circumstances was extremely rare. It requires a very considerable break in normal societal relations in order to institutionalize it. Conquest certainly creates a break of this sort, and it is this that explains the Jesuit communist communities in Paraguay quite as much as it does Sparta. Equally, millenarian expectations of religious charisma more generally so disrupt the normal as to induce social experimentation. The general point is reinforced by the aberrant case of early Iranian communism. Here the sharing of women was suggested by a ruler, Kavadh I, who was keen to discipline his nobility; once the idea had been put into practice and the nobility weakened, its ideology then came to be adopted by Mazdak, the leader of a peasant revolt.
The Destruction of Trust
Authors: Hall John A.
Published: November 2017

This chapter shows how the state can undermine civility by destroying cooperative relations in society. The analysis of trust has become a central focus in contemporary social theory. This is wholly to be welcomed, for it takes but a moment to realize that social life depends on trust. Cooperative relations in general depend on trust, on the expectation that agreements will be honored. So civility rests on trust. State behavior can destroy trust, thereby undermining civility. Majorities can threaten minorities, but elites can repress and divide majorities into suspicious and warring groups. Accordingly, it is best to see democracy as a necessary condition for civility in modern times, even though sufficiency to that end requires the creation and maintenance of a civil political culture.
A Written Republic
Authors: Baraz Yelena
Published: November 2017

In the 40s BCE, during his forced retirement from politics under Julius Caesar’s dictatorship, Cicero turned to philosophy, producing a massive and important body of work. As he was acutely aware, this was an unusual undertaking for a Roman statesman because Romans were often hostile to philosophy, perceiving it as foreign and incompatible with fulfilling one’s duty as a citizen. How, then, are we to understand Cicero’s decision to pursue philosophy in the context of the political, intellectual, and cultural life of the late Roman republic? This book takes up this question and makes the case that philosophy for Cicero was not a retreat from politics but a continuation of politics by other means, an alternative way of living a political life and serving the state under newly restricted conditions. The book examines the rhetorical battle that Cicero stages in his philosophical prefaces—a battle between the forces that would oppose or support his project. It presents his philosophy as intimately connected to the new political circumstances and his exclusion from politics. His goal—to benefit the state by providing new moral resources for the Roman elite—was traditional, even if his method of translating Greek philosophical knowledge into Latin and combining Greek sources with Roman heritage was unorthodox. The book provides a new perspective on Cicero’s conception of his philosophical project while also adding to the broader picture of late-Roman political, intellectual, and cultural life.
Risk
Authors: James Harold
Published: November 2017

This chapter looks at the beginnings of the Krupp company, which were built out of the substantial investments left behind by the founder Friedrich Krupp's grandmother, Helene Amalie Ascherfeld-Krupp. After her death, Friedrich almost immediately merged his own trading firm into that of his grandmother and liquidated them both in order to concentrate on specialty iron known as Gussstahl or Tiegelstahl (cast steel) production. The venture looked like, and was, a wild speculation, giving up a solid business legacy for something that rested on an arcane and uncertain new mode of fabrication. The chapter traces Krupp's business decisions from that point on, taking note of his partiality for “English steel” as well as the eventual decline of his business later in life.
A Result on the Structure of Local Riemannian Invariants: The Fundamental Proposition
Authors: Alexakis Spyros
Published: November 2017

This chapter sets up a highly complicated proposition (the fundamental proposition 4.13), which is to be proven by an elaborate induction on four parameters. It is organized as follows. Section 4.2 sets up the considerable notational and language conventions needed to state the fundamental Proposition 4.13; it then states the fundamental Proposition and explains how the main algebraic propositions are special cases of it. It also explains the induction using four parameters by which the fundamental proposition will be proven. Section 4.3 distinguishes three cases I, II, III of the hypothesis of Proposition 4.13 and claim three Lemmas, 4.16, 4.19, and 4.24, which correspond to these three cases. Finally, Section 4.4 proves that these three lemmas imply Proposition 4.13. It also asserts certain useful technical lemmas that are also used in the subsequent chapters in this book.
The Inductive Step of the Fundamental Proposition: The Hard Cases, Part I
Authors: Alexakis Spyros
Published: November 2017

This chapter takes up the proof of Lemma 4.24, which has two cases, A and B. The strategy goes as follows: It first repeats the ideas from Chapter 5 and derives a new local equation from the assumption of Proposition 4.13. However, it finds that this new equation is very far from proving the claim of Lemma 4.24. It then has to return to the hypothesis of Proposition 4.13 and extract an entirely new equation from its conformal variation. It proceeds with a detailed study of this new equation (again using the inductive assumption of Proposition 4.13); the result is a second new local equation which again is very far from proving the claim of our lemma. Next, it formally manipulates this second new local equation and adds it to the first one, and observes certain miraculous cancellations, which yield new local equations that can be collectively called the grand conclusion. Lemma 4.24 in case A then immediately follows from the grand conclusion.
Fear in Colonial California and within the Borderlands
Authors: Haas Lisbeth
Published: November 2017

This chapter examines how fear prevailed during the Spanish colonization of California. Under Spain, colonial California witnessed the destruction of its densely inhabited zone of linguistically diverse indigenous societies. Waves of illness and warfare transformed tribal societies in the interior, eroded the environment, and devastated the political order. The changes produced by the Spanish colonial presence created what Randall Milliken has called a “time of little choice.” The chapter explores how fear appears in indigenous accounts as a historical emotion, but one elaborated very specifically in relation to native forms of thought and culture such as dance, as seen in the writing of Pablo Tac. It also considers how fear was promulgated in Spanish-language accounts of the Chumash War and concludes by assessing indigenous Californians' histories of the war.
Danger, Media, and the Urban Experience in Delhi
Authors: Sundaram Ravi
Published: November 2017

This chapter examines some of the new media technologies of fear that emerged in urban Delhi during the postcolonial period, using the events of the Monkeyman panic as a point of departure. In 2001, Delhi was deluged by stories of a monkey-like creature that attacked people at night. These accounts, which combined both terror and the carnivalesque, originated almost exclusively from the proletarian and lower-middle-class neighborhoods of East Delhi and the nearby suburbs of Ghaziabad and Noida. Almost immediately a frenzy of media effects began with regular television and news reports, daily sightings, and television interviews given by victims of the so-called “Monkeyman.” The chapter explores how new technologies of fear, which intervene through media effects, and cultures of viral media proliferation combined to create productive situations of danger and an urban crisis that constantly exposed the fragility of institutions of power in Delhi in the 1990s.
White Hajjis
Authors: Laffan Michael
Published: November 2017

This chapter examines comparable incarnations of Islamophobia expressed by adventurers and stay-at-homes from the Netherlands. It begins by focusing on early modern Dutch descriptions of Muslims and Dutch attitudes toward Islam more generally, as well as the fear of Indonesia's “bad Muslims”—the ghostly white hajjis imagined by Louis Couperus in his now classic Hidden Force—that was ultimately displaced by the more tangible claims and threats of nationalists and Communists who had reconfigured the writings of the European tradition. The chapter then considers how a heightened awareness of radical Islam had led a small segment of exclusively white officialdom to issue numerous directives in the early 1880s calling for greater vigilance against purported “foreign” Muslim threats. It concludes with a discussion of how the Dutch forged a new relationship with Islam in the postcolonial era that had little to do with their old Indies or yet their old fears.
Anton Wilhelm Amo
Authors: Smith Justin E. H.
Published: November 2017

This chapter focuses on the life and work of Anton Wilhelm Amo, who was active in Germany in the period between Leibniz and Kant. It shows how Amo's identity as an African in Europe helped to shape both his philosophy and its reception, and what lessons may have been drawn in the era for thinking about the relationship between human racial diversity, on the one hand, and the universality of human reason, on the other. Finally, the chapter argues that the position occupied by Amo in the philosophical landscape of early eighteenth-century Germany reveals the likely influence of Leibniz, who had provided a model for a nonracial philosophical anthropology for which he has generally not been given much credit.
Leisurely Islam
Authors: Deeb Lara , Harb Mona
Published: November 2017

South Beirut has recently become a vibrant leisure destination with a plethora of cafés and restaurants that cater to the young, fashionable, and pious. What effects have these establishments had on the moral norms, spatial practices, and urban experiences of this Lebanese community? From the diverse voices of young Shi'i Muslims searching for places to hang out, to the Hezbollah officials who want this media-savvy generation to be more politically involved, to the religious leaders worried that Lebanese youth are losing their moral compasses, this book provides a sophisticated and original look at leisure in the Lebanese capital. What makes a café morally appropriate? How do people negotiate morality in relation to different places? And under what circumstances might a pious Muslim go to a café that serves alcohol? This book highlights tensions and complexities exacerbated by the presence of multiple religious authorities, a fraught sectarian political context, class mobility, and a generation that takes religion for granted but wants to have fun. The book elucidates the political, economic, religious, and social changes that have taken place since 2000, and examines leisure's influence on Lebanese sociopolitical and urban situations. Asserting that morality and geography cannot be fully understood in isolation from one another, the book offers a colorful new understanding of the most powerful community in Lebanon today.
Flexible Morality, Respectful Choices, Smaller Transgressions
Authors: Deeb Lara , Harb Mona
Published: November 2017

Cafés are places where people are essentially forced to take a stance on the morality of specific activities, not only by choosing whether to partake, but also by passively accepting others' participation in their presence. Because many of the moral “rules” about the sorts of things one can do in a café—like listen to music or smoke argileh—are not clear-cut, cafés require people to navigate complex moral terrain in order to have fun while feeling good about themselves. This chapter takes up a number of these debatable activities in order to show how more or less pious Shi'i Muslims, especially youths, employ moral flexibility in their discourses and practices of leisure. In some cases, people negotiate among different rubrics of morality, while in others they choose to ignore particular tenets or disagree about the accuracy of a rule in the first place.
Introduction
Authors: Zannier Umberto , Masser David
Published: November 2017

This introductory chapter illustrates some basic problems of the topic and then gives an overview of the results and methods treated in the subsequent chapters. It begins with a few words on the general title. This is followed by a brief discussion of Lang's problem on roots of unity.
The Sun's Influence on Climate
Authors: Haigh Joanna D. , Cargill Peter
Published: November 2017

The Earth's climate system depends entirely on the Sun for its energy. Solar radiation warms the atmosphere and is fundamental to atmospheric composition, while the distribution of solar heating across the planet produces global wind patterns and contributes to the formation of clouds, storms, and rainfall. This book provides an unparalleled introduction to this vitally important relationship. The book covers the basic properties of the Earth's climate system, the structure and behavior of the Sun, and the absorption of solar radiation in the atmosphere. It explains how solar activity varies and how these variations affect the Earth's environment, from long-term paleoclimate effects to century timescales in the context of human-induced climate change, and from signals of the 11-year sunspot cycle to the impacts of solar emissions on space weather in our planet's upper atmosphere.
Solar Variability
Authors: Haigh Joanna D. , Cargill Peter
Published: November 2017

This chapter studies the solar atmosphere's temporal variation, particularly the reverse in polarity of the solar magnetic field roughly every 11 years—a complete solar cycle occurs approximately every 22 years. The reason for this reversal must lie in the dynamo process operating at the tachocline, though a complete explanation is still awaited. This lack of understanding also underlies the scholars' inability to predict, on a first-principles basis, events like the recent deep and prolonged solar minimum. From the viewpoint of radiative input to the Earth, the chapter is interested in the variability of visible and UV radiation both across a typical solar cycle and, longer term, over many cycles. It also discusses how various solar and interplanetary parameters vary relative to the solar cycle.
Introduction
Authors: Schäfer Peter
Published: November 2017

This introductory chapter argues that not only the emerging Christianity drew on contemporary Judaism but that rabbinic Judaism, too, tapped into ideas and concepts of Christianity to shape its own identity. Common wisdom has it that belief in the unity and uniqueness of God has been one of the firmly established principles of Jewish faith since time immemorial. The emerging Christian sect set out to elaborate the notion of the one and only God in terms of first a binitarian and then a trinitarian theology—that is, they took the decisive step to include God's Son in the godhead, this followed by the inclusion of a third divine figure, the Holy Spirit. The rabbis were certainly aware of such developments and responded to them. The rabbinic literature has preserved a wealth of sources that portray the rabbis as engaged in a dialogue with people who present views that run counter to the accepted or imagined rabbinic norm system.
The Young and the Old God
Authors: Schäfer Peter
Published: November 2017

This chapter looks at the problem faced by the rabbis when they were confronted with the fact that the God of the Hebrew Bible assumes various guises, using the example of a relatively early Palestinian midrash. There, the heretics take advantage of the fact that God is sometimes portrayed as a young war hero and sometimes as a merciful old man. Countering the heretics' argument that these various manifestations point to two divine powers of equal right in heaven, one old and one young, the rabbis insist that their God, despite his varying appearances, nevertheless is always one and the same—never changing and never growing old. The danger evoked by such an interpretation of the Hebrew Bible is obvious: one immediately thinks of the Christian notion of the old and young God—God–Father and God–Son.
The Angels
Authors: Schäfer Peter
Published: November 2017

This chapter examines rabbinic attitudes toward the angels. Enoch-Metatron, being transformed into the highest of all angels and becoming a divine figure next to God, stands at the extreme (Babylonian) end of a much larger spectrum of rabbinic attitudes toward the angels. Earlier Palestinian sources were vehemently opposed to any such possibility of the angels being granted a role transcending their traditional task of praising God and acting as his messengers. This is particularly true for the creation story and the revelation of the Torah on Mount Sinai. With regard to the former, the rabbis set great store in pointing out that the angels were not created on the first day of creation—to make sure that nobody should arrive at the dangerous idea that these angels participated in the act of creation. Similarly, the rabbis took great care in not granting the angels too active a role during the revelation of the Torah on Mount Sinai.
The Birth of the Messiah, or Why Did Baby Messiah Disappear?
Authors: Schäfer Peter
Published: November 2017

This chapter discusses the emergence of “Christianity” from “Judaism,” examining a famous midrash in the Jerusalem Talmud about the disappearance of the newborn Messiah. Instead of tracking the more elaborate efforts of differentiation and demarcation, one witnesses an early and archaic attempt to excrete “Christianity” from “Judaism”—yet this is a Christianity that is still regarded as part and parcel of Judaism and at the same time recognized as something that will become Judaism's worst enemy. Hence, this Baby Messiah is simultaneously the Jewish and Christian Messiah, caught at that tragic moment when Judaism was desperately trying to retain the Messiah within its fold but was also vaguely sensing that it would ultimately fail and that a new religion had already been born.
From the European Convention to the Lisbon Agreement and Beyond: A Veto Player Analysis
Authors: Tsebelis George
Published: November 2017

This chapter compares the policy and political outcomes that followed from the institutional structures generated by the European Convention, the Treaty of Lisbon, and the default outcome of a failure of negotiations during the process of European integration, the Treaty of Nice. The institutions produced under these different arrangements empowered different actors to create the policies of the EU. The comparison is based on the theory of veto players and is aimed at demonstrating the potential differences in policy outcomes for the EU had future policies been made in each of these institutional settings. In particular, it focuses on the effects of different institutional arrangements on the democratic deficit and the extent to which they strengthen the capacity of the judiciary powers and the bureaucracy to create policies independently from electorally accountable actors.
When the Old Left Was Young … and Went to Washington
Authors: Storrs Landon R. Y.
Published: November 2017

This chapter introduces a group of young radicals, male and female, who ascended with surprising rapidity in the Roosevelt administration. Many of the younger group advocated women's sexual emancipation and conducted their personal lives accordingly. Women in the younger cohort were less likely to make “maternalist” arguments that stressed women's innate differences from men, and they identified less exclusively with women-only organizations. These women did not call themselves “left feminists,” but the term usefully distinguishes them from nonfeminist leftists and from the “pure” feminists of the National Woman's Party, whose proposed equal rights amendment antagonized advocates of wage and hour laws for women. However, not all women in government were left feminists. Those who were gained force from the fact that they often knew one another, through shared interests in labor, poverty, housing, public health and health insurance, consumer rights, and international peace—interdependent causes that in their vision had a feminist subtext.
“Pinks in Minks”: The Antifeminism of the Old Right
Authors: Storrs Landon R. Y.
Published: November 2017

This chapter examines the antifeminism of key instigators of the Second Red Scare: staff members of congressional investigative committees and the conservative journalists with whom they cooperated. Their public statements and private correspondence indicate that they associated communism with men's loss of control over women's labor and sexual conduct. For them, the need to stabilize white male supremacy was one reason to oppose communism. Antifeminism, an objective in and of itself, was also a means to other objectives. Leading anticommunists deployed antifeminism, just as they did homophobia, to generate popular enthusiasm for their attacks on the Roosevelt and Truman administrations.
Conclusion
Authors: Storrs Landon R. Y.
Published: November 2017

This concluding chapter argues that the civil servants described here saw themselves as defenders, not betrayers, of fundamental American values such as egalitarianism and democracy. Not only does acknowledging their presence in the Roosevelt and Truman administrations yield a more accurate history, but a broader understanding of how the right misrepresented and curtailed their influence may contribute to a more informed political discourse. Indeed, correcting the historical record seems especially important now, in the early twenty-first century, when conservatives have returned to arguing that goals such as a more equitable distribution of wealth are alien to the American tradition and to demonizing any deviation from free-market economic policy as socialistic.
The Enneads of Plotinus
Authors: Kalligas Paul
Published: November 2017

This is the first volume of a groundbreaking commentary on one of the most important works of ancient philosophy, the Enneads of Plotinus—a text that formed the basis of Neoplatonism and had a deep influence on early Christian thought and medieval and Renaissance philosophy. This volume covers the first three of the six Enneads, as well as Porphyry’s Life of Plotinus, a document in which Plotinus’s student—the collector and arranger of the Enneads—introduces the philosopher and his work. A landmark contribution to modern Plotinus scholarship, this commentary is the most detailed and extensive ever written for the whole of the Enneads. For each of the treatises in the first three Enneads, the volume provides a brief introduction that presents the philosophical background against which Plotinus’s contribution can be assessed; a synopsis giving the main lines and the articulation of the argument; and a running commentary placing Plotinus’s thought in its intellectual context and making evident the systematic association of its various parts with each other.
After Pericles: The Decline of Athens?
Authors: Azoulay Vincent
Published: November 2017

This chapter considers the notion that Pericles' death marked the starting point of Athens's decadence. In The Peloponnesian War, Thucydides asserts that the death of Pericles was a turning point in the history of Athens. He describes Pericles' “reign” as a clear dividing line between a community led by a virtuous elite and a democratic city abandoned to the hands of kakoi—the despicable demagogues. The chapter first considers the claim that the death of Pericles opened the door to “demagogues” who led Athens to disaster, in contrast to the stratēgos who led the city to its greatest achievements. It then examines the argument of the Socratic authors—Plato, Xenophon, and Antisthenes—that Pericles was incapable of educating his contemporaries. It also discusses the relations between Pericles and democracy by drawing on Plato's analyses.
Pericles in Disgrace: A Long Spell in Purgatory (15th to 18th Centuries)
Authors: Azoulay Vincent
Published: November 2017

This chapter examines the idea of a disgraced, even forgotten Pericles. In the accounts of Athens from Antiquity right down to the eighteenth century, Pericles, ignored and sometimes discredited, was reduced to a marginal figure. The stratēgos was for the most part judged with disdain, if not arrogantly ignored. The chapter first considers a number of structural factors that explain why the memory of Pericles remained in limbo in the Western imagination, including the remarkable success of Plutarch. It then discusses various writings offering a range of views on Pericles, such as those by Jean Bodin and Michel de Montaigne. It also analyzes Pericles' marginal role in the quarrel between the Ancients and the Moderns, Thomas Hobbes's admiration for Pericles, and how Pericles was regarded by the men of the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, and the revolutionary era.
Debating with My Critics
Authors: Qing Jiang
Published: November 2017

This chapter illustrates Jiang Qing's willingness to engage in substantive debate with his critics. Jiang's argumentative style is closest to the mode favored by Western liberal thinkers, though he is no doubt inspired by earlier Confucian debaters such as Xunzi who wrote in a clear and systematic style. Still, there is an element of unease: Jiang seems adamant about sticking to his views; he fails to make even one concession to his critics. He gives the impression that China (and maybe even the whole world) is doomed unless it endorses and implements the Way of the Humane Authority as a whole package. Therefore, it is worth asking if Jiang could have made some compromises or modifications to his theory that would have at least partly satisfied his critics.
Concepts and Models
Authors: Dye Christopher
Published: November 2017

This chapter discusses the epidemiology of tuberculosis from the perspective of population biology. The central concept of population biology with reference to TB control is that a population of organisms (here TB cases) cannot persist if the generation case reproduction number, R, is maintained below the critical value of one. Hence, if one case of TB always generates less than one secondary case on average (R < 1), then Mycobacterium tuberculosis is doomed to extinction. The chapter first provides an overview of the empirical epidemiology of TB before introducing a family of dynamic models to investigate the key questions about TB epidemiology and control. The models are used to assess TB transmission, reinfection and relapse, variation in infectiousness, rise and fall of TB during the industrial revolution, and the characteristics of TB epidemics.
Risk and Variation
Authors: Dye Christopher
Published: November 2017

This chapter examines the factors that affect the risk of exposure to Mycobacterium tuberculosis infection and the risk of developing tuberculosis. Exposure to infection depends on a wide range of exogenous factors linked to the environment, the pathogen and the structure of the human host population. The purpose of identifying such risk factors is to help explain the distribution and abundance of infection and disease in populations, as well as find ways of mitigating the risks to individuals and populations as a means of TB control. This chapter takes a dynamic view of the causes of TB, where risk factors determine the rates of transition between states of health. It discusses comparative risk assessment, dynamic risk assessment, the use of epidemiological models to help refine questions about risk and etiology, and variation in risk of developing TB with age and sex.
Interventions and Control
Authors: Dye Christopher
Published: November 2017

This chapter considers a variety of tuberculosis control measures that can change the rates of transition between states of health. Without a better understanding of who is most at risk of infection and disease, the opportunities for targeted prevention and treatment are limited. This is why dominant TB control efforts today do not focus on hotspots but rather confront the disease in whole populations. The principal approach to TB control, drug treatment of active disease, has saved millions of lives but has been much less effective in stopping TB transmission. The chapter examines the effects of different approaches to TB control, current and future technologies, and the outcomes for infection, disease, and mortality. It shows that while the mitigation of risk factors such as diabetes, undernutrition, or tobacco smoking is helpful as an accessory to TB control, the greater opportunity for immediate impact lies with the early diagnosis and curative treatment of TB disease.
Elimination and Eradication
Authors: Dye Christopher
Published: November 2017

This chapter examines the prospects for elimination and eradication of tuberculosis. It considers how TB elimination could be achieved in principle, making use of the interventions and procedures available now and anticipating new technologies in the future. It places special emphasis on combining interventions for maximum effect and gives a guide to the combinations that work best. These principles are then applied in a detailed analysis of five countries with contrasting TB epidemics: South Africa, India, China, Kiribati, and the United States. To achieve very low incidence rates in their entire populations, these countries must maintain low TB transmission rates domestically and prevent TB arising from old infections in the native-born population. They must also prevent TB arising from imported infections in the foreign-born population. This underscores the point that in today's highly interconnected world, elimination in any country depends on effective TB control in every country.
The Shifting Bases of Prosperity
Authors: McLean Ian W.
Published: November 2017

This chapter discusses how there are two recurring central themes when reflecting on why Australia was, and remains, so rich. First, the interactions between the principal determinants of growth have been more important to the outcomes than the role of any one factor—such as investment, institutions, or resources. Second, it is precisely due to the shifting basis of its prosperity that Australia has managed to sustain its status as a rich economy over so long a period and despite numerous negative shocks. Within the resources sector, the shifts have been between farming and mining; as well as among a range of foodstuffs, fibers, minerals, and energy sources. And for part of the twentieth century, when commodity-based prosperity proved elusive, manufacturing played a supporting role.