The Occasional Conformity Controversy: Ideology and Party Politics, 1697-1711

1977 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 38-62 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Flaningam

The occasional conformity controversy has been the subject of considerable study by historians, both contemporary and modern. However, recent research has tended to concentrate on the parliamentary and electoral aspects of the issue, with somewhat less attention given to its importance as an ideological question. Nevertheless, the latter aspect of the controversy is well worth examining, for aside from its impact upon the struggle for office and power, occasional conformity was also the subject of heated debate on the theoretical and philosophical level. And although this debate often degenerated into partisan diatribes and rhetoric, it also raised questions that transcended the political ploy on the one hand, and the theologian's quibble and the propagandist's stalking horse on the other. The arguments used by both sides during the controversy revealed the basic philosophical differences that lay at the heart of the rivalry between the Whig and Tory parties. Occasional conformity's role as an expression of, and its relation to, this struggle is the subject of this article.The ideological debate over occasional conformity was necessarily stimulated by the parliamentary struggles during the first decade of the eighteenth century over the various bills which were designed to discourage the practice, and many of the tracts on the subject were written in response to these and other political maneuvers. But the pamphlet war had its own distinct existence, and the writers involved fought with their pens a battle that was parallel to the one that the politicians were fighting with votes and influence.

2010 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 135-156 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dorothea E. Schulz

Starting with the controversial esoteric employment of audio recordings by followers of the charismatic Muslim preacher Sharif Haidara in Mali, the article explores the dynamics emerging at the interface of different technologies and techniques employed by those engaging the realm of the Divine. I focus attention on the “border zone” between, on the one hand, techniques for appropriating scriptures based on long-standing religious conventions, and, on the other, audio recording technologies, whose adoption not yet established authoritative and standardized forms of practice, thereby generating insecurities and becoming the subject of heated debate. I argue that “recyclage” aptly describes the dynamics of this “border zone” because it captures the ways conventional techniques of accessing the Divine are reassessed and reemployed, by integrating new materials and rituals. Historically, appropriations of the Qur’an for esoteric purposes have been widespread in Muslim West Africa. These esoteric appropriations are at the basis of the considerable continuities, overlaps and crossovers, between scripture-related esoteric practices on one side, and the treatment by Sharif Haidara’s followers of audio taped sermons as vessels of his spiritual power, on the other.


2016 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 96-120
Author(s):  
Jan-Jasper Persijn

Alain Badiou’s elaboration of a subject faithful to an event is commonly known today in the academic world and beyond. However, his first systematic account of the subject ( Théorie du Sujet) was already published in 1982 and did not mention the ‘event’ at all. Therefore, this article aims at tracing back both the structural and the historical conditions that directed Badiou’s elaboration of the subject in the early work up until the publication of L’Être et l’Événément in 1988. On the one hand, it investigates to what extent the (early) Badiouan subject can be considered an exceptional product of the formalist project of the Cahiers pour l’Analyse as instigated by psychoanalytical discourse (Lacan) and a certain Marxist discourse (Althusser) insofar as both were centered upon a theory of the subject. On the other hand, this article examines the radical political implications of this subject insofar as Badiou has directed his philosophical aims towards the political field as a direct consequence of the events of May ’68.


2018 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
pp. 91-110
Author(s):  
Dariusz Dąbrowski

The main goal of the article is to present the possibilities and methods of research on the Rurikid’s matrimonial policy in the Middle Ages on the example of a selected group of princes. As the subject of studies were chosen Mstislav Vladimirovich and his children. In total, 12 matrimonial relationships were included. The analysis of the source material revealed very unfavorable phenomena from the perspective of the topic under study. The Rus’ primary sources gave information on the conclusion of just four marriages out of twelve. The next four matrimonial arrangement inform foreign sources (Scandinavian and Norman). It should be emphasized particularly strongly that – save for two exceptions of Scandinavian provenance – the sources convey no information whatsoever as regards the political aims behind this or that marriage agreement. It appears, then, that the chroniclers of the period and cultural sphere in question did not regard details concerning marriages (such as their circumstances or the reasons behind them) as “information notable enough to be worth preserving”. Truth be told, even the very fact of the marriage did not always belong to this category. Due to the state of preservation of primary sources the basic question arises as to whether it is possible to study the Rurikids’ matrimonial policy? In spite of the mercilessly sparse source material, it is by all means possible to conduct feasible research on the Rurikids’ marriage policy. One must know how to do it right, however. Thus, such studies must on the one hand be rooted in a deep knowledge of the relevant sources (not only of Rus’ provenance) as well as the ability to subject them to astute analysis; on the other hand, they must adhere to the specially developed methodology, presented in the first part of the article.


Author(s):  
Antonio Hermosa Andújar

In this work the author holds the thesis that with Maquiavelo, in accordance with Tucidides, the complete humanization of history and human life arose. Man has become the complete owner of his destiny when conquering fortune by virtù, that is, the entirety of social forces, concrete or diffuse, that oppose to the exercise of his will. It is only nature that remains as a region still inaccessible to human will. This is the reason why in Maquiavelo the concepts which should organize the explanation of human behavior are not, as considered until now, virtù/fortune but virtù/nature. Even though, there are two antagonic limits to the emancipatory virtuos action: on the one hand, its still nondemocratic condition, since only the Prince is capable of such virtù. On the other, the political liberty, something that in principle appears external to the subject, but once known he won´t forget ever, that is, political liberty becomes a constitutive feature of the human being at which every virtuos action of the Prince directed to extirpate it, fails.


2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 211-223 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alejandro Patat

In the last ten years, Noi credevamo (We Believed) (Martone 2010) has been the subject of a very careful criticism interested not only in its historical-ideological implications but also in its semiotic specificities. The purpose of this article is to summarize the cardinal points of these two positions and to add to them some critical observations that have not been noted so far. On the one hand, it is a matter of highlighting how, as a historical film, the work is connected with the history of emotions, a recent historiographical trend that aims to detect the narrative devices of ideological propaganda and the diffusion of feelings since the late eighteenth century. On the other hand, the article proposes a new interpretation of Mario Martone’s film, starting with the analysis of phenomena that are not only historical but also technical and structural.


1971 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-44 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. C. C. Law

This paper examines the internal disputes which the Ọyọ kingdom suffered during the eighteenth century, and which had as their ultimate issue a coup d'état in ca. 1796 which is traditionally held to mark the beginning of the disintegration of the kingdom. The troubles began with a conflict within the capital of the kingdom, between the Alafin (king) and the Ọyọ Mesi, a group of non-royal chiefs led by the Baṣọrun, and the first phase of the troubles culminated in 1754 in a seizure of power by the Baṣọrun. It is suggested that this struggle between the Alafin and his chiefs had its origins in competition for control of the new sources of wealth derived from the expansion of the kingdom. In 1774 the Alafin overthrew the Baṣọrun and recovered power in the capital by calling in the assistance of the subject towns of the kingdom. It is argued that this action proved fatal to the Ọyọ kingdom, by involving the rulers of the provincial towns in the political disputes of the capital and revealing the military impotence of the divided capital. In ca. 1796 the provincial rulers intervened at the capital on the other side, assisting the Baṣọrun to overthrow the Alafin. But the coalition of dissident metropolitan chiefs and dissident provincial chiefs immediately broke up, and many of the latter began to disregard the divided capital and make themselves independent.


Numen ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 61 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-32 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jakob De Roover

Abstract For centuries, the question whether there were peoples without religion was the subject of heated debate among European thinkers. At the turn of the twentieth century, this concern vanished from the radar of Western scholarship: all known peoples and societies, it was concluded, had some form of religion. This essay examines the relevant debates from the sixteenth to the twentieth century: Why was this issue so important? How did European thinkers determine whether or not some people had religion? What allowed them to close this debate? It will be shown that European descriptions of the “religions” of non-Western cultures counted as evidence for or against theoretical claims made within a particular framework, namely that of generic Christian theology. The issue of the universality of religion was settled not by scientific research but by making ad hoc modifications to this theological framework whenever it faced empirical anomalies. This is important today, because the debate concerning the cultural universality of religion has been reopened. On the one hand, evolutionary-biological explanations of religion claim that religion must be a cultural universal, since its origin lies in the evolution of the human species; on the other hand, authors suggest that religion is not a cultural universal, because many of the “religions” of humanity are fictitious entities created within an underlying theological framework.


1980 ◽  
Vol 15 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 427-434 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bertrand de Jouvenel

SINCE FIRST I BEGAN TO THINK ABOUT THE SUBJECT OF WHAT I called ‘pure politics’ twenty years ago, it has, sad to say, become more immediate. This is because of something I emphasized at the time: the effectiveness of a dedicated group of activists. Although few in number, the group's intensity of will gives it a formidable strength. It is like a projectile which can easily penetrate the soft body of society. It is the generator of the unforeseen, and ushers drama on to the political stage. In my book De la Souveraineté (1955), I contrasted two pictures familiar to us since childhood: Bonaparte on the bridge at Arcola and Saint Louis under the oak tree at Vincennes. The first is standing erect, calling on his men to charge; the other is seated, serene, welcoming the various plaintiffs who press towards him and sending them away content. On one side of the diptych we see a leader who exalts, and on the other side an umpire who corrects and conciliates – an agent of momentum and an agent of equilibrium. Bonaparte points to a direction and the narrowness of the bridge is a symbol of the one-way narrow track, the precise intention. In contrast, the oak tree is the centre of a circumference, from every point of which the plaintiffs or suitors could approach, so that the king's attention was called from all sides: he needed the eyes of Argus.


2000 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 248-272
Author(s):  
Jeremy Black

This article is intended as a sequel to the one published in Albion 28, 4 ([Winter 1996]: 607–33). As with the earlier article, it reflects the wealth of recent scholarship and adopts a wide definition of politics, and there is a powerful element of choice and subjectivity. The last arises in part from the breadth of the subject. A definition of the political culture and process of the period that directs attention to cultural, religious, social and gender issues is not one that can be readily summarized by restricting attention to the world of Court, Parliament, and the political elite.Last time I began with cultural politics, and it is worth renewing this approach because the role of discourses as both forms of political expression and the subject of historical study remain important. The most prominent book in this field was a disappointment. John Brewer's The Pleasures of the Imagination: English Culture in the Eighteenth Century (1997) is a work about and of consumerism. The forcing house of eighteenth-century public demand provides the essential pressure for cultural modernization and for the definition of taste in this account. Consumerism has also structured Brewer's book as a cultural and intellectual artefact. As he acknowledges, he wanted to ensure that the book “would be a beautiful object,” and HarperCollins has amply fulfilled this requirement. The publisher was also responsible for fighting what Brewer terms the “alien abstractions” of the original prose, and presumably for the decision to dispense with footnotes. The book as consumer product contributes to the sumptuous cover illustration, a painting of “Sir Rowland and Lady Winn in the Library at Nostell Priory,” to the photograph of the relaxed author on the dust-jacket, and to the laudatory quotes from two big names, Simon Schama and Lisa Jardine, not noted for their work on the subject but then most potential purchasers would not know that.


Author(s):  
Y. Zelenin ◽  
◽  
A. Vasiliev ◽  
Y.V. Pechatnova ◽  
◽  
...  

The question of defining own national identity is a kind of prism with the help of which consideration, estimation and research of many important features of modern political and legal life of Turkic-Mongolian peoples are possible. That is why at present it is important to trace the foundations of the ideological-value factor, continuity and preservation of traditional and legal institutions of the peoples of the Turkic-Mongolian world. The aim of the study is to analyse the main scientific ideas about the degree of continuity and the possibility of preserving traditional political and legal values in the countries of the Turkic-Mongolian world in the context of globalisation. The authors have assessed the degree of study of the subject of research, highlighted the main scientific ideas, analyzed the possibility of preserving traditional values of the Turkic-Mongolian world in the context of globalization. In the course of the study, proven scientific principles of pluralism of political and legal cultures and historicism, cultural and civilizational approach, historical, hermeneutic, comparative and formal-legal methods were used. As a result of the study, the authors conclude that, on the one hand, the specific functioning of the political and legal institutions of the Turkic-Mongol world is based on the desire to maintain their independence and autonomy from the influence of external forces, but on the other hand, the imitation of Western-oriented narratives is traced with varying degrees of success


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