Samuel Clain and the Rumanian Enlightenment in Transylvania

Slavic Review ◽  
1964 ◽  
Vol 23 (4) ◽  
pp. 660-675 ◽  
Author(s):  
Keith Hitchins
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Social Contract ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
The West ◽  
Local Conditions ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Relationship

In the second half of the eighteenth century the leavening effects of the Enlightenment began to be felt among the Rumanians of Transylvania. The Enlightenment in Transylvania—and in Eastern Europe generally —was a curious blend of natural law, rationalism, and optimism, drawn from the West, and nationalism, a response to local conditions. It is no coincidence that the first tangible signs of national awakening among the Rumanians manifested themselves at this time. In the thought of the Enlightenment they discovered new justification for their claims to equality with their Magyar, Saxon, and Szekler neighbors. For example, they applied the notion of “natural” civil equality between individuals to the relationship between whole peoples, and they accepted wholeheartedly the myth of the social contract as the foundation of society and as the guarantee of the rights of all those who composed it.

Hume's Sceptical Enlightenment

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ryu Susato
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
Social Contract ◽  
David Hume ◽  
Contract Theory ◽  
Social Contract Theory ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
The Social ◽  
Positive Assessment

David Hume (1711–1776) remains one of the most equivocal thinkers in eighteenth-century Europe. Some emphasise his conservatism because of his criticism of rationalism in morals and of the social contract theory in politics, while others deem him one of the most important liberal thinkers. He can also be characterised as a forerunner of utilitarianism or even postmodernism. How can these images be integrated? To address this issue, Hume’s Sceptical Enlightenment demonstrates the uniqueness and complexity of Hume as an Enlightenment thinker through an investigation of the ‘historical’ Hume. Based on a sceptical adaptation of Epicureanism, he delineates the variable and vulnerable nature of the workings of our imagination and opinions, and emphasises the essential instability of civilisation. In addition, he retains a positive assessment of such modern values as liberty, politeness and refinement, and carries the banner for secularisation. His ‘spirit of scepticism’, which permeates even his non-epistemological writings, enables these seemingly paradoxical positions. This book is not only for Hume specialists, but is also a contribution to the flourishing fields of the Enlightenment study. This intellectual history connects Hume’s early eighteenth-century Continental and British predecessors not only to Hume, but also to British philosophers writing up until the nineteenth century.

Identifying the Bases of Party Competition in Eastern Europe

1993 ◽  
Vol 23 (4) ◽  
pp. 521-548 ◽  
Author(s):  
Geoffrey Evans ◽  
Stephen Whitefield
Keyword(s):  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Nation Building ◽  
Party Competition ◽  
New Democracies ◽  
Political Systems ◽  
The West ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Bases ◽  
The Future ◽  
The Relationship

This article examines the emerging structure of party competition in the new democracies of Eastern Europe. It argues that the relationship between the social bases, issue dimensions and stability of party competition in countries in the region will vary depending on their differing experience of marketization, ethnic homogeneity and established statehood. In some countries, the predicted framework of party competition will derive from socio-economic divisions and will resemble that found in the West; in other countries, ethnicity and nation-building will provide the principal structuring factors; in yet other cases, where severe constraints exist on the emergence of any clear bases or dimensions, competition will centre on valence issues from which high voter volatility may be expected. Except where Western-type competition obtains, considerable doubts exist about the future stability of political systems in the region.

scholarly journals Ethical Issues in Consent for the Reuse of Data in Health Data Platforms

2021 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Alex McKeown ◽  
Miranda Mourby ◽  
Paul Harrison ◽  
Sophie Walker ◽  
Mark Sheehan ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Social Contract ◽  
Ethical Issues ◽  
Personalised Medicine ◽  
Data Reuse ◽  
Remote Access ◽  
Risk Indicators ◽  
New Paradigm ◽  
The Social ◽  
New Thinking ◽  
The Relationship

AbstractData platforms represent a new paradigm for carrying out health research. In the platform model, datasets are pooled for remote access and analysis, so novel insights for developing better stratified and/or personalised medicine approaches can be derived from their integration. If the integration of diverse datasets enables development of more accurate risk indicators, prognostic factors, or better treatments and interventions, this obviates the need for the sharing and reuse of data; and a platform-based approach is an appropriate model for facilitating this. Platform-based approaches thus require new thinking about consent. Here we defend an approach to meeting this challenge within the data platform model, grounded in: the notion of ‘reasonable expectations’ for the reuse of data; Waldron’s account of ‘integrity’ as a heuristic for managing disagreement about the ethical permissibility of the approach; and the element of the social contract that emphasises the importance of public engagement in embedding new norms of research consistent with changing technological realities. While a social contract approach may sound appealing, however, it is incoherent in the context at hand. We defend a way forward guided by that part of the social contract which requires public approval for the proposal and argue that we have moral reasons to endorse a wider presumption of data reuse. However, we show that the relationship in question is not recognisably contractual and that the social contract approach is therefore misleading in this context. We conclude stating four requirements on which the legitimacy of our proposal rests.

O początkach wychowania seksualnego w Polsce i kontestacji młodzieżowej na Zachodzie – zapis ostatniego wywiadu z Profesorem Andrzejem Jaczewskim

2021 ◽  
pp. 188-205
Author(s):  
Julia Stępniewska ◽  
Piotr Zańko ◽  
Adam Fijałkowski
Keyword(s):  
Sex Education ◽  
Auxiliary Function ◽  
Sexual Revolution ◽  
Sexual Education ◽  
The West ◽  
The Social ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The University ◽  
The Relationship

In this text, we ask about the relationship between sexual education in Poland in the 1960s and 1970s with the cultural contestation and the moral (including sexual) revolution in the West as seen through the eyes of Prof. Andrzej Jaczewski (1929–2020) – educationalist, who for many years in 1970s and 1980s conducted seminars at the University of Cologne, pediatrician, sexologist, one of the pioneers of sexual education in Poland. The movie “Sztuka kochania. Historia Michaliny Wisłockiej” (“The Art of Love. The Story of Michalina Wisłocka” [1921–2005]), directed in 2017 by Maria Sadowska, was the impulse for our interview. After watching it, we discovered that the counter-cultural background of the West in the 1960s and 1970s was completely absent both in the aforementioned film and in the discourse of Polish sex education at that time. Moreover, Andrzej Jaczewski’s statement (July 2020) indicates that the Polish concept of sexual education in the 1960s and 1970s did not arise under the influence of the social and moral revolution in the West at the same time, and its originality lay in the fact that it was dealt with by professional doctors-specialists. We put Andrzej Jaczewski’s voice in the spotlight. Our voice is usually muted in this text, it is more of an auxiliary function (Chase, 2009). Each of the readers may impose their own interpretative filter on the story presented here.

Russian Enlightenment as a Source of National Philosophy Formation

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (2-1) ◽  
pp. 213-236
Author(s):  
Ivan Kokovin ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Methodological Approach ◽  
Analytical Description ◽  
Russian Philosophy ◽  
The West ◽  
Xviii Century ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Russian Soil ◽  
Cultural Origins ◽  
Philosophical Understanding

The study is devoted to the philosophical understanding of the problem of the cultural origins of Russian philosophy. In the author’s opinion, the source of diversity of modern approaches to the phenomenon of Russian Philosophy is, first of all, the absence of a unified methodological approach. The diversity of research on the phenomenon of the Russian philosophy origins is also a consequence of research susceptibility to certain methodological influences. The paper aims to identify a number of philosophical, historical, literary approaches to the problem of the genesis of the eighteenth century Russian Enlightenment. It is necessary to clarify the mechanisms and procedures for the reception of Western European ideas and concepts by Russian Enlightenment during the eighteenth century. On the basis of adaptation of natural law terms, the author considers certain trends in the theory of reconstruction of the Enlightenment phenomenon in Russia. He reveals a number of significant features of the process of reconstruction of the Enlightenment ideology formation on Russian soil, including the idea that European concepts and theories are assimilated by the domestic semiosphere in the form in which they existed in the culture of the West. The author highlights the idea, that researchers were convinced that Russia of the XVIII century already had a national philosophy. The paper also draws attention to the lack of analytical interest in the problems of transformation of the language of expression of political phenomena. In the same row, there is also the idea that the process of reception of the enlightenment heritage of the West had a revolutionary, not an evolutionary, specificity, and was devoid of cultural prerequisites. Basing on the material of historical and historical-philosophical studies, the author considers the possibilities of constructing a methodologically integral reconstruction, chronologically covering the entire period of the XVIII century. The research methodology is based on the approach that includes an analytical description of the problems of the thematic fields of discourse, concepts and theories of the Enlightenment on the Russian soil. The result of the analysis is the systematization of contradictions in the process of analyzing the phenomena of the Russian Enlightenment in the XVIII century.

Standardizing Ethics East and West

2018 ◽  
pp. 212-240
Author(s):  
F. Sigmund Topor
Keyword(s):  
Intercultural Communication ◽  
Social Contract ◽  
Homo Sapiens ◽  
Basic Element ◽  
The West ◽  
Social Emotion ◽  
Linguistic Rules ◽  
The Social ◽  
Moral Qualities ◽  
Confucian Heritage Cultures

A basic element that separates primates from us Homo sapiens is language, which serves as a socializing catalyst for interpersonal and intercultural communication. Linguistic rules can be regarded as the ethics of communication. Without such rules, encoding and decoding of communication between a speaker/writer and a listener/reader would be impossible. Etiquette and the social emotion of shame, which have dissimilar connotations in Confucian heritage cultures of the East and Socratic or Judeo-Christian cultures of the West, are examples of moral qualities having different attributes and applications for diverse peoples. Whereas distinctive societies, cultures, and civilizations define morality based on their particular history and culture, including religion, humans everywhere are the same. Thus, drawing on Jean-Jacques Rousseau's 1762 Social Contract, the current reality of globalization requires a cultural contract that harmonizes the morals and ethics of Eastern and Western civilizations.

Foundations II

2021 ◽  
pp. 193-215
Author(s):  
Mogens Lærke
Keyword(s):  
Social Contract ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
Collective Security ◽  
Causal Account ◽  
Natural Right ◽  
The Social ◽  
Theoretical Evolution

This chapter explores Spinoza’s doctrine of the social contract and his understanding of natural law and natural right. Contrasting his views with those of Hobbes, it interprets the social contract not as a logical, historical, or causal account of the state’s foundations, but as a fictive narrative, grounded entirely in the imagination, that citizens in a free republic must embrace in order to prevent mutual persecution and ensure collective security. It also argues how such a reading of the social contract can help resolve fundamental tensions between the Tractatus theologico-politicus and the later Tractatus politicus that until now have been most convincingly explained in terms of a fundamental theoretical evolution between Spinoza’s two political treatises.

A Renewal of the Social Contract

2021 ◽  
pp. 113-132
Author(s):  
Charles Devellennes
Keyword(s):  
Social Contract ◽  
Economic Justice ◽  
Economic Independence ◽  
Family Assistance ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Future ◽  
Economic Trends ◽  
Traditional Sense ◽  
New Form

This chapter provides a reflection on the new social contract, taking Diderot as dialectician of change, and offer ways to think about the future of the tradition. It shows that such a model is possible. A new social contract will take into account the need for liberty, democracy and economic justice. Most working class people have finished high school and been awarded a Baccalauréat, and many are home-owners of one of the millions of bungalows built throughout peripheral France. Yet their ability to secure economic independence, a promise of the Enlightenment, has not materialized. Many are worse off than their parents, and those without family assistance are extremely exposed to the ebb and flow of macro-economic trends such as global slowdown and recession. A social contract of the future has to address these needs that were posited as the sine qua non condition for social advancement more than two centuries ago. The revolt of the gilets jaunes against rent-seeking economic actors, such as landlords, motorway management companies, insurance and mortgage companies, and utilities, is testament to the economic plight that needs redressing. Although the gilets jaunes have failed to organize themselves politically in the traditional sense, they have provided one of the strongest political challenges to the very existence of the French state as it currently stands. It is this new form of politics, which does not go through political parties but demands social and economic justice directly, that is at the centre of the new social contract they demand.

Auditing, Trust, and the Social Contract

2021 ◽  
pp. 112-131
Author(s):  
Bo Rothstein
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Research ◽  
Social Contract ◽  
Quality System ◽  
Representative Democracy ◽  
High Quality ◽  
Empirical Results ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Relationship

The relationship between trust and auditing can be described as a paradox. In the social contract that forms the basis of modern societies, extensive trust issues arise. How can citizens trust that what is promised in the contract will also be provided? Elections should work to put politicians who do not deliver according to the social contract to be voted out of their position. Empirical research shows that this often does not work, hence the need for an auditing body. Empirical results have shown that national auditing institutions work towards reducing corruption and other forms of malfeasance, and are thereby vital to creating a working social contract. A high-quality system for auditing also has a much stronger effect on reducing corruption than is the case for democracy. Auditing turns out to be an undervalued instrument that not only complements but in some ways proves even more effective than representative democracy.

Puritan Radicalism and the Enlightenment

1960 ◽  
Vol 29 (4) ◽  
pp. 424-439 ◽  
Author(s):  
George L. Mosse
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
World View ◽  
Difficult Problem ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Religious Truth ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
The World ◽  
Christian Thought ◽  
The Many ◽  
The Relationship

The relationship between Christianity and the Enlightenment presents a subtle and difficult problem. No historian has as yet fully answered the important question of how the world view of the eighteenth century is related to that of traditional Christianity. It is certain, however, that the deism of that century rejected traditional Christianity as superstitious and denied Christianity a monopoly upon religious truth. The many formal parallels which can be drawn between Enlightenment and Christianity cannot obscure this fact. From the point of view of historical Christianity, both Protestant and Catholic, the faith of the Enlightenment was blasphemy. It did away with a personal God, it admitted no supernatural above the natural, it denied the relevance of Christ's redemptive task in this world. This essay attempts to discover whether traditional Christian thought itself did not make a contribution to the Enlightenment.

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