Eric M. Ramírez-Weaver, A Saving Science: Capturing the Heavens in Carolingian Manuscripts. University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2017, pp. 312, 75 b/w ill. + 35 color ill.

Mediaevistik ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 383-384
Author(s):  
Scott G. Bruce
Keyword(s):  
The State ◽  
State University ◽  
Pennsylvania State University ◽  
Pedagogical Tool ◽  
Vital Importance ◽  
Christian Understanding ◽  
Correct Date

In 809, Carolingian prelates under the direction of Adalhard of Corbie convened at Aachen to discuss, among other pressing issues, the state of the knowledge of computus in the realm. The ability of churchmen to reckon the exact day when Jesus was crucified, the age at which he died, and the correct date to celebrate Easter, a moveable feastday, were of vital importance for the Carolingian program of correctio. The product of their meeting was a practical treatise of computistical, calendrical, and astronomical information known to scholars as the Handbook of 809. Culled from ancient and Christian authorities and lavishly illustrated with a total of forty-six diagrams and star pictures, the Handbook of 809 served as an important pedagogical tool for Carolingian intellectuals, who sought a Christian understanding of the heavens.

Total Freedom: Toward A Dialectical Libertarianism. By Chris Matthew Sciabarra. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000. 390p. $65.00 cloth, $24.50 paper.

2002 ◽  
Vol 96 (1) ◽  
pp. 193-194
Author(s):  
Peter G. Stillman
Keyword(s):  
Social Theory ◽  
Political Ideology ◽  
State Violence ◽  
The State ◽  
State University ◽  
Social Environments ◽  
Pennsylvania State University ◽  
The Social ◽  
Self Interest ◽  
Total Freedom

Sciabarra's book attempts to conjoin dialectics with libertarianism to produce total freedom. He is led to this seemingly odd conjunction by a concatenation of concerns. He sees dialectics as the logic or method most attentive to contexts and libertarianism as a radical political ideology of freedom. He sees the opportunity to free dialectics of its totalitarian (including Marxist) overtones and libertarianism of its apparent irrelevance, which is the more galling now that once-popular Marxism has failed as radical social theory. He wishes to combine his own academic appreciation of the dialectical elements of Marx's method with his long-standing love of libertarian ideas. Primarily, he hopes to expand libertarian thought from a narrow concentration on economic self-interest and the state as repressive to a broader concern with the cultural, social, and historical preconditions of freedom, and he sees dialectics, with its emphasis on contexts, dynamism, and relations, as a method that can be appropriated by libertarians to realize these broader concerns and to propound a comprehensive and radical social theory. No longer need libertarian thought be seen as atomic individualism struggling for freedom against state violence; building on dialectical thinking shorn of its Marxist content, libertarians can embrace whole individuals living in rich social environments that can carry out, without violence, the social powers that the state has illegitimately appropriated.

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