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Editors\u27 Introduction
No full textThis short introduction presents the background context from which this special issue originated. It briefly sketches how the Dutch Spinoza Society (Vereniging het Spinozahuis) organized two conferences, one in 1997 and one in 2023, with an increasing focus on reflecting on the spreading of Spinoza’s thought in different countries. The papers published here are mostly derived from the 2023 conference, although they are continuous with the longer-term project already initiated in 1997
Spinoza and Spinozism in Twenty-First Century Anglophone Philosophy
No full textIn this paper, I survey some prominent developments in Spinoza scholarship in English-speaking countries in the past quarter-century. Picking up where Tom Cook left off in his analysis of the reception of Spinoza in Anglo-American philosophy in the hundred years after the founding of the Vereniging Het Spinozahuis (1897–1997) (“Spinoza\u27s Place in Twentieth Century\u27s Anglo-American Philosophy”), I seek to identify some of the main currents in the rich profusion of twenty-first century Spinoza scholarship in the USA, UK, Canada, and Australia. Scholarship on Spinoza’s metaphysics has continued to blossom, harkening back in some respects to the idealist interpretations with which Cook opens his survey. But whereas there was a notable lack of scholarly works on Spinoza’s moral and political philosophy in the twentieth century, there is now an abundance of scholarship in these fields. I will conclude by examining the reach of Spinozism in the twenty-first century, looking at the ways in which scholars and journalists have presented Spinoza’s philosophy to a non-academic readership, and exploring the ways in which contemporary metaphysicians and philosophers of emotion and cognition have cast their work under the “brand” of Spinozism
Spinoza and Twentieth-century Italian Culture
No full textThe paper distinguishes between philosophy and culture and explains the reasons why it is preferable to investigate the relationships between Spinoza and the Italian culture (rather than philosophy) of the twentieth century. Italian culture is characterized by five prevailing forces: Roman Catholicism, the neo-idealism of Croce and Gentile, fascism, Marxism, the mass media. Spinoza’s conceptual world has remained foreign to Italian culture, where it has not been expressly opposed, as, for example, by the Catholic side. The paper then examines some of the main philosophical interpretations of Spinoza (as advanced by Giovanni Gentile, Piero Martinetti, Augusto Guzzo, and Antonio Banfi) showing the relationships between them, the philosophy of their authors, and some salient characteristics of the Italian culture of the century. The theologizing attitude of these philosophers (except Banfi), although expressed in different forms, led them to often misleading interpretations that contributed to nullifying a possible encounter between Spinoza and Italian culture. Finally, mention is made of the historical, philological and exegetical research which, over the last thirty years, has offered a new and significant contribution, with an international impact, to Spinoza studies
Preaching with Newman: Sermonic Vernacular for the Moral Formation of the Church
No full textJohn Henry Newman’s Parochial and Plain Sermons demonstrate a homiletic practice which gives focus to Christian doctrine and morality and aims at the spiritual formation of listeners. To accomplish this aim, Newman uses both conversational speech as well as emotion-laden language which engages listeners as whole persons. Newman’s sermons offer preachers guidance for preaching doctrine and holy living, a task which, to modern ears, may sound as difficult as it does boring. Yet, teaching doctrine and morals are part of the preacher’s task today, even as they have been throughout church history. This essay explores Newman’s preaching and puts him forward as an exemplar of preaching for the “simple formation of real people, real Christians.” Such work in and from the pulpit is increasingly necessary in today’s post-Christian age
“Het is beter te trouwen dan van begeerte te branden”. Stemmen van voorstanders van het priesterhuwelijk in de elfde eeuw
No full textDe bestrijding van nicolaïsme (niet-celibatiaire geestelijken) is een belangrijke component van de gregoriaanse hervorming in heel West-Europa. Aan het einde van de elfde eeuw zien we in polemische literatuur dat de meningen over dit onderwerp verdeeld zijn. In dit artikel wordt gekeken naar de visie van kroniekschrijver Sigebert van Gembloers
The COMP-trace effect as an indirect dependency
No full textThis paper discusses two peculiar differences surrounding long-distance dependencies in English, Dutch and German: German and Dutch employ various alternatives to long-distance movement, so-called scope marking constructions, which seem to be absent from English. Conversely, English markedly differs from Dutch and German in showing a strong COMP-trace effect (the mandatory deletion of complementizers in subject LD question). For scope marking structures in German and Dutch, a type of indirect dependency analysis is adopted in which the embedded clause is formally akin to a relative clause. It is then argued that complementizer deletion in English (i.e. the COMP-trace effect) actually instantiates scope marking: the absence of a complementizer signals the presence of a subject contact relative clause. Evidence in favor of this analysis comes from non-identity effects: in English, the putatively LD extracted wh-phrase is able to carry oblique case, which conflicts with the case it should have been assigned in the embedded clause
“The asylum system is completely broken”: An analysis of justifications and resistance for the UK Government’s Rwanda policy in parliamentary debates
No full textIn April 2022, the UK government announced the signing of a ‘partnership agreement’ with the Government of Rwanda in which some asylum seekers who enter the UK would be transported to Rwanda where their cases would be decided. This ‘Rwanda policy’ has been met with strong resistance from opposition politicians. This paper examines how the UK Government has sought to justify this ‘offshore processing’ policy and the ways in which the policy is resisted by politicians from the Opposition. We present a discursive analysis of the transcript of the Home Office’s statement to the House of Commons on the “Global Migration Challenge” and the subsequent debate among Members of Parliament about the statement. We identified three discursive repertoires that politicians on opposing sides used to both justify and resist the Rwanda policy, specifically repertoires focussing on the safety of Rwanda, the need to deter people smugglers and be in line with ‘what the people want’. Despite political polarisation in the debate on this policy, we argue that the use of similar discursive devices to both justify and resist this policy creates problems for supporters of refugees, asylum seekers and migrants in carving out a clear discursive space for their arguments
From Linguistic to Discursive Patterns: Introducing Discoursemes as a Basic Unit of Discourse Analysis
No full textCorpus-assisted discourse studies (CADS) combine corpus linguistics and (critical) discourse analysis to explore how language reflects and shapes discourse. CADS researchers derive macro-level social explanations based on micro-level description of texts. Interpretation (the meso level of discourse analysis) is mostly accomplished by deriving discursive patterns from linguistic patterns observed across many texts. CADS blends close reading (examining individual examples in concordances) and distant reading (looking at results of keyword and collocation analyses). While effective, we argue that CADS lacks a true integration of qualitative and quantitative techniques, which results in a unidirectional workflow where qualitative-hermeneutic interpretation is detached from quantitative analysis. To bridge this gap, we propose operationalising the grouping of linguistic surface realisations in terms of discoursemes – building blocks for discourse analysis. Discursive patterns can then be approximated by co-occurrences of discoursemes. We demonstrate the usefulness of our approach by means of a case study analysing the discourse related to refugees in the German federal parliament during two salient moments in Germany’s history. The case study is carried out using a new open-source software toolkit that facilitates the construction of a consistent database of discoursemes and overcomes some of the technical limitations faced by most CADS studies.
Corpus-assisted Discourse Studies (CADS); Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA); German parliamentary debates (GermaParl); Corpus Workbench (CWB); discourseme
A taste of nobility. The wine cellars of Alfred Vilain XIIII in late nineteenth century Belgium
No full textThis article examines the wine cellars of Alfred Vilain XIIII, a member of one of Belgium’s most prominent noble families, at the time of his death in 1886. An in-depth analysis of the inventory allows us to map the wine consumption of a noble household in great detail. The wine stock consisted of 11,000 bottles of wine, liqueurs, and spirits, reflecting the refined tastes and social status of the Belgian elite in the nineteenth century. It primarily featured high-quality French wines from Bordeaux and Burgundy, aligning with the preferences of the aristocracy and bourgeoisie of the period. The wine cellars were located at the family’s castle in Wissekerke and their townhouse in Brussels, with notable differences in the contents, suggesting varying tastes between the rural and urban settings. Although providing a comprehensive overview of the Vilain XIIII wine inventory, the article calls for further research into the family’s wine purchasing habits and broader culinary practices, proposing that such studies could offer deeper insights into the gastronomic traditions of Belgium’s affluent circles during the long nineteenth century
Zuivere, eerlijke, oprechte kerkmuziek. Leven en werk van componist en kerkmusicus Willem Vogel
No full textSamenvatting proefschrift. Dit proefschrift is verdedigd op 23 juni 2023 aan de Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. Supervisors: prof. dr. August den Hollander (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam) en prof. dr. Marcel Barnard (Protestant Theological University, Amsterdam). Co-supervisor: dr. Gerben Gritter (Conservatorium van Amsterdam)