1,354,493 research outputs found
The Historian as a Translator of the Past
No full textThis chapter takes into consideration the arguments regarding the relationships between history and translation advanced by eminent historians such as Quentin Skinner, John Pocock, and Peter Burke. Then, taking inspiration from an essay by Kari Palonen, particular attention is devoted to Koselleck’s theoretical assumption according to which there is (or, at least, there should be) a meta-language which would constitute a necessary term of comparison for the translation of past words and concepts; the thesis put forward in this chapter is that, in fact, such a meta-language does not exist and could not exist, our own language being the only means through which we can translate past words and concepts. The distinction between onomasiology and semasiology, originally introduced in linguistic studies and resumed by Koselleck for historical analysis, could be of help to cope with this issue; if exploited in all its implications, it would allow to avoid some possible epistemological aporias in the conception of history as a translation of the past. Above all, this should lead to be aware of the fact that the act of writing history, that is the act of translating past words and concepts, is constitutively and unavoidably anachronistic, and that the only way out from this impasse is a form of conscious and careful anachronism; furthermore, this anachronism should be conceived as a form of synchronism, since language in action continually reset and suspend time, linking past, present and future
Introduction: Translating the past
No full textThe artle introduce the volume 'History as a Translation of the Past: Case-Studies from the West
Lettere di John Acton, Ferdinando Borbone e Maria Carolina d'Asburgo-Lorena a Francesco Maria Statella ottobre 1799 - giugno 1800
No full textIl bicentenario della Repubblica napoletana del 1799 ed il 150° anniversario dell’Unità d’Italia sono stati caratterizzati da una vivace e spesso colorita serie di pubblicazioni e di manifestazioni, che hanno avuto lo scopo di riabilitare l’immagine della monarchia borbonica e di mettere in discussione le modalità del processo unitario. Il carteggio di Ferdinando Borbone, Maria Carolina d’Asburgo-Lorena e John Acton con Francesco Maria Statella, chiamato a succedere nell’ottobre del 1799 come Luogotenente e Capitan generale del Regno di Napoli al celebre cardinale Fabrizio Ruffo, permette ora di gettare nuova luce sullo spessore della politica borbonica in un momento cruciale per le sorti del Mezzogiorno d’Italia e, soprattutto, consente di valutare a pieno lo scarsissimo rilievo politico e militare che avevano gli Stati italiani pre-unitari nel quadro della politica di potenza messa in atto da Francia, Inghilterra, Austria-Impero e Russia. Proprio nel periodo immediatamente successivo alla caduta della Repubblica napoletana, sul quale giustamente la storiografia in questi ultimi anni ha spostato l’attenzione, è possibile misurare gli esiti del programma riformistico adottato dalla dinastia borbonica nella seconda metà del Settecento e cogliere la gravità dello scollamento che si venne a creare fra la monarchia e i ceti dirigenti meridionali
Cultura e pratica politica fra Regno di Napoli e Stato pontificio nel 1798-99: il conflitto fra controrivoluzione e insorgenze
No full textIl saggio ripercorre le vicende del conflitto fra insorgenze e controrivoluzione al confine tra regno di Napoli e Stato pontificio, mettendo in luce lo scollamento che si venne a creare fra ceti dirigenti e strati popolari che si opponevano all'arrivo delle armate repubblicane francesi e napoletane
L’origine dei feudi nei Regni di Napoli e Sicilia nell’opera di Giacinto Dragonetti
No full textThe article focuses on Giacinto Dragonetti’s Origins of the Fiefs in the Neapolitan and Sicilian Kingdom. The book was published in 1788 as expression of the governmental policy concerning the good interpretation of the Volentes chapter and the right exerted by the fiscal system on the fiefs without heirs. Through a detailed analysis of the text and the context into which it was written, the article aims to deepen the knowledge of the cultural changes caused by the intertwining among historiography, politics and law into the framework of the discussions relating the feudal matter in the second half of the Eighteenth century. Paying particular attention to the epistemological and methodological innovations in the fields of the textual critics and philological erudition, as well as in the larger outlook of the social and natural sciences, the author points out the “pre-historicist” bent acquired by the history of law through the development of evolutionary and dynamic conceptions (such as the theory of epigenesis), which were alternative to the hypothetical and analogical ones at that time prevailing. The study of the origins of the fiefs borrowed many heuristic innovations from different disciplinary fields in a complex way, fostering the way to the writing of proper constitutional histories
Jus percipiendi pecuniam: credito e rendite fra XIII e XIV secolo
No full textThe article reconstructs the intellectual process through which the right to perceive annuities (jus percipiendi pecuniam) was identified. This conceptual and juridical instrument was of great importance for the functioning of an economy largely based on the circulation of annuities, such as that existing between the Middle Age and the Renaissance. At the centre of this intellectual process there were, on the one hand, the theory of the divided domunium, through which the dominium eminens was to be distinguished from the dominium utilis, and on the other the debate concerning the management of the res ecclesiae and the use of goods, which concentrated on the relations between usus-fructus and jus. Reflecting on the technical-legal materials deriving from the flourishing economic activities of the later Middle Ages, doctors on civil law, theologians and doctors in canon law worked out a conceptual instrument which allowed to make the real estates ‘movable’ and, at the same time, which permitted the sins of usury and simony to be avoided. To pursue this goal, it was necessary to give a juridical qualification to the usus-fructus and to recognise to the annuity its juridical autonomy, considering it as independent both from the propriety and from the possession. Thanks to the right to perceive annuities (jus percipiendi pecuniam) would have been possible to conclude a series of transactions that could have been censured from the ecclesiastical institutions, making available many assets which otherwise would have been excluded from trade
‘Oeconomy' and 'Political Oeconomy' in the Theory of Moral Sentiments and in the Wealth of Nations’
No full textIt has been authoritatively supposed that probably Adam Smith did not make use for his book of the term ‘political economy’, because of the Editor’s choice of not repeating the title of James Steuart book. In fact, if we examine attentively the use of the term ‘political oeconomy’ made by Adam Smith, we reach different conclusions; in order to better understand this use, it is necessary taking into account the use of the term made by others authors, writing in the third quarter of the Eighteenth century, when the ‘political oeconomy’ begun a new life. Until then the term had been only rarely used, especially in a tradition linked to the writings of Xenophon and Aristotle. To make more clear this literary context, and the disciplinary process occurring at that time, we will focus not only on the use of the term ‘political economy’ in the Wealth of Nations, but also on the significance of the term ‘oeconomy’ in the Theory of Moral Sentiments.
The entry ‘Oeconomy’ published in 1755 by Rousseau on behalf of Diderot and D’Alambert, represents a good example of the tensions that followed in those years the word ‘oeconomy’ in its relation to the term ‘political oeconomy’. The entry published in the fifth volume of the Éncyclopedie, under the exact title “Économie ou Oeconomy (Morale et Politique)”, was reissued three years later by the editor Duvillard of Geneve choosing as title Discours sur l’économie politique, with the consent of the same Jean Jacques Rousseau; in the meanwhile the philosopher of Geneva had broken with the Encyclopedists, which, for the eleventh volume of the Éncyclopedie, published in 1765, reproduced under the title “political oeconomy” the work of N. A. Boulanger, Recherches sur l’origine du despotisme oriental (1761).
Furthermore, when Adam Smith sojourned in Paris during the 1766, the group of Physiocrats had begun to speak of the new “Science de l’économie politique”, a term used above all by Samuel Dupont de Nemours and the marquis of Mirabeau some year later. Anyway, the most important reference of Adam Smith relating to the term in question when he wrote the Wealth of Nations, was the work of James Steuart, Inquiry into the Principle of Political Oeconomy; but the founder of the modern political economy did not like the term ‘political oeconomy’ in order to define his inquiry. In fact, the meaning of the noun ‘economy’ was still ‘order/structure’, so that the term ‘political economy’ was essentially used to indicate the science of politics. It was only during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries that the discipline of Economics was progressively identified as a field independent, and thus separate, from the science of Politics, conferring to the term ‘political economy’ a new semantic identity; but it was a difficult and not linear process, on which historians and scholars are still debating
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