History Commons^™

Tyrannies Gave Rise To Martial Arts, But Enlightened Martial Philosophies Reveal A Better Way, Michael Andregg

Comparative Civilizations Review

Most of this brief review will be academic history, but one of the truisms of the martial arts is that it is never strictly “academic.” Words on paper cannot express some things at the heart of the art. Many of the most thoughtful masters of various schools have worried about how to cultivate students with the discipline and philosophical background to be “safe” for polite society. This is a similar problem for police departments and even armies. The best wish to train professionals in ways of being deadly, without empowering undisciplined people to harm innocents. Therefore, part of this paper …

Book Review: David J. Rosner. Catastrophe And Philosophy, John Berteaux

Comparative Civilizations Review

In Chinese, the word “catastrophe” is composed of two characters: 危机 The first character represents danger and the second is the symbol for opportunity, suggesting as my son so aptly put it, “We should never let a ‘good’ disaster go to waste.” In much the same light, philosopher David Rosner’s sensible and probing anthology, Catastrophe and Philosophy, directs us to observe that, “catastrophes are catastrophes not only because they bring widespread death and destruction in their wake, but also because they fundamentally challenge the basic ‘sense making’ feature of the human mind and our need for a meaningful world.” …

St. Thomas Aquinas And The Third Hellenization Period, Demetri Kantarelis

Comparative Civilizations Review

In this paper, I assert that currently the world has been experiencing the Third Hellenization Period that started with the Italian Renaissance, instigated by the teachings of the theologian and philosopher St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274 CE). Unlike philosophers in previous periods (First and Second Hellenization as well as Medieval), St. Thomas preached that Truth is a function of both Natural Revelation and Supernatural Revelation. This resulted in, simultaneously, Christianizing Aristotle (St. Thomas’ most referenced philosopher) and Aristotleizing Christianity, thus opening up the doors to human reason that had been muted during the Medieval centuries.

I also assert that the basic …

Review Essay: Miran Bozovic. An Utterly Dark Spot: Gaze And Body In Early Modern Philosophy, Shankar Raman

Quidditas

Miran Bozovic. An Utterly Dark Spot: Gaze and Body in Early Modern Philosophy. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000.

Review Essay: Anna Battigelli. Margaret Cavendish And The Exiles Of The Mind, Sylvia Bowerbank

Quidditas

Anna Battigelli. Margaret Cavendish and the Exiles of the Mind. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1998.

Classicism And Christianity In Hélisenne De Crenne's Les Angoysses Doulouoreuses Qui Procedent D'Amours, Megan Conway

Quidditas

Although Renaissance philosophers and theologians like Marsilio Ficino strove mightily to show Plato and Plotinus compatible with Saint Paul, writers of popular prose and poetry suffered no such qualms. While it appears curious and often shocking to modern readers to find reference to the apostles and Apollo in successive paragraphs, many Renaissance writer followed Dante's example in The Divine Comedy and saw nothing incongruous in embracing classical mythology while espousing Christian doctrine. A fascinating example of this combination of traditions is the popular French work of a female author of the early Renaissance—Hélisenne de Crenne's Les Angoysses douloureuses qui procedent …

Review Essay: De' Medici, Lorenzo. The Autobiography Of Lorenzo De' Medici The Magnificent: A Commentary On My Sonnets, Joseph Rosenblum

Quidditas

de' Medici, Lorenzo. The Autobiography of Lorenzo de' Medici the Magnificent: A Commentary on My Sonnets. Trans. James Wyatt Cook. Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies, vol. 129. Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies, Binghamton, N.Y., 1995. 289 pp. $28.

"Pleasing Passages": Style In The Old English Pastoral Care, Ray Moye

Quidditas

The Old English Pastoral Care, a translation of Gregory the Great's Liber Regula Pastoralis which King Alfred completed sometime in the first few years of the 890s, was the first in a series of translations of Latin Christian works in English that would serve as the foundation of Alfred's program of cultural and educational reform aimed at restoring England's preeminence as a leading Christian intellectual center. This reputation that the land had enjoyed during the glory days of Bede and Alcuin had been lost as a consequence of continual Viking invasions in the eighth and ninth centuries, with the …

Review Essay: Theresa Coletti, Naming The Rose: Eco, Medieval Signs, And Modern Theory, Frede Jensen

Quidditas

Theresa Coletti, Naming the Rose: Eco, Medieval Signs, and Modern Theory, Cornell University Press, 1988, xi, 212 pp., index, $30.00.