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This paper explores how the Codex de la Cruz Badiano illustrates the ability of indigenous Mexicans to appropriate European forms to their own ends, even when seemingly conforming to European traditions and theories. To fully appreciate the Codex readers must reevaluate the concepts of literacy and cultural assimilation in the light of the bicultural nature of sixteenth-century Mexico. The European "contamination" seen by many scholars might actually reflect indigenous ethnocentricity and misinterpretation of European texts, rather than the wholesale acceptance of European culture.
This article traces the development of the hermaphrodite symbol in alchemical literature from the high Middle Ages to the early modern period. It argues that alchemical writers used themetaphor of hermaphroditism to describe the "philosophers' stone," a chemical agent believed to be a combination of contradictory elemental qualities. Such writers extended the hermaphrodite metaphor to Jesus, whome they conflated with the philosophers' stone, and whom they viewed as a combination of masculine and feminine, as well as human and divine, attributes. This article also explores the "Jesus Hermaphrodite" metaphor in the context of approaches toward intersex people during the period.
In this paper I explore the history of the notion that to believe in religion is to believe in society by tracing instances in which, in the discourse of this current within nineteenth-century French republicanism, the term religion entered into the same semantic field as the notions of society and association. I analyze several groups and individuals who sought to define religion by invoking "association" and "society": the Saint-Simonians, P.-J.-B. Buchez, Pierre Leroux, Jean-Marie Guyau, and Emile Durkheim. I conclude by suggesting that this way of thinking about religion not only illuminates the intellectual context in which Durkheim's religious sociology emerged, but also highlights a distinctly French social imaginary.
Robert Nisbet's influential "Many Tocquevilles" is shown to be lacking in evidence for its contentions about Tocqueville's reputation from 1870 to 1940 and about American intellectuals' interpretations of his works after 1940. The uncritical reception accorded to "Many Tocquevilles" led to distortions of Tocqueville's thought and an erasure of an important part of the historical record, resulting in significant harm to the field. Nisbet made his unsupported assertions to bolster conservative political positions. Tocqueville was widely read between 1870 and 1940. No evidence exists for Nisbet's claims about interpretations of Tocqueville's works supposedly made by subsequent American commentators.
Maurice Blondel, best known for his 1893 work on Action, offers a window on the world of philosophers who negotiated the scientific disciplines at the turn of the twentieth century. During this amazing era of discoveries, Blondel encouraged the bold, encyclopedic spirit of science as well as the new standards coming into use for accumulating and judging observational evidence. However, he warned of reductionism, determinism, and phenomenism, trends which could be avoided or corrected if the nature and scope of science were broadened. Such a broadening would introduce a more integrated and holistic understanding of the scientific quest.
History is in the midst of experiencing a "moral turn." This shift has resulted from the culture wars, challenges to objectivity and truth, and various world crises. Understanding moral issues through historical narratives requires a dialogue between historians and philosophers. Philosophers need to appreciate historians' attention to circumstance and context, while historians need to be familiar with philosophical concepts such as moral luck and virtue ethics. Rather than simply rendering judgments, history in a moral mode demonstrates the complexity behind agency, character, empathy, and moral decisions.
Although moral history in the twentieth century was much less intense than in earlier centuries, it never entirely disappeared. Now it seems to have increased in the past two decades. Moral history, however, is a difficult genre to define. How many moral judgments on the part of the historian qualifies it as part of the category? What work is without some moral component? But whether or not George Cotkin is mistaken on a few minor matters, this is excellent, thought-provoking historiography that is a benefit to the discipline as a whole.
It is suggested that George Cotkin's essay is unpersuasive in its two central claims. Firstly, the evidence is not persuasive that there has been a discernible "moral turn" among historians in the last two decades; rather, it is argued that an engagement with morality has been fairly constant in historical scholarship since its ancient origins. Secondly, it is felt that Cotkin is evasive on whether he wishes historians merely to have opinions about the moralities of others in the past or to be moral agents themselves; the first position is thought to be tenable, the latter probably not.
George Cotkin's paper is an earnest effort to resolve the supposed conflict between inherited historical circumstances and the enunciation of ethical principles―as if necessity and freedom, past and present, somehow exclude each other; as if "moral history" is something new; as if the injection of an authorial voice or point of view gets us beyond the absurdities of "objectivity." Clearly Cotkin has not been reading historical monographs published since, say, 1935. Is there a field not reanimated by the moral problems of exclusion, oppression, and obligation framed by the civil rights movement, the women's movement, and then the "new social movements" organized around questions of identity and sexuality?
The essay is stimulating, but some clarification would be welcome on the relationship between religion and moral history. The reopening of moral inquiry in history probably began earlier than Cotkin suggests. On the issue of how exactly history and moral philosophy might be joined, there is much to be said for the classroom and for community programs like "Facing History and Ourselves."
Reply to Steven Lestition's article, "Countering, Transposing, or Negating the Enlightenment? A Response to Robert Norton," published in the Journal of the History of Ideas(2007), pp. 659-81.
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