The Long Quarrel: Past and Present in the Eighteenth Century examines how the intellectual clashes emerging from the Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns continued to reverberate until the end of the eighteenth century. This extended Quarrel was not just about the value of ancient and modern, but about historical thought in a broader sense. The tension between ancient and modern expanded into a more general tension between past and present, which were no longer seen as essentially similar, but as different in nature. Thus, a new kind of historical consciousness came into being in the Long Quarrel of the eighteenth century, which also gave rise to new ideas about knowledge, art, literature and politics.
Contributors are: Jacques Bos, Anna Cullhed, Håkon Evju, Vera Faßhauer, Andrew Jainchill, Anton M. Matytsin, Iain McDaniel, Larry F. Norman, David D. Reitsam, Jan Rotmans, Friederike Voßkamp, and Christine Zabel.
Jacques Bos, Ph.D. (2003), Leiden University, is associate professor at the Department of Philosophy of the University of Amsterdam. His principal area of research is early-modern intellectual history.
Jan Rotmans obtained his PhD in history from the University of Amsterdam in 2020, where he currently works as a policy officer. His dissertation is entitled Enlightened Pessimism: Republican Decline in Dutch Revolutionary Thought, 1780-1800.
List of Figures Notes on Contributors
Part 1: The Long Quarrel
1 The Long Quarrel in the Eighteenth Century Jacques Bos and Jan Rotmans
2 The Quarrel in the Long Eighteenth Century: From “Ancient and Modern” to “Classical and Romantic” Larry F. Norman
Part 2: Epistemology
3 The Speculative Foundations of the Quarrel: Fontenelle’s Plurality of Inhabited Worlds and the ‘Epistemology of the Uncertain’ Christine Zabel
4 The Quarrel over Chronology at the Académie des inscriptions: Ancient History, Modern Methods, and the Autonomy of the Historical Discipline Anton M. Matytsin
Part 3: Aesthetics
5 Questioning Homer’s Iliad? Different Perceptions of the Ancient World in the Pages of the Nouveau Mercure Galant David D. Reitsam
6 Thersites Moralized: Eighteenth-Century Corrective, Apologetic and Exegetic Readings of the Second Book of Homer’s Iliad Vera Fasshauer
7 “Horace is dead, but I am alive”: Epic Failure and Satiric Authority in Eighteenth-Century Sweden Anna Cullhed
8 ‘Necesse est indiciis monstrare recentibus abdita rerum’: William Hogarth’s The Four Times of Day and the Challenge to Past Models in Eighteenth-Century Art Friederike Voßkamp
Part 4: Politics
9 Ochlocracy and Democracy in the “Long Quarrel”: Modern Republicanism and Its Ancient Rivals Revisited Iain McDaniel
10 The Political Thought of Henri de Boulainvilliers Reconsidered Andrew Jainchill
11 Between History and Political Economy: The Debate over Ancient Populousness in Eighteenth-Century Denmark-Norway Håkon Evju
Bibliography Index
All interested in eighteenth-century intellectual history, including the history of art and literature, especially those concerned with the Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns, the Enlightenment, and historical thought. Keywords: Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns, Enlightenment, eighteenth century, historical thought, historical consciousness, intellectual history, literary history, history of aesthetics, history of political thought.