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Abstract

This article addresses the methodological issues involved in the study of interlingual translation as an avenue of reception in the history of ideas. In particular, it assesses the possible uses of linguistic contextualism and conceptual history (Begriffsgeschichte) in this endeavor. It argues that both of these approaches have been, or are capable of being, far more sensitive towards the phenomenon of reception than it is usually acknowledged and, indeed, this is an area where cross-fertilization between them (often commended in general but rarely if ever in specific terms) is a practical possibility. Perspectives from Rezeptionsgeschichte may provide useful tools for building bridges between them. A few case studies in translation history are then critically examined, and on the basis of the foregoing methodological reflections propositions are made for further refining the approach taken in those case studies.

In: East Central Europe

Abstract

This article inquires into the meaning and valence of late nineteenth-century exotic displays in Budapest, a location without the colonial stakes that apparently determined the course of the “human zoo” in most Western European contexts. It explores the reporting on ethnic shows in the metropolitan press, points out stereotypical and more idiosyncratic representations, and examines these against the background of arising scientific discourses in anthropology and ethnography. While in some corners at least the ethnic shows were understood and promoted as potential instruments of engendering a cosmopolitan sense of “being-in-the-world” for a recently emancipated province of a continental empire, the responses do not appear to have satisfied such expectations.

In: East Central Europe

Abstract

The Jesuit scholar János Sajnovics’s (1733–85) work on the ‘sameness’ of the Hungarian and Sámi language, first published in 1770, re-ignited discussion on the ethnic kinship and origin of the Hungarians, traditionally associated with the Turkic or ‘Scythian’ warrior peoples of the Eurasian steppe. Participants in this discussion relied extensively on international and domestic literature in ethnography and global geography, classifying these peoples according to the categories of stadial history as savage or barbarous. As Scythianism was entwined with discourses of social distinction and political privilege of the Hungarian elite, and the Kingdom of Hungary was both a multi-ethnic entity and part of the larger Habsburg composite polity whose enlightened reformist leaders were challenging these privileges, the subject had significant ideological implications. Representations of the Sámi even assumed dehumanising overtones. On a different level of abstraction, some of the contributors, like the par excellence Hungarian philosophe György Bessenyei (1746–1811), also dedicated important texts to larger questions of nature, human nature and culture. The paper examines the interferences among these different genres, and the ways in which assumptions about the nation’s ‘own’ past and natural states, and their ambiguous confrontation with mainstream European intellectual developments, shaped emerging discourses of identity during the Hungarian national awakening, with long-standing consequences.

In: The State of Nature: Histories of an Idea
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Read Crisis as a trigger for new ways of thinking about politics here.

This volume explores the complex theme of crisis in European political thought from antiquity to the twenty-first century. It investigates the innovations in political thought that sprang from crisis, as well as the conceptual challenges thinkers faced when dealing with the devastation wrought by spiritual, economic and political crises. In so doing, Crisis and Renewal also examines the ways in which crisis often became the site of renewal. As an object of theoretical reflection, and as a pivotal element of our vocabulary, the notion of crisis is often applied, indiscriminately and without clarity, to a huge variety of domains.This volume provides a historically informed analysis of what it means to reflect on and theorise about crisis.
Contributors are: Erica Benner, Niall Bond, Nathaniel Boyd, Andrea Catanzaro, Patricia Chiantera-Stutte, Alberto Clerici, Cesare Cuttica, Annalisa Furia, George Gallwey, Kai Gräf, Ferenc Hörcher, Paschalis M. Kitromilides, László Kontler, Adriana Luna-Fabritius, Clara Maier, Janine Murphy, Adrian O’Connor, and Mark Somos.
Editors: and
The notions of happiness and trust as cements of the social fabric and political legitimacy have a long history in Western political thought. However, despite the great contemporary relevance of both subjects, and burgeoning literatures in the social sciences around them, historians and historians of thought have, with some exceptions, unduly neglected them. In Trust and Happiness in the History of European Political Thought, editors László Kontler and Mark Somos bring together twenty scholars from different generations and academic traditions to redress this lacuna by contextualising historically the discussion of these two notions from ancient Greece to Soviet Russia. Confronting this legacy and deep reservoir of thought will serve as a tool of optimising the terms of current debates.

Contributors are: Erica Benner, Hans W. Blom, Niall Bond, Alberto Clerici, Cesare Cuttica, John Dunn, Ralf-Peter Fuchs, Gábor Gángó, Steven Johnstone, László Kontler, Sara Lagi, Adriana Luna-Fabritius, Adrian O’Connor, Eva Odzuck, Kálmán Pócza, Vladimir Ryzhkov, Peter Schröder, Petra Schulte, Mark Somos, Alexey Tikhomirov, Bee Yun, and Hannes Ziegler.
In: Trust and Happiness in the History of European Political Thought