The Emergence of Subjectivity in the Ancient and Medieval World: An Interpretation of Western Civilization

409 Pages·2020·2.73 MB·English

by  Jon Stewart

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The Emergence of Subjectivity
in the Ancient and Medieval World
OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 14/12/19, SPi
OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 14/12/19, SPi
The Emergence of
Subjectivity in the
Ancient and
Medieval World
An Interpretation of Western Civilization
JON STEWART
1
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1
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
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Library of Congress Control Number: 2019952268
ISBN 978–0–19–885435–7
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198854357.001.0001
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This work is dedicated to the memory of Thomas Posch (1974–2019).
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Preface
The present investigation is designed to be read on its own, but it can also be used
as a companion to the many interdisciplinary humanities courses taught at the
university level. The work offers analyses of a number of foundational texts in the
Western tradition that are often assigned in such courses. The individual chapters
can be read either collectively, as a part of the broader narrative about the devel-
opment of the tradition, or individually, as commentaries on the specific texts
that they treat.
This study does not pretend to represent a new contribution to the specialized
secondary literature on the individual texts, authors, or periods treated. Its
ultimate goal is rather to provide a synoptic view. With that said, the investigation
is informed by the recent developments in the different fields and attempts to
sketch these in a general way for the reader. At the beginning of the individual
chapters, an effort has thus been made to give a brief glimpse of the tradition of
modern scholarship on the work under examination. The goal with these intro-
ductory discussions is to provide the reader with a greater appreciation of the
problems with the texts that scholars have traditionally struggled with. Moreover,
these brief accounts also give some insight into the history of reception of the
works and their role in the Western canon.
Sometimes there is resistance to obligatory humanities courses, and a part of
the dissatisfaction arises from a sense that they are irrelevant for the modern
world and are thus useless as preparation for work life. In response to objections
of this kind, this study attempts to identify the universal issues in key texts from
the Western canon in ways that show their continuing relevance for us today. The
hope is that this will demonstrate why the material from ancient cultures can still
be both valuable and interesting in the twenty-first century.
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Acknowledgments
The idea for the present work arose during a research stay at the Radcliffe Institute
for Advanced Study at Harvard University from 2016–17. The immediate occasion
to return to some of the central texts from the Western canon after many years was
provided by Tim Hall, who kindly invited me to develop a class on Western
Civilization for Thales College, which he was in the process of creating. It was for
this class that the original manuscript was written. I am thankful to Tim for offer-
ing me this opportunity. I am also grateful to Winston Brady from Thales for all of
his help with the class and for many engaging discussions about the material. In
that context it was also a pleasure to work with the kind Lori and Dave Mahaley.
A year later I had a new opportunity to teach the class at the Bratislava
International School of Liberal Arts (BISLA) in Slovakia. This afforded me the
chance to go through the material again and finalize the manuscript. I would like
to thank BISLA’s director Samuel Abraham for allowing me to offer this course at
the college.
I would also like to express my gratitude to Finn Gredal Jensen and Katalin
Nun Stewart who read different parts of the text and provided valuable feedback
and suggestions. Finally, I would like to acknowledge the help of my friends and
colleagues at the Institute of Philosophy at the Slovak Academy of Sciences for
welcoming me to their engaged research team: Peter Šajda, Róbert Karul,
Jaroslava Vydrová, František Novosád, and Jozef Pauer.
As I was working on this book, I gave the following public lectures, which
provided me with the occasion to try out parts of the text: “Globalization and
Hegel’s Theory of the Emergence of Subjectivity,” Cultural Politics Seminar at The
Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Harvard University, December 5,
2017; “The Dialectic of Subjectivity and Community in the 21st Century: The
Struggle for Identity,” The Liberal Herald Annual Conference, “Demos vs. Polis?
Responsible Citizenship in Post-Transitional Societies,” Bratislava International
School of Liberal Arts, Bratislava, November 23, 2018; “The Discovery of
Subjectivity as Reflected in Early Notions of the Afterlife,” The Polish-Slovak
Workshop: “Individual and Collective Subjectivity: Historical and Contemporary
Issues,” Institute of Philosophy and Sociology, Polish Academy of Sciences,
Warsaw, June 26, 2019. The text was improved by the valuable feedback that
I received on these occasions.
This work was produced at the Institute of Philosophy, Slovak Academy of
Sciences. It was supported by the Slovak Research and Development Agency
under the contract No. APVV-15-0682.
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