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115 Pages·2004·6.61 MB·English
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THROUGH A GLASS, DARKLY INTERNATIONAL STUDIES IN SOCIOLOGY AND SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY Editor S. ISHWARAN VOLUME LXXV WIL ARTS (ED.) THROUGH A GLASS, DARKLY THROUGH A GLASS, DARKLY Blurred images of cultural tradition and modernity over distance and time EDITED BY WIL ARTS BRILL LEIDEN • BOSTON • KOLN 2000 This book is printed on acid-free paper. Die Deutsche Bibliothek - CIP-Einheitsaufnahme Through a Glass, Darkly : blurred images of cultural tradition and moder- nity over distance and time / ed. by Wil Arts - Leiden ; Boston ; Koln : Brill, 2000. (International studies in sociology and social anthropology ; Vol. 75) ISBN 90-04-11597-8 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is also available ISSN 0074-8684 ISBN 90 04 11597 8 © Copyright 2000 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Brill provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910 Danvers, MA 01923, U.S.A. Fees are subject to change. PRINTED IN THE NETHERLANDS CONTENTS WIL ARTS, Through a Glass, Darkly: An Introductory Essay 1 WOLF LEPENIES, Beyond Melancholy and Before Utopia: A Plea for a Boring World 12 JACK GOODY, Experience and Expectations of the East 30 NILUFER GOLE, Global Expectations, Local Experiences: Non- Western Modernities 40 HANS BELTING, The Visual Arts Today: Experiences and Expecta- tions 56 HARRY PEETERS, Old Virtues and Vices as Icons of a New Morality 67 WlLLEM WITTEVEEN, Pursuing the Spirit of the Laws: An Epilogue 79 LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS 92 AUTHOR INDEX 94 SUBJECT INDEX 96 Acknowledgment We gratefully acknowledge financial support from the Praemium Erasmianum Foundation and Tilburg University Through a Glass, Darkly An introductory essay WIL ARTS Introduction Erasmus's first visit to England, which lasted from the early summer of 1499 till the beginning of 1500, marked for him a period of drastic change. He came as a learned poet. He left with a need to dedicate himself to more serious matters. The cause of this turn was, according to Johan Huizinga's famous biography of Erasmus, that he found in England two new friends, John Colet and Thomas More, who as personalities were far superior to those who had crossed his path till then. Another biographer of Erasmus, Cornelis Augustijn, describes vividly how deeply impressed Erasmus was by the lectures Colet delivered in Oxford in 1499 on the epistles of St. Paul. While returning from his second visit to England in the summer of 1514 Erasmus wrote a letter to the Prior of the Monastery of Steyn who had called him back to the cloistered life that he had abandoned twenty years before. The core of his letter is a reasoned and staunch refusal to be recalled. For the sake of argument he refers to the important lessons he learned from John Colet and defends how he put those lessons into practice, i.e. his way of living. He lists the works he wrote in the mean time and elaborates on his plans especially with regard to the epistles of St. Paul. That he turned his attention to more serious things did not mean, however, that Erasmus the poet had gone for ever. In 1509, while he crossed the Alps on the way from Italy for his second visit to England, the conception of his now world famous The Praise of Folly came to him. He wrote it quickly in London, at the house of Sir Thomas More, to whom it is dedicated. The book is spoken by Folly in her own person. She makes fun of all kinds of things, such as national pride and professional conceit. There are passages, however, where the satire gives way to invective, and Folly utters the serious opinions of Erasmus. Even in some of those passages we find references to the letters of St. Paul, especially those to the Corinthians: Erasmus's inevitable and revered St. Paul, one could call him! For above all he wanted to follow St. Paul's lead by reconciling two cultures, Christendom and Greek philosophy. 'Saint Socrates, pray for us'; so WIL ARTS wrote Erasmus at the end of his Religious Symposium, comparing the pagan Greek philosopher to St. Paul. [2] Conference Erasmus dispatched the last letter known to us from Basle, where he had lived at the end of his life, on the 28th of June 1536. In this letter he wrote aegra manu, i.e. with a sick hand, 'Oh, if Brabant was only somewhat nearer...'. In the Dutch province of North-Brabant at Tilburg University a conference was held on the 26th of November 1998 under the title of Through a Glass, Darkly. It was part of a whole range of festivities on the occasion of the fortieth anniversary of the Praemium Erasmianum Foundation. The Board of the Foundation brought the festivities under one denominator, that of the Festival of Contrasts. The common theme was the interplay between experiences and expectations in modern arts and sciences. The question addressed at the Tilburg conference went as follows: Do the images Western scholars and artists derive from their experiences with modernity and tradition in East and West, in Past and Present contrast with the images concerning the future they draw from their expectations? In view of Erasmus's special affinity with the epistles of St. Paul it seems appropriate that the conference took as its motto part of a famous passage from St. Paul's first letter to the Corinthians. 'For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known'. St. Paul makes this remark as a sequel to an earlier observation 'For we know in part, and we prophesy in part'. Without any sacrilegious intent these citations were used by the organizers of the conference to emphasize that in today's European arts and sciences most of the time we see not only other, but also our own cultural traditions and the different forms of modernity like a dim image in a mirror. And the future of our own and other cultures seems to be shrouded in mystery, because our gift of knowledge and inspired messages are only partial. We seem to have a propensity to look at cultural forms of tradition and modernity over distance and time as through a glass, darkly. Is it possible to get an almost face-to-face intimacy with various forms of cultural tradition and modernity by using our experiences and our powers of imagination, i.e. our expectations, in a more fruitful way? That was the question to be addressed at the conference. This book contains the proceedings of this conference in which preliminary answers were given to this weighty question. The contributors to the conference tried to give these answers by taking as a guideline Erasmus's famous motto ad fontes, i.e. always go to the sources. INTRODUCTION Without, however, nursing the illusion that our partial knowledge will ever be complete. [3] Problem definition The central question of the conference, and therefore of this book, was as mentioned above the following: How do our experiences of cultural tradition and modernity in East and West, in Past and Present, contrast with our expectations of cultural changes in the time to come? This question raised new questions. For example: How can we derive a vision of what is bound to happen or what we want to happen by applying our experiences of the past and our expectations of the future? How do our experiences of culture and society in East and West, in Past and Present, contrast with our expectations of cultural and societal changes that will direct us possibly or probably, hopefully or regrettably to the global society of the future? From the vantage point of the social and behavioral sciences, these questions place us on the horns of a dilemma. We as human beings, regardless of whether we are living in either East or West, take part in a culture that has both traditional and modern characteristics. In coping with the challenges of tradition and modernity we are directed by our mind and its brain, which are complex information- processing systems that function to identify problems and offer solutions to them. Because human perception and action take place through time from the past to the future, we necessarily live in a world full of contradictions and paradoxes. Why is that so? Because in order to solve our problems we have to nurse the expectation that our future will be different from the past. If we want to use our experiences to solve our problems, however, we need the future to be like the past. The past can be known by having recourse to our experiences but cannot be influenced by us, whereas the future can be influenced by us but not known by having recourse to our experiences. We can only make guesses about possibilities and probabilities and entertain hopes or be afraid of what the future will bring. In solving our problems by using our mind and its brain we therefore have to be directed by both the visible hand of the past and the invisible hand of the future. And we have to realize that there is an almost unsolvable tension between those two hands, or at least a tension that is very difficult to neutralize. Let me give an example that elucidates this rather abstract line of reasoning and which is quite appropriate to the subject of this book. Our experiences of cultural changes in past and present give credence to our belief that modernization and globalization processes will go on accelerating at least for a while. At the same time, however, we expect that the acceleration

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nity over distance and time / ed. by Wil Arts - Leiden ; Boston ; Koln : had lived at the end of his life, on the 28th of June 1536. In this letter he wrote aegra manu, i.e. with a sick hand, 'Oh, if Brabant was only somewhat .. a short, joyful murmur, and the call 'sinking!' was answered with iso
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Most books are stored in the elastic cloud where traffic is expensive. For this reason, we have a limit on daily download.