Enlightenment

"Moses Mendelssohn has often been described by his friends and admirers as the paragon of tolerance. It is likely that some of these tales are hagiographic, but, as far as I can tell, the historical evidence we have portrays him as a decent, non-arrogant person, who was open to criticism and willing to engage in an attentive dialogue with his opponents. Though it is hard to distinguish Mendelssohn, the man, from his views, I will attempt here to scrutinize Mendelssohn’s notion of tolerance, and particularly his objection to the use of herem/excommunication  against dissenters within the Jewish community.
The common Maskilic narrative of this story runs roughly along these lines. Mendelssohn had an “unrestricted commitment” to tolerance.  He was opposed to excommunication on the grounds that its use would display intolerance toward a member of the community. Mendelssohn’s objection to excommunication is frequently discussed in the context of the ex-communication of Spinoza. It is sometimes even depicted as evidence of a lesson learned from that event. In this paper I will argue that this self-flattering narrative is based on several myths. "

"This volume publishes for the first time an untitled anti-Hasidic manuscript, which the editors have called Reshit Hokhmah (The Origin/Beginning of Wisdom), from the Joseph Perl Archive in Tarnopol. The manuscript was copied in 1819, the year that Perl’s Megale Temirin was published. It is housed today in the National Library of Israel in Jerusalem. The identity of the author is unknown, but he probably came from Galicia and was associated with Mitnagdim and Maskilim. The book expresses harsh and detailed criticism of the hagiographic work, Shivhei ha-Besht (In Praise of the Baal Shem Tov, Kapost 1815), which is the first extensive engagement with this book. Moreover, the work is erudite and anticipates the views of Isaac Baer Levinson in his work Te‘udah be-Yisrael (A Warning to Israel, Vilna and Grodno 1828). The manuscript was read by many Maskilim in Galicia and it seems to have influenced both Joseph Perl and Isaac Baer Levinson. This work is therefore of great importance as an example of anti-Hasidic literature, which influenced nineteenth-century Haskalah literature. A transcription of the manuscript is presented in this volume, accompanied by explanatory notes, references to literature that influenced the author, references to anti-Hasidic literature, and an introduction that describes the character of the work and its reception.

Table of Contents

Early Manuscripts in Joseph Perl Archive / Jonatan Meir
Introduction / Shmuel Werses

Reshit Hokhmah (1819): Critical Edition
Introduction • The History of Heresy • In Praise of Wisdom and The Sages • On the Ways of the Fools • Hasidic Tales and their Secrets • On the Besht’s Path • The Besht’s Family • The Secret of Healing a Barren Woman • A Hasidic Sermon on Wine and Sons • Another Question and a Sermon on the Secrets • A Question and Sermon on Hasidic Tales • A Story about the Wonders of the great Tzaddik • On the Besht and a Priest who had an Accidental Emission • Another Story on the Besht and a Priest • The Besht and Wine • The Besht and Adultery • The Besht and the Messiah • Exaggerated Praise Concerning the Besht and the Origins of Praise • An Elegy on the Heretics, the Besht, and the Hasidim • A Reproach against the Besht’s Sayings Concerning the Messiah • Stories of False Tzaddikim • Two Types of Hasidic Rabbis • On the Tzaddikim and the Damage They Cause • Praising Wisdom and Work

Bibliography
Indexes


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The study of anatomy in England during the 18th and 19th century has become infamous for bodysnatching from graveyards to provide a sufficient supply of cadavers. However, recent discoveries have improved our understanding of how and why anatomy was studied during the enlightenment, and allow us to see the context in which dissection of the human body took place. Excavations of infirmary burial grounds and medical school cemeteries, study of hospital archives, and analysis of the content of surviving anatomical collections in medical museums enables us to re-evaluate the field from a fresh perspective. The pathway from a death in poverty, sale of the corpse to body dealer, dissection by anatomist or medical student, and either the disposal and burial of the remains or preservation of teaching specimens that survive today in medical museums is a complex and fascinating one.

"Książka przedstawia związki polskiego teatru oświeceniowego z utworami Plauta i Terencjusza. W kręgu badawczym znalazły się komedie konwiktowe, klasycystyczne, sentymentalne, rokokowe i dramy z lat 1740-1795.

Komedia oświeceniowa w swym bogactwie i różnorodności ukazuje, jak wiele gatunek ten zawdzięcza antykowi. Utworów w całości inspirowanych przez Plauta lub Terencjusza było w oświeceniu niewiele. Ciekawym przykładem są sztuki konwiktowe Bohomolca, którym Ratio studiorum narzuciło pewien specyficzny kierunek naśladownictwa. Sam autor nie wymienia swego rzymskiego pierwowzoru, a jeśli pada nazwisko antycznego komediopisarza, to jest nim Terencjusz, a nie Plaut. Sztuka Bogusławskiego zaś jest świadomą próbą współzawodnictwa, a nawet "poprawienia" Plauta, z punktu widzenia autora bowiem rzymska komedia miała pewne niedociągnięcia sceniczne. Przywołane przykłady stanowią dowód żywego zainteresowania rzymską komedią i, co ogromnie ważne, twórczej emulacji.

Trzeba także dodać, że Plaut i Terencjusz rywalizowali ze sobą w dziełach ich następców i że Plaut to współzawodnictwo wygrywał. Jego sztuki stanowiły pewien wzór komediowy, w którym postaci - maski pełniły z góry określoną rolę w rozwoju intrygi i przypisane były zawsze do jednej ze stron konfliktu dramatycznego. Sztuki Plauta stały się ponadto skarbnicą chwytów teatralnych, możliwych do wykorzystania bez powielania fabuły, z której pochodzą. Mnóstwo tam przebieranek, podszywania się pod inną postać i temu przede wszystkim Plaut zawdzięcza swą przewagę nad Terencjuszem.

Oświecenie ze swą szczególną aprobatą dla przeróbek i powtórzeń stworzyło doskonałe warunki do wykorzystywania i eksploatacji rozległych obszarów wspólnego dziedzictwa literackiego, w których niemałą część zajmowały komedie rzymskie. Komediopisarze polscy korzystali z tego olbrzymiego repertorium, czasem nie zdając sobie nawet sprawy z tego, że jego korzenie tkwią w antyku. "

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In this paper, we present a soft computing modelof decision support systems for diagnosing diseases andprescribing herbal prescriptions by oriental medicine.Inputs to the model are severities of observed symptoms onpatients and outputs from the model are a diagnosis of disease states and corresponding herbal prescriptions.First, having used fuzzy inferences, the most seriousdisease state in which the patient appears to be infected isdetermined. Next, an herbal prescription written insuitable herbs with reasonable amounts for treating thatdisease state is given by neural networks. Finally, wedescribe an application of this model in rheumatismdiagnoses and show its evaluations"

"The lecture will treat the relationship of various maskilim in Eastern
Europe (especially Isaac Bear Levinsohn)  to kabbalistic literature and will focus on their assumption about the authenticity of part of Jewish esoteric literature. This assumption not only sparked the active resistance of those maskilim to the Hasidim but also fostered certain forms of historical and textual criticism of kabbalistic literature. This observation will uncover new facets of the Haskalah movement and will demonstrate its affinities to
romantic literature. It will further expose certain precedents for kabbalah scholarship in the Scholem's scholarship and those who followed his lead.

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"The Scottish Enlightenment has often been regarded by historical scholarship as having paved the way for the abolition of African chattel slavery in the 19th century due to their early critiques of the practice contained in their philosophical writings. Of particular interest is David Hume, whose essay ‘Of the populousness of ancient nations’ is widely regarded as being one of the earliest critiques of slavery from the Scottish literati and a milestone in the movement toward the change in attitudes of the British public toward seeing slavery as an unacceptable institution. Despite Hume’s infamous other writings which are considered to be exceptionally racist, enlightenment scholars have often argued, on the strength of the above mentioned essay, that these ‘side remarks’ are an aberration and not representative of ‘the good David’s’ true sentiments.
This paper contests the long accepted view that Hume’s essay ‘Of the populousness of ancient nations’ represents his rejection of contemporary colonial slavery, but instead that the essay represents a denial of its true nature. By comparing the essay to his other writings on the topic and on other writings dealing with personal liberty, this paper argues that Hume cannot be considered a proto-abolitionist but merely a political pragmatist who regarded individual liberty as being secondary to national interest."

"The eighteenth century's preoccupation with the relationship between music and language was decidedly ambivalent and double-sided, caught between Enlightenment values of universal rationality and non-universal sensibility. On the one hand, analogies between the musical and grammatical structures helped ground music's rationality: just as rhetoricians combined well-balanced sentences and paragraphs, all revolving around a central point, so a composer was to construct his musical Sätze and Perioden within a well-ordered form. At the same time, however, the metaphor of oration also emphasized music's role as a tool of affectively eloquent persuasion, through which composers could bypass listeners' rationality and access their sensibility directly.

These paradoxes manifest themselves particularly forcefully in the special case of instrumental recitative, which occupied a prominent position in the later-eighteenth-century's empfindsamer Stil. Contemporary writers were acutely aware of the paradoxes embedded in instrumental recitative; given that recitative's express purpose is to match the cadences of spoken language, what should one make of recitative without words? In my paper, I first draw on Batteux's widely-disseminated theory of artistic imitation in order to argue that eighteenth-century instrumental recitative mediated tensions between music and language and between rationality and sensibility precisely through its deliberate divergence from vocal recitative. I then briefly analyze concerto movements by C.P.E. Bach, Mozart, and Haydn to demonstrate how their individual uses of instrumental recitative negotiated these tensions. Throughout, I contest the conception of the Classical era as a time of undisturbed rationality, foregrounding the unstable undercurrents present within its musical thought and musical sounds."