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The intellectual revolution in twelfth century Europe
Book Reviews Shklar says, in her 1986 Introduction, that most lawyers were offended by the book. I recall that this was indeed my response when I first read the book. This time round, however, I was much more struck by the validity of the arguments concerning the interrelations between law on the one hand and morals and politics on the other, and by the insight that is gained by putting the analysis of law into a broader context. I still think it is impossible to talk and think about the law without first knowing what the law is and how it should be distinguished from either morals or politics. I still believe that the attempt to analyse law must be, at one level, non-evaluative. But there can be no doubt that the interesting and important things about laws and legal ideologies are thefuncrions they play in social life. These functions are neither non-evaluative nor neutral, and theorising about law should reflect them too, thus re-introducing morals and politics as integral parts of thinking about law and using it. Shklar’s book is a magnificent exercise of this art. Ruth Gavison Hebrew University, Jerusalem
The Intellectual Revolution in Twelfth Century St. Martin’s Press, 1985), vii + 117 pp., $19.95.
Europe,
Tina
Stiefel
(New
York:
In this slim but expensive volume, Tina Stiefel, a Fellow of the Institute for Research in History, New York, presents a provocative and important thesis that needs to be carefully considered by all historians of medieval science. Stiefel states that the prevailing view of mediaeval science is not accurate; thus her book is a revisionist statement. ‘In sum, this is a study of the inception of a belief in a rationally ordered universe and the concomitant search for a discipline of natural science in medieval Europe’ (p.3). According to her thesis, thinkers such as Adelard of Bath, William of Conches, Thierry of Chartres and other cosmologists of the twelfth century were entranced by the spirit of reason. For the first time since antiquity, the world (nature) was seen as a tit subject of inquiry. These cosmologists, who called themselves moderni, were proto-scientists with ‘a pragmatic, unorthodox and nonconformist cast of mind’ (p.2). Their productive ideas concerning nature, expressed before the appearance of the Aristotelian corpus in translation, were influenced in part by Arab scientific thought, bits of Greek science and medicine, and the Chalcidius version of Plato’s Timaeus. The intellectual revolution with which the author is concerned is always placed in tempore. As applied to the entire society, Stiefel’s thesis resembles that expressed by Friedrich Heer in The Medieval World. In that classic work, Heer described how the buoyant, fluid society of twelfth-~entu~ Europe sohdified into the medieval world of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, characterised by religious and intellectual intolerance, fortified frontiers and bitter competitive states. According to Stiefel, the cosmologists of the twelfth century failed to bring about the revolution they sought because it was an unpropitious time of retrenchment by the 1150s. She believes that there was an increasing need for certitude and intellectual support for the growing centralised institutionalism. By the thirteenth century, the complete corpus of Aristotle was available and incorporated into scholastic summae. Such an ordered, hierarchical worldview discouraged science. Whereas the twelfth-century cosmologists had wished to ask new questions, the scholastics wanted a set of answers; thus ‘their questions were carefully designed to produce the desired answers’ (p. 106). In his contribution to Renaissance andRenewalin the Twerfrh Century, Guy Beaujouan said that no real history of western science of the twelfth century has been written yet, in part, because scholars devoted their main attention to problems of transmission of knowledge. He cited Tina Stiefel as the only example of someone who has emphasised the
Book Reviews rationaiisation of the world-image in the twelfth century. Although perhaps Stiefel’s thesis is overstated, her picture of the intellectual world of twelfth-century Europe is very persuasive.
Women, History, and Theory, Joan Kelley (Chicago Press, 1986), xxvi + 163 pp., paper $7.95.
and London:
University
of Chicago
When Joan Kelly died of cancer in 1982, at the age of fifty-four, the field of women’s studies lost one of its guiding spirits as well as one of its most fertile minds. Kelly had a contract with the University of Chicago Press to do a volume about women, history and theory. She could not finish it because of her illness; so she planned this present work that draws upon previously published essays. Her Preface is based on tapes dictated during the last months of her life, the transcripts of which were edited by Catharine Stimpson. The book begins with an Introduction written by five friends and colleagues after Kelly’s death. Her most significant essays then follow. In ‘The Social Relation of the Sexes’, her first extensive theoretical statement about women’s history, Kelly argues that in regard to periodisation historians should look at ages or movements of great social change in terms of their liberation or repression of woman’s potential. Using this criterion in ‘Did Women Have a Renaissance‘?’ she concludes that there was no ‘renaissance’ for women, at least not during the Renaissance because ‘a new division between personal and public life made itself felt’ and as a consequence women increasingly lost control over production, property and their own persons. Her essay ‘Family and Society’ shows how gender relations and antagonisms are complicated by class and race. She traces the development of family forms and places them within an historical context; thus patriarchy is not some static eternal verity, but rather the product of historical conditions. In ‘The Doubled Vision of Feminist Theory’ Kelly shows how the bourgeois conception of a private (home) and a public (work) domain supports a partiarchal social order, which in itself inhibits the full female potential from being realised. Finally, her essay on ‘Early Feminist Theory’ is rich in sources and ideas for further research. For the period 1400-1789, Kelly discerns a coherent body of feminist thought, i.e. a feminist consciousness. This emphasis on consciousness is central to all of Kelly’s work. She insists ‘on the importance of women’s own experience, including that of resistance and struggle, in demystifying misogynist culture’ (pp. xxv-xxvi). One cannot read these posthumous essays without a profound sense of loss; nevertheless this slim volume contains the fruits of Joan Kelly’s fresh insights, an enduring lagacy for us all.
The Thought of Gregory the Great, G. R. Evans, Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought, Vol. 2 (Cambridge Unviersity Press, 1986) xi + 164 pp., f25.00, $39.50. It is a pity that this carefully researched and eminently useful volume is so expensive. It should be in every university library. G. R. Evans has captured the practical, pastoral mind of Gregory the Great with a fluency and persuasiveness worthy of Gregory himself. Through his close reading of the sources, Evans has allowed ‘Gregory’s thought to shape the discourse’. By Gregory’s time there was an established body of teaching, a full theology upon which the pope could draw; so the intellectual struggles of St. Augustine were not part of Gregory’s world of thought. Like St. Augustine, however, Gregory was uneasy about secular learning; but he, too, felt that the liberal arts were necessary in order to gain a more accurate knowledge of God’s Word. Gregory shared with his contemporaries a strong sense of the nearness of the supernatural world; therefore signs and wonders filled his
The Intellectual Revolution in Twelfth Century St. Martin’s Press, 1985), vii + 117 pp., $19.95.
Europe,
Tina
Stiefel
(New
York:
In this slim but expensive volume, Tina Stiefel, a Fellow of the Institute for Research in History, New York, presents a provocative and important thesis that needs to be carefully considered by all historians of medieval science. Stiefel states that the prevailing view of mediaeval science is not accurate; thus her book is a revisionist statement. ‘In sum, this is a study of the inception of a belief in a rationally ordered universe and the concomitant search for a discipline of natural science in medieval Europe’ (p.3). According to her thesis, thinkers such as Adelard of Bath, William of Conches, Thierry of Chartres and other cosmologists of the twelfth century were entranced by the spirit of reason. For the first time since antiquity, the world (nature) was seen as a tit subject of inquiry. These cosmologists, who called themselves moderni, were proto-scientists with ‘a pragmatic, unorthodox and nonconformist cast of mind’ (p.2). Their productive ideas concerning nature, expressed before the appearance of the Aristotelian corpus in translation, were influenced in part by Arab scientific thought, bits of Greek science and medicine, and the Chalcidius version of Plato’s Timaeus. The intellectual revolution with which the author is concerned is always placed in tempore. As applied to the entire society, Stiefel’s thesis resembles that expressed by Friedrich Heer in The Medieval World. In that classic work, Heer described how the buoyant, fluid society of twelfth-~entu~ Europe sohdified into the medieval world of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, characterised by religious and intellectual intolerance, fortified frontiers and bitter competitive states. According to Stiefel, the cosmologists of the twelfth century failed to bring about the revolution they sought because it was an unpropitious time of retrenchment by the 1150s. She believes that there was an increasing need for certitude and intellectual support for the growing centralised institutionalism. By the thirteenth century, the complete corpus of Aristotle was available and incorporated into scholastic summae. Such an ordered, hierarchical worldview discouraged science. Whereas the twelfth-century cosmologists had wished to ask new questions, the scholastics wanted a set of answers; thus ‘their questions were carefully designed to produce the desired answers’ (p. 106). In his contribution to Renaissance andRenewalin the Twerfrh Century, Guy Beaujouan said that no real history of western science of the twelfth century has been written yet, in part, because scholars devoted their main attention to problems of transmission of knowledge. He cited Tina Stiefel as the only example of someone who has emphasised the
Book Reviews rationaiisation of the world-image in the twelfth century. Although perhaps Stiefel’s thesis is overstated, her picture of the intellectual world of twelfth-century Europe is very persuasive.
Women, History, and Theory, Joan Kelley (Chicago Press, 1986), xxvi + 163 pp., paper $7.95.
and London:
University
of Chicago
When Joan Kelly died of cancer in 1982, at the age of fifty-four, the field of women’s studies lost one of its guiding spirits as well as one of its most fertile minds. Kelly had a contract with the University of Chicago Press to do a volume about women, history and theory. She could not finish it because of her illness; so she planned this present work that draws upon previously published essays. Her Preface is based on tapes dictated during the last months of her life, the transcripts of which were edited by Catharine Stimpson. The book begins with an Introduction written by five friends and colleagues after Kelly’s death. Her most significant essays then follow. In ‘The Social Relation of the Sexes’, her first extensive theoretical statement about women’s history, Kelly argues that in regard to periodisation historians should look at ages or movements of great social change in terms of their liberation or repression of woman’s potential. Using this criterion in ‘Did Women Have a Renaissance‘?’ she concludes that there was no ‘renaissance’ for women, at least not during the Renaissance because ‘a new division between personal and public life made itself felt’ and as a consequence women increasingly lost control over production, property and their own persons. Her essay ‘Family and Society’ shows how gender relations and antagonisms are complicated by class and race. She traces the development of family forms and places them within an historical context; thus patriarchy is not some static eternal verity, but rather the product of historical conditions. In ‘The Doubled Vision of Feminist Theory’ Kelly shows how the bourgeois conception of a private (home) and a public (work) domain supports a partiarchal social order, which in itself inhibits the full female potential from being realised. Finally, her essay on ‘Early Feminist Theory’ is rich in sources and ideas for further research. For the period 1400-1789, Kelly discerns a coherent body of feminist thought, i.e. a feminist consciousness. This emphasis on consciousness is central to all of Kelly’s work. She insists ‘on the importance of women’s own experience, including that of resistance and struggle, in demystifying misogynist culture’ (pp. xxv-xxvi). One cannot read these posthumous essays without a profound sense of loss; nevertheless this slim volume contains the fruits of Joan Kelly’s fresh insights, an enduring lagacy for us all.
The Thought of Gregory the Great, G. R. Evans, Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought, Vol. 2 (Cambridge Unviersity Press, 1986) xi + 164 pp., f25.00, $39.50. It is a pity that this carefully researched and eminently useful volume is so expensive. It should be in every university library. G. R. Evans has captured the practical, pastoral mind of Gregory the Great with a fluency and persuasiveness worthy of Gregory himself. Through his close reading of the sources, Evans has allowed ‘Gregory’s thought to shape the discourse’. By Gregory’s time there was an established body of teaching, a full theology upon which the pope could draw; so the intellectual struggles of St. Augustine were not part of Gregory’s world of thought. Like St. Augustine, however, Gregory was uneasy about secular learning; but he, too, felt that the liberal arts were necessary in order to gain a more accurate knowledge of God’s Word. Gregory shared with his contemporaries a strong sense of the nearness of the supernatural world; therefore signs and wonders filled his