'La Violence et la mauvaise foi': Context and rhetoric in Pierre Bayle's Ce que c'est que la France toute Catholique

My thesis presents an examination of Ce que c'est que la France toute Catholique (1686) by Pierre Bayle, a prominent figure in the Republic of Letters and the Huguenot Refuge in the seventeenth century. This pamphlet was the first occasional text that Bayle published following the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in which the religious toleration afforded to the Huguenot minority in France was repealed, a pivotal moment in the history of early modern France. In my thesis, I analyse the specific context within which Bayle wrote this pamphlet as a means of addressing a number of issues, including the legitimacy of forced conversions, the impact of the religious controversy upon exchanges in the Republic of Letters, the nature of religious zeal and finally the alliance of Church and state discourses in the early modern period. An examination of this context provides a basis from which to re-interpret the rhetorical strategies at work within the pamphlet, and also to come to an increased understanding of how, why and to what end he wrote it. In turn this allowed me to examine the relationship between this often overlooked pamphlet and the more extensively studied Commentaire Philosophique, in which Bayle argued in favour of religious toleration. Ultimately, understanding the relationship between these two texts proves essential in order to characterise his response to the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes and to understand the place of the pamphlet within his oeuvre. Furthermore, an analysis of the pamphlet and the Commentaire Philosophique provide a lens through which to elucidate both Bayle's intellectual development at this early stage in his career, and also the wider context of the rise of toleration theory and the evolution of modes of civility within the Republic of Letters on the eve of the Enlightenment.

Redefining military memorials and commemoration and how they have changed since the 19th century with a focus on Anglo-American practice

This thesis is a study of military memorials and commemoration with a focus on Anglo-American practice. The main question is: How has history defined military memorials and commemoration and how have they changed since the 19th century. In an effort to resolve this, the work examines both historic and contemporary forms of memorials and commemoration and establishes that remembrance in sites of collective memory has been influenced by politics, conflicts and religion. Much has been written since the Great War about remembrance and memorialization; however, there is no common lexicon throughout the literature. In order to better explain and understand this complex subject, the work includes an up-to-date literature review and for the first time, terminologies are properly explained and defined. Particular attention is placed on recognizing important military legacies, being familiar with spiritual influences and identifying classic and new signs of remembrance. The thesis contends that commemoration is composed of three key principles – recognition, respect and reflection – that are intractably linked to the fabric of memorials. It also argues that it is time for the study of memorials to come of age and proposes Memorialogy as an interdisciplinary field of study of memorials and associated commemorative practices. Moreover, a more modern, adaptive, General Classification System is presented as a means of identifying and re-defining memorials according to certain groups, types and forms. Lastly, this thesis examines how peacekeeping and peace support operations are being memorialized and how the American tragic events of 11 September 2001 and the war in Afghanistan have forever changed the nature of memorials and commemoration within Canada and elsewhere. This work goes beyond what has been studied and written about over the last century and provides a deeper level of analysis and a fresh approach to understanding the field of Memorialogy.

Merleau-Ponty and Nishida: Artistic expression as 'motor-perceptual faith'

This dissertation carries out a dialogue between Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Nishida Kitarō concerning their theories of artistic expression and faith. Both philosophers go through remarkably similar trajectories in their philosophic projects: In their early works they focus on the motor-perceptual body of the artist, and as they move towards the mature articulation of their ontologies, the concept of faith becomes central. I propose the term “motor-perceptual faith” to bring these seemingly diverse sets of concerns into a conceptual continuity. My study explores this connection, and argues that the artist’s motor-perceptual expressive body, as colourfully and sometimes poetically articulated in their early works, enacts the form of faith developed more abstractly in their later writings. Exploring these relations fosters a mutual expansion of the early by the later works, thus thickening the concept of faith by seeing it as enacted by the artist, while enlarging the concept of artistic expression by understanding it as a practice of motor‐perceptual faith. Framing these philosophers as putting forth a traditionally religious concept as illustrated by way of artistic expression, offers a new articulation of both of their writings, an important conceptual bridge between the two, while challenging un-ambiguous distinctions between art, philosophy and religion, and ultimately philosophy East and West.

Environmental science and sustainability: some critical thoughts

Environmental science is often described as an interdisciplinary subject, but one firmly grounded in positivist science. Less well recognized is the idea that interdisciplinarity actually challenges fundamental conceptions concerning how reality is understood from an orthodox science perspective. Drawing on recent non-dualism (or post-natural) literature, it is suggested in this paper that there is a need for greater awareness and debate concerning the underlying challenges that ideas of interdisciplinarity and holism present for environmental science. It is argued by aligning environmental science more strongly with non-dualistic traditions (spanning the sciences, arts and religion), fundamental issues are raised concerning how reality is understood and what constitutes valid research methodologies. The concept of intrinsic value is used as one example of the way non-dualistic theory can open up new territories for exploring reality.

Is Northern Ireland abnormal? An extension of the sociological debate on religion in modern Britain

This article places Northern Ireland within the unfolding sociological debate on religion in modern Britain. It measures secularization along Casanova’s three dimensions (1994): religious differentiation, decline and privatization. It finds that Northern Ireland has, in common with Britain, high levels of religious differentiation, grey areas of religious belief and little convinced secularism. However, Northern Ireland differs in that it has higher levels of religious affiliation and practice, and religion plays more roles in civil society than it does in other parts of Britain. The article explores the role of conflict in forming these religious trends, asking if they represent a persistence of the sacred, or simply mask deeper ethnic divisions. It concludes that the social dimensions of religion are just as important as the supernatural, and that they often inform each other. Finally, it suggests that the dynamics of religious change are comparable across regions and, as such, Northern Ireland might be a useful case study for British policy makers, particularly as it becomes increasingly multicultural and religiously plural.

The Secular Beyond: Free Religious Dissent and Debates over the Afterlife in Nineteenth-Century Germany

Toward the end of the first third of the nineteenth century, German writers began to favor a new metaphor for the afterlife: “das Jenseits” (“the Beyond”). At first glance, the emergence of such a term may appear to have little bearing on our understanding of the history of religious thought. However, as the late historian Reinhart Koselleck maintained, the study of semantic changes can betray tectonic shifts in the matrix of ideas that underpin the worlds of politics, learning, and religion. Drawing on Koselleck's method of conceptual history, the following essay takes the popularization of “the Beyond” as a point of departure for investigating secularization and secularism as two linked, yet distinct, sources of pressure on the fault lines of nineteenth-century German religious thought.

Exeter-Hall Science and Evangelical Rhetoric in Mid-Victorian Britain

In the early and mid-Victorian period public pronouncements by evangelicals were often described as the antithesis of rational speech. The voice of science, on the other hand, was routinely equated with the voice of reason. This disparity was particularly clear in satirical and critical commentary about the platform rhetoric associated with London’s Exeter Hall, a key meeting place for evangelicals and a metonym for evangelical expressions of Christian belief. It was against this backdrop that the fledgling Young Men’s Christian Association inaugurated a popular series of lectures in 1845. Held in Exeter Hall from 1848, the series ran until 1865 and proved to be immensely popular. By investigating the ways in which the promotion of science was combined with religious exhortation in the YMCA lectures, this paper examines how evangelicals positioned themselves with respect to the growing cultural authority of science. The paper also argues that these efforts were indelibly marked by the Hall and the communicative medium in which they were made. As such, the paper sheds light on the significance of platform culture within and beyond evangelicalism and on the importance of venue and audience in understanding science and religion relations in an age of lecturing.

Race, space and politics in Mid-Victorian Ireland: the ethnologies of Abraham Hume and John McElheran

There has been much scholarly debate about the significance and influence of racialist thinking in the political and cultural history of nineteenth-century Ireland. With reference to that ongoing historiographical discussion, this paper considers the racial geographies and opposing political motivations of two Irish ethnologists, Abraham Hume and John McElheran, using their racialist regimes to query some of the common assumptions that have informed disagreements over the role and reach of racial typecasting in mid-nineteenth-century Ireland. As well as examining in detail the racial imaginaries promulgated by Hume and McElheran, the paper also argues for the importance of situating racialist discourse in the spaces in which it was communicated and contested. Further, in highlighting the ways in which Hume and McElheran collapsed together race, class and religion, the paper troubles the utility of a crisp analytical distinction between those disputed categories.

The Intersection of Religious Autonomy and Religious Symbols: Setting the Stage

Two sets of issues in the area of law and religion have generated a large share of attention and controversy across a wide number of countries and jurisdictions in recent years. The first set of issues relates to the autonomy of churches and other religiously affiliated entities such as schools and social service organisations in their hiring and personnel decisions, involving the question of how far, if at all, such entities should be free from the influence and oversight of the state. The second set of issues involves the presence of religious symbols in the public sphere, such as in state schools or on public lands, involving the question of how far the state should be free from the influence of religion. Although these issues – freedom of religion from the state, and freedom of the state from religion – could be viewed as opposite sides of the same coin, they are almost always treated as separate lines of inquiry, and the implications of each for the other have not been the subject of much scrutiny. In this Introduction, we consider whether insights might be drawn from thinking about these issues both from a comparative law perspective and also from considering these two lines of cases together.

Not all social cleavages are the same: On the relationship between religious diversity and party system fragmentation

Most studies examining the relationship between social cleavages and party system fragmentation maintain that higher levels of social diversity lead to greater party system fragmentation. However, most aggregate-level studies focus on one type of social cleavage:ethnic diversity. In order to develop a better understanding of how different cleavages impact electoral competition, this paper considers another type of social cleavage: religious diversity.Contrary to previous literature, higher levels of religious diversity provide incentives for cross-religious cooperation, which in turn reduces party system fragmentation. Using a cross national data set of elections from 1946-2011, the results show that, in contrast to most studies examining the effects of social cleavage diversity on the number of parties, higher religious diversity is associated with lower levels of party system fragmentation.