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Theory is the use of abstraction in the pursuit of understanding. In the human sciences, theory is a talmudic process of reading and conceptual dispute that carries the colligation of evidentiary signs (minimal interpretation) towards riskier, but more insightful and widely relevant, interpretations of the meanings, causes, and significance of human events (maximal interpretation). Yet, in making possible such maximal interpretations of society, politics, literature, and so forth, theory also introduces the possibility of overinterpreting evidence. Judgments that overinterpretation has occurred are made collectively within communities of inquiry. After developing Umberto Eco's theory of overinterpretation as part of a hermeneutic-semiotic account of theory in the human sciences, this paper conducts a case study of the rise and partial fall of the Marxist interpretation of the French Revolution. This reveals aspects of the process whereby patterns of maximal interpretation, carried through several academic generations, allow the development and refinement of knowledge and insight about an object of inquiry, on the one hand, and yet are subject to judgment as overinterpreted, on the other. Much more than a matter of falsification and/or the politics of intellectuals, the decline of the Marxist interpretation of the French Revolution involved a complex series of judgments about the degree to which an abstract theoretical terminology could continue to produce new and deeper understandings. In conclusion, the paper suggests that the talmudic aspect of social theory has affinities with the universal human capacity for thinking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Abbé Sieyès is usually portrayed as a thoroughly modern thinker and a critic of the nostalgic Classical Republicanism of some of his contemporaries, in favour of a "modern republicanism", founded upon the division of labour and commercial sociability in a nation composed of equal labourers and producers. But Sieyès's unpublished manuscripts suggest he, in fact, regarded modern labourers as unskilled "Machines du Travail", dulled by work and incapable of exercising the duties of citizenship, a critique grounded in a critical account of commercial society as compared to the ideal republican polity. Where most scholars regard this as either a simple contradiction or a passing juvenile nostalgia, this paper argues that, influenced by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Sieyès consistently sought to counteract the degrading effects of the inequalities generated by commercial society and the division of labour. It was on this basis that Sieyès sought to construct a new political system which would reconcile participatory politics with representative government, enabling all citizens to enjoy a life of Active Citizenship. Based on these insights, this paper reinterprets Sieyès's political project as an attempt to reconcile the classical conception of citizenship with the demands of a commercial society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This paper revisits Burns's reactions to the French Revolution and its implications for British domestic reform through review of three crucial contexts which shaped his responses: the character and trajectory of Scottish reform politics in the early 1790s; loyalist volunteering in the mid-1790s; and the town of Dumfries where Burns came to live in late 1791. It re-examines and sheds new light on the tricky political balancing act in which Burns was compelled to engage in order to keep his post in the Excise service and avert potential local hostility to someone who clearly privately stood well outside the prevailing political consensus in Dumfries after late 1792. Closer attention to these contexts and the character of political rhetoric and discourses in the 1790s brings into sharper focus Burns's likely political views at this moment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that the concept of dignity played an important role in the political thought of Edmund Burke. It seeks to show that, in contrast with the egalitarian and individual version of dignity associated with Immanuel Kant, Burke devised a conception of dignity that rested on reverence, grandeur and formality, to be manifested through institutions, customs, and social relations. Burkean dignity was thus closely linked with the ancient constitution. In his thought, dignity played an essential role in maintaining social stability and ensuring wise governance. This conviction informed Burke's opposition to the French Revolution, which he feared would destroy the conditions necessary for dignity to thrive. Unpicking Burke's understanding of dignity thus gives us new insights into the intricacies of his political thought and another perspective on his opposition to the French Revolution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ancient Athenian historian Thucydides’ account of the civil and interstate wars of classical Greece proved particularly illuminating for British commentators writing at the time of the French Revolution (1789–99). However, despite a growing scholarly interest in Thucydides’ Nachleben in historical and political thought, little has been said on this period of his reception. This paper aims to address that gap. It suggests that, while Thucydides remained something of a minority interest, a curious mix of historians, journalists and political commentators turned to his History to explore the possibility that it might illuminate contemporary events. They were particularly interested in Thucydides’ account of the stasis on Corcyra (modern Corfu), and its role in spreading instability, civil strife and war throughout Greece. These commentators used Thucydides to think through the similarities and differences between ancient and modern iterations of political violence and sometimes appropriated his language to existing political vocabularies and categories of thought. This resulted in innovative interpretations of Thucydides’ text that emphasized the affinities between stasis in Antiquity with the idea of civil war, sedition, political instability and decline and fall in the contemporary world. It also led to the emergence of nuanced ideas of the lessons and warnings that could be drawn from Greek history as presented by Thucydides and how they could be applied to the turbulent politics of the 1790s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1789, during the outset of the French Revolution, Jens Baggesen (1764–1826) embarked on a journey traversing Germany, Switzerland, and France. His experiences were later crystallized into a two-volume travelogue, Labyrinten , published between 1792 and 1793. In a similar vein, in 1793, Adam Moltke (1765–1843), a close friend of Baggesen, visited the besieged city of Mainz and subsequently chronicled his experiences in Reise nach Maynz (1794), also a two-volume work. Both authors, profoundly impacted by their travels, expressed a compulsion to write as an outlet. Intriguingly, their texts employ alimentary and metabolic metaphors to depict the act of experiencing as a form of ingestion, where impressions are consumed, assimilated, and eventually transformed into written narrative. This portrayal of memory and writing as a bodily process sharply diverges from the classical ideals of artistic and literary purity. This article argues that these alimentary and metabolic metaphors represent a subversive poetics, challenging conventional literary norms and offering a novel perspective on the interplay between human experience, bodily processes, and literary creation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Exemplifying par excellence the American and exotic figure Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson had epitomized before him, Gouverneur Morris worked in France as the herald of enlightened republican principles. In 1789, when he arrived in Paris, Morris was thrilled to see that the French had begun their own revolution in the name of liberty. Moreover, as he lived among the nobility, the New Yorker criticized what represented to him the decaying monarchy's corrupt values and frivolity, which he contrasted with the morals and the aesthetics of simplicity of the United States. He thus appeared as the standard-bearer of an idyllic and idealized American identity and tried to translate these virtuous republican principles to the French. However, Morris is now remembered as an enemy of the French Revolution, a traitor to the republican cause, and an ally of the French monarchy. Unraveling why this former Patriot became the foe of the Revolution that claimed to be the heir of the American War for Independence could help us to see the variety of republican sentiments making the revolutionary Atlantic world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Potestas: Estudios del Mundo Clásico e Historia del Arte is the property of Potestas Estudios del Mundo Clasico e Historia del Arte and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)