In 1615 Englishman Gervase Markham published a handbook for housewives that contains "all the virtuous knowledges and actions both of the mind and body, which ought to be in any complete housewife". Markham instructs and advises on everything from the plague to baldness and bad breath. Woodcut illustrations add a richness to this look at life during the Renaissance.
Daniel Russell develops the idea that a necessary part of virtue is practical intelligence, the skill of determining what the right (e.g. kind or fair) thing to do would be on a given occasion, which requires much time, experience, and practice. This idea, drawn from classical philosophy, has a key role to play in contemporary virtue ethics.
Sôphrosunê ("self-discipline") is the often-forgotten sibling of justice, wisdom, courage, and piety in discussions of canonical Greek virtues. Christopher Moore shows that during the classical period it was the object of significant debate--about its scope, its feel, its practical manifestations, and its value. By interpreting sôphrosunê as a commitment to norm-following, we see that these pointed discussions of the virtue, previously ignored as parodic moralizing or expressions of political propaganda, are in fact concerned with the ideal of human agency. These discussions query the way we become fully responsible for our actions. Greek thinking about sôphrosunê becomes thinking about self-constitution, our crucial capacity to act on the general reasons that we come to identify with as our own. This perspective explains sôphrosunê's inclusion in Plato's canon of virtues, and before that its frequent appearance in funerary inscriptions, elegiac poetry, tragic drama, and historiography. It also explains the analytic attention given to it by Heraclitus, the Sophists, the historians, Socrates, Xenophon, and Plato. Moore deals principally with the classical period, though the book includes one chapter addressing earlier poetry and another addressing the virtue in two gender-sensitive post-classical works. An appendix deals with the epigraphic material. For the Greeks (and perhaps for us) there is a virtue of agency, an acquirable capacity to be guided by what's best. Hardly just a concern for reticence and reserve, commitment to sôphrosunê is a commitment to whatever it is that makes us truly ourselves.
The opening studies in this volume, on the revival of Galenic medicine in Continental Europe, provide the context for its focus - England in the 17th century. The author covers the discovery of the circulation of the blood, but it is the underlying components of health and medicine that form the subjects of this book. It deals, notably, with the strong link then perceived between health and the environment, perhaps even more present in people’s minds than today, with the relationship between medicine and religion, and with medical ethics. Further studies discuss the provision made for the sick poor, the popularisation of medicine, and the epistemological basis of learned or university based medicine. A theme throughout is the range of treatments available in the ’medical marketplace’ of the 17th century, from wise women to learned physicians.
During the early modern period, men and women in England lived their lives within a social and gender framework inherited from biblical times. Patriarchy - the social and cultural dominance of the male - has long been a feature of western civilization, and this work attempts to provide a portrait of the origins and operation of the system over a long stretch of the English past.
From the softest caress to the harshest blow, touch lies at the heart of our experience of the world. Now, for the first time, this deepest of senses is the subject of an extensive historical exploration. The Deepest Sense: A Cultural History of Touch fleshes out our understanding of the past with explorations of lived experiences of embodiment from the middle ages to modernity. This intimate and sensuous approach to history makes it possible to foreground the tactile foundations of Western culture--the ways in which feelings shaped society. Constance Classen explores a variety of tactile realms including the feel of the medieval city; the tactile appeal of relics; the social histories of pain, pleasure, and affection; the bonds of touch between humans and animals; the strenuous excitement of sports such as wrestling and jousting; and the sensuous attractions of consumer culture. She delves into a range of vital issues, from the uses--and prohibitions--of touch in social interaction to the disciplining of the body by the modern state, from the changing feel of the urban landscape to the technologization of touch in modernity. Through poignant descriptions of the healing power of a medieval king's hand or the grueling conditions of a nineteenth-century prison, we find that history, far from being a dry and lifeless subject, touches us to the quick.
In the early modern centuries a body of popularized medical writings appeared, telling ordinary people how they could best take care of their own health. Often written be doctors, such books gave simple advice for home treatments, while commonly warning of the dangers of magic, quackery, old wive's tales and faith-healing. The Popularization of Medicine explores the rise of this form of people's medicine, from the early days of printing to the Victorian age, focusing on the different experiences of Britain, the Continent and North America.
The seven deadly sins are pride, envy, anger, sloth, gluttony, greed, and lust. The seven virtues are prudence, fortitude, temperance, justice, faith, hope, and love. This book brings all of them together and for the first time lays out their history in a collection of the most important philosophical, religious, literary, and art-historical works. Starting with the Greco-Roman and Judeo-Christian antecedents, this anthology of source documents traces the virtues-and-vices tradition through its cultural apex during the medieval era and then into their continued development and transformation from the Renaissance to the present. This anthology includes excerpts of Plato's Republic, the Bible, Dante's Purgatorio, and the writings of Friedrich Nietzsche and C. S. Lewis. Also included are artworks from medieval manuscripts; paintings by Giotto, Veronese, and Paul Cadmus; prints by Brueghel; and a photograph by Oscar Rejlander. What these works show is the vitality and richness of the virtues and vices in the arts from their origins to the present. You can continue this book's conversation by visiting http://www.virtuesvicesinthearts.blogspot.com/. There you can join conversations, find out more, and meet other scholars and artists interested in this vibrant tradition.
