Authors:Wendy R. Simon Pages: 1 - 3 Abstract: This Special Issue of the Journal of Catalan Intellectual History on “Dialogue as a source of law” is the second volume of the journal to be published exclusively online and exclusively in English. As was presented in the editorial from the previous issue, the journal was conceived from the very beginning as being a proposal for thinkers across the board to delve into intellectual history as a valid, independent discipline for the studying of human thought. In order for it to be accomplished successfully in the 21st century world, we highlighted the importance of relying on interdisciplinarity as a necessary methodological requirement as well as stressing the importance of factoring technology and artificial intelligence into these studies. Technology can be developed (and is being developed) as a powerful intellectual resource for analysis; but in this day and age, technology and all that it brings with it (AI, but also the internet, Big Data…) is an element that should also itself be analyzed as a component of the Intellectual History. This duplicity brings us to the issue at hand. Aware that the intellectual historian must work with ideas in two contexts (i) as abstract—albeit applicable—propositions and (ii) in specific historical, cultural instances, we curated a collection of articles which offer a sample of this complementary analytical attempt. PubDate: 2021-08-19
Authors:Mario Macías, Pere Ripoll Pages: 4 - 7 Abstract: This Special Issue can hardly be considered a monography, at least in the classical sense. The contributions that inform this volume cover a wide range of topics from a wide range of perspectives, methodologies and backgrounds. Although they all are linked by the temporal scope of the Middle Ages, there is only one overarching notion which underpins all of them: agreement. This concept is an old friend to political and legal philosophy. It has been discussed and interpreted in many different apparently disconnected ways, periods and traditions. It can be found as an elemental instrument for doctrinal legitimation at the bases of an endless number of theories and models of authority. PubDate: 2021-08-19
Authors:Tomàs de Montagut, Pere Ripoll Pages: 8 - 24 Abstract: This article offers a historiographic definition of ‘pactism’, i.e. the pact-based model institutional doctrine and practice held in Europe from the High-Middle Ages onwards, until the emergence of the modern concept of sovereignty in the absolutist state of the 16th and 17th centuries. As institutional doctrine, pactism found in Catalonia one of its most elaborate formulations. This article defines the constitutive elements of Catalan legal pactism, stemming from the Romanist concept of ius commune and the conceptual work on interpretation and early public law carried out by legal scholars. It distinguishes different kinds and degrees of jurisdictio (senyoria, in Catalan language)—universals, generals and speciales—and it defines populus, constitutio populi, imperium and contrafaccions. Catalan legal instruments related to the enactment of laws by the General Courts—Constitucions, Capítols i Actes de Cort—and the limited power of the King, the composition of Generalitat (the General of Catalonia), and the role of the three Catalan branches (braços, estaments) are also elucidated. It also delves into the procedure for establishing constitutions which was followed by the Cort General of Montsó of 1585. The 15th c. legal compilation called Llibre dels Quatre Senyals and the recent discovery of the Llibre dels Vuit Senyals allow a more accurate dating of origins (1289, 1291, 1359, 1376), and a better understanding of its financial objectives, procedures and protections. Finally, this article introduces the notion of a dual conception of the political community as a suitable interpretative thesis to make sense of the whole process of the development of public law in Medieval Catalonia. PubDate: 2021-08-19
Authors:Joan Tello Pages: 25 - 45 Abstract: Renaissance humanist Joan Lluís Vives explained his views on Law, its origin, its elements, and its corruption mainly in the De disciplinis (1531). However, he had already outlined some relevant key notions in early works such as the Praefatio in Leges Ciceronis (1514) and, especially, the Aedes legum (1519). The aim of this article is twofold: on the one hand, to provide the reader with a succinct introduction to the latter work and, on the other hand, to identify some of its key concepts and describe their meaning. PubDate: 2021-08-19
Authors:Mario Macías Pages: 46 - 63 Abstract: The aim of this article is to present the Haskamot of Barcelona of 1354 in their political and legal context. These agreements were a response to the difficult situation faced by the Jews of the Crown of Aragon in the 14th c., when natural and human disasters threatened the survival of their communities. The target of this project was to assemble all the aljamas of the Crown in a supra-communal assembly of representatives. The drafters also wished to achieve a number a measures from the King and the Church improving the delicate situation of Catalan-Aragonese Jewry. These Haskamot, despite not succeeding in their objectives, are a perfect starting point for any research on the legal and jurisdictional relations between Christians and Jews. PubDate: 2021-08-19
Authors:Mario Macías, Pompeu Casanovas, John Zeleznikow Pages: 64 - 96 Abstract: Late Medieval anti-Jewish violence is a well-known phenomenon, but its origins and institutionalization are still blurred and enigmatic. In thirteenth and fourteenth century Catalonia, the denouement of the increasing popular hostility against the Jewry was particularly dramatic. The seeds of violence were the result of a long and complex process of social, theological and political interactions. In this contribution, we will discuss the intellectual matrix of medieval anti-Semitism in Catalonia and its relationship with the rising of scholastics and with the theoretical foundations of Catalan politics. We will also approach its counterpart: the Jewish response to collective suffering. PubDate: 2021-08-19
Authors:Mustafa Hashmi Pages: 97 - 108 Abstract: Within the context of a larger project, in this paper, we discuss one-to-one mapping of the Shari’ah normative concepts of wajib, haram, sunnah, etc., with conventional normative concepts of obligation, prohibition, and permission. The goal of the mapping to gaining a better understanding of the Shari’ah normative concepts and what deontic effects they generate when applied, and what consequences can be attained through the actions as compared to the Western normative concepts. Existing literature lacks such understanding of the correspondence between the two normative systems. The mapping shows conceptual overlapping between the concepts, yet the two types of systems should be separated from each other in terms of the philosophy, context, and the consequences of the Islamic normative systems as the expression of the divine will. PubDate: 2021-08-19
Authors:Joan Cuscó i Clarasó Clarasó Pages: 109 - 111 Abstract: In recent years, in reviewing their intellectual biography, neurologists Oliver Sacks, first, and Joaquim Mª Fuster, later, explain and make clear the importance of the links they created from a very young age with their own intellectual environments; or rather, with the discipline and topics that over the years shaped their work. Joaquim Mª Fuster—despite the poor philosophical atmosphere of the city of Barcelona during the Franco regime—can rediscover the spur of the works of Joan Lluís Vives and Ramon y Cajal. Progressively, in addition to his familiarisation with the work of these authors, he traces their way of embracing the concerns and challenges of those who have preceded him in the task of working on human consciousness around the world. He feels connected to it and recognises its merits because, as he says: “Memory is, in fact, essential for learning, retaining experiences, imagination, remembrance, reasoning, emotion, education, the arts and social life with other human beings”. PubDate: 2021-08-19
Authors:Bernat Torres Pages: 112 - 114 Abstract: Joan Cuscó’s work Subjectivitat i Creativitat. Temps, memòria i creació (Subjectivity and Creativity. Time, memory and creation) is an attempt to comprehend creativity thruough the filter of subjectivity. The epigraph of the book already anticipates the trajectory and logic of the research presented by the author, who, in the form of an erratic movement—various authors, apparently heterogeneous—explores and discovers, as an explorer in an unknown land, a clear image, elaborated in a solid and disciplined project: the nature of human subjectivity. As the author tells us, subjectivity will be the way to approach or try to understand human creativity; and this approach will be done—as if it were a composition of a musical chord, constituted by four notes—through the comprehension and mutual relationship between mind, brain, consciousness and language. The research presented by Cuscó is based on a plural and multifocal approach between scientific knowledge, philosophy and art, always avoiding reductionists views and encouraging unconditional dialogue between these disciplines or perspectives. Throughout his composition, the author progressively reveals a certain conception of human thought or of human nature in general terms. Human nature, Cuscó defends, must be understood from the dialectic between necessity and possibility, that is, from the double perspective of understanding our existence as organisms attached to certain necessities and possibilities open up by our symbolic capacity. It is in this manner that the author tries to capture the space that separates biology from artistic creation; and he does this by avoiding at all times to fall into any kind of reductionism, mainly in the idealism that considers humans as singular beings in the bosom of creation; and also avoiding various forms of dualism, such as the one between biology and culture, between body and mind, and ultimately between philosophy and science. The whole work shows an extraordinary mastery of specialised literature on the issues addressed, from biology to philosophy, through art and artistic creation. Especially noteworthy is the attention to Catalan thinkers and scientists, often neglected by the academic research done in Spain itself—an element that shows how Cuscó’s work has a clear international aspiration and remains rooted in the fruitful production of his homeland. PubDate: 2021-08-19
Authors:Mario Macías Pages: 115 - 117 Abstract: The Talmud in Dispute During the High Middle Ages has been produced in the framework of the ERC project The Latin Talmud and Its Influence on Christian-Jewish Polemic (LATTAL). The aim of this project, which finalized in 2019, was the study of the use of Jewish sources by Christian scholastics as apologetic materials to probe the veracity of the Catholic dogma and the falsities of Judaism. Alexander Fidora, principal researcher of the project and ICREA research professor at the Autonomous University of Barcelona, is also the editor of this exhaustive book composed by ten independent contributions on the Disputation of Paris and the Latin translations of the Talmud in the mid-thirteenth century. PubDate: 2021-08-19
Authors:Josep Monserrat Pages: 118 - 125 Abstract: In the historiography of Catalan culture, both the external continuity of the historiographical reflection and the internal discontinuity of such “reflections” are surprising. The History of institutions and the cultural movement in Catalonia (1900-1936) by Alexandre Galí is perhaps a good example of this. PubDate: 2021-08-19
Authors:Pompeu Casanovas Pages: 126 - 134 Abstract: This is a Research Note about the ongoing Project on the semantics of pactism (pactisme) in Catalan ancient law. Pactism is the name of the legal doctrine that grounds the validity of legal provisions upon a pact-based model. It was developed as a basis for Catalan Public law in the 13th, 14th and 15th centuries. We present it as a medieval realism. Looking at the concomitances of 20th century legal realism and the doctrine of pactism can shed light on the emergence of early states and the construction of legal doctrines stemming from the reception of Roman law, the wide use of ius commune, and the development of case-based law and Scholastic reasoning methods. The semantics of pact-modelling processes and outcomes has yet to be established. Thus, it is also contended that Digital Humanities can offer some technological solutions to unravel underlying linguistic, cognitive and ontological patterns to understand the political culture that came out of it and developed until the 18th c. in Catalonia. PubDate: 2021-08-19
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