"Know yourself" - This sentence is from the ancient Greek temple of Delphi has been passed down to this day and has been misread until now. If we read early ancient Greek literature, we will find that the "self" in the oracle does not refer to the concept of "individual" in the modern sense, but is more like what we now call the "family/world" view. Knowing you "self" is not so much about knowing yourself, but rather understanding the hierarchical order of society or the world.
So, what is the concept of "individual" in the modern sense? From the classical era to modern society, how were Western "individuals" invented and created? Why did the concept of "individual" be constructed and become the basis for Western social organizations? British historian Larry Sidentop answers this series of confusion for us in his book "Invention of the Individual: The Status of Man in the Classical Ages and the Middle Ages".
As an expert in the history of the mind and the history of thought, Sidentop discovered that individual or self-invention is closely linked to the moral revolution of Christianity. Through the concept of moral equality (“God’s Love”), preached by early Christianity, people were liberated for the first time from some unchanging Greek order or destiny and became a true "individual" with subjective initiative.
After a series of social changes such as the Reformation, the Church Law, and the Renaissance , the admiration of individuals and the establishment of individual status are no longer just the moral intuition promoted by Christianity, but have become the basic concept consensus of modern Western society. Since then, individuals have replaced families and castes and have become the basic role of modern social organizations. This also laid the foundation for the subsequent wave of thought such as liberalism.
The following is excerpted from Chapter 26 of the book "Invention Individuals: The Status of Man in the Classical Age and the Middle Ages" by the Press. The subtitle was added by the editor.
"Invention Individuals: The Status of Man in the Classical Age and the Middle Ages", written by Larry Sidentop, translated by He Qingchuan, Great Questions by Guangxi Normal University Press, January 2021.
Original author | [English] Larry Sidentop
excerpt | Qingqingzi
Renaissance: A key step to individual liberation
Renaissance is regarded as the end of the Middle Ages and a key step to individual liberation. We have inherited the view from historians like Bookhart that the Italian Renaissance has given individuals a rebirth and prosperity. It is believed that the Renaissance marked the end of a religious tyranny (i.e., ideological tyranny). It opened the eyes of Europeans to see more and more richer values and interests in the classical era. Moreover, a passion for the ancient world undoubtedly attracted the attention of many thoughts.
In Bookhart's eloquent debate, the Italian city-states in the 14th to 15th centuries witnessed people's unabashed pursuit of fame, wealth and beauty, witnessed the subversion of value and the revival of self-affirmation. Surrounded by the ruins of ancient city-states, Italian humanists living in urban countries began to use ancient sculpture, painting, architecture and literature as examples. The revival of humanism reveals to people that he has liberated people, allowing people to explore new needs, create new ambitions, and taste new happiness. The revival of humanism encourages people to treat this world with an undisguised attitude of enjoyment and to get rid of the constraints of religious guilt.
Although early Italian humanists might have wanted to reconcile Christianity with ancient values, humanists in the late 15th century usually had a hostility to the church. Machiavelli went the farthest, and he liked to compare the patriotism of ancient citizens with the virtues of Christians the most. Other humanists are also not patient with the boring "school" research in universities, as well as the "obscure" arguments in logic and natural law explored by church jurists and philosophers. In their view, these arguments are far away from human affairs, from human real desires, needs, and especially happiness. Their preferred philosopher was Plato , because his dialogue conceived a civilized urban world rather than the monastery background implied by scholastic scholars’ debate around Aristotle.
Machiavelli
If the Renaissance is seen as the first step towards liberal secularism , it is because it begins to get rid of the shackles of religious authority, the second step is the development of skepticism, which follows the religious war of trying to force unify faith. This new skepticism is full of anti-priestism and calls for religious tolerance, a typical example of which is Montaigne's work. Soon, these appeals were re-proposed in the name of natural rights, so the discourse of rights became an inherent element of the development of liberal secularism. The realm of freedom defended in this way gradually expanded, and even atheism was absorbed. By the 18th century, anti-priestism was so poisonous in parts of Europe that it led to a massacre of religious belief itself. As a result, people gradually believed that liberal secularism was essentially anti-religious in Europe. People also use this method to explain its roots with the Renaissance concept. Any attempt to trace its roots back to Christianity will be considered a strange theory.
However, as a process of separation between public and private spheres, secularism is based on the distinction between external obedience and internal authentic beliefs. On the other hand, the premise of this distinction lies in the belief that freedom is a prerequisite for moral action, and moral obligation presupposes the existence of a selective field. After all, it is this belief that led to the transformation of ancient natural law theory into a set of natural rights theories.
This is the trouble. The unforced faith is a product of Christianity, and this belief itself provides a real basis for legitimate authority. The touchstone of "inner belief" gradually makes "forced faith" contradictory, and this can summarize the reflections of church jurists, theologians and philosophers on the role of individual conscience in the 14th to 15th centuries. As mentioned above, their reflection relies on rejection of the natural inequality premise of ancient thought. This is why it is a misleading view to regard the secularist process as the "rebirth" of ancient humanism. It ignores a moral belief, and it is it that leads to the transformation of the theory of natural law itself and makes "right" the fundamental topic of liberal secularism.
However, in the early modern war against the church, people lost their understanding of this connection. This is why we must reflect on the Renaissance of Rubu's viewpoint marks a decisive turning point in European history, distincting a "medi-century" era of ignorance and superstition from an era of freedom and progress.
The ancient ways of thought, emotion and expression once thrilled Italian humanists, but they originated from and reflected a completely different social type: a society where citizens and slaves coexist, and a society where families outweigh the soul. Humanists often overlook this difference, and many are almost only interested in what we call "fine art." However, by neglecting this difference, they were unable to explore the deeper differences between the ancient world and Christian Europe. They do not like philosophical arguments about the moral premise of “founding nature”. Italian humanists regard the ancient world as a quarry, but do not care much about its original structure.
To be fair, the elitism of humanists allows them to combine ancient and modern characteristics in many aspects of their interest. However, part of their interest is that they juxtapose different social types of inquiries, and their ideological backgrounds depend on different premises of natural inequality and moral equality. However, humanists cannot resist the moral intuition of their society. Perhaps by accident, Renaissance painters turned the ideal types found in the remaining ancient sculptures into a series of beautiful individuals. Take the nude of a man as an example: Italian painters will turn the symbol of social superiority - the domination of male citizens over the inferior - into the beautiful and touching figure we see now, and Botticelli is a typical example.
So, I'm not saying that the Renaissance is not important, nor that it does not innovate people's thoughts, emotions, and expressions.Likewise, I have no intention of thinking that the Renaissance has no place in our understanding of sculpture, painting and architecture. But I insist that the Renaissance, as a historical concept, is an overstatement, and that it caused a break between early modern Europe and the previous centuries is also a misleading view.
"Individual" as an organic social role
If the basic characteristic of modernity is an individualized social model, a model in which individuals rather than families, clans or castes become basic social units, it is necessary to distinguish this standard from other standards. People's admiration for how literature and art have become has confused the rise of two different things: one is the aesthetic concept of "pursuing individuality", and the other is the moral concept of "inventing individuality". The invention of individuals is the result of the so-called "ontology" argument by philosophers, and it is related to how to understand reality. This is not the job of humanists, although they have absorbed its achievements. Humanists do emphasize self-cultivation, emphasizing more refined taste and self-expression. This practice shapes a religion that can be described as a personality worship, describing individuals as “victims” of social oppression and heroism that resists oppression, while the social system takes on a look that threatens the self.
This new sensual spirit promoted the development of moral philosophy and political theory in the 17th to 18th centuries. They often have a critical attitude towards liberalism, encourage a "atomized" social picture, completely separate individuals from social backgrounds, and conceal the normative development process on which liberalism relies. It is true that a kind of "naturalism" invaded the liberal thought at that time and was helped by the development of natural science: natural science placed the individual's mind in nature rather than culture, making observable laws rather than social norms the criterion for testing the effectiveness of knowledge. Our so-called utilitarian philosophical tradition has turned this wave into a "atomized" social model. In such a society, individual needs or preferences are regarded as established facts and have nothing to do with the role of norms or the process of socialization.
There is a good reason for us to regard these later intellectual developments as liberal heresy, because it deprives liberal secularism of the deepest moral roots and cuts off the connection with the discourse traditions on which it relies. However, liberalism relies on the moral premises provided by Christianity. In the absence of metaphysics of Dun Redemption, liberalism retained the ontology of Christianity.
As mentioned above, jurists, theologians and philosophers in the 12th to 15th centuries laid the deepest foundation for individuals, which is to break the shackles of family and caste and regard the individual as an organic social role. The realistic picture of these people gives individuals a conscience and will, giving them a moral life and basic role. Let us recall a previous example: Through the reform of the 13th century church law, societies were gradually regarded as a group of individuals, and no longer possessed an identity independent of their members and superior to them. The club gradually lost that concrete ancient meaning, which to a considerable extent promoted the development of a more free spirit and the awareness of institutional reform. This is not atomized individualism, but a habit of incorporation into independence and unity.
The idea that the Renaissance and its successors marked the end of the "Medieval Age" and the birth of the modern world is actually wrong. By the 15th century, church jurists and philosophers had made the following claim: "Experience" is essentially an individual's experience, and there is a series of basic rights to protect individual agency. The ultimate authority of any organization lies in all its members. Reason's use in understanding the process of the physical world is very different from normative reasoning, or innate reasoning. But these have become contents of modernity.
The above 15th century elements have not been classified into any "ism" and have not even been integrated into a consistent and combative plan. Despite this, these elements were gradually introduced from the priest elite to university education, which in turn influenced the attitude of the general public.At the same time, they also make the egalitarian moral intuition sharper, ultimately pointing the finger at an authoritative church. Paul's concept of "Christian freedom" returns in a revengeful posture.
The cornerstone of modern Europe exists in a long and difficult process, which gradually transforms a moral demand into a social status. The pursuit of belief in the equality of the soul has made this transformation possible, and at the same time it has given rise to a certain responsibility for individual freedom. The combination of the two values of equality and freedom has nurtured the essential principle of modern liberal thought, which is "equality freedom". However, it is hard to say how much role the Italian Renaissance played in the exploration or development of this principle.
Renaissance humanists hardly advanced the study of logic and ontology, and it was these studies that allowed medieval thinkers to change the social concepts of the time. However, from the 14th to the 15th century, church jurists and philosophers laid the foundation for a more radical distinction in the holy realm, which was beyond the imagination of people at that time. They laid the foundation for a private sphere of rights-based nature where freedom and conscience dominate. This field had a significant impact on both the state and the church, because for the first time it established that authority within the church ultimately relied on the collective of believers represented by the Council and provided a new model of domination for secular society where the “sovereigner” represents the individual rather than the family or clan.
's understanding of the nature of the "state" inspires people to rethink the "co-ownership" since the church and the state tradition. In the 14th century, Maraiglio of Padua, a philosopher and politician, began to argue that the church, as a system, must obey the laws of the state. He believes that the original meaning of "law" must be based on visible rulings in this world. In his opinion, no matter how noble the moral commandments are, should not be called law. Although the rulers of the state should be guided by morality, they should not tolerate priests interfering in their own affairs. In Masiliu's view, the pope's ambitions to expand and abuse the church's judicial power have caused unnecessary war and civil unrest. Therefore, he believes that if the purpose of the state is to protect the peace and order of the individual groups, the state lies in the autonomy of the law.
By the 15th century, this new social picture permeated the lives of Europeans. This picture is relatively vague, especially in some areas: some commercially developed urbanized areas are clearer, while the rural areas in southern Europe are not as clearer as those in northern Europe. But even in "backward" rural areas, the decline of serfdom and the development of the market economy also show this picture to some extent. Affected by the labor shortage after the Black Death, social mobility has become very interesting, and it has opened up the way for intellectual transformation conveyed by the picture. Similarly, the monarchies of France, Legacy and Spain are increasingly strengthening centralization. The reason why many Italian humanists feel jealous is that they compare these situations with the current situation of the failure of Italian unification. This also indirectly proves the impact of the new social landscape.
emphasizes "intrinsicity"
However, there is a more direct evidence for this effect. In Europe between the 14th and 15th centuries, fundamental changes occurred in several areas: attitudes toward oneself, attitudes toward the natural world, and attitudes toward domination. Let's briefly look at it one by one.
First of all, the extreme emphasis on "innerity" suddenly became a symbol of the religious movement of the people across Europe. Guided by the "inner light" has almost become a criterion for measuring whether it is inspired by God. It is like the individuals who have glimpsed a world where there is no innate difference in social status again and feel that they need a more solid moral foundation. If an individual identity cannot be exhausted by the role occupied by the individual, where can the individual seek support?
As we all know, Meister Eckhart emphasizes the mysterious connection between God and the individual soul, believing that "creation exists only because of God and through God."This mysterious connection is not only the purpose of the Minyu faction in Germany and the Netherlands , but also the followers of Wycliffe in England and Prague Hus . Religion is no longer regarded as a ritualized practice.
's emphasis on intrinsicity helps to cultivate a new attitude of humility and reevaluate the role of reason: "A humble peasant who serves God is better than a proud philosopher who ignores himself and only thinks about the movement of celestial bodies." Among them, the most intriguing sentence is "ignoring oneself."
Self-practice has gradually become the primary moral law. Reason cannot simply control emotions, which is a belief derived from Paul and Augustine . This belief contrasts with the ambitions of other theologians who attempt to incorporate Christian beliefs into the framework of ancient rationalism. In the eyes of the pious, the relationship between man and God is a fundamental experience that all individuals can obtain and the true source of morality. Such a relationship should be declared to all others: "God is among all creatures... but also above all creatures."
Augustine
Emotional transformation cannot be accomplished by the thought itself. However, we cannot regard the pious response as anti-intellectualism, because these popular movements emphasize self-practice through education and reading the " Bible ". They point out the limits of thought in shaping moral action, emphasizing the role of a dedicated life and grace to alert the arrogance of intellectuals. Work and daily dedication should be companions for learning. In this way, virtue becomes a matter of practice.
Jean Gerson was the president of the University of Paris in 1395. Thinkers like him believe that what leads people to God is the individual's moral agency, rather than the various systems created by theologians under the excessive infection of ancient philosophical achievements. Gerson believed that theologians like Aquinas wanted to imitate Aristotle to explain the concept of God. In doing so, they deviated from the God proclaimed by Paul, deviated from the God in the Bible spoken by Abraham and the prophets, and deviated from the Christ who was in the image of man. The reason is that God in the Bible is a God who changes the motivation and actions of man. Those who believe in God always gain experience of such a God, and their experience of the altered motivation is as real as their experience of the physical world.
People's interest in "innerity" has also become fascinated by their will. Here, the direction of public opinion is similar to that of the philosophers' arguments at that time. We know that Scott and Okam's criticism of Aquinas meant that they rejected Thomasism in the name of "God's freedom." Aquinas’s concept of natural law seems to lead to a result: God cannot choose or practice other ways other than his current way of doing. In Aquinas's view, natural law contains a series of rational principles that govern the will of God and the will of man. But in Scott and Occam's view, this position threatens both the omnipotence of God and misunderstands the role of reason. They believe that God's will is limited only by the free nature of the pool, and that Christian faith reveals God's will, requiring all people to be an active subject of equality and freedom. Therefore, freedom has become the bond that connects God and man. It was God who created our world, not some "necessary" rational command. Reason is nothing but part of creation, but not the Creator.
Rethinking the "physical world"
Here, we see the second fundamental change, because once the concept of the role of reason is corrected, other important results have been produced. It helps to reshape our understanding of the physical world, making a sharper division between an inner moral life (the “fighting” with will) and the process of the physical world. This obviously appears in the development direction of thought in the 14th to 15th centuries, because Occam's nominal philosophy swept across Europe at that time, took root in various universities, and competed with the "official" Thomasism. In Paris, Oxford, Heidelberg, Prague and Krakow, noun theory has risen rapidly.Those who adhere to the philosophical position of "realism", that is, the "ancient path" rather than the "modern path", are sometimes desperate to try to prohibit people from teaching nominalism.
Occam emphasized that individual experience and observation are the only legal basis for empirical knowledge ("contingent" knowledge). This is different from the knowledge that originates from deductive truth ("provemental" truth), which does not provide practical knowledge about the world. The distinction between the two forms of knowledge plays a role in rejecting metaphysical thinking, especially "natural theology". In Occam's view, the natural world is just an object to be examined and used to explore the reasons for things. He believes that the causes of external events cannot be discovered through innate reasoning, and the certainty that the latter can provide is limited to deducing conclusions from inherent premises and definitions. The distinction between accidental truth and formal truth creates conditions for people to engage in more free thinking and stimulates people's curiosity about the natural world of experience.
Occam's followers continue the division of two types of reasoning, opposing a "realistic" position that believes that there is some kind of rationally known universe existence. We already know how Occam criticizes the practice of abuse of definitions, including presuppositions such as “cause of purpose” that do not point to verifiable things. Therefore, Okam insists on the distinction between rationality and cause, and the latter resorts to the observable process of events and conducts free research on the natural world under the premise of distinguishing between "nature" and "social". This sounded the death knell of traditional theological thinking, because it divided the norms and situations of human action with the conditions that interpret external natural events.
Therefore, universities in the 14th century began to rethink their previous understanding of the natural world, and this situation was not accidental. A new method of criticizing Aristotle’s physics has been developed, and it is necessary to pay attention to abnormal phenomena that do not conform to general theories through direct observation. The initial response of the Aristotleists was to introduce additional premises to explain the anomalies in order to “save” Aristotle’s theory. However, the practice of "save appearances" by adding the predecessor gradually leads people to doubt the basic predecessor that Aristotle's theory relies on, that is, everything in the universe can find a fixed position and find its destination or "purpose cause".
"If it is not necessary, do not add the previous settings" is the best explanation for Occam's razor, which greatly reduces Aristotle's confidence in physics theory. Aristotle insisted that all things were in their place, and this premise came from the ancient natural law tradition based on natural inequality. Therefore, Aristotle distinguished between "natural motion" and "unnatural motion", such as throwing a stone upwards, which will fall "naturally". Occam rejects this distinction and replaces it with some idea similar to inertia. Influenced by Occam, Nicole Oreame, Pierre d'Ailly and Jean Buridan developed an explanation of the momentum of motion: the kinetic energy of an object comes from the driver.
There is a concept that gradually emerges, that is, it is believed that movement and stillness have the same fundamental position in "nature". In the 14th century, this concept gradually subverted the ancient cosmic model. For example, Bridan believed that the impact theory could be used to explain the movement of celestial bodies like the motion of objects on earth: "We do not need to assume that celestial bodies are composed of special elements such as ether or the fifth corpus, and can only do circular motions. We do not need to assume that celestial bodies have intelligence and use celestial bodies' intelligence to explain the movement of celestial bodies." Therefore, Bridan abandoned the idea that celestial bodies have higher nature and that the role of celestial bodies comes from a certain kind of higher intelligence ("the music of celestial bodies"). Since "the movement of the earth and the movement of the celestial bodies can be explained in the same way", the moral intuition behind the social equality of the earth can also be applied to the heavenly realm. There is no need to assume that there is a "noble system" in nature!
Orisum is bolder than Bridan. He questioned another basic premise in ancient times, where the celestial bodies were moving while the earth was still: “My conclusion is that we cannot show by any experience that celestial bodies have a periodic motion and that the earth does not move in the same way."In short, the 14th century physics theory shows how people's understanding of the physical world benefits from their abandonment of natural inequality.
's appeal to "sovereign states"
Now, let's look at the third set of changes, which also reflect the impact of the new social picture. This set of changes belongs to politics rather than moral or scientific. Europe in the 15th century has always faced a question: since the feudal system was destroyed, how should Europe organize it? Feudalism has not taken the same roots in all places. For example, its strength is different in Italy and southern France, and in northern France and in Germanic regions. Italian city-states or republics, as well as the cities of the Flanders River Catalonia, show the foundation of a political organization different from the feudal system in the north. England also has a model in which its royal power has always been stronger than the feudal power since tradition.
15th century Europe's most prominent political facts, In order to get rid of feudal constraints, the monarch became a veritable "sovereigner" by centralizing authority and power. Louis XI in France , Henry VII of England, Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain all took iconic steps in this direction. Why did they succeed? How did they overcome the resistance of other institutions? In fact, there were four institutions that might have become role models for European political organizations at that time: feudalism, churches, municipalities and monarchy.
Louis XI
However, the theocratic ambitions of Innocent IV and Bonifas VIII were thwarted, and feudal powers and municipalities could not form European political organizations. By the 14th century, feudal law could no longer serve as a basis for a stable political system, because of its inconsistency and reliance on violence. But at the same time, feudal powers also had enough strength to prevent any "republican" citizenship system from being promoted. This development is impossible in any case, because the citizens of the city lacked greater political ambitions. Heart. In the face of feudal powers, citizens show the attitude of inferior people. If they come to the juncture of defending their own cities, they will become brave, but they have not conceived some kind of republican organization for a society in a larger sense, although the Netherlands may be an exception.
Therefore, all parties are stalemate. But before the victory of the monarchy, there was another attempt to integrate Europe similar to feudalism. Its way is to bring representatives of different institutions together, cooperate together, while retaining their original nature. Therefore, people We realized the pressure of centralization and created a series of congresses that embody and organize European diversified systems, such as the French Third Session, the English Parliament, the Spanish Parliament , and the German Imperial Parliament. These congresses are organized based on hierarchy, with aristocrats, priests and citizens having their own positions.
However, the organizational attempts in these countries have failed, with the only exception being the English Parliament, which benefited from the strong royal power. The heterogeneity of these congresses is too strong: the feudal powers have The priests and citizens were used to exercising political will, and neither priests nor citizens were used to guiding political power, nor were interested in it because they were afraid of adding new taxes. As a result, these congresses could not be an effective tool for domination.
However, the failure of these congresses was not simply due to their degree of diversity and the reservation of traditional privileges. There is a deeper reason: the new concept granted sovereign authority to the monarch, thus designing a very different egalitarian social picture, evoking the past without The demands of the royal power have liberation and strengthened the new aspirations of the people. The attitudes of the people have changed greatly enough to deprive the legitimacy of the traditional collective society. This is why the attitude of treating the sovereign with "equal obedience" cannot be regarded as less than worth the gain. Therefore, we must be cautious when talking about the "victory" of the 15th century royal power, because it is indirectly also the victory of the moral intuition fostered by the church.
monarchy assumes the heavy responsibility of organizing Europe, because the church has paved the way for it.Not only did the Pope Revolution shape the monarch's ambition to gain sovereign authority, but on a deeper level of morality and intelligence, the Church has won victory in wars concerning Europe's future. The Church has planned a picture of society as a group of individuals, and this picture has started the process of centralization in Europe.
It is true that monarchs do not care about an egalitarian form of society. They quickly understood how great power they could win from the process of centralization of legal authority. In their view, the prospect of conquering feudal powers and controlling the church in their territory was as important, and often more important, as the moral considerations of the birth of Christian faith. Despite this, the monarchs' approach produced unexpected results. In the process of centralizing laws, customs and ideas, and transforming the once divided and narrow community camps into a unified society, the monarch not only created the country, but also laid a "public" or "state" opinion. The national opinions that emerged in some areas of the 15th century further proved the new impact of society as a group composed of individuals. How obvious is this effect of
? The pride of royal power grew, because the power of the monarch became a symbol of social progress, which meant the abolition of privilege through "equal obedience." The third rank of France and the "lower house" of England sometimes even destroyed feudal privileges at the expense of local autonomy. Creating a "sovereign" active subject seems to be the most important goal. This model is a sign of the expansion of royal power, especially in France. But from the perspective of Europe as a whole, it also puts a certain idealism on the royal power. It is believed that to develop equal obedience to the sovereign, obedience based solely on customs must be sacrificed.
Therefore, it is wrong to see only the potential tyrannical nature of the expansion of sovereignty and authority, that is, the "royal absolutism" that took the stage from the 16th to the 17th century. Because it also contains the seeds of individual freedom. The sovereign claimed that they monopolized the authority of the law, thus abolishing many attitudes and practices of traditional legal status. The royal power did not make positive orders or prohibitions, which at least potentially defines a realm of choice and personal freedom.
Of course, people do not fully realize overnight that sovereignty claims have produced such a social model. Even the French sovereign theorist Bodan in the 16th century was not clear about what kind of minimum obedience unit had produced the sovereign claim. But by the next century, that is, the era of Hobbes , the unique nature of sovereignty and authority appeals has been clarified, not to mention that Hobbes calls the sovereign the worldly gods.
"On Sovereignty", written by Jean Bodan, translated by Li Weihai/Qian Junwen, Peking University Press, December 2008.
Finally, there is strong evidence to prove the applicability of the statement "invention individual". This evidence has always been the most reliable source of measurement of social change, and that is the language itself. If we look at the usage of the word "individual" in the English or French historical dictionary, we will find that it was originally popular since the 15th century. The term "state" and its relevant provisions involving sovereignty and authority also became popular during the same period. Coincidentally, the meanings of these two words depend on each other: it is through the creation of the state that individuals are invented and become the most important organic role in society.
Therefore, we do not have to be surprised by the fact that we often feel that it is easier for us to understand the motivations and behaviors of the 15th century Europeans, and they are more intimate and more "modern". We associate instrumental rationality and target rationality with the market relationship, and this rationality or thought has been clearly reflected in Louis XI and Henry VII's calculations, and even reached a certain level of exaggeration. This is why such dramatic changes in beliefs and institutions that influence people's behavior.
Soon after, Cervantes could parody the motivations and patterns of a no longer existential aristocratic society, and Shakespeare could also create character characters by exploring the depth of social roles. Christian egalitarianism paved the way for the revolution of social structure, and social status is no longer regarded as an inescapable "destiny".
This is the secular version of the Christian "soul" concept, and even our lives today are accompanied by the consequences of its fertility.
Original author | [English] Larry Sidentop
excerpt | Qingqingzi
edit | Wang Qing
introduction part proofreading | Wang Xin
Source: Beijing News
