Academic literature on the topic 'Oriental despotism'

Abstract Marx believed that socialist revolution, i.e., the end of the private ownership of the “means of production”, would make the state weak in the long run: the state would “wither away”. He also believed that the despotic state is related to Oriental despotism, marked by general ossification. Here Marx followed the views of his contemporaries. The socialist revolutions in Russia and China demonstrate that Marx was wrong: the end of private ownership of the “means of production” creates a state similar to Oriental despotism, but it is a quite dynamic and economically viable regime. The USSR’s collapse was due to Gorbachev alone; at the same time, totalitarian socialist China would become an economic and geopolitical global force in the future.

European portraits of the great Asian states, China, India, and Persia, remained remarkably constant from the establishment of the Chinese silk trade in the first century B.C. until the religious and mercantile expeditions to the Orient prominent in the late Middle Ages. For more than a millenium, the Eastern empires had been classified by Europeans as stable despotisms – stationary societies governed by custom and tradition and devoid of economic, political, or cultural dynamism. Only during the Enlightenment did the proper interpretation of the merits of ‘Oriental despotism’ become a matter of controversy. To some Enlightenment figures, the paternalistic despotisms of Asia appeared to be superior to the nations of Europe ethically and in the quality of their political, legal, and educational institutions. Many social philosophers of the period agreed that the example afforded by Asia could contribute much to the rejuvenation of European society they hoped to effect.

AbstractThe issue of how European images of the East were formed, used, and contested is far from simple. The concept of oriental despotism allowed early-modern Europeans to distinguish themselves from the most powerful and impressive non-European civilizations of the Ottoman Middle East, Persia, India, and China on grounds which were neither fundamentally religious nor linked to sheer scientific and technological progress, but political and moral. However, it would be incorrect to treat this as a pure European fantasy based on the uncritical application of a category inherited from Aristotle, because both the concept and its range of application were often hotly contested. By assessing the way travel accounts helped transform the concept from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment, this article argues that oriental despotism was not a mental scheme that blinded Europeans to the perception of the true Orient, but rather a compelling tool for interpreting information gathered about the Orient, one which served a common intellectual purpose despite important differences of opinion in Europe about the nature of royal power.

The article investigates the reforms introduced by Alexander II through the prism of a comparative analysis of western and eastern civilizations. The author maintains that, having long developed as eastern civilization, Russia is characterized by oriental despotism, absence of a constructive dialogue between government and society, paternalistic social consciousness, legal nihilism. The author assesses historical data on reforms implemented by Alexander II and comes to the conclusion that the reforms signified an attempt to converge with western civilization. Alexander II‟s reforms enhanced the importance of law, highlighted the principle of everyone‟s equality before the law, encouraged a constructive dialogue between government and society, and underlined the inadmissibility of plenipotentiary autocratic power and despotism. However, since it is not easy to change public mind, western innovations remained closely associated with oriental traditions, such as the importance of community, paternalism, and legal nihilism. The author concludes that though Alexander II‟s reforms introduced some elements of western civilization, Russian society remained essentially oriental.

Abstract Eighteenth-century critics of the concept of Oriental Despotism understood rights to hold an important place in the governance of Muslim-ruled empires. In asking what we might make of this idea, this article examines a tradition of speaking about the “rights of subjects over the kingdom” in sultanic India from the late fourteenth century onwards. This tradition, drawing to a significant extent from the writings of ‘Ali Hamadānī (d. 1384), articulated normative rights of recipience for sultanic subjects, often embedded in an early Islamic imaginaire. Sketching several iterations of this tradition over five centuries, the article argues that while the critique of the concept of Oriental Despotism, in so far as it dealt with rights, would come to focus centrally on the question of property rights, there was another, less familiar rights tradition that was left thereby in the shadows.

This study aims to examine the way in which European writers of the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries represented Ottoman government. The Ottoman Empire had a special place in European experience and thought. The Ottomans were geographically close to Western Europe, yet they were quite apart in culture and religion, a combination that triggered interest in Turkish affairs.1 Particularly important were political affairs. The Ottoman government inspired a variety of opinions among European travelers and thinkers. During the 18th century, the Ottomans lost their image as formidable and eventually ceased to provoke curiosity in the European public. They were no longer dreaded as the “public calamity”; nor were they greatly respected as the “most modern government” on earth. Rather, they were regarded as a dull and backward sort of people. From the 16th century to the 19th century, the European observers employed two similar, yet different, concepts to characterize the government of the Ottoman Empire. The concept of tyranny was widely used during the 16th and 17th centuries, whereas the concept of despotism was used to depict the regime of the Ottomans in the 18th century. The transition from the term “tyranny” to that of “despotism” in the 18th century indicates a radical change in the European images of the Ottoman Empire. Although both of these terms designate corrupt and perverse regimes in Western political thought, a distinction was made between tyranny and despotism, and it mattered crucially which term was applied to the Ottoman state. European observers of the empire gave special meanings to these key concepts over time. “Tyranny” allowed for both positive and negative features, whereas “despotism” had no redeeming features. Early modern Europeans emphasized both admirable and frightening aspects of Ottoman greatness. On the other hand, the concept of despotism was redefined as inherently Oriental in the 18th century and employed to depict the corruption and backwardness of the Ottoman government. This transformation was profoundly reflected in the beliefs of Europeans about the East. That is, 18th century thought on Ottoman politics contains a Eurocentric analysis of Oriental despotism that is absent from the discussions of Ottoman tyranny in earlier centuries.

Концепція «азійського способу виробництва» згадувалася в працях Карла Маркса, проте не отримала належної уваги та залишилася незавершеною. Витоки цієї концепції прослідковуються в працях класиків наукової думки XVIII та XIX століть – Ш. Монтеск’є, А. Сміта, Г. В. Ф. Гегеля. Після смерті Маркса продовжив розвивати цю концепцію К. А. Віттфогель. Цю концепцію можна охарактеризувати як єропоцентричну. В 20-30тих роках ХХ століття в СРСР відбувалася дискусія щодо «азійського способу виробництва», в якій брали участь радянські марксисти та сходознавці. Не дивлячись на відсутність безпосередніх висновків з дискусії, в подальшому висновком стала відмова від концепції на офіційному рівні та створення прогресивної моделі розвитку людства, так званої “п’ятичленки”, тобто моделі з п’яти послідовних формацій. Метою моєї роботи було визначення основних протиріч навколо концепції «азійського способу виробництва» та визначення можливих шляхів вирішення цих протиріч в експертному інтерв’ю. В ході роботи були виявлені ці протиріччя та оформлені у вигляді питань до експертів. Я приходжу до висновку про європоцентричність поглядів дослідників, визначний вплив політичної кон’юнктури на причини та висновки дискусії та вельми високий евристичний потенціал концепції в рамках марксистської теорії.
The concept of the "Asian mode of production" was mentioned in the works of Karl Marx, but did not receive due attention and remained incomplete. The origins of this concept can be traced in the works of the classics of scientific thought of the XVIII and XIX centuries - S. Montesquieu, A. Smith, G. Hegel. After Marx's death, Karl Wittfogel continued to develop this concept. This concept can be described as eurocentric. In the 1920s and 1930s, there was a discussion in the USSR about the "Asian mode of production," in which Soviet marxists and orientalists took part. Despite the lack of direct conclusions from the discussion, the subsequent conclusion was the rejection of the concept at the official level and the creation of a progressive model of human development, the so-called "five members". The aim of my work was to identify the main contradictions surrounding the concept of the "Asian mode of production" and to identify possible ways to resolve these contradictions in an expert interview. During my work, these contradictions were identified and formalized in the form of questions to experts. I come to the conclusion that views of researches were eurocentric, the influence of the political situation on the causes and conclusions of the discussion was significant, and the heuristic potential of the concept within marxist theory is very high.

À la suite d’importants travaux portant sur la place de la figure féminine dans lalittérature du XVIIIe siècle, notre regard s’est porté sur la figure de la femme del’Orient, de culture musulmane particulièrement. De nombreux écrivains font de cettefigure une construction littéraire qui met l’accent sur nombreuses idées qui préoccupentle siècle des Lumières. Dans cette étude, certains genres de la littérature française del’époque se croisent comme le roman, le conte, l’histoire, la tragédie et une oeuvrelittéraire de la littérature anglaise traduite en français qui est le fruit d’un voyage d’uneauteure anglaise en Turquie. L’intérêt de notre recherche consiste à étudier le rôle, laprésence et les caractéristiques de la femme orientale dans quelques oeuvres de Voltaire,de Diderot, de François, Baron de Tott, de Lady Montagu et principalement deMontesquieu, en particulier les Lettres persanes. La femme orientale, objet d’étude pourles écrivains, représente cet étranger intriguant qui permet d’élaborer un discours àdifférents niveaux : social, moral, religieux, politique, esthétique et littéraire. Elle estpour les lecteurs cet Autre qui crée chez eux de l’attirance et du rejet, de la curiosité etune forme de condamnation. La femme est représentée à travers un ensemble deprincipes qui permettent d'une part d'aborder la féminité (l'amour, la séduction, lemariage) mais aussi de la placer dans un dispositif argumentatif qui concerne desvaleurs universelles : la liberté, l'égalité des êtres, dans un contexte religieux, social etpolitique. La présence de la femme orientale dans la création littéraire libère le regardsur l’autre ainsi que sur soi. Son image est une invention occidentale qui ne vise pas às’imposer comme une réalité historique et culturelle, mais qui est considérée comme lavariante d’un même stéréotype mise au service du projet esthétique, intellectuel,philosophique des auteurs des Lumières soucieux de transmettre une connaissancesavante sur l’Orient
The image of the oriental woman has for a long time its echo and its distinct place in the French literature. For this reason, we chose this sujet. In our researche,we intend to find answers to numerous questions: How did constitute the image of the woman in the works of the writers? How was it reflected in their spirit? What arouses its image? How the writers represent her(it)? What parameters (do typological, sociological, psychological, ethnic, religious) allow to represent at best the oriental woman? How do we make of the East, place of diverse fantasies, the object of a metaphoric or allegorical discussion of another sociocultural reality, the western world? Why the literary myth of the Oriental is favored in the literary creation of the writers of the Enlightenment? In sum, we suggest studying the treatment of the stereotype of the oriental woman in the literature and his evolution during the XVIIIth century. Is the oriental woman condemned to be only the symbol of the sensualism, and the sensual delight, the inhabitant of a harem where the power of the man subjects her constantly? Such a stereotype reduces the woman to be only a body object of desire. But the literature of the XVIIIth century seems to give an other place to the oriental woman, as we were able to see him in our memory of Master's degree. Thus this reflection deserves to be completed in a more thorough study, during a doctoral thesis

L’objectif de cette thèse est d’examiner en détail le concept de despotisme présenté par « la deuxième génération de la Nahḍa » - des penseurs actifs de la fin des années 1870 au début du XXème siècle - ainsi que d’éclaircir l’importance historique de leur effort intellectuel. En outre, l’objectif secondaire est de démontrer que cette génération, tout en tenant compte de l’esprit de la liberté comme norme politique, a développé une connaissance plus universelle qu’auparavant vis-à-vis du mécanisme du despotisme et des moyens d’y résister. Les intellectuels arabes du XIXème siècle commencent à utiliser le mot al-istibdād dans le sens de « despotisme », en entendant que ce concept, différent de celui de « tyrannie » qui est traditionnellement l’objet de condamnations, est un système oppressif qui bloque le développement de la société et qui cause la ruine de la communauté. Notamment depuis la révolte de ‘Urābī, les penseurs utilisent le « despotisme » comme un mot-clé pour lutter contre les régimes autoritaires et élargissent leurs débats non seulement au domaine politique mais également au domaine social avec des combats tels que la libération des femmes ou encore l’éducation, sans oublier le domaine culturel avec l’écriture de romans et l’activité théâtrale. Dans ce contexte historique, le réformiste musulman Muhammad ‘Abduh (1849-1905) contribue au développement du concept de despotisme, notamment à travers l’idée du « despote juste », et à la connaissance du système oppressif. Tout en gardant une conception platonicienne qui attribue la prospérité de l’État à la qualité et aux vertus de son dirigeant, il approfondit tout de même l’analyse sur le système de propagation du pouvoir qui transmet l’oppression des élites alliées avec les puissances européennes aux classes populaires et pauvres, par l’intermédiaire des classes moyennes.Les contributions des autres intellectuels à la critique du despotisme se diversifient. Jamāl al-Dīn al-Afghānī (1838/9-97) et Khalīl Ghānim (1846-1903) insistent sur le rapport idéologique entre l’impérialisme et le despotisme oriental. Adīb Isḥāq (1856-1884), inspiré par les Lumières européennes telles que Montesquieu et Rousseau, explique que la liberté et le despotisme forment un couple de concepts interdépendants qui se réfléchissent comme en miroir, ce qui rend d’autant plus aisé la substitution du couple de concepts politiques traditionnels que sont la justice (‘adl) et l’injustice (ẓulm). Par ailleurs, alors que Shiblī Shumayyil (1850-1917), darwiniste arabe, critique le despotisme du point de vue de l’organicisme social, ‘Abdullāh Nadīm (1845-1895) met en question, à travers ses fictions, la domination des privilégiés économiquement, culturellement et linguistiquement, sur les populations défavorisées. Enfin, Qāsim Amīn (1863-1908) et ‘Abdul Raḥmān al-Kawākibī (1855-1902) essayent quant à eux de concilier la connaissance de leur propre tradition avec les sciences modernes : ils mettent en lumière le rôle du pouvoir despotique dans l’ordre hiérarchique entre hommes et femmes, et replacent le despotisme oriental dans le contexte de la monopolisation des capitaux par les puissances coloniales au sein du système économique mondial. En somme, les penseurs de cette génération multiplient les efforts pour approfondir leurs analyses du despotisme indigène, pour construire un esprit commun, pour reconnaître sans concessions les défauts de leur propres sociétés, pour rendre prioritaire l’éducation du peuple aux dépens des intérêts du dirigeant et des privilégiés, et pour émanciper à la fois l’État et la société. Ainsi, nous montrons que ces auteurs ne tombent pas dans le piège d’une théorie soulignant les spécificités des sociétés arabo-musulmanes et aboutissant à défendre l’inévitabilité du despotisme dans cette partie du monde, mais qu’ils poursuivent au contraire leur quête de la conciliation de leur propre tradition avec une inspiration universaliste
The objective of this dissertation is to examine in detail the concept of despotism as presented by the second generation of Nahḍa – Arabic thinkers active from the late 1870s to the early twentieth century - as well as to clarify the historical importance of their intellectual efforts. In addition, the secondary objective is to demonstrate that this generation, while taking into account the notion of freedom as a political norm, also developed a far more universal understanding of the mechanisms of despotism (and the means to resist them) than had hitherto existed.Arab intellectuals of the 19th century began to use the word al-istibdād as an equivalent to "despotism", understanding this concept, in contradistinction to traditional notions of “tyranny”, as an oppressive system that impedes the development of society, and which brings about the eventual ruin of the community. Particularly following the ‘Urabi Revolt (1879-1882), Arabic thinkers began to use the term "despotism" as a slogan in their fight against authoritarian regimes, and extended its use not only from the political field to the social field, notably with regard to the struggle for the liberation of women and the education of the people, but also to the cultural field, including through the writing of novels and plays. In this historical context, the Islamic reformist Muhammad ‘Abduh (1849-1905) made a particularly noteworthy contribution to the development of the concept of despotism, especially through his idea of the "just despot", and his analysis of the systems of oppression. While retaining the Platonic principle that the prosperity of the State depends upon the qualities and virtues of its leader, he simultaneously analyzed the ways in which the power system reproduced itself, transmitting oppression from elites allied with the European powers, via the middle classes, down to the lower classes and the poor. Many other intellectuals also contributed to the development of the concept of despotism. Jamal al-Dīn al-Afghani (1838/9-1897) and Khalīl Ghānim (1846-1903) emphasized the ideological relationship between imperialism and Oriental despotism. Adib Isḥāq (1856-1884), inspired by European Enlightenment thinkers such as Montesquieu and Rousseau, explained that the despotic state does not repress the people in the name of “repression” but creates -by giving the illusion of freedom to the public- a triangular system of fear, jealousy, and mutual suspicion. Moreover, while Shibli Shumayyil (1850-1917), an Arab Darwinist, criticized despotism from the perspective of social evolution, Abdullaah Nadim (1845-1895) questioned, through his fiction, the economic, cultural, and linguistic hegemony of the privileged classes over the masses. Finally, Qāsim Amīn (1863-1908) and ‘Abdul al-Raḥmān Kawakibi (1855-1902) attempted to reconcile their own traditional knowledge with modern science. They highlighted the role of despotic power in hierarchical relationships between men and women, and reexamined Oriental despotism in the context of the monopolization of capital by the colonial powers within the global economic system. In sum, the thinkers of this generation made every possible effort to deepen their analysis of indigenous despotism, to recognize the faults of their own societies, to prioritize the education of the people over the interests of the leader and privileged, to emancipate both the state and society from the yoke of autocratic tradition, and to evolve a common sprit or vision. Thus, these authors did not fall into the trap of emphasizing the specificities of Arab-Muslim societies, and thus defending the inevitability of despotism, but rather persevered in their quest to reconcile their own traditions with universal visions

Dissertation .. The approaches towards death and burial in different historical epochs of mankind dealing with a view of death in intellectual conceptions during the history. People have been engaged in the question of life and deaths for ages. It is one of the oldest, the hardests and the most fundamental questions which are asked. We can think of the death in two levels: a general and a personal. The comprehension of deaths was developing in history. Thesis traces, what affected and how it is possible, that the today`s subject of personal death states taboo, even if masmedia floods us with death of others. For understanding, the thesis goes throught history. From the methodological aspects it follows the time line, divides the history into ancient world, the Middle Ages and modern period, as well as on horizontal line following individually nations and their intellectual directions.