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Home -> Community -> Mailing Lists -> Oracle-L -> RE: OT (Fwd) RE: :what is the meaning of "ad hoc query"?
Lars,
thanks again for the excellent, and stimulating elucidations!
This sounds like the same stuff Quakers do (silent witness?), I wonder if there is a connection. Also, Ghandi was supposedly greatly influenced by the Quaker "witness" process when he was studying law in England. I've heard from muslim scholars that there was a similar school of islamic mysticism, I think called the "illuminationists". They relied in highly developed spiritual purification practices/rituals to open the mind to the "inner voice" of the soul (truth).
Supposedly the univeralists think that there is a phenomena called "perennial philosophy", which indicates that there is a certain similarity in how many/most (pre-modern) cultures developed the "inner wisdom" (discernment/insight, "irfan" in arabic) and ability to determine "truth".
My guess is that this is the "baby" that thrown out with the "bathwater" (superstition) during the period of the rise of the age of rationalism, science and technology.
It probably sounds weird, but it may be that democracy is not sustainable over the long run without strong traditions of mysticism.
On electing Kings, that also supposedly happened in the iberia, including the catalan-aragonese empire (now Aragon, Catalonia and Languedoc). It may have been originally (but indirectly?) inspired by the Norse traditions! In popular modern catalan history, they take pride in claiming to have had a "magna carta" 4 years before the one in England.
( http://zeus.townhall.com/phillysoc/liggiosa.htm
excerpts:
"In the midst of the resistance of the Spanish townsmen and rural
yeomen after May 2, 1808, their leaders sought inspiration
from the historic institutions of Spain. The provincial councils
looked to the medieval representative institutions, and the
national council in Cadiz called in 1810 for the formation of a
successor to the Cortes which issued a new Constitution on
March 19, 1812. It was based on English constitutional
principles. The Liberales sought a foundation in the
[]
[***]Gothic traditions[***]
[]
of liberty in constitutional documents and institutions, such as the [***]communas of Cataluna and Castile[***]. In March, 1814, Ferdinand VII was restored after swearing to maintain the constitution of 1812. But he suppressed the Cortes and undertook a ferocious destruction of the Liberales. In January, 1820, a revolution re-established the Cortes; but a French invasion in 1823 restored Ferdinand VII and witnessed his massacre of the Cortes in Cadiz. Benjamin Constant was the French writer most in tune with the Spanish Constitutionalists and their foundation in the medieval representative institutions of the communas.
Spain had shared the liberation from Roman taxation and inflation
when the Germanic tribes burst the Rhine frontier in 406 A.D. The
Visigothic settlers in Spain brought
[***]German concepts of limited power of the ruler[***]
and extensive independence and rights of freeman.
[]
[***]The king must live on his own resources[***], and
[]
[***]the concept of taxation was unacceptable[***]
[]
[] to independent
freeman. But the representative institutions of the Germans
became limited to the Visigothic Christian kingdoms in the
Pyrenees, Asturias, Navarre, and Galicia with the Moslem conquest
after 711 A D. and the Moslem defeat by the Franks at
the Battle of Tours in 732 A. D.
During the five hundred years of the Reconquista, the Germanic concepts of law and political institutions flourished in Spain. In the various kingdoms of Spain, Asturias, Galicia, Navarre, Leon, Castile, Aragon, Cataluna, and Valencia the rights of freeman were clearly recognized. Taxation was at odds with freedom. The king's capacity depended on possessing enough funds of his own to pay for his costs as king. The nobles and freeman, townsmen in municipalities with charters, and the secular and monastic clergy embodied complete independence and rights against the king.
The well-known oaths of the nobles, freeman, townsmen, and
clergy, as at the coronation of the kings of Aragon, and the
reciprocal oaths of the kings required kings to live up to their
oaths; and if not, the freeman, etc. were absolved of their oaths.
We find in the [***]Fueros[***]--traditional rights and
independence from taxation of the medieval nobles, freeman,
townsmen, and clergy, with their
[***]roots in Germanic legal concept[***]--the foundations of
modern rights. English legal and constitutional history,
with the Magna Carta, was parallel to the experiences in Spain,
such as the Great charter of 1020 issued by the Cortes of
Leon under Alphonso V."
...
"At the time (after 1760) of London's attempt to displace North
America's medieval heritage, a leading Bourbon reformer and
utilitarian advocate of Enlightened Despotism, Gaspar Melchor de
Jovellanos (1744-1811) declared Iberia's great tragedy to
be its Gothic inheritance. Jovellanos and the Enlightened
philosophers attacked Montesquieu and his assertion that it was
Gothic constitutional traditions which were the foundations of
the flourishing of liberty and wealth among Europeans. We
need to recall that Montesquieu and his defense of the Gothic
constitution was the most influential authority among the
American founding fathers."
...
"When the United States Constitution was written, it received
*-> violently critical reviews from the great philosophers of the
French Enlightenment. They did not understand, as Edmund Burke
well understood, that the Americans had revolted against
England because the English bureaucrats were attempting to
destroy the Americans' medieval institutions and to install a
modern, bureaucratic state. The French philosophers emphasized
repeatedly that the American constitution was retrogressive,
looking back to the institutions and concepts of liberty of the
middle ages. Thomas Jefferson and John Adams sought to
explain to the philosophers that the American revolutionaries
were traditional Whigs who wished to keep all the historic,
medieval institutions of England, from common law to
[]
[***] absence of central government agents. [***]"
[!!!!!!]
...
"The medieval supremacy of the judiciary and judicial review were
reflected in the U. S. Constitution and The Federalist
Papers. "The political and social philosophies that sprang from
the Enlightenment were [***]religious[***] because they ascribed
ultimate meaning and sanctity to the individual mind and also, it
must be added immediately, to the nation. The age of
individualism and rationalism was also the age of nationalism:
the individual was a citizen, and public opinion turned out to be
not the opinion of mankind but the opinion of Frenchmen, the
opinion of Germans, the opinion of Americans, and so forth.
Individualism, rationalism, nationism - the Triune Deity of
Democracy - found legal expression in the exaltation of the role
of the legislature and the consequent reduction (except in the
United States) of the law-crating role of the judiciary." Harold
J. Berman, The Interaction of Law and Religion (Nashville,
Tennessee, Abingdon Press, 1974, pp. 68-9)."
...
---end exceprts--- )
(also see: http://libro.uca.edu/lewis/sfcatsoc.htm , http://www.hyw.com/downloads/HYWNotes.txt , http://libro.uca.edu/ck . the latter describes catholic/muslim conflict during the reconquista c. 1300 in spain. http://www.niu.edu/~td0kru1/spain.html , etc. )
As in England, the Magna Carta was of course an agreement between feudal warlords/landowners and the nobility. ( http://www.infokey.com/hall/magna.htm , http://www.nara.gov/exhall/charters/magnacarta/magmain.html )
Note there is a "translation" of the Magna Carta into modern english at the above site!
At any rate, this might cast a bit of light on the current political "insanity" going on in the usa.
regards,
ep
ps, yet more linguistic oddities!!!:
http://www.estelnet.com/catalunyacymru/catala/pc_cogn.htm
On 1 Dec 2000, at 8:15, Lars Skj=E6rlund wrote:
From: "Lars Skj=E6rlund" <lars_at_spinn.dk> To: "Netware 4 Discussion List" <Netw4l_at_mail.otherwhen.com> Subject: RE: OT (Fwd) RE: :what is the meaning of "ad hoc query"? Date sent: Fri, 01 Dec 2000 08:15:15 +0100 > > >It was the valley where, up until a hundred years or two ago, > >every summer every Icelander gathered for the All thing, where all > >things were discussed and decided. > > Among those the famous descision made by an old, wise man in 1000 > that the entire island from now on would be Christian. He lay down > under a sheep skin for three or four days, and when he returned to > the Alting (it does mean 'everything' in Danish as well), he had > made up his mind about religion. No fighting, no wars. >
> >When the king was selected, he would stand before all the people > >and recite - from memory - all the laws under which they would be > >governed.
>
> That's exactly how the political system worked all over the Nordic
Received on Fri Dec 01 2000 - 22:06:50 CST
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