{"title":"\"The African Problem Is a World Problem\": (Dis)locating Race in Late Colonial Indian Intellectual Thought.","authors":"Shruti Balaji","doi":"10.1353/jhi.2026.a989315","DOIUrl":"10.1353/jhi.2026.a989315","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>How elite Indian intellectuals conceptualized \"race\" in late British India remains undertheorized. In this essay, I demonstrate how Indian intellectuals invoked racial solidarities in strategically ambiguous and hierarchical ways, either in a comparative mode with caste, imperialism, and shared oppression or as difference to be transcended by a humanist cosmopolitanism. Empirically, I argue through a close reading of anti-imperialist Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay's political essays \"The People of Africa\" and \"The Awakening of Asia\" that ideas of civilizational hierarchies, imperial notions of time and progress, and notions of \"geopolitical tutelage\" toward Africa underpin assumed progressive Afro-Asian solidarities in the pre-Bandung era.</p>","PeriodicalId":47274,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF IDEAS","volume":"87 2","pages":"383-399"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2026-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147822135","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Race, Redemption, and Reform: The Interplay of Eugenics, Antisemitism, and Feminist Anti-Trafficking Efforts in Early Twentieth-Century Italy.","authors":"Paola Zichi","doi":"10.1353/jhi.2026.a989316","DOIUrl":"10.1353/jhi.2026.a989316","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>This paper considers a series of medical congresses, abolitionist networks, and eugenic debates, and the intertwining of scientific and feminist knowledge in tackling prostitution and trafficking from 1899-1921. It argues that western male civilizational and racialized assumptions profoundly influenced the ideas of gender and international relations in international law-making at the beginning of the 20th century. The article retraces genealogies of feminist approaches to international law based on criminalized and sanitized understandings of gender violence, sexual rights, and justice for women.</p>","PeriodicalId":47274,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF IDEAS","volume":"87 2","pages":"401-426"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2026-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147822281","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Neurophysiology of Violence: José Delgado and the Stimoceiver.","authors":"Nadine Weidman","doi":"10.1353/jhi.2026.a1003014","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/jhi.2026.a1003014","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>This paper traces the history of José Delgado's stimoceiver, a brain-implant device used to control aggression via electrical stimulation, from its Cold War-era promise to its fall into political disrepute. Beginning with Delgado's dramatic demonstration in a Spanish bullring, the paper situates his work within long-standing neurophysiological traditions of localization and emotional brain theory. It then follows how, through collaborations with Harvard-affiliated psychiatrists, the stimoceiver became central to a broader project of psychosurgical violence control. By the 1970s, however, critiques linking such interventions to racism and repression transformed the stimoceiver from symbol of scientific progress into emblem of biomedical overreach.</p>","PeriodicalId":47274,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF IDEAS","volume":"87 4","pages":"849-872"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2026-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149172200","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Indian Feminists and Orientalist Fantasies: Seeta Parmanand's Reimagining of Hindu Law.","authors":"Mrinalini Sisodia Wadhwa","doi":"10.1353/jhi.2026.a1003009","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/jhi.2026.a1003009","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Can emancipation be found in reading the canon? I trace this question through Sanskritist and legislator Seeta Parmanand (1901-79). In 1920s Oxford, Parmanand reinterpreted epic poetry to argue that the status of women in ancient India underwent a contingent decline; in 1950s Hindu Code debates, she used this scholarship to advocate sweeping reforms to family law. Restoring Parmanand to the worlds of Orientalism, nationalism, and feminist activism, I argue that this seemingly exceptional figure was symptomatic of broader transformations: over who represented a community, with what texts, through which interpretations, and over who counts as representative within history-writing itself.</p>","PeriodicalId":47274,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF IDEAS","volume":"87 4","pages":"715-747"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2026-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149168648","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Mixing Labour and Mixed Property: The Law of Locke's Original Appropriation.","authors":"Joshua Freed","doi":"10.1353/jhi.2026.a997081","DOIUrl":"10.1353/jhi.2026.a997081","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Locke's famous account of labor-mixing in acquiring property is often treated as a metaphor: labor cannot be literally mixed with objects. This article situates Locke's vocabulary and argument of \"mixing,\" \"joining,\" and \"annexing\" in a long legal tradition of writing about mixed, joined, and fused substances in property acquisition. It suggests that Locke's account can be textually and contextually interpreted as an example of accession and specification-civil and common legal modes of original acquisition through mixing properties-and that this account solves many of the famous criticisms of Locke's theory of property.</p>","PeriodicalId":47274,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF IDEAS","volume":"87 3","pages":"461-496"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2026-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148702363","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"\"Natural Wonders Are Greater than Miracles\": Christian Wolff on Supernatural Events.","authors":"Matteo Favaretti Camposampiero","doi":"10.1353/jhi.2026.a997082","DOIUrl":"10.1353/jhi.2026.a997082","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Wolff's doctrine of miracles has been interpreted either as a rationalistic attempt to minimize (or even deny) supernatural events or as a defense of their possibility. This article argues that both interpretations are one-sided, because Wolff's position evolved over time. After reconstructing the doctrine of miracles expounded in German Metaphysics, I consider Wolff's (and Hollmann's) response to the Pietist attack. I argue that his later definition of the supernatural, while prima facie equivalent to the earlier, actually has a different meaning and less alarming implications. I conclude that Wolff gradually moved away from his initial, Leibniz-inspired concept of miracle.</p>","PeriodicalId":47274,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF IDEAS","volume":"87 3","pages":"497-525"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2026-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148702391","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Dugald Stewart and Racial Theory in the Late Scottish Enlightenment.","authors":"Ian Stewart","doi":"10.1353/jhi.2026.a1003008","DOIUrl":"10.1353/jhi.2026.a1003008","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>This article recovers the racial theory that Dugald Stewart taught as Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Edinburgh from 1785 until 1810. In the third, political, segment of his lecture course Stewart presented various racial theories and offered his own opinion that non-European races were not naturally inferior to Europeans. Slavery, he concluded, was therefore unnatural in all its forms. However, though he believed all races were equally perfectible, Stewart nevertheless presented a picture of the world's peoples arranged along a civilizational scale with \"civilised\" white Europeans at the top and darker-skinned \"savage\" races at the bottom.</p>","PeriodicalId":47274,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF IDEAS","volume":"87 4","pages":"689-714"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2026-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149169609","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"John Locke and the Truth About \"True and Saving Religion\".","authors":"Timothy Stanton","doi":"10.1353/jhi.2026.a1003007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/jhi.2026.a1003007","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The liberal insistence that religion is a private affair is a very old opinion. It is said to go back at least to Locke's Epistola de tolerantia (A Letter Concerning Toleration), published in 1689 and, more precisely, to his claim that true and saving religion \"consists in an inward persuasion of the mind.\" This article demonstrates that Locke's text has been mistranslated and misconstrued. He never claimed that religion was simply a matter of inward persuasion or private belief. Rather, he postulated a natural duty to worship God publicly that made church membership a necessity for all human beings.</p>","PeriodicalId":47274,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF IDEAS","volume":"87 4","pages":"657-688"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2026-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149168649","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Who Owns French Brain Science? Neurophysiologists' Response to Cyberneticians in the 1950s French National Daily Press.","authors":"Jean-Gaël Barbara","doi":"10.1353/jhi.2026.a1003013","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/jhi.2026.a1003013","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>This paper examines the contested reception of cybernetics in 1950s France, focusing on how French neurophysiologists strategically engaged with cybernetic metaphors to assert disciplinary authority over the study of the brain. While early press enthusiasm embraced cybernetic analogies, figures like Alfred Fessard and Henri Gastaut leveraged public debate to promote a neurophysiology grounded in experimental rigor and national scientific traditions. Tracing key moments in press discourse, scientific symposia, and institutional developments, the paper argues that French neurophysiologists helped shape a new science of the brain-not by rejecting cybernetics outright but by reframing it within their epistemological and professional priorities.</p>","PeriodicalId":47274,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF IDEAS","volume":"87 4","pages":"817-848"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2026-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149170946","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Paracelsus's Doctrine of Signatures Reconsidered.","authors":"Matti Leprêtre","doi":"10.1353/jhi.2026.a989479","DOIUrl":"10.1353/jhi.2026.a989479","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>This article examines Paracelsus's doctrine of signatures as a crucial component of his challenge to humoral medicine, integral to his localist understanding of diseases and drugs action. It addresses the boundaries that lead scholars to regard these aspects of Paracelsus's thought as \"scientific,\" while the doctrine of signatures is associated with \"religion\" or \"magic.\" By considering overlooked theological tracts, it demonstrates the interconnectedness of the three aspects of his thought, tracing Paracelsus's reinterpretation of the signatures as invisible signs back to his belief that all Gewächse (i.e., animals, plants, stones, and metals) grow from an invisible tree sprouted from God.</p>","PeriodicalId":47274,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF IDEAS","volume":"87 2","pages":"225-256"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2026-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147822238","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}