W.R.E. Velema

Omstreden Oudheid: de Nederlandse achttiende eeuw en de klassieke politiek

Het grote belang van het klassieke erfgoed in de onstuimige Nederlandse politieke discussies van de achttiende eeuw wordt door historici ten onrechte genegeerd. De gangbare voorstelling dat het achttiende-eeuwse Nederlandse politieke debat uitsluitend draaide om de interpretatie van de eigen geschiedenis of om het abstracte natuurrecht is onjuist. Ook de Griekse en de Romeinse oudheid waren voor de deelnemers aan het Nederlandse achttiende-eeuwse politieke debat alomtegenwoordige referentiepunten. Niet iedereen gebruikte de klassieken echter op dezelfde manier: de interpretatie van de oudheid was omstreden. De verschillende politieke groeperingen schiepen allemaal hun eigen beeld van de klassieke politiek. Wyger Velema toont in zijn oratie hoe regenten en patriotten, conservatieven en revolutionairen de klassieke oudheid op hun eigen manier probeerden te gebruiken in de Nederlandse politieke discussies van de achttiende eeuw.

Ancient models in the early modern republican imagination

Ancient Models in the Early Modern Republican Imagination offers a new approach to the study of the classical dimensions of early modern republican thought by analysing its specific and concrete uses of ancient republican models.

Het klassieke Griekenland door achttiende-eeuwse Duitse ogen [Bespreking van: D. Valdez (2014) German Philhellenism: The Pathos of the Historical Imagination from Winckelmann to Goethe]

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Licht op het verleden [Bespreking van: S. Bourgault, R. Sparling (2013) A Companion to Enlightenment Historiography]

Disclaimer/Complaints regulations If you believe that digital publication of certain material infringes any of your rights or (privacy) interests, please let the Library know, stating your reasons. In case of a legitimate complaint, the Library will make the material inaccessible and/or remove it from the website. Please Ask the Library: http://uba.uva.nl/en/contact, or a letter to: Library of the University of Amsterdam, Secretariat, Singel 425, 1012 WP Amsterdam, The Netherlands. You will be contacted as soon as possible.

Oude waarheden: over de terugkeer van de klassieke oudheid in de verlichtingshistoriografie

Since the publication of Peter Gay’s The Enlightenment: An Interpretation, scholarly interest in the classical presence in Enlightenment culture has waned. Over the past decade, however, this topic has returned to center stage. This review article discusses the ways in which recent research has contributed to the rediscovery of the classical past in the Enlightenment. It starts with an evaluation of the current reinterpretation of the Querelle des anciens et des modernes, continues with an overview of recent scholarship on the various intellectual and institutional environments in which knowledge of the classical past was acquired and transmitted, and ends with a discussion of the crucial role of the ancient world in eighteenth-century historiography and political thought. In its conclusion the article draws attention to the many ways in which recent scholarship on the eighteenth-century reception of the classics has broken new ground. It also argues that the ‘classical turn in Enlightenment studies’ is still unjustifiably neglected in general interpretations of the Enlightenment.

Conversations with the Classics: Ancient Political Virtue and Two Modern Revolutions

Since R. R. Palmer formulated his influential thesis about the Age of the Democratic Revolution half a century ago, historians have criticized and revised his views on the nature of the late eighteenth-century political revolutions in the Western world. They have, among other things, pointed out that whereas Palmer treated those revolutions as a sharp break with the past, revolutionary political thought in fact remained significantly rooted in classical republicanism. Departing from such insights, this article discusses some of the ways in which the classical heritage remained relevant to the late eighteenth-century revolutions in both America and the Dutch Republic. After reviewing the various ways in which the Palmer thesis has been revised over the past decades, this article focuses on the immense importance of the classical notion of virtuous participatory citizenship for revolutionaries on both sides of the ocean. It demonstrates how this notion not only was of crucial consequence in the initial assault on the established order, but also remained conspicuously present in the constructive phase of both the American and the Dutch revolutions, particularly in the substantial debates over the proper size of a republic and the nature of political representation.