The Idea of A Nation State

The Men of the Anglo-French Enlightenment were empirical and utilitarian in outlook, and severed all the ties between God and man. But the German ( Enlightenment) ,while abandoning the old dogmas,exalted the idea of divine order,of a progressive education of the human race. It preserved and interpreted the christian notion of the relation between Creator and creatures. This trend continues in the historicism of German 19th-century thought. In history - the record of the works of man- man learns to study himself as an object;in this object each individual finds more than himself.

The German philosopher J.G.Herder ( 17744- 1803) was the first to show a true historical sense for the uniqueness of each people and their works. In ideas on the philosophy of the history of Mankind , he sees all races and all types of civilization as realizing each in their own way the human ideal- in contrast, for example, to Condorcet;s view of the progress of the human race as a whole through the development of knowledge and arts.

Hegel sees history of the world as the carrying out of God's plan, in which mankind is involved. The individual is confronted by the traditions of society into which he is born, finds his place and significance by absorbing these traditions and being absorbed by them. This is the positive concept of freedom. Here law morality,government are not constraints,but are the objective presence of the individual's own essence- Reason. He attains his spiritual reality by identifying himself with them,thus participating in the infinite whole. Truth is the unity of the universal and subjective will; and its universal and rational arrangements. The state is the divine idea as its exists on earth. In such a conjunction of the universal with the particularity lies the divinity of our nation;or,if we give this universal a separate place in our ideas, it is the god of the nation.

The romantic idea of the present with its romantic idea of the past was utterly opposed to individualism of the Enlightenment. It was a new transcendental interpretation of the absolute power and the will of the sovereign state which was assumed to express the general will of the fraternal and organic commonwealth.

Joseph Mazzini ( 1805-72) , the Italian patriot , expressed his religious view of history and politics differently. He, too , deplored the individualism and materialism which has grown from the enlightenment and the french revolution.  Like the German philosophers, he accepted society as an organic whole, living a providentially progressive life, and realizing in its laws and educational plan. Like the French socialists ,he wanted to see the privilege abolished so that workers might enter into the full inheritance of modern society. But Mazzini saw society as a living body , held together by tradition,language and nationality. men should abandon the old principles of the concert of Europe with dynastic divisions based on power politics, and adopt a new ideal: the free and fraternal association of peoples. The people were to be called upon to sacrifice themselves, not to existing State,but to this divine idea and providential order, ' God and the people.
The prolonged revolutionary crisis which troubled Europe could be relived only by re-drawing the map on the bases of nationality and free association. The idea of humanity itself as a fraternal association of free nations was the divine idea, and the individual found the divine only in the nation, his link with humanity. Individualism , at best, meant disenchantment , the moral suffering and despair of negative romanticism. The positive ideal was the divine idea and the divine will at work in history.

The Short History of Pineapple

When Columbus landed in Guadeloupe in 1493 he found pineapples,which probably came from Brazil. The word nana (perfumed),part of the native name retained in French and German ananas, is a brazilian Guarani vocable. As father Acosta observed as early as 1569,the spanish thought this new fruit resembled a pine cone,whence the Spanish name of Pina,and the English pineapple (the fruit was often just called a pine when it was first introduced into britain).  The Portuguese set about naturalizing the pineapple in India,Indonesia,Madagascar and Java,and it settled down very well.

Pineapples were also brought to Europe,of course to give the old world a taste of their succulence,but the emperor Charles V, the first monarch to try one, thought it very nasty. The long voyage had completely spoilt the decorative fruit. It was grown in Holland a century later,when hot-houses were first invented,by french hugenot who had taken refuge in leyden. Around 1642 a pineapple was grown in the Duchess of cleveland's hot-house. it was presented by the king Charles II,and immortalized by the court painter. Louis VIX is said to have asked La Quintine to grow this exotic marvel for him in the frames of the versailles vegetable garden,but it seems that his successor Louis XV was the only one to benefit. In any case pineapples became extremely fashionable in the second half of the 18th century. Market gardeners asked very high prices because of the great cost of growing them. As yet there could be no questiom of importing the fruit from the west indies,for transport was not mucj faster than in the days of the Empeor chares V.

Pineapples have become more democratic since air transport has made it possible to deliver them almost perfectly ripe,a miracle which today's consumers takes for granted. We not get pineapples from Hawaii, the west indies,Florida,Kenya,south Africa,Cameroon and the ivory coast. The french were eating nearly 50,00tonnes a year at the beginning of the 1980's :42,000 tonnes from ivory Coast and 5000 from Cameroon.

The pineapple is a collection of berries, a herbaceous plant.

The History Of Ballett ( Part 1)

Ballet was born about five hundred years ago in Renaissance Italy,where such rich and powerful merchant-princes as the Medici of Florence and the Sforza of Milan employed professional dancing masters to supervise the production of pageants and other spectacles. These court dance displays, called Balletti, became a regular feature of every lavish entertainment . Great pageants, with hundreds of performers ,took place everywhere,both indoors and in the open air. Such displays required little technical skill from the dancers-who,in any case ,were dressed so elaborately that they could manage only the simplest movements.Thus,Renaissance Italy's choreography-was a s much a matter of geometry as of dancing. It consisted almost entirely of working out complicated patterns of group movement, a little like the contermarching of soldiers on parade.


In 1494,King Charles VIII of France marched into Italy at the head of his army and claimed the throne of Naples. While there, both the king and his courtiers were so delighted by the dance Pageants given in their honor that they soon set about importing Italian dancing masters and musicians into France. Court ballet became popular, and remained for more over than hundred years. The court become obessed with dancing;and the greatest enthusiast of all was King Louis XIV. He danced in his first ballet at the age of 12 and went on playing leading parts -such as apollo ,jupiter or Mars until ,in his early thirties,he got too fat to dance. Louis lavished immense sums of money on staging ballets,and he employed men of genius to produce them,realizing that it would bring him even greater prestige.


In England , a rather different kind of court entertainment evolved : The masque. Although it made use of dancing, it was dominated by the poet or dramatist rather than the dancing master. Jean Baptiste lully ,an italian musican and dancer in service of Louis XIV,was among the first to compose a complete musical score especially for ballet. Early ballet music had always been arranged from various pieces by a number of different composers. Declamation and songs,written by a poet,were used to tell the story. Thus,its early days,ballet shared many of the features of what was later to become the seperate distinct art of Opera.

Hair styles in Ancient Egypt (3000-1596 BC)

Throughout the entire periods of their civilization they didn't change their hair-style or their mode of dressing.  At First they wore their natural hair, which was thick and dark, in tightly braided coiffures, sometimes adding false hair. Wigmaking become universally worn amongst the privileged ones .Poorer people on the other hand wore caps of leather or felt.

Plaints were also very popular but for certain ceremonies the wig had to be worn. Males normally had their head shaved under their wigs and women cut their hair extremely short. It must be also stated that the wigs were made up of human hair and at times from sheep’s wool. The wigs ranged from plaits or braids with some ending in ringlets. These were kept in beautiful decorated boxes, and treated as almost as something sacred.

In Egyptian painting it is noted that during banquets shows that guests wore an ornamented cone of scented pomade on top of their heads. This cone is left there to melt down slowly onto the wig.

During  the period of the 12^th dynasty, we can see an emergence of many hair-accessories made of gold and numerous precious stones. Glass beads also were included but not that popular. Hairpins were made out of bone, ivory, or boxwood.

In 1150BC the colored wigs were extremely fashionable, they came in red, blue and even green.

The barber made sure that when cutting children’s hair he'll leave a lock of hair falling over one of their ears. This sounds strange but the reason behind this was that it signifies the youth of the wearer. Also known as the Horus lock.

The kings apart from being clean shaven, they also grew a square beard and during ceremonial costumes they wear a platted beard.

What I found interesting was that even women used to wear an artificial beard during court ceremonies.

The barber was considered as truly essential, especially for the wealthy families. Poor people had to search for a barber under a tree waiting to make a living. The barbers that accommodated the wealthy were at times also doctors; they took care of their entire body.

Tweezers, scissors, razors and combs were carried in leather cases and kept beautifully in ebony boxes..

Joyce Asser's book
Historic hairdressing (1966) - Re- (1970)