Talk:Justus Lipsius

Catholic Encyclopedia

I removed the entry from the CE that was pasted in below the Ency. Brit. variation. It was mostly repetitive information. Both sources have noticeable POV issues, but it seemed odd just to keep the pasted text in addition. I also moved the existing text that nicely summarized his philosophy to the lead, and added a few of his main works. --Stomme 17:11, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

Translations of book titles

Could someone add rough English translations of the title of the books in the "Works" section? That would be useful, thanks. --Gronky (talk) 09:09, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

Over-reliance on Gerhard Ostreich?

The second paragraph of the lede follows Ostreich on L's political thought. It's been argued (Miller, 'Nazis and Neostoics', Past & Present, 2002; see for recent discussion Chris Brooke, Justus Lipsius and the Post-Machiavellian Prince, Philosophic Pride, 2012, ch. 1) that Ostreich's take on Lipsius was at best one-sided and at worst distorted by National Socialist historiography.Dsp13 (talk) 16:39, 9 February 2013 (UTC)

Southern Netherlandish, Belgian, Flemish

In his edit of the wiki article Justus Lipsius of 3 September 2014 Oreo Priest changed the word 'Flemish' to 'Southern Netherlandish (Belgian)' giving as the reason that It is an anachronism to call someone from Brabant 'Flemish' before the past one or two hundred years. In his edit of the wiki article Justus Lipsius building of 30 June 2013 Oreo Priest changed the word 'Flemish' to 'Belgian' (which referred also to Justus Lipsius) giving as reason that Belgian is closer to southern netherlandish, especially considering he's from Brabant, not Flanders. It seems from is/her changes that Oreo Priest is needlessly creating confusion about the term to be used when referring to historical Flemish persons.

As to his first argument about anachronism, it is not clear what Oreo Priest means. Wiki defines anachronism as a chronological inconsistency in some arrangement, especially a juxtaposition of person(s), events, objects, or customs from different periods of time. The most common type of anachronism is an object misplaced in time, but it may be a verbal expression, a technology, a philosophical idea, a musical style, a material/textile, a plant or animal, a custom or anything else associated with a particular period in time so that it is incorrect to place it outside its proper temporal domain. We therefore have to assume that Oreo Priest means that the term Flemish was not used in the 16th century for what we now claim it describes. In particular, in his justification of 30 June 2013 he appears to imply that the expression Flemish was only used for persons from the County of Flanders and not for persons from other parts of the Southern Netherlands (such as Brabant). However, this statement has no basis in fact. As the wiki article on Flanders states: In the Early modern period, the term Flanders was associated with the southern part of the Low Countries: the Southern Netherlands. Further, the Spanish government department in charge of ruling the Southern Netherlands was called at the time the 'Consejo de Flandes' (Council of Flanders) since that region was generally called Flanders (and not the Southern Netherlands). The persons living in that region were referred to as Flemish (irrespective of the language that they spoke). That is also the reason why it is correct and the most common practice to call artists like Rubens, van Dyck etc Flemish (although they were of Antwerp/Brabant descent). In fact, they are still called Flemish today and Wikipedia does not have a problem calling them such.

Our Priest seems to hold a strange bias against the use of an expression that has been commonly in use from at least the 14-15th century (who else do the 14th-17th century Italians and Spanish refer to as 'fiamminghi' and ‘flamencos’?). The newly coined expression 'Southern-Netherlandish' has been invented only in the last century or so to refer to artefacts, science etc from the Southern Netherlands but should not be used to denote the persons who made that art etc. (although there is an unhealthy tendency to do so). Such use of the word 'Southern-Netherlandish' is certainly an anachronism in the 16th century as it was not in use then. If someone would have asked Justus Lipsius or Rubens which nationality they had, would they have answered 'Southern Netherlandish' or ‘Belgian’? Of course not. In fact, in one of his books Justus Lipsius calls one of his friends from Liège Flemish because that was the common expression for persons from Flanders/the Southern Netherlands (and even persons from Liège). Let’s also point out that Justus Lipsius is categorized under the categories of 'Flemish classical scholars' and 'Flemish Renaissance humanists' by wiki, so again the argument about this being anachronistic or incorrect is not supported by wiki itself.

The reasoning that we should call Lipsius 'Belgian' because the political entity in which he lived 'most closely resembles what is now Belgian' has no basis. That would mean, for instance, that a Flemish person like William of Rubruck should be referred to as French because his birthplace is now part of France. Moreover, there is no wiki rule which states that a reference to a person’s nationality should be based on the idea of nation states (which only arose later in history anyway) and the Southern Netherlands were no nation state.

Another argument that has been used for excluding the use of the expression Flemish is that the 'term would be problematic as it excludes the French-speaking people. ' First of all, it did not exclude the French-speaking population in its completely proper use in the 16-17th century (in fact, in the 19th century Michael Bryan still referred to 17th - 18th century artists from the French-speaking part of Belgium as 'Flemish' artists). Secondly, French-speaking people from the Walloon part of historical Flanders can easily be called Walloon and that seems to have been the term many of them preferred to use when they emigrated to Holland in the 16th century and established many Walloon churches. The solution suggested by calling Flemish persons 'Southern Netherlandish' because of a perceived issue with the French-speaking population can be compared to the following: we will agree in future no longer to call the colour 'red' red but we will call it 'green” in order not to upset the colour 'blue'. This is nonsense.

Let’s also emphasize that Wikipedia must follow the majority practice. Leading international encyclopedias refer to Justus Lipsius as Flemish:

• Encyclopedia Britannica: http://global.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/342992/Justus-Lipsius
• Larousse: http://www.larousse.fr/encyclopedie/litterature/Lipse/174907
• Treccani: http://www.treccani.it/scuola/archivio/europa/abc_Europa/justus_lipsius.html

Justus Lipsius was properly called Flemish in his time and he can (should) still be properly called Flemish today. It is not clear what Our Priest suggests happened 100 or 200 years ago to make it no longer anachronistic to talk about Flemish people: the Battle of Waterloo, the start of WWI? The Flemish people were not a creation of the nationalisms of the 19th century but they were clearly around in Justus Lipsius' time (and before) when they were also generally (and only) called Flemish. Of course, the meaning of the term may have undergone some change but that is the same for the term 'Italian' between the 15th and 21st centuries but that does not make it problematic to call Leonardo 'Italian'. The insistence on the term Southern-Netherlandish is in fact tantamount to denying the Flemish people their history. It makes it appear as if before 1815 there were only Southern-Netherlanders and then somehow in the 19th century the Flemish people were created/invented out of nothing without history or heritage. We can see the same tendency in the use of the term 'Early Netherlandish'. The wiki article on Jan van Eyck starts as follows: 'Jan van Eyck (Dutch: [ˈjɑn vɑn ˈɛjk], before c. 1390 – before c. 9 July 1441) was an Early Netherlandish painter active in Bruges…' Of course, van Eyck was not an 'Early Netherlandish painter'. He was a Flemish painter whose work forms part of an artistic movement which now (for reasons that are not entirely clear as it has only led to confusion) is referred to as Early Netherlandish painting. Nowhere does the wiki article mention the fact that van Eyck was Flemish, an omission that we would never see in an article about an Italian artist from the same time period (let’s imagine an article on Leonardo only stating that he was a Renaissance painter and nowhere mentioning that he was Italian). The French-language article about Jan van Eyck commences by stating that he was 'born in territories subject to the Prince-Bishop of Liege', clearly another attempt to avoid calling van Eyck Flemish. Is there really anything wrong with the beginning of the German-language article which goes as follows: Jan van Eyck (* um 1390 in Maaseik; † 1441 in Brügge) war ein flämischer Maler des Spätmittelalters und gilt als der berühmteste Vertreter der altniederländischen Malerei (Jan van Eyck was a Flemish painter from the late Middle Ages and is considered the most famous representative of Early Netherlandish painting)?

As has been demonstrated by the citations above from leading international encyclopedias, the common and established practice is to call Justus Lipsius Flemish. Wikipedia should not try to create 'new realities on the ground' by applying to persons who have always been called 'Flemish' the new expression 'Southern-Netherlandish'. In addition, by applying the ugly and improper designation Southern-Netherlandish many readers typically assume that the person referred to was in fact Dutch (as they understand the expression to mean 'from the south of the Netherlands' and internal wiki links do not help to remedy this issue). This tendency to confuse Dutch and Flemish is already reflected far too often in wiki articles. Doewiets (talk) 01:38, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

A well-written explanation! Though I do disagree that I am biased or attempting to deny anyone's history. Imperfectly informed would be better, and I thank you for filling me in.

That being said, I do have some concerns. For one, I am not convinced that 'Flemish' is as unambiguous as you say it is. It may have been used for the whole Southern Netherlands (and even Liège), but even frequent use of pars pro toto does not make it correct; that article shows a great number of examples. Perhaps most relevant here, I would have no trouble digging up a pile of references to the Netherlands as 'Holland', or to the UK as 'England', and as I'm sure you know that neither is right either. Nonetheless, I think you're right that the term 'Flemish' should still be used.

Another concern is that [[Southern Netherlands|Flemish]] amounts to an WP:Easter egg, as the target of the link is not what you'd expect from the visible part (which would be a page on Flanders).

With your concerns and mine in view, I have changed the text to [[Southern Netherlands|Flemish/Southern-Netherlandish]] (modern [[Belgium|Belgian]]) both here and at Justus Lipsius building‎. That way the term 'Flemish' is used, but by also including 'Southern-Netherlandish', the ambiguity is dealt with. It's also important to mention that this is modern Belgium, because most people are not familiar enough with medieval or even modern terms for European sub-national regions for simply 'Flemish' to be immediately clear. Thoughts? Oreo Priest ^talk 20:25, 9 September 2014 (UTC)

Let's not make things unnecessarily complex and convoluted. Rather, let's keep to what has been the established practice for the past 500 years and is still the prevalent usage. The word Flemish is widely recognized. If persons like Robert Burns, Sean Connery, Alex Ferguson, etc. can simply be referred to as 'Scottish' without any wiki internal links to 'Scotland' or 'Scottish people' and without insisting on calling them 'Scottish/British' than this should be okay for Flemish (officially, the political entity in which Justus Lipsius lived most of his life was not the Southern Netherlands but the Low Countries (the Seventeen Provinces) as unified by Charles V through the Pragmatic Sanction of 1549; what is now called the Dutch Republic was considered a seditious region which was de facto self-ruling (not dissimilar to the situation of Kurdistan in Iraq) and the independence of which was only officially recognized in 1648 with the Peace of Münster). Have made changes accordingly.Doewiets (talk) 02:59, 10 September 2014 (UTC)

While Scotland is universally understood by English-speaking readers, the word 'Flemish' is most certainly 'not' widely recognized by a majority of the population. As a European (probably Belgian) you would be shocked and amazed by how little is known in North America about Belgium ("Is that part of Germany?") and Flanders. To most people, Flanders is a character on The Simpsons, not a subnational region, and they almost certainly have no understanding of the present and historical nuance of the term. I agree that your solution is probably more elegant for the well-informed reader, but few of our readers are likely to be well-informed enough to understand.

With this in view, I've changed both to [[Seventeen Provinces|Flemish/Netherlandish]] (modern [[Belgium|Belgian]]); what do you think? Oreo Priest ^talk 11:53, 19 September 2014 (UTC)

You first create a problem where there never was one and then you propose to resolve it. In addition, by your own admission (Imperfectly informed), you are not an expert in this area and unfamiliar with Flemish and Belgian history. This has not stopped you from making edits to articles on Belgium and Flanders based on unfounded arguments such as Flemish was only used for persons from the County of Flanders. Maybe you should contribute in areas where you are better informed. To assert that the expression Flemish is not as well-known as Scottish is clearly not my experience travelling all over the world. It is also not wiki's mission to compensate for USA and Canadian ignorance about geography, their schools should fix that. Are you suggesting that for Rembrandt we write: [Hollandish|Netherlandish|Dutch] (modern-day Netherlands)(Western-Europe) so that Canadians can understand? Doewiets (talk) 04:16, 20 September 2014 (UTC)

Infobox

Wondering why the infobox was removed. Is there some objection to infoboxes? --Andreas Philopater (talk) 09:33, 3 May 2020 (UTC)