In this comprehensive interview with Charles Taylor, the focus is put on the conceptual level. Taylor reflects on the relationship between history, narrativity and social critique, between social imaginaries and social change, and between his own thought and that of Cambridge School history of ideas, Nietzschean genealogy, Frankfurt School critical theory, and agonistic approaches to the political. This interview not only captures the tremendous breadth and range of Taylor’s theoretical interests, it also vindicates his contention (...) that the common thread of his oeuvre is the attempt to work out a non-reductive, non-mechanistic, non-atomistic philosophical anthropology. Still, it offers new insights into Taylor's most recent thinking and his intellectual engagement with the challenges of our time. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: References.

This book highlights not only aspects of the career of Everett Mendelsohn, one of the premier historians of biology of our age, but also a wide range of topics that are now grouped under the general heading of science studies. This broad collection includes articles on the relations between science and the military, science as narrative, natural history and conservation, Marxism and science, the Human Genome Project, and the relation of philosophy to the study of embryonic development in the (...) 18th century. This book is essential not only for those who admire Professor Mendelsohn's work but also for those who want a slice of the current field of science studies. Audience: The main readership of this volume consists of historians of science, technology, and medicine, and sociologists of science. The book will also appeal to philosophers of science and biologists. Those interested in Middle Eastern studies will find the discussion of Professor Mendelsohn's political work in this area, as well as the article dealing with his activism in general, of considerable interest. (shrink)

In a world that peers over the brink of disaster more often than not it is difficult to find specific assignments for the scholarly community. One speaks of peace and brotherhood only to realize that for many the only real hope of making a contribution may seem to be in a field of scientific specialization seemingly irrelevant to social causes and problems. Yet the history of man since the beginnings of science in the days of the Greeks does (...) not support this gloomy thesis. Time and again we have seen science precipitate social trends or changes in the humanistic beliefs that have a significant effect on the scientific community. Not infrequently the theoretical scientist, triggered by society's changing goals and understandings, finds ultimate satisfaction in the work of his colleagues in engineering and the other applied fields. Thus the major debate in mid-nineteenth century in which the evidence of natural history and geology at variance with the Biblical feats provided not only courage to a timid Darwin but the kind of audience that was needed to fit his theories into the broad public dialogue on these topics. The impact of "Darwinism" was felt far beyond the scientific community. It affected social thought, upset religious certainties and greatly affected the teaching of science. (shrink)

The title question becomes a rabbit-hole through which we tumble in search of an answer, encountering everyone from Herodotus to Humphrey Bogart along the way. Is History Fiction? is an invaluable guide on how to weld creative thinking and sound research into meaningful history, and how to understand the different arguments that have abounded throughout time regarding the nature of history. More than a book of theory about theory, this innovative work is an asset to the (...) undergraduate classroom and the research seminar alike. Is History Fiction? will be a welcome aid for teaching historical writing and examining an age-old question. Is History Fiction? is a must-read for undergraduate and graduate students and scholars from the humanities and social sciences, or anyone grappling with the enduring issues that have shaped the theory and practice of recording history. (shrink)

In a series of incisive readings of signature historical works, Mark Poster charts the move from social history to new practices of cultural history that are drawing strength from poststructuralist interpretive strategies and raising issues found in feminist and postcolonialist discourse. In the process, he sets forth an outline for a postmodern historiography that can negotiate the contested terrain between the ambiguities of discourse and the pull of the "real." As Poster provides close readings of leading historians (...) and theorists such as Lawrence Stone, Francois Furet, Michel de Certeau, and Michel Foucault, key themes animate his work: the often irreducible difference between past and present; the relationship of writing and representation to power and domination; the dissolving distinctions between high and low culture, production and consumption, and reality and fiction; and, most important, a new perspective on human agency and the construction of political subjects. (shrink)

Social Theory and the Political Imaginary: Practice, Critique and History is an innovative work of synthesis, critique, and analysis. It presages a social theory perspective that recognises the constitutive significance of the political imaginary in modernity. Social theory's current dilemmas are explored through a series of interlinked asssessments of some of its recent substantial strands, specifically, Luc Boltanski's pragmatism and the wider 'practical turn', the perspectives of multiple modernities and global modernity, the outlook of (...) class='Hi'>social and political imaginaries, and critical social theory. The political imaginary's reconfigurations are evident in the tensions of global modernity and original social theory interpretations are advanced of landmark instances of twenty-first century social contestation: the Hong Kong protests conditioned by threats to civil freedoms and a lack of self-determination, the radical democratic practices of anti-austerity movements contesting capitalist globalisation's injustices, and the inverted cosmopolitanism of the 2005 French Riots challenging the oppression and inequalities experienced by immigrant communities and marginalised youth. These incisive applications of social theory and complementary conceptual innovations illuminate the vicissitudes of social struggles, political forms, and theoretical perspectives. Similarly, reflection on the political imaginary is found to enable a necessary rethinking of the interrelationship of practice, critique and history. (shrink)

This book seeks to advance social economic analysis, economic methodology, and the history of economic thought in the context of twenty-first century scholarship and socio-economic concerns. Bringing together carefully selected chapters by leading scholars it examines the central contributions that John Davis has made to various areas of scholarship. In recent decades, criticisms of mainstream economics have rekindled interest in a number of areas of scholarly inquiry that were frequently ignored by mainstream economic theory and practice during the (...) second half of the twentieth century, including social economics, economic methodology and history of economic thought. This book contributes to a growing literature on the revival of these areas of scholarship and highlights the pivotal role that John Davis's work has played in the ongoing revival. Together, the international panel of contributors show how Davis's insights in complexity theory, identity, and stratification are key to understanding a reconfigured economic methodology. They also reveal that Davis' willingness to draw from multiple academic disciplines gives us a platform for interrogating mainstream economics and provides the basis for a humane yet scientific alternative. This unique volume will be essential reading for advanced students and researchers across social economics, history of economic thought, economic methodology, political economy and philosophy of social science. understanding a reconfigured economic methodology. They also reveal that Davis' willingness to draw from multiple academic disciplines gives us a platform for interrogating mainstream economics and provides the basis for a humane yet scientific alternative. This unique volume will be essential reading for advanced students and researchers across social economics, history of economic thought, economic methodology, political economy and philosophy of social science. (shrink)

The Jamesian mode of writing, it has been claimed, actively works against an understanding of the way truth, history and power circulate in his texts. In this collection of essays, leading scholars of James analyse the strategies James used to address these crucial issues. Enacting History in Henry James claims that, because the type of knowledge available in James's fiction is never of a cognitive kind, the reader can never know 'truth' in any verifiable sense. James's writing instead (...) promises an experiential type of knowledge, one that is attained by participating in the power games and moral dramas that unfold within the text. This collection argues that reading James ultimately requires not just an emotional responsiveness, but also an ethical assumption of responsibility for the act of reading. By placing James's work in a fresh theoretical context, this book throws new light on this most enigmatic of writers. (shrink)

History in a Post-Truth World: Theory and Praxis explores one of the most significant paradigm shifts in public discourse. A post-truth environment that primarily appeals to emotion, elevates personal belief and devalues expert opinion has important implications far beyond Brexit or the election of Donald Trump, and has a profound impact on how history is produced and consumed. Post-truth history is not merely a synonym for lies. This book argues that indifference to historicity by both the purveyor (...) and recipient, contempt for expert opinion that contradicts it, and ideological motivation are its key characteristics. Taking a multidisciplinary approach, this work explores some of the following questions. What exactly is post-truth history? Does it represent a new phenomenon? Does the historian have a special role to play in preserving public memory from 'alternative facts'? Do academics more generally have an obligation to combat fake news and fake history both in universities and on social media? How has a 'post-truth culture' impacted professional and popular historical discourse? Looking at theoretical dimensions and case studies from around the world, this book explores the violent potential of post-truth history and calls on readers to resist. (shrink)

History from Loss challenges the common thought that 'history is written by the winners' and explores how history makers in different times and places across the globe have written histories from loss, even when this has come at the threat to their own safety. A distinguished group of historians from around the globe offer an introduction to different history-makers' lives and ideas, and important extracts from their works which highlight various meanings of loss: from physical ailments (...) to social ostracism, exile to imprisonment, and from dispossession to potential execution. Throughout the volume consideration of the information 'bubbles' of different times and places helps to show how information has been weaponised to cause harm. In this way, the text helps to put current debates about the biases and weaponization of platforms such as social media into global and historical perspective. In combination, the chapters build a picture of history from loss which is global, sustained, and anything but a simple mirror of history made by victors. The volume also includes an Introduction and Afterword which draw out the key meanings of history from loss, and which offer ideas for further exploration. History from Loss provides an invaluable resource for students, teachers, and general readers who wish to put current debates on bias, the politicization of history, and threats to history makers into global and historical perspective. (shrink)

"For description and defense of the narrative configurations of everyday life, and of the practical and social character of those narratives, there is no better treatment than Time, Narrative, and History.... a clear, judicious, and truthful account, provocative from beginning to end." —Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology "... a superior work of philosophy that tells a unique and insightful story about narrative." —Quarterly Journal of Speech.

The frequency of historical materialist explanations in evolutionary social sciences is very low even though historical materialism and evolutionism have great many shared aims towards explaining the long term social change. David Laibman in his Deep History (2007) picks up some of the standard questions of evolutionary social theory and aims at advancing the conception of historical materialism so as to develop a Marxist theory of history from an evolutionary point of view. The contribution of (...) Laibman’s work is to show that historical and materialist explanations are present both in Marxian and evolutionary interpretations of history, and moreover, the traditional borders of historical materialism can be enlarged so as to embrace evolutionary methodology in explaining social change. The unbalanced research methodology of Laibman’s work, however, reduces the evolutionary depth of his contribution. The two main shortcomings of Laibman’s work are discussed under the titles of “The Audience Problem” and “The Evolutionary Problem”. (shrink)

Plato's Academy is commonly regarded as the most prestigious and most influential of all educational institutions in antiquity. Founded by one of the greatest thinkers of all times, its activity as a centre of philosophical and scientific research spanned at least three centuries (from ca. 387 to ca. 86 B.C.), while the influence it has exerted on contemporary and later philosophical and scientific thought is almost impossible to overestimate. The Academy's history is supposed to reflect not only the theoretical (...) aspirations of its founder and his followers, but also the manner in which they believed their views should operate within a given social context. (shrink)

A major figure in women's studies and a long-term activist for women's issues, Gerda Lerner is a pioneer in the field of Women's History and one of its leading practitioners. "Why History Matters" is a summation of her work which includes pieces on the author's early life as a Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany and on her slow assimilation into American life.

In this ambitious work, Fred Weinstein confronts the obstacles that have increasingly frustrated our attempts to explain social and historical reality. Traditionally, we have relied on history and social theory to describe the ways people understand the world they live in. But the ordering explanations we have always used--derived from the classical social theories originally forged by Marx, Tocqueville, Weber, Durkheim, Freud--have collapsed. In the wake of this collapse or "fall," the rival claims of fiction, (...) psychoanalysis, sociology, anthropology, and history have created the dilemma of radical relativism, the prospect of multiple interpretations of any complex historical event. The basic strategy of social theory and the social sciences--the search for underlying unities--proves so inherently contradictory and has provided so little in the way of reliable knowledge of social and historical relationships that to many critics it seems no longer worth pursuing. Weinstein enters the debate by rejecting any search for underlying structural unities, dynamic or social, through which historians have attempted to find continuity with the past. He looks instead to ideological processes, to the construction of successive and changing versions of reality that mediate between the power of fantasy on the one side and the power of the social world on the other. He argues further that the need to use ideological constructs in this way accounts for the heterogeneous and changing content of social movements and for the persistent need people have always had for authoritative leaders, even in democratized societies. He suggests that people have historically been able to take a step away from leaders only by substituting the possession of objects such as property or money. This book is a breakthrough in poststructuralist theory that is sure to stimulate considerable discussion, especially about the shape of the social sciences and the future of historical interpretation. (shrink)

The French philosopher Jacques Rancière has influenced disciplines from history and philosophy to political theory, literature, art history, and film studies. His research into nineteenth-century workers’ archives, reflections on political equality, critique of the traditional division between intellectual and manual labor, and analysis of the place of literature, film, and art in modern society have all constituted major contributions to contemporary thought. In this collection, leading scholars in the fields of philosophy, literary theory, and cultural criticism engage Rancière’s (...) work, illuminating its originality, breadth, and rigor, as well as its place in current debates. They also explore the relationships between Rancière and the various authors and artists he has analyzed, ranging from Plato and Aristotle to Flaubert, Rossellini, Auerbach, Bourdieu, and Deleuze. The contributors to this collection do not simply elucidate Rancière’s project; they also critically respond to it from their own perspectives. They consider the theorist’s engagement with the writing of history, with institutional and narrative constructions of time, and with the ways that individuals and communities can disturb or reconfigure what he has called the “distribution of the sensible.” They examine his unique conception of politics as the disruption of the established distribution of bodies and roles in the social order, and they elucidate his novel account of the relationship between aesthetics and politics by exploring his astute analyses of literature and the visual arts. In the collection’s final essay, Rancière addresses some of the questions raised by the other contributors and returns to his early work to provide a retrospective account of the fundamental stakes of his project. _Contributors_. Alain Badiou, Étienne Balibar, Bruno Bosteels, Yves Citton, Tom Conley, Solange Guénoun, Peter Hallward, Todd May, Eric Méchoulan, Giuseppina Mecchia, Jean-Luc Nancy, Andrew Parker, Jacques Rancière, Gabriel Rockhill, Kristin Ross, James Swenson, Rajeshwari Vallury, Philip Watts. (shrink)

These essays survey the histories, the theories and the fault lines that compose the field of memory research. Drawing on the advances in the sciences and in the humanities, they address the question of how memory works, highlighting transactions between the interiority of subjective memory and the larger fields of public or collective memory.

Law and History contains a broad range of essays by prominent legal historians, which explore the ways in which history has been used by lawyers. Largely theoretical in focus, the volume covers a broad range of issues, including discussions of norms in medieval England, the works of Montesquieu, Maine, and Weber, and of the nature of legal argument in nineteenth-century England, and in twentieth- century war crimes trials.Readership: Scholars of law and history, social historians, legal historians.

a product of human thought that betrays the lived uniqueness of persons, reducing ‘otherness’ to the categories of the understanding and to its historical consequences? Or is history too ‘thick’ to be synchronized in memory and historical consciousness? The article, taking its inspiration from Enrique Dussel’s ethics of liberation and particular moments of Latin American history, develops the notion of the proximity of history, phenomenologically critiquing Emmanuel Levinas’s own reduction of history to consciousness, his reading of (...) history as a synchronizing betrayal of diachronic events. It thus reads Levinas against his own texts, arguing that historical memory and historical encounters function much as the face does in Levinas’s own ethics, not only giving rise to irrecusable responsibilities, but also demanding the work of a critical, conscious appropriation of that history. Key Words: conquest • Dussel • ethics • history • Latin America • Levinas • proximity • responsibility. (shrink)

, whereby some causes are deemed more important than others, are ubiquitous in historical studies. Drawing from influential recent work on causation, I develop a definition of causal-explanatory strength. This makes clear exactly which aspects of explanatory weighting are subjective and which objective. It also sheds new light on several traditional issues, showing for instance that: underlying causes need not be more important than proximate ones; several different causes can each be responsible for most of an effect; small causes (...) need not be less important than big ones; and non-additive interactive effects between causes present no particular difficulty. Key Words: causation • explanation • history • interaction • proximate • underlying. (shrink)

Chrisoula Andreou argues that the predominant factor in the exalted and worldly views of human thriving involves a psychological measure of relative deprivation or advantage in relation to social competitors. This is the 'no avail' thesis: promoting self-sacrifice for the sake of conservation, in-and-of-itself, will remain ineffective as environmental policy. However, Andreou sets aside, to some extent, the applicability of philosophical discourse on happiness and human thriving, which is where this commentary is directed. Specifically, Aristotle's insights on social (...) prestige (exousia) being attained through philanthropy is discussed as a counter-narrative to present day materialist culture. For Aristotle, the Hellenic mentality was not to be of exclusionary competition but rather strengthening the community through competitive social power aimed at mutually enriching philia. This model provides a provocative case-study for insight on redirecting competitive human nature toward other ends. Additional supporting analysis is also provided on the emergence of the modern market economy using the works of economic historian Karl Polanyi. (shrink)

An interdisciplinary reappraisal of Lynn White, Jr.’s “The Historical Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis” reopens several issues, including the suggestion by Peter Harrison that White’s thesis was historical and that it is a mistake to regard it as theological. It also facilitates a comparison between “Roots” and White’s earlier book Medieval Technology and Social Change. In “Roots,” White discarded or de-emphasized numerous qualifications and nuances present in his earlier work so as to heighten the effect of certain rhetorical (...) aphorisms and to generalize their scope and bearing well beyond what the evidence could bear. The meaning of Genesis and other biblical books proves to be just as important in White’s thesis as their historical reception. In “Roots,” White presents, alongside other contentions, the claims that Christian doctrines have all along been both anthropocentric and despotic, especially in the West, and that this is where the real roots of the problems are to be found. These claims, however, conflict with most of the relevant evidence. An adequate reappraisal of White’s work needs to recognize that there is a cultural determinism parallel to the technological determinisms alleged by R. H. Hilton and P. H. Sawyer, to endorse Elspeth Whitney’s “single-cause” critique of links between religion and technological change in the Middle Ages, and to treat sympathetically Whitney’s claim that White and some of his eco-theological critics (despite their disagreements) have in common both their valorizing of individual beliefs and values and their neglect of economic and institutional factors. Nevertheless, our ecological problems need to be understood through explanations turning on beliefs and values as well as on economics and institutions. (shrink)

'One may state Dilthey's significance in most general fashion by characterizing his work as the first thorough-going and sophisticated confrontation of history with positivism and natural science. Dilthey's sweep was universal: he strove to reduce to order the multifarious realms of knowledge, the conflicting traditions of cultural study, that he had embraced. Thus Dilthey laid out a program that no mortal - and certainly no one whose mind had been formed in the third quarter of the nineteenth century (...) - could hope to bring to completion. Yet despite its inconclusiveness, Dilthey's work exerted enormous influence. The distinction he had drawn between natural and cultural science became standard for historians and, to a lesser extent, for social scientists also. After Dilthey historians no longer needed to apologize for the "unscientific" character of their discipline: they understood why its methods could never be quite the same as those of natural science. And the contemporary tradition of intellectual history grew naturally out of Dilthey's teaching.' - H. Stuart Hughes. (shrink)

Historians around the world have sought to move beyond national history. In doing so, they often conflate ethical and methodological arguments against national history. This essay, first, draws a clear line between the ethical and the methodological arguments concerning national history. It then offers a rationale for the continued writing of national history in general, and American history in particular, in today’s global age.The essay makes two main points. First, it argues that nationalism, and thus (...) the national histories that sustain national identities, are vital to liberal democratic societies because they ensure the social bonds necessary to enable democratic citizens to sacrifice their immediate interests for the common good. The essay then argues that new methodological and historical work on the history of nations and nationalism has proven that nations are as real as any other historical group. Rejecting national history on critics’ terms would require rejecting the history of all groups. Instead, new methods of studying nations and nationalism have reinforced rather than undermined the legitimacy of national history within the discipline. (shrink)

What is the relationship between intellectual and cultural history? An answer to this question may be found in the area between the two poles of inquiry commonly known as internalist and externalist methods. The first of these deals with old-fashioned `ideas' (in Lovejoy's sense) and the second with social and political context and the sociology and anthropology of knowledge. This article reviews this question in the light of the earlier historiography of philosophy, literature and science, and debates over (...) the role of context in determining historical meaning. Within the horizon-structure of experience and interpretation the short answer is that cultural history is the outside of intellectual history and intellectual history the inside of cultural history. Ideally, historians ought to work both sides of the historical street. (shrink)

In this path-breaking work, Susan Buck-Morss draws new connections between history, inequality, social conflict, and human emancipation. _Hegel, Haiti, and Universal History_ offers a fundamental reinterpretation of Hegel's master-slave dialectic and points to a way forward to free critical theoretical practice from the prison-house of its own debates. Historicizing the thought of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and the actions taken in the Haitian Revolution, Buck-Morss examines the startling connections between the two and challenges us to widen the (...) boundaries of our historical imagination. She finds that it is in the discontinuities of historical flow, the edges of human experience, and the unexpected linkages between cultures that the possibility to transcend limits is discovered. It is these flashes of clarity that open the potential for understanding in spite of cultural differences. What Buck-Morss proposes amounts to a “new humanism,” one that goes beyond the usual ideological implications of such a phrase to embrace a radical neutrality that insists on the permeability of the space between opposing sides and as it reaches for a common humanity. (shrink)

Making history - in the sense of writing it - is often set against talking about it, with most historians considering writing history to be better than talking about it. My aim in this article is to analyze the topic of making history versus talking about history in order to understand most historians' evident decision to ignore talking about history. Ultimately my goal is to determine whether it is possible to talk about history with (...) any sense.To this end, I will establish a typology of the different forms of talking practiced by historians, using a chronological approach, from the Greek and Roman emphasis on the visual witness to present-day narrativism and textual analysis. Having recognized the peculiar textual character of the historiographical work, I will then discuss whether one can speak of a method for analyzing historiographical works. After considering two possible approaches - the philosophy of science and literary criticism - I offer my own proposal. This involves breaking the dichotomy between making and talking about history, adopting a fuzzy method that overcomes the isolation of self-named scientific communities, and that destroys the barriers among disciplines that work with the same texts but often from mutually excluding perspectives. Talking about history is only possible if one knows about history and about its sources and methods, but also about the foundations of the other social sciences and about the continuing importance of traditional philosophical problems of Western thought in the fields of history and the human sciences. (shrink)

Through an engagement with Massimiliano Tomba’s work Insurgent Universality, this paper explores the possibilities and limitations that reside at the heart of historical thinking.

From the Introduction:The present essay provides an introduction to the treatment of human existence and individuality in Marxist thought. The work will be primarily concerned with two related topics: the evaluation by Marxists of individual emancipation and their assessment of subjective factors in social theory. By taking up these taking up these topics within a systematic and historical framework, I hope to generate some fresh light on several familiar issues. First, I pursue a reading of Marx focused on (...) his treatment of subjectivity, individuation, and related methodological and practical matters; second, I apply this interpretation to analyzing the dispute between Marxist orthodoxy and heterodoxy over such matters as class consciousness and the philosophy of materialism; finally, I employ this historical context to clarify the significance of "existential Marxism," Maurice Merleau-Ponty's and Jean-Paul Sartre's contribution to Marxist thought. (shrink)

The article illustrates the different meanings of the term “logic” in Weber's work and then proceeds to discuss his approach to the explanation of historical events and in particular to counterfactual analysis. Weber's epistemology is first situated within the neo-Kantian debates of his time as well as legal positivism and historical jurisprudence. The article then focuses on this author's conception of science as a value sphere, on the aims and methods of explanation in the social and historical sciences (...) and on the key concepts of possibility judgements and adequate causation. The central role played by counterfactuals and modal logic is illustrated through the example of the battle of Marathon, which Weber himself saw as the starting point of a causal chain leading to the rise of Western rationalism. The article concludes by highlighting the pioneering role of Weber's counterfactualism for the subsequent development of possible worlds theory and its use in the causal analysis of singular historical events. (shrink)

This essay was first presented at the 2010 Ludwig Holberg Prize Symposium in Bergen, Norway, where I, as the prize recipient, was asked to describe my work and its import for our period of globalization. The essay first traces the interconnected processes of “decentering” history in Western historiography in the half century after World War II: the move to working people and “subaltern classes”; to women and gender; to communities defined by ethnicity and race; to the study of (...) non-Western histories and world or global history, in which the European trajectory is only one of several models. Can the historian hold onto the subjects of “decentered” social and cultural history, often local and full of concrete detail, and still address the perspectives of global history? To suggest an answer to this question, I describe my own decentering path from work on sixteenth-century artisans in the 1950s to recent research on non-European figures such as the Muslim “Leo Africanus” . I then offer two examples in which concrete cases can serve a global perspective. One is a comparison of the literary careers of Ibn Khaldun and Christine de Pizan in the scribal cultures on either side of the Mediterranean in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries. The other is the transmission and transformation of practices of divination, healing, and detection from Africa to the slave communities of Suriname in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. (shrink)

The thesis of this book is "that we can meaningfully speak of the task of the Phenomenology; that there is a single coherent argument running through its entirety; and that when properly understood, the Preface can be seen not only as complementary to the Introduction but as growing directly out of it". Specifically, W. wants to show that the "epistemological" and "historical" sides of the PhG are compatible in that the former is finally grounded in the latter. Theoretical-scientific consciousness is (...) not autonomous. History is the development of Geist through man’s work, strife, desires, thought; i.e., W. endorses a "humanistic interpretation" of "Spirit". That this is a "left-Hegelian" approach is clear. Although W. is careful to point out the deficiencies in Marx’s and Feuerbach’s critiques of Hegel, with respect to the foundational role of the "socially-historically conditioned aspect" of man, for example, we find that Marx and Hegel are in agreement. And we are told that Feuerbach’s conception of God is actually not so different from Hegel’s. For both, God is a kind of human "projection". W. defends this psychological concept as a "model for understanding Hegel’s view of religion," so long as it is remembered that this must be a "collective projection". These projections are not simply illusions since they reveal something true about human nature. But there is no transcendent Spirit for Hegel. To speak of Spirit as "absolute" is simply to refer to the transcendence of society to the individual. Thus the argument of the PhG in chapters 6 and 7 "could easily be described as atheism and communism," with the reservations that the "divine" exists in the form of man and that private property is not to be abolished. (shrink)

Does Marxism reflect uncritically the conceptual system it fights against, rather than a truly comprehensive approach to human history? Drawing on innovative work in anthropology, history and philosophy, Professor Donham confronts this problem in analyzing a radically different social order: the former Maale kingdom of southern Ethiopia. Unlike capitalism, where inequality is organized by contracts between 'free' individuals, powerful men in Maale were conceived as 'begetting' others through control of biological fertility and material fortune. The author (...) scrutinizes this unusual system of domination in order to sharpen issues in social and cultural theory. He concludes that the interpretation of symbols and analysis of historical contingency should be crucial steps in any Marxist investigation. This unusual combination of social theory and ethnography will appeal to anthropologists, sociologists and political scientists. (shrink)

Melanesian societies, like village societies in many parts of the world, are frequently portrayed as existing in a timeless, traditional present. The effects of this view are seen not only in overall popular and academic understandings of these societies but also in more abstract debates within anthropology about the nature of kinship, exchange, or social organization. History and Tradition in Melanesian Anthropology offers an alternative view, from authors who believe that historical evidence can and must inform our understanding (...) of contemporary cultures. This collection of original essays brings together scholars in anthropology and history. They point out ways in which the "timeless-traditionalism" approach of anthropology is inadequate. Life in the existing societies of Melanesia cannot be understood, they say, without taking firmly into account how these societies are shaped by their interactions with Western influences. In different ways all the contributors bring the history of Melanesian societies into their analyses, whether discussing the generally dismissive attitude of ethnographers toward the large numbers of Melanesian Christians; the ethnocentrism that led European observers to interpret fighting among the Melanesians solely according to whether it was for or against the Europeans; or the mechanism by which a practice such as kerekere (the soliciting of goods or services in Fijian society) became reified as a "custom." While the essays are critical of much of the anthropology that is done in Melanesia, they also exemplify a responsible, historically informed approach to the study of Melanesian societies - sober, constructive, and ideologically disinterested. Historians and anthropologists of Melanesia and the Pacific in general will find here original and enlightening work that is sure to influence the theoretical orientation of Melanesian anthropology. (shrink)

How to mobilize a traumatic national history on behalf of a less fractured polity? How to gain closure over a past that bifurcates the nation and establishes (at least) two national histories — history as told by the victims and by the perpetrators, now to be replaced by a history, as Mark Sanders (2003: 79) describes it, not of `bare facts but, at a crucial level, a history judged, and thus shaped, according to norms of universal (...) human rights'. How to engineer through politics the creation of new national selves, no longer pathologically attached to old and circumscribed forms of identification? These are now the critical questions confronting many elites: the overcoming of traumatic memory through various publicly mandated `technologies of the self'. To heal the nation requires the curing of the self. The politics of social repair understands itself largely through a psychologically inflected vocabulary of regret, apology, and forgiveness — the language of reconciliation. `Social cure', or reconciliation is understood as a process of social healing. In the face of traumatic ruptures in the body politic, in short, governments have sought to repair past wrongs and to heal an emotionally infirmed community. Such politics imply that societies have the capacity to repair themselves, to overcome traumatic pasts, just as an individual possesses the potential to overcome his or her own psychic trauma and fragmentation. But what evidence is there to support the claim that trauma — even for the individual — can be overcome, that history can be overridden, that forgiveness is possible? Psychoanalysis offers the most fully developed systematic body of work embracing a concept of the healing of the self. The article's aim, based upon an empirically derived (case-based) psychoanalysis, is to move toward a more robust theory of self-transformation and political reconciliation in post-traumatic communities. Thus, the article considers contemporary psychoanalytic evidence and asks of it the following questions: How is traumatic experience in the past recovered, and disabled, in the present? Is it necessary through memory to `return to the scene of the crime', in order to move beyond it? What features in the present-day therapeutic setting and in the therapeutic relationship promote healing? The objective is a grounded theory of reconciliation that includes discussion for whole societies of the role of historical recovery in social repair, the relation of the present to the past in self-constitution, and the requisite structure of the present-day reparative community to promote self-transformations. (shrink)

There have been more studies, critical books, and learned articles produced over the years about Jane Austen than of any other English literary "great" with the exception of William Shakespeare. The flow of these studies greatly increased in the latter part of this century. Her novels, juvenilia and surviving letters have been intensively researched. Added to this, there is an ever growing interest in her life, times, the importance to her writing of a sense of place, and in her familial (...) and social relationships. To study her work within this wider context, the student needs to refer to the source texts, some written by members of her family after her death, printed in small printings and now both scarce and valuable. (shrink)

This book provides a social history of the Tamil Jainas, a minority community living in Tamil Nadu in south India. It holds special significance in the method of studying the community, living in villages of Tamil Nadu and retrieving their perspectives on their past. This is a new approach in terms of historiography from extant works on Jainism in south India. A major feature of this book is the hitherto uncovered aspect of the question of language and identity, (...) caste and the modern socio-political movements in Tamil Nadu, such as the Self-Respect Movement (initiated by 'Periyar'), in which some Tamil Jainas were active participants. Special features in the book include photographs of the community and monuments, maps, and a unique style, which combines a journalistic approach and academic historical research. This book is of interest to readers of Tamil language and history, and to anyone working on the idea of politics of marginalisation of religious identities, ide as of memory, and community narratives of shared history in the face of religious persecution. (shrink)

This paper argues that Milonakis and Fine, in their bookFrom Political Economy to Economics, offer an account of history that systematically omits discussion of how economics has been shaped by the political and social context in which it developed. This contrasts with work by intellectual historians who have argued that such factors were crucial to understanding the history of economic ideas. It is ironic given that Milonakis and Fine are criticising economists for excluding the political and (...) the social from economics. (shrink)

Abstract In this paper, I argue that there is a recursive relationship between history and philosophy that provides the methodological basis for the moral (human) sciences in the work of David Hume. A grasp of Hume's use of history is integral to understanding his project which I believe to be the establishment of “moral science” (i.e., the social sciences) on an empirical basis by linking that history and philosophy as two sides of the same discourse (...) about human beings. (shrink)

This article presents a new argument concerning the relation between Kant’s theory of race and aspects of the critical philosophy. It argues that Kant’s treatment of the problem of the systematic unity of nature and knowledge in the Critique of Pure Reason and the Critique of the Power of Judgment can be traced back a methodological problem in the natural history of the period – that of the possibility of a natural system of nature. Kant’s transformation of the methodological (...) problem from natural history into a set of philosophical problems proceeds by way of the working out of his own problem in natural history – the problem of the natural history of the human races – and specifically the problem of the unity in diversity of the human species, in response to which he develops a theory of race. This theory of race is, further, the first developed model of the use of teleological judgment in Kant’s work. The article thus argues that Kant’s philosophical position on the sy... (shrink)

The belief of Gallie, Danto, and others that history is constructing narratives is too simplistic and neglects the role of inquiry and discovery. Teleology in history - only events relevant to a known outcome find a place in a work -while similar to that in narratives is not decisive, since in any explanation the explicandum controls the explicans to some extent. History is not recounting a linear sequence of intelligible human actions but is an analysis of (...) a complex pattern of change into factors that served to make it what it was. Social backgrounds and conditions that are influences but not actually parts of the story of actions are crucial; the fundamental relationship is part to whole, not antecedent to consequent. (shrink)

The Academy was a philosophical school established by Plato that safeguarded the continuity and the evolution of Platonism over a period of about 300 years. Its contribution to the development of Hellenistic philosophical and scientific thinking was decisive, but it also had a major impact on the formation of most of the other philosophical trends emerging during this period. This volume surveys the evidence for the historical and social setting in which the Academy operated, as well as the various (...) shifts in the philosophical outlook of Platonism during its existence. Its contribution to the evolution of special sciences such as mathematics is also examined. The book further includes the first complete annotated translation in English of Philodemus' History of the Academy, preserved on a papyrus from Herculaneum. It thus offers a comprehensive picture of one of the most prominent and influential of all educational institutions in ancient Greece. (shrink)

Where is language? Answers to this have attempted to 'incorporate' language in an 'extended mind', through cognition that is 'embodied', 'distributed', 'situated' or 'ecological'. Behind these concepts is a long history that this book is the first to trace. Extending across linguistics, philosophy, psychology and medicine, as well as literary and religious dimensions of the question of what language is, and where it is located, this book challenges mainstream, mind-based accounts of language. Looking at research from the Middle Ages (...) to the present day, and exploring the work of a range of scholars from Aristotle and Galen to Merleau-Ponty and Chomsky, it assesses raging debates about whether mind and language are centred in heart or brain, brain or nervous-muscular system, and whether they are innate or learned, individual or social. This book will appeal to scholars and advanced students in historical linguistics, cognitive linguistics, language evolution and the philosophy of language. (shrink)

Even before trust became a buzzword, theoretical developments were made, which have instigated the development of two forms of trust which are described as personal trust and system trust/confidence. However, this distinction remained rather secondary in the overall literature. There is an overall lack on the historical developments of these forms of trust, their internal logic and how they interlink, overlap, or work against each other. The paper aims to advance these three aspects: first through a historical overview of (...) the semantic of this distinction, followed by a theoretical reconstruction of the historical material and third by demonstrating how these theoretical concepts can be applied to political crises (Revolutions of 1989), thus revealing their logic and mutual interlocking. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Experience, Embodiment, and History: Remarks on Waldow’s Experience EmbodiedDario Perinetti (bio)Anik Waldow’s Experience Embodied delves into what she calls the “early modern debate on the concept of experience.”1 In her rich and wide-ranging account, she shows how a group of key early modern philosophers dealt with a puzzle regarding the connection between the subjective and objective aspects of experience. The puzzle stems from the fact that experience reveals (...) as much about the experiencing subject as it does about the experienced world. Waldow believes that a one-sided focus on the role of “the way of ideas” in shaping the subjective aspect of experience has distorted our understanding of early modern views on experience.According to the traditional reading, the puzzle presents an intractable challenge to early modern philosophers. For if we experience the world through ideas, and ideas are internal mental states, it becomes difficult to reconcile the explanations required for the psychology of our mental states with those needed for the natural sciences dealing with objective states of affairs. But, so Waldow claims, the challenge can be successfully faced once we understand experience as embodied: “We have to think of experience as embodied to do justice to both explanatory requirements, because it is the body that connects the experiencing mind and its subjectivity with the factual realm of the world.”2Waldow disputes the commonly held view that early modern philosophers saw experience as an interaction between mind and world. She contends, instead, that most early modern philosophers understood experience as embodied. The thesis is presented through a series of “case studies” or “snapshots.” These snapshots focus on the way Descartes, Locke, Hume, Rousseau, Herder, and Kant accounted for the [End Page 319] embodied dimension of experience. The case studies are noteworthy because they succeed in revealing the significance of embodied experience for the authors in question. Waldow manages to expose the significance of embodied experience by focusing on the connection between the authors’ central philosophical views and their views on topics like education, the psychology of emotions, and history, which are often considered of lesser interest by contemporary philosophers.For example, in chapter 1, Waldow argues that connecting Descartes’s mind-body dualism with his understanding of reason as a tool for human self-determination and agency, makes it possible to see how, contrary to commonly held assumptions, Descartes’s dualism aligns well with an understanding of experience as embodied. This weakens the view that Descartes defended a conception of reason as disembodied, and instead, allows for a reading of Cartesian philosophy as aligned with a more naturalistic picture of human nature. In her chapters on Hume and Herder, Waldow sheds light on the way these philosophers perceived reason and experience as deeply rooted in bodily sensibility, as well as in historically shaped moral attitudes and social norms. This focus on embodied experience is central for highlighting how, in different ways, these philosophers endorsed the naturalistic project of understanding the human place in nature. Building on these results, Waldow approaches the problem of the relationship between naturalism and the methodology proper to philosophy from a different and original angle. Her final chapters on Herder and Kant present two ways of understanding the connection between philosophy and the empirical sciences. In her view, Herder advocates for a naturalistic methodology as a way to provide answers to deep metaphysical questions, as well as to empirical questions related to human nature and its connection to culture, society, and history. Unlike Herder, Kant appears as promoting a form of methodological dualism that distinguishes conceptual questions regarding the structure of experience from empirical questions regarding the experience of concrete, embodied human beings. Waldow succeeds in highlighting this contrast between two methodological approaches, thanks to a journey that takes us through the canonical texts of these two thinkers, as well as through less frequented texts such as Herder’s work on the origins of language and Kant’s writings on anthropology, geography, natural history, and history. As can be seen, Waldow’s book not only provides a valuable insight into the significance of embodied experience in early modern philosophy, but also offers refreshing and unexpected readings of the... (shrink)

Psychologists and philosophers have assumed that psychological knowledge is knowledge about, and held by, the individual mind. _Psychological Knowledge_ challenges these views. It argues that bodies of psychological knowledge are social institutions like money or the monarchy, and that mental states are social artefacts like coins or crowns. Martin Kusch takes on arguments of alternative proposals, shows what is wrong with them, and demonstrates how his own social-philosophical approach constitutes an advance. We see that exists a substantial (...) natural amount of philosophical theorising, a body of work that tries to determine the nature and structure of folk psychology. An introduction to the workings of constuctivism, _Psychological Knowledge_ is an insightful introduction to the history of psychology and the recent philosophy of mind. (shrink)

In the last half century, oral history has emerged as a historical approach that is being considered by archivists involved with the collection and accessibility of archival collections for researchers and interested members of the public. The approach to ethics by oral historians has emerged from two major fears: the fear of failing as researchers and the fear of failing the narrators and doing harm. Archivists also need to be cognisant of these fears when collecting oral history. Confronting (...) these fears makes it possible to understand the complex questions behind oral historians’ and archivists’ preoccupations and sheds light on how oral history has evolved and expanded as a field. The research objectives of this article are to determine the three principles identified from the Belmont Report that relate and should be applied to the collection of oral histories by archivists and historians from communities and individuals residing and working in and alongside the Kruger National Park. The theoretical framework for this article is the critical race theory to address historical accounts from communities and individuals sidelined by the mainstream media in South Africa. For the purposes of this article, the study was conducted with the Makuleka and Tsonga communities to determine what ethical implications need to be respected when conducting oral history projects with communities.Contribution: This article will contribute to ethics concerning social sciences and specifically the collection of oral history. (shrink)