This exciting new text presents the first overview of Jean Jacques Rousseau's work from a political science perspective. Was Rousseau--the great theorist of the French Revolution--really a conservative? This original study argues that the he was a constitutionalist much closer to Madison, Montesquieu, and Locke than to revolutionaries. Outlining his profound opposition to Godless materialism and revolutionary change, this book finds parallels between Rousseau and Burke, as well as showing how Rousseau developed the first modern theory of (...) nationalism. The book presents an integrated political analysis of Rousseau's educational, ethical, religious and political writings, and will be essential reading for students of politics, philosophy and the history of ideas. (shrink)

One of Ian C. Jarvie’s most interesting contributions is his discussion of the thinking of Karl Popper and Michael Polanyi on the nature and workings of the scientific community and their relation to politics : 545–564, 2001). The self-image these thinkers contributed to still lingers, but their accounts capture a historical moment that has passed and was idealized even when they were written. In this chapter, I examine this tradition and identify the central themes which dominated this literature and ask (...) the question of how this history is relevant today. The answer will perhaps be surprising: despite the fact that the Left of the past held positions that are the opposites of the positions of the present participatory Left, the considerations that motivated the older Left remain. (shrink)

One of Ian C. Jarvie’s most interesting contributions is his discussion of the thinking of Karl Popper and Michael Polanyi on the nature and workings of the scientific community and their relation to politics : 545–564, 2001). The self-image these thinkers contributed to still lingers, but their accounts capture a historical moment that has passed and was idealized even when they were written. In this chapter, I examine this tradition and identify the central themes which dominated this literature and ask (...) the question of how this history is relevant today. The answer will perhaps be surprising: despite the fact that the Left of the past held positions that are the opposites of the positions of the present participatory Left, the considerations that motivated the older Left remain. (shrink)

This article explores the enticement of consumers for natural philosophy in London between 1695 and 1720 through advertisements placed in two political newspapers. This twenty-five-year period witnessed both the birth of public science and the rage of party politics. A consideration of public science adverts within the Whig-leaning Post Man and the Tory-leaning Post Boy reveals that members of both the Whig and Tory parties were equally targeted and that natural philosophy was sold to London's reading population (...) in bipartisan fashion. In the process of integrating natural philosophy into the wider culture through commercial sales, political allegiances were not imprinted on the advertising process. This conclusion raises questions regarding the historiographical assertion of Whig-supported public science and Tory opposition to it at the level of consumers. (shrink)

History of science is, we are told, an important subject for study. Its rise in recent years to become a ‘stand alone’ discipline has been mirrored by an expansion of popular history of science texts available in bookstores. Given this, it is perhaps surprising that little attention has been given to how history of science is written. This article attempts to do that through constructing a typology of histories of science based upon a consideration of audiences (...) who read these texts and writers who construct them. It identifies four ideal types of history of science which describe the opposite poles of two continua running from exoteric to esoteric. The article also examines the content of a sample of history of science texts and finds that often these texts, whether esoteric or exoteric, provide only a chronology of events (often incredibly detailed), avoiding discussion or even mention of wider social, economic and political contexts. Such histories serve to reinforce a ‘standard’ account of science as ‘separate’ from the rest of society, an account that is at odds with almost all contemporary sociology of science and science and technology studies. This prompts the question: why should I read histories of science? (shrink)

History of science is, we are told, an important subject for study. Its rise in recent years to become a ‘stand alone’ discipline has been mirrored by an expansion of popular history of science texts available in bookstores. Given this, it is perhaps surprising that little attention has been given to how history of science is written. This article attempts to do that through constructing a typology of histories of science based upon a consideration of audiences (...) who read these texts and writers who construct them. It identifies four ideal types of history of science which describe the opposite poles of two continua running from exoteric to esoteric. The article also examines the content of a sample of history of science texts and finds that often these texts, whether esoteric or exoteric, provide only a chronology of events, avoiding discussion or even mention of wider social, economic and political contexts. Such histories serve to reinforce a ‘standard’ account of science as ‘separate’ from the rest of society, an account that is at odds with almost all contemporary sociology of science and science and technology studies. This prompts the question: why should I read histories of science? (shrink)

Few philosophers of science have influenced as many readers as Thomas S. Kuhn. Yet no comprehensive study of his ideas has existed--until now. In this volume, Paul Hoyningen-Huene examines Kuhn's work over four decades, from the days before The Structure of Scientific Revolutions to the present, and puts Kuhn's philosophical development in a historical framework. Scholars from disciplines as diverse as political science and art history have offered widely differing interpretations of Kuhn's ideas, appropriating his notions of (...) paradigm shifts and revolutions to fit their own theories, however imperfectly. Hoyningen-Huene does not merely offer another interpretation--he brings Kuhn's work into focus with rigorous philosophical analysis. Through extended discussions with Kuhn and an encyclopedic reading of his work, Hoyningen-Huene looks at the problems and justifications of his claims and determines how his theories might be expanded. Most significantly, he discovers that The Structure of Scientific Revolutions can be understood only with reference to the historiographic foundation of Kuhn's philosophy. Discussing the concepts of paradigms, paradigm shifts, normal science, and scientific revolutions, Hoyningen-Huene traces their evolution to Kuhn's experience as a historian of contemporary science. From here, Hoyningen-Huene examines Kuhn's well-known thesis that scientists on opposite sides of a revolutionary divide "work in different worlds," explaining Kuhn's notion of a world-change during a scientific revolution. He even considers Kuhn's most controversial claims--his attack on the distinction between the contexts of discovery and justification and his notion of incommensurability--addressing both criticisms and defenses of these ideas. Destined to become the authoritative philosophical study of Kuhn's work, Reconstructing Scientific Revolutions both enriches our understanding of Kuhn and provides powerful interpretive tools for bridging Continental and Anglo-American philosophical traditions. (shrink)

This article addresses the ideological context of twentieth-century history of science as it emerged and was discussed at the threshold of the Cold War. It is claimed that the bifurcation of the discipline into a socio-economic strand and a technical-intellectual one should be traced back to the 1930s. In fact, the proposal of a Marxist-oriented historiography by the Soviet delegates at the International Congress of History of Science and Technology led by Nikolai Bukharin, set off the ideological and (...) methodological opposition that characterised the later years. Bukharin’s views on science are closely considered, as well as those of his Marxist critics, György Lukács and Antonio Gramsci. It is argued that, despite the fluidity of the positions of the 1920s and 1930s, these theories soon crystallized as demonstrated by the leftist reception of Bukharin’s and his associates’ perspective in the history of science, especially in Great Britain, as well as by the anti-communist reactions. Intellectualist approaches renouncing socio-economic factors, typically those by Alexandre Koyré and Thomas Kuhn, are reconsidered in the light of the ideological confrontation of the Cold War era. Reflection on the political-cultural embedding of the history of science has often been overshadowed by claims about the objectivity and neutrality of science and its historiography. Thus, the seminal discussion of the 1930s remains one of the most lucid moments of reflection about the role of science and history of science as cultural phenomena shaped by political struggles. (shrink)

History casts a spell on our minds more powerful than science or religion. It does not root us in the past at all. It rather flatters us with the belief in our ability to recreate the world in our image. It is a form of self-assertion that brooks no opposition or dissent and shelters us from the experience of time. So argues Constantin Fasolt in The Limits of History , an ambitious and pathbreaking study that conquers history's power (...) by carrying the fight into the center of its domain. Fasolt considers the work of Hermann Conring (1606-81) and Bartolus of Sassoferrato (1313/14-57), two antipodes in early modern battles over the principles of European thought and action that ended with the triumph of historical consciousness. Proceeding according to the rules of normal historical analysis--gathering evidence, putting it in context, and analyzing its meaning--Fasolt uncovers limits that no kind of history can cross. He concludes that history is a ritual designed to maintain the modern faith in the autonomy of states and individuals. God wants it, the old crusaders would have said. The truth, Fasolt insists, only begins where that illusion ends. With its probing look at the ideological underpinnings of historical practice, The Limits of History demonstrates that history presupposes highly political assumptions about free will, responsibility, and the relationship between the past and the present. A work of both intellectual history and historiography, it will prove invaluable to students of historical method, philosophy, political theory, and early modern European culture. (shrink)

Until relatively recently, Jacques Derrida was seen by many as nothing more than the high priest of Deconstruction, by turns stimulating and fascinating, yet always somewhat disengaged from the central political questions of our time. Or so it seemed. Derrida's "political turn," marked especially by the appearance of Specters of Marx, has surprised some and delighted others. In The Politics of Friendship Derrida renews and enriches this orientation through an examination of the political history of the idea (...) of friendship pursued down the ages. Derrida's thoughts are haunted throughout the book by the strange and provocative address attributed to Aristotle, "my friends, there is no friend" and its inversions by later philosophers such as Montaigne, Kant, Nietzsche, Schmitt and Blanchot. The exploration allows Derrida to recall and restage the ways in which all the oppositional couples of Western philosophy and political thought--friendship and enmity, private and public life--have become madly and dangerously unstable. At the same time he dissects genealogy itself, the familiar and male-centered notion of fraternity and the virile virtue whose authority has gone unquestioned in our culture of friendship and our models of democracy. The future of the political, for Derrida, becomes the future of friends, the invention of a radically new friendship, of a deeper and more inclusive democracy. This remarkable book, his most profoundly important for many years, offers a challenging and inspiring vision of that future. (shrink)

In Riches and Poverty, Donald Winch explores the implications of a fundamental and influential idea in political economy. Adam Smith's science of the legislator provided a key to studying the rich and poor in commercial societies, transformed an ancient debate on luxury and inequality, and furnished a basis for assessing the American and French revolutions. Against this background, Britain embarked on its career as the first manufacturing nation, and Malthus made his first contributions to a debate which concluded (...) with the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834. Malthus provoked fierce opposition from the Lake poets, opening an intellectual rift that persisted throughout the nineteenth century and continues to influence our perceptions of cultural history. Donald Winch has written a compelling and consistently-argued narrative of these developments, which emphasises throughout the moral and political bearings of economic ideas. (shrink)

Defending the role that science must play in democratic society--science defined not just in terms of technology but as a way of approaching problems and viewing the world. In this collection of original essays, experts in political science, the hard sciences, philosophy, history, and other disciplines examine contemporary anti-science trends, and make a strong case that respect for science is essential for a healthy democracy. The editors note that a contradiction lies at the heart (...) of modern society. On the one hand, we inhabit a world increasingly dominated by science and technology. On the other, opposition to science is prevalent in many forms--from arguments against the teaching of evolution and the denial of climate change to the promotion of alternative medicine and outlandish claims about the effects of vaccinations. Adding to this grass-roots hostility toward science are academics espousing postmodern relativism, which equates the methods of science with regimes of "power-knowledge." While these cultural trends are sometimes marketed in the name of "democratic pluralism," the contributors contend that such views are actually destructive of a broader culture appropriate for a democratic society. This is especially true when facts are degraded as "fake news" and scientists are dismissed as elitists. Rather than enhancing the capacity for rational debate and critical discourse, the authors view such anti-science stances on either the right or the left as a return to premodern forms of subservience to authority and an unwillingness to submit beliefs to rational scrutiny. Beyond critiquing attitudes hostile to science, the essays in this collection put forward a positive vision for how we might better articulate the relation between science and democracy and the benefits that accrue from cultivating this relationship. (shrink)

An esteemed scholar of Hinduism presents a groundbreaking interpretation of ancient Indian texts and their historic influence on subversive resistance. Ancient Hindu texts speak of the three aims of human life: dharma, artha, and kama. Translated, these might be called religion, politics, and pleasure, and each is held to be an essential requirement of a full life. Balance among the three is a goal not always met, however, and dharma has historically taken precedence over the other two qualities in Hindu (...) life. Here, historian of religions Wendy Doniger offers a spirited and close reading of ancient Indian writings, unpacking a long but unrecognized history of opposition against dharma. Doniger argues that scientific disciplines (shastras) have offered lively and continuous criticism of dharma, or religion, over many centuries. She chronicles the tradition of veiled subversion, uncovers connections to key moments of resistance and voices of dissent throughout Indian history, and offers insights into the Indian theocracy's subversion of science by religion today. (shrink)

Hegel and Canada is a collection of essays that analyses the real, but under-recognized, role Hegel has played in the intellectual and political development of Canada. The volume focuses on the generation of Canadian scholars who emerged after World War Two: James Doull, Emil Fackenheim, George Grant, Henry S. Harris, and Charles Taylor.

This article examines the life and activities of the Italian intellectual Aldo Mieli as examples of the impact on intellectual agendas of interference by the authorities. Mieli is nowadays known as one of the founders of the history of science as an autonomous discipline and as a pioneer of gay rights. For most of his life he managed to further his activities related to the history of science. The political career that he started as a young man, (...) however, was cut short because the Italian Socialist Party could not accept his homosexuality. His first exile, and his leaving of one of the two journals he had founded, _Rassegna di studi sessuali_, in the hands of people close to the Fascist regime have been generally seen as Mieli’s free choice. But his private correspondence reveals that his hatred and fear of the regime left him with no option. In particular, the regime did not tolerate any opposition to its demographic policy and its own view of eugenics. As a consequence _Rassegna_ was brought into line and Mieli pushed aside. The Fascist regime thus covertly closed down a prominent forum for discussion of sexuality and homosexuality. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Adam Smith and the History of the Invisible HandPeter HarrisonFew phrases in the history of ideas have attracted as much attention as Smith’s “invisible hand,” and there is a large body of secondary literature devoted to it. In spite of this there is no consensus on what Smith might have intended when he used this expression, or on what role it played in Smith’s thought. Estimates of its significance (...) range from the laudatory—“one of the great ideas of history,” to the dismissive—“an ironic joke.”1 Commentators are also divided on whether Smith’s “invisible hand” has teleological or providential connotations, or whether it is simply a rhetorical device. John Kenneth Galbraith declared that we do a grave disservice to Smith if we insist on understanding his invisible hand as a kind of “spiritual force.”2 Spenser J. Pack maintained that the invisible hand was “a rhetorical device which Smith made up, and knew he made up” and certainly “not [End Page 29] a theological underpinning for Smith’s social and/or economic theory.”3 Others have adopted the opposite view. Jacob Viner contended that Smith’s economic theory becomes unintelligible if “the invisible hand” is evacuated of its theological significance.4 For David A. Martin, Smith’s use of the phrase pointed to the foundational role played by divine wisdom in Smith’s thought, while for Andy Denis, “the invisible hand concept in Smith was entirely and unambiguously theological.”5Surprisingly, given this situation, a systematic study of the uses of the expression before Smith has yet to be made.6 Indeed, it is not unusual to find claims that Smith invented the expression himself, or that it was primarily owing to his influence that the phrase first became widespread.7 Those who have made perfunctory efforts at a history of the phrase generally point to a few scattered literary references with a view either to judging them irrelevant to Smith’s oeuvre, or to suggesting that Smith’s (admittedly meagre) uses of the phrase are empty metaphors. This paper seeks to remedy this deficiency, offering a history of “the invisible hand” with a particular focus on the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. What clearly emerges from this survey is that the concept was relatively common by the time Smith came to use it. Moreover, while “invisible hand” was used in a variety of contexts, by far the most common involved reference to God’s [End Page 30] oversight of human history and to his control of the operations of nature. Almost certainly, then, when readers encountered the phrase in Smith, they would have understood it as referring to God’s unseen agency in political economy. Whether Smith was himself committed to such a view is more difficult to determine, but the history of the expression and the contexts in which it appears in Smith’s writings offer some support for providentialist readings.Hidden and Invisible HandsThe expression “invisible hand” was not commonly used before the seventeenth century. It does not occur in classical literature (although some have suggested that the phrase may be found in Ovid).8 Neither does it appear in the Hebrew Bible or the New Testament.9 The earliest reference that I have found occurs in a Greek liturgy which invokes God’s “invisible right hand which is full of blessing.”10 The liturgy was used by the Alexandrian Church and its origins date back (probably) to the second century. However, [End Page 31] the expression is relatively rare in subsequent patristic and medieval writings. In one of his Old Testament commentaries, Alexandrian Church father Origen (185–254 ce) attributed the Israelites’ defeat of the Amalekites, recorded in Exodus 17, to the agency of God’s hidden hand.11 Some later sources made reference to the work of a “hidden” or “invisible” hand of God in restoring individuals to health. Augustine of Hippo (354–430 ce) thus spoke of the hidden hand of God which heals and makes whole.12 A medieval source refers similarly to a wound being healed by the touch of an invisible hand.13 French Benedictine Petrus Cellensis (1115–83 ce) alluded to the action... (shrink)

Economics has become a monolithic science, variously described as formalistic and autistic with neoclassical orthodoxy reigning supreme. So argue Dimitris Milonakis and Ben Fine in this new major work of critical recollection. The authors show how economics was once rich, diverse, multidimensional and pluralistic, and unravel the processes that lead to orthodoxy’s current predicament. The book details how political economy became economics through the desocialisation and the dehistoricisation of the dismal science, accompanied by the separation of economics (...) from the other social sciences, especially economic history and sociology. It is argued that recent attempts from within economics to address the social and the historical have failed to acknowledge long standing debates amongst economists, historians and other social scientists. This has resulted in an impoverished historical and social content within mainstream economics. The book ranges over the shifting role of the historical and the social in economic theory, the shifting boundaries between the economic and the non-economic, all within a methodological context. Schools of thought and individuals, that have been neglected or marginalised, are treated in full, including classical political economy and Marx, the German and British historical schools, American institutionalism, Weber and Schumpeter and their programme of Socialökonomik, and the Austrian school. At the same time, developments within the mainstream tradition from marginalism through Marshall and Keynes to general equilibrium theory are also scrutinised, and the clashes between the various camps from the famous Methodenstreit to the fierce debates of the 1930s and beyond brought to the fore. The prime rationale underpinning this account drawn from the past is to put the case for political economy back on the agenda. This is done by treating economics as a social science once again, rather than as a positive science, as has been the inclination since the time of Jevons and Walras. It involves transcending the boundaries of the social sciences, but in a particular way that is in exactly the opposite direction now being taken by "economics imperialism". Drawing on the rich traditions of the past, the reintroduction and full incorporation of the social and the historical into the main corpus of political economy will be possible in the future. (shrink)

In Machiavelli on Freedom and Civil Conflict: An Historical and Medical Approach to Political Thinking, Marie Gaille rethinks Machiavelli's conception of civil conflict. In complete opposition to the common view of Machiavelli as a defender of tyranny, this analysis brings new elements to the forefront: the use of medical metaphors to describe the body politic, its historical lifespan and its institutional arrangement. This study is also based on a comprehensive approach to Machiavelli's writings, including his most famous works, (...) but also The History of Florence, his correspondence, and his political, military and diplomatic reports. This study allows Marie Gaille to propose an original assessment of Machiavelli's insights for contemporary conceptions of democracy. This is a revised and translated edition of Conflit Civil et Liberté: la Politique Machiavelienne entre Histoire et Médecine, first published in French, in 2004 by Éditions Honoré Champion. (shrink)

This book brings together the political thought of Gandhi and Tagore to examine the relationship between politics, truth and conscience. It explores truth and conscience as viable public virtues with regard to two exemplars of ethical politics, addressing in turn the concerns of an evolving modern Indian political community. The comprehensive and textually argued discussion frames the subject of the validity of ethical politics in inhospitable contexts such as the fanatically despotic state and energised nationalism. The book studies (...) in nuanced detail Tagore’s opposition to political violence in colonial Bengal, the scope of non-violence and _satyagraha_ as recommended by Gandhi to Jews in Nazi Germany, his response to the complexity of protest against the Jallianwala Bagh massacre, and the differently constituted nationalism of Gandhi and Tagore. It presents their famous debate in a new light, embedded within the dynamics of cultural identification, political praxis and the capacity of a community to imbibe the principles of ethical politics. Comprehensive and perceptive in analysis, this book will be a valuable addition for scholars and researchers of political science with specialisation in Indian political thought, philosophy and history. Gangeya Mukherji is Reader in English at Mahamati Prannath Mahavidyalaya, Mau-Chitrakoot, Uttar Pradesh, India. (shrink)

"Liberalism" is widely used to describe a variety of social and political ideas, but has been an especially difficult concept for historians and political scientists to define. Burckhardt, Mill, and Tocqueville define one type of liberal thought. They share an aristocratic liberalism marked by distaste for the masses and the middle class, opposition to the commercial spirit, fear and contempt of mediocrity, and suspicion of the centralized state. Their fears are combined with an elevated ideal of human (...) personality, an ideal which affirms modernity. All see their ideals threatened in the immediate future, and all hope to save European civilization from barbarism and militarism through some form of education, although all grow more pessimistic towards the end of their lives. Aristocratic Liberalism ignores the national boundaries that so often confine the history of political thought, and uses the perspective thus gained to establish a pan-European type of political thought. Going beyond Burckhardt, Mill, and Tocqueville, Aristocratic Liberalism argues for new ways of looking at nineteenth-century liberalism. It corrects many prevalent misconceptions about liberalism, and suggests new paths for arriving at a better understanding of the leading form of nineteenth-century political thought. The new Afterword by the author presents a novel description of liberal political language as the "discourse of capacity," and suggests that this kind of language is the common denominator of all forms of European liberalism in the nineteenth century. Aristocratic Liberalism will be valuable to students of history, political science, sociology, and political philosophy. (shrink)

In this article I argue that Thomas Hobbes’s theory of the “state of nature” should be understood as describing a thoroughly political situation. Hobbes’s exemplification of the state of nature by resorting to the “savages” of America should be taken in its ultimately paradoxical character, one that puts in question the stark opposition between a prepolitical natural state and the properly political state resulting from the “social contract.” Through the lenses of ethnographic studies and anthropological theory, I (...) propose a reinterpretation of Hobbes’s characterization of the state of nature as a state of war. In the first section, I present my interpretation of Hobbes’s understanding of war, arguing that war is characterized not by actual battle but by the uncertainty of conflict, already entailing a social dimension to it. In the second section, I engage with Pierre Clastres’s theory of the society against the State to discuss how, for Amerindian peoples, war not only has a social character but is itself the basis of sociality. In the last section, I discuss Eduardo Viveiros de Castro’s theory of potential affinity to propose that Hobbes’s state of nature is also a form of schematization of alterity as enmity. I conclude by showing how this provides an understanding of peace as a precarious situation, one that is the outcome of ethical practices ultimately independent from the State. (shrink)

History casts a spell on our minds more powerful than science or religion. It does not root us in the past at all. It rather flatters us with the belief in our ability to recreate the world in our image. It is a form of self-assertion that brooks no opposition or dissent and shelters us from the experience of time. So argues Constantin Fasolt in _The Limits of History_, an ambitious and pathbreaking study that conquers history's power by (...) carrying the fight into the center of its domain. Fasolt considers the work of Hermann Conring and Bartolus of Sassoferrato, two antipodes in early modern battles over the principles of European thought and action that ended with the triumph of historical consciousness. Proceeding according to the rules of normal historical analysis—gathering evidence, putting it in context, and analyzing its meaning—Fasolt uncovers limits that no kind of history can cross. He concludes that history is a ritual designed to maintain the modern faith in the autonomy of states and individuals. God wants it, the old crusaders would have said. The truth, Fasolt insists, only begins where that illusion ends. With its probing look at the ideological underpinnings of historical practice, _The Limits of History_ demonstrates that history presupposes highly political assumptions about free will, responsibility, and the relationship between the past and the present. A work of both intellectual history and historiography, it will prove invaluable to students of historical method, philosophy, political theory, and early modern European culture. (shrink)

This paper examines the production and circulation of astrological prognostications regarding the illness and death of kings, princes, and popes in the Italian Renaissance . The distribution and consumption of this type of astrological information was often closely linked to the specific political situation in which they were produced. Depending on the astrological techniques used , and the media in which they appeared these prognostications fulfilled different functions in the information economy of Renaissance Italy. Some were used to legitimise (...) the rule of a political leader, others to do just the opposite. Astrological prorogations and interrogations were often used to plan military and political strategies in case of the illness or death of a political leader, while astrological prognostications were generally written to promote certain political leaders while undermining others. While certainly often partisan to this game, astrologers, for their part, worked within a very well established tradition that gave authority to their forecasts. This paper argues that, as indicators of deeper political tensions otherwise not always explicitly manifest, these prognostications are privileged sources of information providing a better understanding of the political history of the period. (shrink)

From 1918 to the late 1940s, a host of influential scientists and intellectuals in Europe and North America were engaged in a number of far-reaching unity of science projects. In this period of deep social and political divisions, scientists collaborated to unify sciences across disciplinary boundaries and to set up the international scientific community as a model for global political co-operation. They strove to align scientific and social objectives through rational planning and to promote unified science (...) as the driving force of human civilization and progress. This volume explores the unity of science movement, providing a synthetic view of its pursuits and placing it in its historical context as a scientific and political force. Through a coherent set of original case studies looking at the significance of various projects and strategies of unification, the book highlights the great variety of manifestations of this endeavour. These range from unifying nuclear physics to the evolutionary synthesis, and from the democratization of scientific planning to the utopianism of H.G. Wells's world state. At the same time, the collection brings out the substantive links between these different pursuits, especially in the form of interconnected networks of unification and the alignment of objectives among them. Notably, it shows that opposition to fascism, using the instrument of unified science, became the most urgent common goal in the 1930s and 1940s. In addressing these issues, the book makes visible important historical developments, showing how scientists participated in, and actively helped to create, an interwar ideology of unification, and bringing to light the cultural and political significance of this enterprise. (shrink)

In this paper it is argued that philosophical anthropology is central to ethics and politics. The denial of this has facilitated the triumph of debased notions of humans developed by Hobbes which has facilitated the enslavement of people to the logic of the global market, a logic which is now destroying the ecological conditions for civilization and most life on Earth. Reviving the classical understanding of the central place of philosophical anthropology to ethics and politics, the early work of Hegel (...) and Marx is explicated, defended and further developed by interpreting this through developments in post-mechanistic science. Overcoming the opposition between the sciences and the humanities, it is suggested that the conception of humans developed in this way can orient people in their struggle for the liberty to avert a global ecological catastrophe. (shrink)

A fascinating history that reveals the ways in which the pursuit of rationality often leads to an explosion of irrationality It’s a story we can’t stop telling ourselves. Once, humans were benighted by superstition and irrationality, but then the Greeks invented reason. Later, the Enlightenment enshrined rationality as the supreme value. Discovering that reason is the defining feature of our species, we named ourselves the “rational animal.” But is this flattering story itself rational? In this sweeping account of irrationality from (...) antiquity to today—from the fifth-century BC murder of Hippasus for revealing the existence of irrational numbers to the rise of Twitter mobs and the election of Donald Trump—Justin Smith says the evidence suggests the opposite. From sex and music to religion and war, irrationality makes up the greater part of human life and history. Rich and ambitious, Irrationality ranges across philosophy, politics, and current events. Challenging conventional thinking about logic, natural reason, dreams, art and science, pseudoscience, the Enlightenment, the internet, jokes and lies, and death, the book shows how history reveals that any triumph of reason is temporary and reversible, and that rational schemes, notably including many from Silicon Valley, often result in their polar opposite. The problem is that the rational gives birth to the irrational and vice versa in an endless cycle, and any effort to permanently set things in order sooner or later ends in an explosion of unreason. Because of this, it is irrational to try to eliminate irrationality. For better or worse, it is an ineradicable feature of life. Illuminating unreason at a moment when the world appears to have gone mad again, Irrationality is fascinating, provocative, and timely. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:September 27, 2008 (1:09 pm) G:\WPData\TYPE2801\russell 28,1 048RED.wpd Reviews 89 MODERNIST HERESIES K.yE. Garay Arts & Science/Research Collections / McMaster U. Hamilton, on, Canada l8s 4m2 [email protected] Damon Franke. Modernist Heresies: British Literary History, 1883–1924. Columbus : Ohio State U. P., 2008. Pp. xx, 258. isbn 978-0-8142-1074-1 (hb). us$47.95. The editor of the Russell journal summed up Modernist Heresies: British Literary History, 1883–1924z with his usual brevity during (...) a recent conversation : “The Wrst part is about Russell and the rest of it isn’t.” In fact the Wrst two chapters are only somewhat concerned with Russell, since he Wgures as part of the Heretical Cambridge scene with which Damon Franke opens this study, but, September 27, 2008 (1:09 pm) G:\WPData\TYPE2801\russell 28,1 048RED.wpd 90 Reviews after a Xeeting appearance of both Russells, Bertie and Dora, in the opening pages of Chapter 3, Bertie is not heard from again. Franke, who teaches English at the University of Southern Mississippi, has set himself an ambitious task, the scope of which is not fully captured in this book’s title. The selection of no fewer than ten subject headings in the cataloguing data for this studyz—zheadings ranging from “Modernism (Literature)” through “English Literature”, “Religion and Literature”, “Heresies, Christian”, and “Paganism in Literature”z—zprovides the wary reader withsome forewarning of its breadth. The author’s focus is on nothing less than the emergence and development of modernism in England, using the rise and demise of what Franke terms “heresy” as his barometer. Nor does the ascribed date range, 1883– 1924, prove much more accurate; in one of the most persuasive segments of the book, the After Words, Franke extends his examination, Wrst into the 1930s and then as far as 1949, the year that Orwell’s novel Nineteen Eighty-Fourz was published. Selecting as his starting point the 1883 blasphemy trial of G.yW. Foote, the editor of The Freethinker, at which the right to attack “even the fundamentals of religion” was enshrined in English law, providing that “the decencies of controversy” are observed (p. 10), Franke argues that this decision made possible “intellectual and literary forms of heresy which questioned the principles of religion ” (ibid.). His use of the term “heresy” for his wide ranging survey of philosophical and linguistic as well as literary opinion, provoked pause in this reader. The Oxford English Dictionary, the Wrst edition of which appeared the year after Foote’s heresy trial, provides a primary deWnition of heresy as follows: Theological or religious opinion or doctrine maintained in opposition, or held to be contrary, to the “catholic” or orthodox doctrine of the Christian Church, or, by extension, to that of any church, creed, or religious system, considered as orthodox. It is only through an extended deWnition of heresy that the door opens to allow Franke’s highly variable use of the term: “Opinion or doctrine in philosophy, politics, science, art, etc., at variance with those generally accepted as authoritative ” (OED Online, 2008). As will be demonstrated, aspects of thought which the less adventurous might prefer to call agnosticism, paganism or even atheism, are subsumed into the wide-ranging scope of this provocative study. The Cambridge Heretics, the group of which Russell was an Honorary Member, provides Franke with both his heretical cornerstone and his book’s opening chapters. In a skilfully contextualized examination, Franke documents the group’s Michaelmas 1909 genesis in the shadow, or perhaps in the intellectual light, of the Chawner ATairz—zthe Master of Emmanuel’s public expression of his personal loss of religious faith. Its Wrst chairman was C.yM. Picciotto, but it was its Wrst secretary, C.yK. Ogden, a newly arrived Magdalene College under- September 27, 2008 (1:09 pm) G:\WPData\TYPE2801\russell 28,1 048RED.wpd Reviews 91 graduate, who was to prove the group’s guiding genius. Franke argues convincingly that the group, which included Bernard Shaw, J.yM. Keynes, I.yA. Richards and G.yE. Moore, as well as Russell, in its membership roster, has suTered puzzling scholarly neglect, particularly when compared with the Apostles, its... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:September 27, 2008 (1:09 pm) G:\WPData\TYPE2801\russell 28,1 048RED.wpd Reviews 89 MODERNIST HERESIES K.yE. Garay Arts & Science/Research Collections / McMaster U. Hamilton, on, Canada l8s 4m2 [email protected] Damon Franke. Modernist Heresies: British Literary History, 1883–1924. Columbus : Ohio State U. P., 2008. Pp. xx, 258. isbn 978-0-8142-1074-1 (hb). us$47.95. The editor of the Russell journal summed up Modernist Heresies: British Literary History, 1883–1924z with his usual brevity during (...) a recent conversation : “The Wrst part is about Russell and the rest of it isn’t.” In fact the Wrst two chapters are only somewhat concerned with Russell, since he Wgures as part of the Heretical Cambridge scene with which Damon Franke opens this study, but, September 27, 2008 (1:09 pm) G:\WPData\TYPE2801\russell 28,1 048RED.wpd 90 Reviews after a Xeeting appearance of both Russells, Bertie and Dora, in the opening pages of Chapter 3, Bertie is not heard from again. Franke, who teaches English at the University of Southern Mississippi, has set himself an ambitious task, the scope of which is not fully captured in this book’s title. The selection of no fewer than ten subject headings in the cataloguing data for this studyz—zheadings ranging from “Modernism (Literature)” through “English Literature”, “Religion and Literature”, “Heresies, Christian”, and “Paganism in Literature”z—zprovides the wary reader withsome forewarning of its breadth. The author’s focus is on nothing less than the emergence and development of modernism in England, using the rise and demise of what Franke terms “heresy” as his barometer. Nor does the ascribed date range, 1883– 1924, prove much more accurate; in one of the most persuasive segments of the book, the After Words, Franke extends his examination, Wrst into the 1930s and then as far as 1949, the year that Orwell’s novel Nineteen Eighty-Fourz was published. Selecting as his starting point the 1883 blasphemy trial of G.yW. Foote, the editor of The Freethinker, at which the right to attack “even the fundamentals of religion” was enshrined in English law, providing that “the decencies of controversy” are observed (p. 10), Franke argues that this decision made possible “intellectual and literary forms of heresy which questioned the principles of religion ” (ibid.). His use of the term “heresy” for his wide ranging survey of philosophical and linguistic as well as literary opinion, provoked pause in this reader. The Oxford English Dictionary, the Wrst edition of which appeared the year after Foote’s heresy trial, provides a primary deWnition of heresy as follows: Theological or religious opinion or doctrine maintained in opposition, or held to be contrary, to the “catholic” or orthodox doctrine of the Christian Church, or, by extension, to that of any church, creed, or religious system, considered as orthodox. It is only through an extended deWnition of heresy that the door opens to allow Franke’s highly variable use of the term: “Opinion or doctrine in philosophy, politics, science, art, etc., at variance with those generally accepted as authoritative ” (OED Online, 2008). As will be demonstrated, aspects of thought which the less adventurous might prefer to call agnosticism, paganism or even atheism, are subsumed into the wide-ranging scope of this provocative study. The Cambridge Heretics, the group of which Russell was an Honorary Member, provides Franke with both his heretical cornerstone and his book’s opening chapters. In a skilfully contextualized examination, Franke documents the group’s Michaelmas 1909 genesis in the shadow, or perhaps in the intellectual light, of the Chawner ATairz—zthe Master of Emmanuel’s public expression of his personal loss of religious faith. Its Wrst chairman was C.yM. Picciotto, but it was its Wrst secretary, C.yK. Ogden, a newly arrived Magdalene College under- September 27, 2008 (1:09 pm) G:\WPData\TYPE2801\russell 28,1 048RED.wpd Reviews 91 graduate, who was to prove the group’s guiding genius. Franke argues convincingly that the group, which included Bernard Shaw, J.yM. Keynes, I.yA. Richards and G.yE. Moore, as well as Russell, in its membership roster, has suTered puzzling scholarly neglect, particularly when compared with the Apostles, its... (shrink)

The need for renewal felt in various fields with the Tanẓīmat, and the changes and modernization activities realized in accordance with it, and the nature and boundaries of these activities are important issues that determine the period's intellectual agenda. Some of the proposals for a solution to save the state are related to the renewal of religious thought. The bad situation in the Ottoman Empire stems from the way religion is understood, not from religion itself, and one of the names (...) that produce ideas about the necessity of changing this way of thinking is Ḥüseyin Kāẓım Kadri. He believes that Fiqh and Exegeticsshould be based on the work of updating the content of Islamic Sciences within the framework of contemporary needs. Claiming that the basic need of society is not Science of Kalām but Catechism, Kadri claims that the attempt of the science of Kalām, regulated to respond to the needs of the age will not result in even will cause religious conflict among people. In this article, Ḥüseyin Kāẓım Kadri'sintellectual background, his suggestions for the renewal of religious thought and his objection to the new Science of Kalām are discussed.Summary: What defines the history of late Ottoman period is the concept called change. There have been reform attempts in order to canalise the military, economic, socio-cultural change and transformation due to political turmoil starting from the end of the 16th century and beginning of the 17th century. Basic argument regarding these reforms finds its base on Qanūn al-Qadīm and the idea of returning to Sharia. Along with the Declaration of the Imperial Edict of Reorganization (Edict of Gulhane) the previous reforms which were made earlier changed dimension and westernization became a government policy. During the ongoing process, the change in terms of Westernization became a current issue within every segment of Ottoman society. Need for innovation in various areas, and therefore the change and modernization movements and accordingly these movements’ nature and boundries set the intellectual agenda of the era. Some of the suggestions are associated with renewal of the religious thought which are to keep the State from difficult situation it is in. Solutions proposed in this context creates a rich intellectual discussion environment within Western, Islamist, and Turkist intellectuals. Islamists in general terms are of the opinion that the difficult situation Ottoman is in does not stem from the religion itself but the way of understanding religion; and they are of the opinion that this way of thinking should be altered; when they bring about their suggestions, it is seen that the way of thinking is their starting point. What causes the Islamists fall apart within themselves is the nature of renawal. Islamist intellectuals, supporting the idea which is the content of islamic knowledge should be updated according the needs of era, suggest various ideas in terms of which dicipline should be in charge for the needs in question. While some intellectuals are of the opinion Kalām should be prioritised, some are of the opinion Fiqh and Exegetics should be prioritised. Ḥüseyin Kāẓım Kadri, who wrote under the pseudonym of Shaykh Muḥsin-i Fānῑ ez-Ẓāhirῑ, is one of these intellectuals coming up with an idea. Kadri suggests a renawal in thinking based upon Fiqh and ExegeticsḤüseyin Kāẓım Kadriis one of the most prominent intellectuals of Constitutional Period. Working as a governor of an Ottoman province, deputy, and minister and engaging in journalism, Kadri compiles a series of work in religion, language and agriculture. All of his efforts are to find ways of saving Ottoman from its difficult situations. Thus, Kadri questions the quality of the knowledge which was brought about in religious thinking and proposes solutions. What lies under his solution is the need for a dicipline for society’ s practical problems. He bases his opinion on opposition to new theology movement. According to Kadri, ever since Kalām was codified, it has never been useful to Muslims, on the contrary it has impaired the Muslims. Renowation of Kalām creates nothing but problem. In his opinion, due to using Greek philosophy content and method, Kalām is not a dicipline authentic to Muslims, besides it is a harmful dicipline which aims to damage the essence of Islam.One of the reasons why Kalām is out of Islamic thinking tradition is because of the Mu'tazila wises are the founders of this dicipline. Kadri is of the opinion that the wises/intellectuals belonging to this school and their theories regarding to understand the existence do not contribute to the field of faith. Admitting the function of Ahl-al Sunnah school generated after the Mihna Period, Kadri states the insufficient side of that function. To him, hence the subjects such as substance (cevher) –accident (araz), hudûth-eternality, wujud (vücûd)-nothingness (adem) etc have been discussed but at that time the subject in question could not be renovated in regard to needs. Another criticism of Kadri raised against Kalām is he considers this field the reason why Muslims are divided. Especially during the times when Muslims need to be in unity and solidarity, Kadri is worried about new discursion which will occur due to the renovation of Kalām attempts. This concern of Kadri causes him to object Kalām with a pragmatic motive.Kalām which is called Usulu'd-Din is another reason why Ḥüseyin Kāẓım Kadriis against Kalām. In his opinion, theologians complicates the subjects such as amalgation and adjectives of Allah instead of making it clear with ijtihad. Kadri who considers offering proof in terms of faith as faithlessness is of the opinion that faith is not a matter of reason but a matter of sense which has no doubt among people. Criticising the struggle for the enquiry of faith, Kadri puts an emphasis on the significance of the reinterpretation of the principles, for example in the field of Fiqh which deals with the practical area and says it is the most prominent religious duty. He also criticises the imitation of the past and remarks the importance of reason in Fiqh. As an alternative to Ilm-i Kalām, he claims a new Catechism and adds, it is going to provide the religious knowledge people need. It is an ideological contrast of Ḥüseyin Kāẓım Kadrito think Kalām is the reason for all the misfortune Muslims encountered. This opposition causes him to ignore all the accumulation in Kalām field. Moreover, it is the reason why he makes emotional deductions conflicting with historical facts. Kalām plays a role just like the other fields who could not contribute to Islamic Thinking and its renovation process in accordance with the needs of time. However, it is not realistic and reasonable to think Kalām is the only one responsible. (shrink)

Slavoj iek's refusal to sketch an alternative to the global liberal-capitalist order, combined with his claim that there is an urgent need for a repolitization of, most of all, the economy, raises the question of the possibility of radical political thought and action. Considering fundamentalisms and politically correct multiculturalism not as oppositional, but as correlative to the depolitization of post-modern societies, iek invokes the emancipatory legacy of Europe in an attempt to reinvent Marxism in a way similar to what (...) Lenin, thrown into an open situation, had to do in 1917 between the revolutions. A single question confronts political philosophy today: is liberal-capitalist democracy the ultimate horizon of our political practice, or is it possible to open up the space for another political articulation? The key to a repolitization is to identify with the symptom of the existing global order's false claim to Universality, with the excluded part of no part who politicizes it's predicament by claiming to stand for the real universal. In order not to discard political struggle as unrealistic, today's cynical realist consensus must be broken. Taking things as they really are has become the dominant ideological mode that keeps people from thinking about alternatives. The remedy is to show that things never are really as they are. (shrink)

MARINA PAOLA BANCHETTI-ROBINO is Associate Professor and Chair of the Philosophy Department at Florida Atlantic University. Her areas of research include phenomenology, philosophy of language, philosophy of science, philosophy of mind, and zoosemiotics. Her publications have appeared in such journals as Synthese, Husserl Studies, Idealistic Studies, Philosophy East and West, and The Review of Metaphysics. She has also contributed essays to The Role of Pragmatics in Contemporary Philosophy (1997), Feminist Phenomenology (2000), and Islamic Philosophy and Occidental Phenomenology on the (...) Perennial Issue of Microcosm and Macrocosm (2006). She co-edited Philosophies of the Environment and Technology (1999) and is currently working on a book-length project entitled The Birth of Science Out of the Spirit of Myth: A Historico-Phenomenological Re-Examination of the Crisis of the European Sciences. BERNARD BOXILL was born in Saint Lucia, West Indies where he received his primary and secondary education. He studied philosophy at the University of New Brunswick, Canada and at the University of California, Los Angeles where he was awarded a doctorate in philosophy in 1971. He has published numerous articles, a book, Blacks and Social Justice (1992), and is professor of philosophy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. ED BRANDON was born and educated in England, studying philosophy and linguistics at The University of York, England, and later philosophy at The University of Oxford with the late John Mackie. After teaching in Sierra Leone and briefly in England, he went to teach philosophy of education at the University of the West Indies at Mona, Jamaica in 1978. From 1992 he has been attached to a policy unit of the Vice-Chancellery, based at the Cave Hill campus in Barbados, where he has been assisting since 2000 with a new major in philosophy. His academic work can be accessed from http://cavehill.uwi.edu/bnccde/epb/personalpage.html CAROLYN CUSICK is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Philosophy at Vanderbilt University. She is a founding member of the Phenomenology Roundtable. Her research focuses on feminist epistemology, Africana philosophy, and phenomenology. LEWIS GORDON is President of the Caribbean Philosophical Association. He is Laura H. Carnell Professor, the most distinguished chair, at Temple University, where he holds appointments in philosophy, religion, and Judaic studies and directs the Institute for the Study of Race and Social Thought and the Center for Afro-Jewish Studies. He is also Ongoing Visiting Professor of Philosophy and Government at the University of the West Indies at Mona, Jamaica. He is the author of several books, including the award-winning Her Majesty's Other Children: Sketches of Racism from a Neocolonial Age (Rowman and Littlefield, 1997), Disciplinary Decadence: Living Thought in Trying Times (Paradigm, 2006), An Introduction to Africana Philosophy (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming), and co-editor of A Companion to African-American Studies (Blackwell, 2006) and Not Only the Master's Tools: African-American Studies in Theory and Practice (Paradigm, 2005). CLEVIS HEADLEY is currently Associate Professor of Philosophy at Florida Atlantic University, director of the Ethnic Studies Certificate Program, as well as director of the Master's in Liberal Studies. Professionally, he serves as the Vice-President and Treasurer of the Caribbean Philosophical Association. Professor Headley has published widely in the areas of Critical Race Theory and Africana philosophy. He has also published in Analytic philosophy, focusing specifically on Gottlob Frege. PAGET HENRY is Professor of Sociology and Africana Studies at Brown University. He is the author of Caliban's Reason: Introducing Afro-Caribbean Philosophy, Peripheral Capitalism and Underdevelopment in Antigua, and the co-editor of C. L. R. James' Caribbean. Professor Henry also serves as the editor of the C. L. R. James Journal, and has published numerous articles on the political economy of the Caribbean as well as on African, African-American, and Afro-Caribbean philosophy. ESIABA IROBI is Associate Professor of International Theatre/Performance Studies at Ohio University, Athens. His groundbreaking book: A Theatre for Cannibals: Resisting Globalization on the Continent and Diaspora since 1441 will be published by Palgrave Macmillan, London, in 2007. He has been invited to be an External Resident Fellow at the prestigious Dartmouth College Humanities Institute for the 2007-2008 academic year. CHIKE JEFFERS is a graduate student in the Ph.D. program of the Philosophy Department at Northwestern University. His interests are in Africana philosophy, social and political philosophy, ethics, philosophy of religion and aesthetics. He is originally from Toronto, Ontario, Canada. CATHERINE JOHN is Associate Professor of African Diaspora Literary and Cultural Studies at the University of Oklahoma. Her book Clear Word and Third Sight: Folk Groundings and Diasporic Consciousness in African Caribbean Writing was co-published by Duke University Press and UWI Press in 2003. She has published several articles on Caribbean literature and culture and her current book project is entitled The Just Society and the Diasporic Imagination. She spends her summer working in Woodside, St. Mary, Jamaica helping with a summer school for children and participating in the community's emancipation celebration. KENNETH KNIES is a doctoral student in philosophy at Stony Brook University. His areas of focus are phenomenology and ancient philosophy. He is also a contributing editor for Political Affairs magazine. EDIZON LEN is a photographer and coordinator of the Fondo Documental Afro-Andino at the Universidad Andina Simòn Bolivar in Quito, Ecuador. In 2006, he was curator of the photo exhibit "The Color of the Diaspora" presented at the Cultural Center of the Catholic University of Ecuador and the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. He is currently completing his doctorate at the Universidad Andina Simòn Bolivar with a focus on Maroon thought. REKHA MENON is Associate Professor of Art History at State University of New York, Buffalo State. She is the author of Seductive Aesthetics of Post Colonialism (forthcoming). Her area of research focuses on current philosophical investigations in colonial and neocolonial aspects of Indian art, artistic/cultural practices and philosophies and their relationship to Western arts and philosophies. Her manuscripts under review are: Ashamed of Our Nakedness, Is There Ever a Naked Body? Ambivalence in Contemporary Indian Expressive Aesthetics and Insatiable Desire. MICHAEL R. MICHAU is a Ph.D. candidate in the Philosophy and Literature Program at Purdue University, and during the 2006-2007 school year, a lecturer in the Department of Comparative Studies and Department of Philosophy at Ohio State University. He is the co-founder and co-secretary of the North American Levinas Society. CHARLES W. MILLS is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He works in the general area of oppositional political theory, and is the author of numerous articles and three books: The Racial Contract (Cornell University Press, 1997), Blackness Visible: Essays on Philosophy and Race (Cornell University Press, 1998), and From Class to Race: Essays in White Marxism and Black Radicalism (Rowman and Littlefield, 2003). MABOGO P. MORE is currently Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. He has published articles on African philosophy and social and political philosophy in a number of academic journals, such as South African Journal of Philosophy, Dialogue and Universalism, Alternation, Theoria, and African Journal of Political Science. MARILYN NISSIM-SABAT, Ph.D., M.S.W. is Professor Emerita and Adjunct Professor of Philosophy, Lewis University. Dr. Nissim-Sabat is also a psychotherapist in private practice. She is the author of numerous book chapters and papers in the fields of philosophy (Husserlian phenomenology), psychoanalysis, feminism, and critical race theory. Citations of her works can be found on her website: marilynnissim-sabat.com. FREDERICK OCHIENG'-ODHIAMBO is a Senior Lecturer of Philosophy and Coordinator of the discipline at The University of the West Indies, Cave Hill, Barbados. His major research areas are African philosophy and social philosophy. He has published several articles on philosophic sagacity. IVAN PETRELLA is an Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Miami. He is author of The Future of Liberation Theology: An Argument and Manifesto (SCM Press, 2006) and editor of Latin American Liberation Theology: The Next Generation (Orbis Books, 2005) as well as co-editor of the series Reclaiming Liberation Theology (SCM Press) RICHARD PITHOUSE is a research fellow at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in Durban, South Africa. He is editor of Asinamali: University Struggles in Post-Apartheid South Africa (Africa World Press, 2006). SATHYA RAO is Assistant Professor in French translation at the Department of Modern Languages and Cultural Studies, University of Alberta, Canada. His research fields include: theory of translation, continental philosophy, postcolonial studies, discourses on Africa, and Francophone cinema and literature. He has published articles in various peer-reviewed journals and written chapters in several collective books such as: De l'Ecrit Africain a l'Oral le Phenomene Graphique Africain, Simon Battestini (Ed.) (Paris: L'Harmattan, 2006) and Thèorie-rèbellion. Un Ultimatum, Gilles Grelet (Ed.) (Paris: L'Harmattan, 2005). He has a co-edited a book on Francophone African cinema L'Afrique fait son cinema (Montreal: Memoires d'encrier, forthcoming). Sathya Rao is vice-president of the International Non-Philosophical Organisation (INPhO), member of the Canadian Association of Translatology (CATS), coordinator of the research team Poexil, and Secretary of the Caribbean Philosophical Association. He is co-founder of an online journal Alternative Francophone. CATHERINE WALSH is Professor and Director of the doctoral program in Latin American Cultural Studies at the Universidad Andina Simon Bolivar in Quito, Ecuador. Her research interests include the geopolitics of knowledge, interculturality and concerns related to the Afro-Andean Diaspora and the production of decolonial thought. Among her recent publications are Pensamiento crìtico y matriz colonial (Quito: Abya Yala, 2005), "Interculturality and the Coloniality of Power. An 'Other' Thinking and Positioning from the Colonial Difference," in Coloniality of Power, Transmodernity, and Border Thinking, R. Grosfoguel, J.D. Saldivar, and N. Maldonado-Torres (Eds.) (Durham: Duke University Press, forthcoming) and "Shifting the Geopolitics of Critical Knowledge: Decolonial Thought and Cultural Studies 'Others' in the Andes," Cultural Studies (forthcoming). KRISTIN WATERS has published widely in the areas of race and gender. Her anthology Enlightened Conversations: Women and Men Political Theorists (Blackwell, 2000) challenges political theorists to be more inclusive of race and gender in their research and teaching. Her book Black Women's Intellectual Traditions: Speaking Their Minds, co-edited with Carol Conaway (University of Vermont Press, forthcoming), addresses the varied intellectual traditions of black women's thought that spans more than two hundred years in North America. She is currently Professor of Philosophy at Worcester State College and Visiting Research Associate at Brandeis University. (shrink)

Condorcet's arguments concerning the dependence of unhindered scientific development on the presence of democratic conditions still sounds relevant today, because they are based on specific and complex considerations concerning the character of the social enterprise of science that articulates problems that still continue. The implicit dispute between Condorcet and Rousseau is also the first great historical example of the conflict between the Enlightenment and Romanticism, which accompanies the history of modernity, as an unresolved and indeed irresolvable opposition that (...) belongs to the prehistory of our own confusions and quandaries concerning the relations between culture, science, politics and society. (shrink)

As frequently pointed out in this discussion, one of the most characteristic features of Mayr's approach to the history of biology stems from the fact that he is dealing to a considerable degree with his own professional history. Furthermore, his main criterion for the selection of historical episodes is their relevance for modern biological theory. As W. F. Bynum and others have noted, the general impression of his reviewers is that “one of the towering figures of evolutionary biology has now (...) written a towering history of his discipline.”138 Bynum is here referring to The Growth of Biological Thought, but this observation holds equally true for Mayr's other historical writings: One must surely read this book [One Long Argument] not only for its content in itself, but for what it tells of its author. And certainly as one does so, one comes away full-handed. Many, if not all, of the disputes and controversies that have driven Mayr through his long intellectual life reappear, stated as forcefully and elegantly as ever.139Up to this point, most reviewers agree; the bone of contention is, rather, how to evaluate Mayr's historical work, considering this observation. The two related characteristics of his work-I will call them subjectivity and presentism-stand in opposition to a widespread approach in the history of science exemplified by Kuhn's suggestion that “insofar as possible..., the historian should set aside the science that he knows. His science should be learned from the textbooks and journals of the period he studies.”140 There are, however, historians who consider the close connection between Mayr and the subject matter of his historical studies to be an advantage.141On the other hand, it is assumed that the connection between past and present must result in a distortion of the historical truth and lead to a historiographical fallacy, commonly referred to as “Whig history”. Herbert Butterfield, who in 1931 gave the term its now generally accepted meaning, believed that “real historical understanding is not achieved by the subordination of the past to the present, but rather by our making the past our present and attempting to see life with the eyes of another century than our own”142. Unfortunately, Butterfield's definition of what he considers Whig history remains somewhat vague, and modern authors have emphasized what they consider most important. Butterfield's “subordination of the past to the present” is referred to in respect to the selection of subjects (there are more biographies of Charles Darwin than of, let's say, Louis Agassiz),143 to the evaluation of historical authors,144 or, more generally, to all kinds of histories “with one eye, so to speak, upon the present.”145 The underlying tendency of Whig historians is to produce a “historical account told from the viewpoint of those in power,”146 leading to a “glorification of the present.”147 It is obvious that Mayr's strongly presentist approach to the history of biology can be called Whiggish, if we apply the criteria of “selection” or “reference.” However, it might be worth mentioning that the program of writing a strictly historicist account of the history of science is challenged by various authors.148 For Mayr, it is not only legitimate but necessary to compare the present situation with the past. “Whiggish” is only the evaluation of an author in terms of our time.149I cannot discuss the Whit/anti-Whig controversy in any detail here, apart from saying that Mayr has defended himself rather extensively against the charges of being Whiggish.150 Nevertheless, it may be useful to touch on some of the criticisms that are predominant in reviews of his writings. First, we encounter the notion that historians can write a true and convincing historical account only if they have no personal interest or interpretation of their own; Mayr, on the other hand, because he “has such strong interpretations of his own, ... cannot possibly convince everyone that he is right about everything.”151 It makes one wonder, what historian has ever been able to convince everyone that he or she is right about everything? But apart from this peculiar idea, it unquestionably poses certain dangers if the subject matter of historical scrutiny and the author are identical. At the same time, this identity brings certain advantages with it, especially firsthand experiences of the period in discussion. Whether these personal memories ultimately result in a distorted picture of the past has to be decided in every particular instance. The notion that a scientific study can be conducted by a completely detached observer from a neutral standpoint has been shown to be impossible in physics, and it is also an illusion in historiography. The question is not whether, but which kind of interest are the underlying motivation for a historian. At this point, Mayr is ahead of his critics when he suggests that our understanding of the past always has a subjective component: The main reason, however, why histories are in constant need of revision is that at any given time they merely reflect the present state of understanding; they depend on how the author interpreted the current zeitgeist of biology and on his own conceptual framework and background. Thus, by necessity the writing of history is subjective and ephemeral.152Second, the temporal proximity between the event and the historical analysis makes difficulties inevitable and will finally result in certain false assessments. But this applies to all historians when they discuss recent problems, regardless of whether they are personally involved or not: As long as the battle between Darwinism and Lamarckism was raging, it was quite impossible to undertake an unbiased evaluation of Lamarck. ...[The] definite refutation of Lamarck's theory of evolutionary causation clears the air. We can now study him without bias and emotion and give him the attention that this major figure in the history of biology clearly deserves.153Third, Mayr is primarily interested in biological problems and not, for instance, historiographical, sociological, or psychological questions. Several authors have remarked that since the beginning of the professionalization of the history of science in the 1960s, a rift between two groups has developed, resulting from the heterogeneous professional backgrounds and interests of the people involved: the authors who were originally biologists and became interested in the history of their discipline only later on, and the authors who were trained as historians.154 Whereas the first group, the “biologists,” tend to be laymen in history proper, the “historians” are in most cases laymen in biology. Different professional backgrounds obviously shape the historical perspective in both groups, but neither approach is necessarily superior. The great number of important books in the history of biology written by “biologist” documents how valuable this point of view can be. On the other hand, it cannot be denied that the writings of biologists in the history of science tend to have a strong “internalist” tendency and often neglect the professional, cultural, and political context of science. Mayr's approach is that of a “biologist”; it is “internalist,” and typical for scientists who turn to the history of their discipline.I want to conclude my analysis with a quotation from a review by Douglas J. Futuyma, which gives a perceptive glimpse of Mayr's personality and style: One cannot help standing in awe of the germanic capacity for vast, allembracing synthesis: consider the lifelong devotion of Goethe to Faust, or Wagner's integration of the arts into a Gesamtkunstwerk in which all of human history and experience is wrought into epic myth. It is perhaps in this tradition that Ernst Mayr's The Growth of Biological Thought stands: a history of all of biology, a Ring des Nibelungen complete with leitmotivs such as the failures of reductionism, the struggle of biology for independence from physics, and the liberation of population thinking from the bounds of essentialism.155 Within this style of thinking Mayr has “to offer...nothing less than a vision of biology that places neodarwinian evolutionary theory firmly at the centre.”156 There may be other visions of biology, but few of them have as indefatigable and able representatives as Darwinism has in Ernst Mayr. (shrink)

When the creationism issue rose to the surface in the late 1970s, an organized opposition to the creationist campaign came from an unexpected source. Local groups of rank and file evolution defenders, led by a retired biology teacher, organized a grassroots network of anti-creationism called the Committees of Correspondence. They basically approached the creationism issue as a political rather than a scientific problem and fought the battle on local fronts, where creationists were heavily engaged in legal campaigns to (...) include their ideas in the public schools. Grassroots anti-creationism was, however, eventually replaced by a centralized national operation with an educational emphasis. In this paper, I will document the development of this neglected part of the creation-evolution controversy and discuss related issues, namely the politics of science that became clearly visible in the course of evolutionists' disputes over anti-creation strategies. (shrink)

This book is a clear, judicious, explanatory, and short analysis of the development of linguistics, particularly in this century. While describing the ups and downs of autonomous linguistics, in its structuralist and various generativist phases, and the humanist, Marxist, and sociological opposition, Newmeyer from time to time makes striking points about the strong influence of national political agendas, as expressed in research money, on the waxing or waning of theoretical orientations in linguistics. Mirroring an older British imperialism, the (...) burgeoning of autonomous linguistics in the 1950s and 1960s was underwritten by a United States government anxious to support a scientific access to societies it wished to enlighten and dominate. Indeed, the end of sumptuous Department of Defense funding for MIT linguistics may even have had a hand in the revolt against the Chomskysan orthodoxy. But Newmeyer forms his intellectual history with enough of a characterization of the theoretical advances, arguments, and resolutions to make it clear that his central judgement is that autonomous linguistics is science and is a viable enterprise. (shrink)

This article revisits Dolf Sternberger’s 1960 theory, which, in explicit opposition to Carl Schmitt’s friend/enemy thesis, found the essence of politics and the political in peace. The essay contextualizes Sternberger’s propositions by relating them to his immediate post-1945 considerations – such as normalizing domestic politics, jettisoning authoritarianism, and laying the conceptual foundations for the nascent political science – and thereby reconstructs the questions his theory of the political sought to answer. The analysis shows in detail (...) how the key elements of Sternberger’s 1960 theory derived from the late-1940s: rather than reflecting an already normalized political situation or proposing naïve pacifism, Sternberger’s text took political conflicts seriously and provided an outline of a desired but only prospective political peace amidst a crisis. Despite substantial polarity, Sternberger’s view is largely compatible with Schmitt’s theory once we remove context-induced polemics and grave misinterpretations – and carries potential for systematic political theorizing. (shrink)

John Canaday, The Nuclear Muse: Literature, Physics, and the First Atomic Bombs. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2000. Pp. xviii+310. ISBN 0-299-16854-9. £19.50.Septimus H. Paul, Nuclear Rivals: Anglo-American Atomic Relations 1941–1952. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2000. Pp. ix+266. ISBN 0-8142-0852-5. £31.95.Peter Bacon Hales, Atomic Spaces: Living on the Manhattan Project. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1997. Pp. 448. ISBN 0-252-02296-3. £22.00.A decade after the end of the Cold War, the culture and technology of nuclear weapons had lost (...) much of the overt sense of dread they once inspired. The decline in international tension following the end of the communist regimes of the Soviet bloc produced a massive shift in the ideology of the nuclear in the 1990s. The de-targeting and dismantling of large numbers of nuclear weapons and the demise of the threat of nuclear annihilation created new conditions both for international security and for the writing of nuclear history. With the declassification and release of large quantities of official documentation from the former adversaries, as well as the fiftieth anniversary of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1995, a burst of histories of various aspects of the nuclear age have appeared over the last ten years, exploring not just the technopolitics, strategy and operational logistics of the Cold War and the arms race, but the cultural history of the nuclear age, its imagery, its architecture, its oppositional politics and its effects on the landscape, national and regional economies and cultures and indeed everyday life. At a time of global economic and political uncertainty and the emergent threat of capricious international terrorism and new nuclear proliferation, the apparent certainties of the Cold War now even evoke a certain nostalgia, and its artefacts and structures are being recast as ‘heritage’. (shrink)

'Relativism versus absolutism' is one of the fundamental oppositions that have dominated reflections about science for much of its history. Often these reflections have been inseparable from wider social-political concerns regarding the position of science in society. Where does this debate stand in the philosophy and sociology of science today? And how does the 'relativism question' relate to current concerns with 'post truth' politics? In Relativism in the Philosophy of Science, Martin Kusch examines some of (...) the most influential relativist proposals of the last fifty years, and the controversies they have triggered. He argues that defensible forms of relativism all deny that any sense can be made of a scientific result being absolutely true or justified, and that they all reject 'anything goes' – that is the thought that all scientific results are epistemically on a par. Kusch concludes by distinguishing between defensible forms of relativism and post-truth thinking. (shrink)

Cosmopolis A Review of Cosmopolitics -/- 2015/3-4 -/- Editorial Dominique de Courcelles & Paul Ghils -/- This issue addresses the general concept of “spirituality” as it appears in various cultural contexts and timeframes, through contrasting ideological views. Without necessarily going back to artistic and religious remains of primitive men, which unquestionably show pursuits beyond the biophysical dimension and illustrate practices seeking to unveil the hidden significance of life and death, the following papers deal with a number of interpretations covering a (...) wide field extending from belief to theory, from emotions to concepts, from the wisdom of personal experience to the most sophisticated doctrines. Spirit and spirituality are indeed many-faceted notions. They may refer to the intricate world of the interacting spirits which inhabit living beings in animistic traditions, without excluding a “grand force” linking human beings within a dynamic whole on which their very existence rely . They also bear upon more atomistic and either/or approaches of Western philosophy, which have become embodied in Cartesian dualism against a monotheist background, to the point of freezing the essence of individuals and culminating in the extreme individualism that characterizes our contemporaries. However, this equally refers to the opposite conception of materialism, across times and cultures, from ancient India and Greece (Cārvāka, originally known as Lokāyata, or some Buddhist doctrines for the former, Democritus or Lucretius for the latter) to more contemporary materialistic schools, whether modern or postmodern. -/- The following papers look at the contrasting forms of the philosophy and spirit of the human factor set into a whole, with no artificial disjoint between the psychical and the physical levels, as Wittgenstein put it: “And how can a body have a soul?”. This approach is not unrelated to the notion of anthropocene examined in a recent issue of Cosmopolis, with provides another comprehensive framework open to a spiritual life emerging from the very environment that generated it. -/- *** The first section of this issue was edited by Dominique de Courcelles, director at the National French Research Centre (CNRS), whom we wish to thank for collecting relevant studies relating to the religious and political questions, with a view to focusing on the war of ideas inevitably waged behind images, concepts and perceptions, taking an asymmetrical approach. To the extent that they are mindful of global/local interactions and include representations, opinions and beliefs, such disciplines as philosophy, philology, history and social sciences can provide useful studies accounting for new practices in geopolitics and a fair diplomacy. -/- In her introduction, Dominique de Courcelles first poses the question of how the religious and political spheres interrelate, with their corresponding religious demands and humanistic values. She then suggests that the right question today may be breaking with the philosophy of human rights concerned with the defense of human beings against the hazards of arbitrary politics or the instrumental use of religion, in favour of a fair philosophy of humankind, a new humanism. This would consist in recognizing a common loyalty of all towards one interhuman, not only interstate community, to protect it from both the autonomy demanded by individuals and the instrumental use of minorities. -/- Considering the fact of diversity, so important today in terms of both politics and religion, Abdelhai Azarkan looks at the conditions under which tolerance could obtain the double status of right and duty. He revisits to two philosophers, John Locke and Voltaire, who thought about it from the historical reality of religious wars. The former made tolerance into a right, basing his analysis on the political-legal level, while the latter saw tolerance as a duty, from an analysis based on ethical-political criteria. -/- Mathieu Guidère examines what he calls semantic denominationalism, a term which implies religious attributes and identities, whichever national loyalties or personal belonging they may have at the same time. Since the early 2000s, thie phenomenon has expanded tremendously, compounded by the “war on terror” and the over media-oriented terrorist actions. Denominational expressions act as formal names for ordinary and high-profile players in domestic and foreign policies of democratic states. These systems reveal a receding secularization, while the powerful comeback of religious identities signals the failure of nation-states and the weakening of the humanist spirit. -/- Barbara De Poli retraces the history of a contemporary jihadism claiming its Islamic essence and asserting the truth of genuine coranic principles via the war on infidels, with a view to restoring the Caliphate. After defining the term jihad, she shows that even if this contemporary jiadism is spreading in the Muslim world, it radically departs from Islamic law and the received use of the term jihad, in so far as it is rooted in the early radical thinking of Islamic ideologues in the 20th century, starting with with Hassan al-Banna, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood. This current has been fueled by by international conflicts since the outbreak of the war in Afghanistan, in which the so-called Western countries bear a major responsibility. -/- Abderrazak Sayadi starts from the Tunisian experience to ask the question of humanist values and democracy within the relationships between the religious and political spheres. As a historian of religion, he is brought to demystify certain islamic principles and to paying attention to the reform of law, seeing the separation of religion and politics as a precondition to a successful democratic gamble and the establishment of a renewed humanism. -/- Dominique de Courcelles reminds us that getting a better knowledge of narrations and words makes it possible to better understand how logical and rhetorical thinking works for those who wage an asymetriccal war, re-enchanting and mystifying the world to better take control. As soon as 1932, an exchange of letters between Einstein and Freud made it clear that, in order to free man from fatality and war, education understood as culture was fundamental. Such illustrations as the exécution of Oussama ben Laden and the Caliph’s speech in Mossoul show that a premiminary analysis of images and words is essential to a fair diplomacy conducted by people from civil society, whose culture and wisdom allow justice and force to speak together and better resist war. -/- Marcel Boisard thinks that on the day the guns fall silent, exhausted by war, we will not return to the state borders that have prevailed for a century as an outcome of the Sykes-Picot agreement of 1916. It is time to prepare the “day after”, which will be a huge challenge. To this end, a summit of Middle-East nations is urgently needed to globally decide the fate of those peoples. On the condition that we know who the enemy is and accept to name it, to understand the history of the countries, groups and alliances, and to question any false or self-interested sense of certainty. -/- *** In the second section, Paul Schafer provides the author’s experiences to explain how culture, from the artistic to the biological, has the power to to open the doors to spirituality, from the inner self to the global environment. He asks himself whether a relative permanence of spirituality can arise from the specific moments that characterize it. Laurent Ledoux synthesizes the conclusion of a symposium held on 22 January 2015 on the links between philosophy and management, on the basis of the spiritual dimension conceived as “natural” and the answers it may suggest to the issues that face the organizations in a “contemporaniversal” world. Jacques Rifflet makes that question in a secular perspective, based on the wellsprings of personal commitment before it can be caught by any religious creed or scientific theory. In this sense spirituality, in alliance with reason, both inspires human consciousness and illuminates its destiny. Sami Aldeeb asks himself whether Islam can be reconciled with human rights. Caught between the belief in an absolute and final Word descended from the sky, and evidence showing that any religion is the creation of a given culture and a society situated in time and space, the Makkan and … contexts et médinois call for differentiated, if not opposite answers and exegeses. Bernard Carmona provides the outline of a dialogical framework, which is known to be a feature of debates between the various philosophical schools of classical India, exemplified here by the transdisciplinary perspective of debates within a Buddhist context. *** The articles not focused on the previous topic include a study by Landry Signé on China’s strategy, competing with the United States to control African resources. The author deals with the specific case of China’s rapprochement with Southern Sudan since Sudan was broken up. In the last paper, Goran Fejić and Rada Iveković, return to the essential role that women should play, and comments upon the role of some international legal instruments related in particular to the elimination of all forms of discrimination. The perspective is transnational and transethnic and is based on secular criteria, as regards nation-building and more generally society-building. Considering the persistence of widespread violence, whether in times of armed conflict or in times of peace, the question remains whether it is possible to fully implement rights and justice instruments. (shrink)

In this way progressive bourgeois philosophy, which seemed to offer the promise of a unified and peaceful world, in fact produced just the opposite.The book ...

Best known as a moralist and one of the founders of the Scottish Common Sense school of philosophy, Thomas Reid was also an influential scientific thinker. Here his work on the life sciences is studied in detail, bringing together unpublished transcripts of his most important papers on natural history, physiology, and materialist metaphysics. Part I provides the first published account of Reid's reflections on the highly controversial theories surrounding muscular motion and the reproduction of plants and animals and relates them (...) to the broader Enlightenment debates on these issues. It also contains the first systematic reconstruction of Reid's opposition to materialism and views his polemics against the noted Dissenter Joseph Priestley in terms of their differing interpretations of the Newtonian legacy, their conflicting philosophical assumptions, and the cultural politics of Common Sense philosophy in the 1770s. Part II reproduces a selection of Reid's most significant papers on the life sciences, including his Glasgow Literary Society discourses on muscular motion and on Priestley's materialism, as well as other manuscripts that document the development of his scientific ideas. (shrink)

The article is devoted to the analysis, and introduces the publication, of one of the texts of the documentary complex ‘The Verkhne-Uralsk Political Isolator Notebooks’ – the ‘Theses on Economic Policy’ of 1933. The article (DOI: 10.1163/1569206X-00002252) covers the history of the discovery of this complex of documents reflecting the ideological and political life of imprisoned members of the Opposition of the Bolshevik Leninists (Trotskyists) in the early 1930s, and discusses the context of their creation. On the (...) basis of archival materials, the biography of one of the authors of the Theses – the agricultural economist, and a member of the Siberian opposition centre, F.P. Sasorov – is reconstructed. It is noted that Sasorov held a special position among the Bolshevik Leninists, determined by his economic views. He belonged to the current whose adherents were called ‘neo-Nepists’ by their opponents. This current advocated not just a return to the NEP cancelled by Stalin, but also an expansion of its scope, and this position is presented and argued for in the ‘Theses on Economic Policy’. A comparison of the views of Sasorov and his co-author G.A., stated in the Theses, including on the explanation of the crisis and the liquidation of the NEP, the policy of out-and-out collectivisation and forced industrialisation, with the views of Leon Trotsky, allows us to conclude that the thought of the imprisoned oppositionists developed independently, and not always in accordance with the guidelines of their exiled thought leader. The article also examines the forecasts of the development of the economic and socio-political situation in the USSR presented in the Theses. (shrink)

The achievement of unity and perfection in human action begins with a struggle for these ideals in human thought. Dr. Klaus Vondung in his collection of essays that span four decades explores examples of this in different fields of human inquiry: striving for harmonious existential unity of talents and morals, intellect and emotion; seeking to make natural sciences consonant with the humanities and thereby moving toward a more universal, "perfect" science; and establishing unity in political structures and cultivating (...) in this unity a homogenous society. Vondung has given special devotion to National Socialism as a context wherein he revisits its perverted motivation and the consequences of this despite noble ideals. Particular focus in following the thread of unity and perfection in human intellectual and practical ambitions ultimately hones in on the combination of religion and politics. Vondung in these essays unpacks the ways in which this continues to fascinate and disturb us, and in his expertise he uses National Socialism to connect this pursuit of unity and perfection to what he calls one of the signature marks of modernity--namely, secular apocalypticism. This claim stands in opposition to Eric Voegelin's remark that Gnosticism, rather, is "the nature of modernity." Vondung, who studied and wrote his dissertation under Voegelin, grapples with the contrast of these positions. Vondung is willing to challenge Voegelin, but ultimately his treatment of the latter bears the quality of tribute to this great scholar. Vondung also explores the points of contact between apocalypticism and Hermetic speculation. Despite the independence of the religious and philosophical doctrines of Hermeticism, there are parallels to be found. Apocalypticism and Hermeticism originated in antiquity and yet each represents a tradition that still holds footing today. Vondung furthermore leads the reader to see the project of salvation found in both even as each operates with a different scope. This collection of essays centers itself on a perspective of the human pursuit of unity and perfection, directly or indirectly, as objectives of intellectual endeavors, existential ideals, as social or political outcomes, and in the case of National Socialism even as perverse aberrations. Vondung's particular treatment of Voegelin's work likewise establishes what the former identifies as a stand-out question of this study: Does the search of order in history show us the unity of the history of humankind? (shrink)

Zu den politischen revolutionären Bewegungen in Europa vor 1848 gehörte auch die Gärung von «umstürzenden» Ideen gegen überkommene Gedankensysteme. Im Band werden die politische, insbesondere demokratische Opposition und die sozialen Bewegungen der vormarxschen und marxschen Arbeiter, der Frauen und der (intellektuellen) Jugendlichen untersucht.

Presenting the key concept of 'ovular space' as opposed to 'rectilinear' spatial concepts as a new paradigm for social analysis, the authors put forward a wide-ranging social and cultural critique based on a utopian vision of a new social organization. They argue for a reversal of the 'masculinism' that has predominated throughout human history to date. They analyze the origins and structures of this predominant cultural form and describe phenomena that indicate that this pattern is shifting with changes in gender (...) roles. They emphasize that their approach is not biologistic or essentialist and that their argument is based on the psychosocial reaction to biological factâ??based on a fundamental opposition between 'formal-rational thinking, prototypical of the male mind' and 'female, ovular thinking, expressing itself in empathy', which they regard as a key component of social change in contemporary society. Gender Space and Power discusses the problems relating to 'masculinist' bias in these subject areas and indicate some possible new approaches. (shrink)

In 1986, a debate - der Historikerstreit (the historians’ dispute) - erupted in the German public sphere. It involved a number of historians who attempted to ‘revise’ approaches to the study of the Holocaust. Their endeavours met with fierce opposition, most notably from Jürgen Habermas, who accused them of trying to endow Germany with a presentable political image by relativizing the Holocaust. This article examines the conduct of the debate, in particular the manner in which each side alleged (...) of the other that it was driven by political motives rather than wissenschaftliche interests. I consider the way in which Ernst Nolte tries to ‘understand’ the Holocaust, and discuss the difficulties of investigating the Holocaust in a wissenschaftlichen manner.1. (shrink)