This volume provides a lucid and distinct introduction to multiculturalism and the philosophy of social science.

_ Source: _Page Count 11 Jouni-Matti Kuukkanen’s _Postnarrativist Philosophy of Historiography_ is a major work in the philosophy of history, one that seeks to conceive historiographies not as concerned to represent the past but rather to propose ways of regarding it. To do this requires replacing narrative as the key element in the philosophy of history with the idea that historiographies are informal arguments that propose and defend a thesis about how events or entities of the past should be viewed. (...) This re-orientation in how to view historiography makes it possible to see it as a rational enterprise in which its claims and counterclaims can be rationally assessed. The book is remarkably successful in achieving its goal, but along the way it neglects to address new questions about narrative as a form of argument, and in the end lacks full faith in its pragmatist heart by insisting that standards of rationality are universal and merely given rather than discipline—and culturally—specific, hard won achievements accomplished by historians themselves. (shrink)

Brian Fay - The Ethics of History - Journal of the History of Philosophy 44:4 Journal of the History of Philosophy 44.4 677-678 Muse Search Journals This Journal Contents Reviewed by Brian Fay Wesleyan University David Carr, Thomas R. Flynn, and Rudolf A. Makkreel, editors. The Ethics of History. Northwestern University Topics in Historical Philosophy. Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 2004. Pp xvi + 263. Paper, $29.95. It is rare that every essay in a collection is well worth reading, but (...) that is the case in this illuminating and stimulating volume. Perhaps this should not be surprising, since its contributors comprise a virtual "Who's Who" of philosophers and intellectual historians who have contributed.. (shrink)

This book brings together some of the most important essays in the theory of history which have produced this revolution and the responses to it.

Winch’s The Idea of a Social Science is explicitly based on a conception of philosophy. This article outlines and criticizes this conception, and then explores the relevance of this for Winch’s conception of social science. Winch identifies philosophy with conceptual analysis, and social science with unearthing the meaning of concepts operating within a form of life. These identifications produce a one-sided view both of philosophy (which must also criticize schemes of concepts and propose alternatives to them) and of social science (...) (which must also explain schemes of concepts and sometimes attempt to change them). (shrink)

That George Eliot was deeply interested in Spinoza is well known. She translated part of Benedict de Spinoza's Tractatus Theologico-Politicus as early as 1842, and completed a full translation of the Ethics by 1856. This might lead one to think that in her novels, Eliot applied the insights of Spinoza by showing them at work in the lives of her characters. Indeed, a number of commentators have made this assumption in depicting the relationship between Eliot and Spinoza.1 Other commentators have (...) taken Eliot to be extending Spinoza's thought, adapting and transforming it in sympathetic ways.2 Unfortunately, however, these views are deeply mistaken.I say "deeply mistaken" because the differences between Spinoza and... (shrink)