The story of James and John Stuart Mill is one of the great dramas of the 19thcentury. In the tense yet loving struggle of this extraordinarily influential father and son, we can see the genesis of evolution of Liberal ideas-about love, sex, and women, wealth and work, authority and rebellion-which ushered in the modern age. The result of more than a decade of research and reflection, this is a study of the relationship between James Mill, the self-made utilitarian philosopher who (...) tried (with only partial success) to shape his son in his own image. Mazlish integrates psychology and intellectual history as part of his larger and continuing effort to spur deeper understanding of the character, limitations, and possibilities of the social sciences. John Stuart Mill's rebellion against a joyless, loveless upbringing, one in strict accordance with the principles of Utilitarianism, was rooted ina powerful Oedipal struggle against his father's authority. Mazlish describes this rebellion as playing an important role in the genesis of classical nineteenth century liberalism. Behind this intellectual development were the women in Mills' life: Harriet the mother, never mentioned by her son in his autobiography, and Harriet Taylor, with whom Mill lived in a scandalous, if chaste, ménage a trois. It was this long relationship which informed his famous essay “The Subjection of Women,” one of the most eloquent feminist statements ever written. A work of brilliant historical research and psychological insights, James and John Stuart Mill shows how the nineteenth-century struggle of fathers and sons shaped the social transformation of society. (shrink)

Vico.--Voltaire.--Condorcet.--Kant.--Hegel.--Comte.--Marx.--Spengler.--Toynbee.--Freud.

Traces the development of thought through historical movements and periods from 1500 to 1830.

Utopian thinking, and utopias as a genre, flourished as forms of the imaginary until recently. The emergence of the genre, with Thomas More, emphasizing spatial arrangement and with Louis-Sébastien Mercier invoking future orientation, I argue, is illuminated by placing them next to the economic enclosures of their time. Their utopias, however, closed off both the individual and time from the capitalist changes around them, allowing for little or no variation or expression of self. Thus, their imagined virtuous societies actually sought (...) to foreclose the future and other spaces. The paradox is that capitalist development, with its admitted inequities and horrors, favored an expansive self and vital societies, which carry with them their own virtues. In spite of the ameliorative tendencies of utopias, their limitations, that is, their closed-mindedness, slowly but surely discredited the genre itself. Its place has been taken today by science fiction, futurist studies and the exercise of the imaginary in terms of social science. (shrink)

Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies by Jared Diamond The Structure of Big History: From the Big Bang until Today by Fred Spier.

This article is an inquiry into the ties - which the author treats as invisible - that help bind humans in a society. Three forms of the modern Western world can usefully be discerned: patronage, connections and networks. Though retaining continuity, they have succeeded one another in impact and importance. The first mainly characterizes the period of the 16th to 18th centuries; the second, the 19th century, and especially England as it moved from an aristocratic to a bourgeois society; and (...) the third, the late 20th century, with its computer revolution. In general, the direction of change has been from hierarchy to greater equality. Network society, however, is still in its incipient phase, and a final verdict is not yet possible. All three of the types of ties ideally shed light on the societies that they have helped to hold together. (shrink)

The result of a lifetime of research and contemplation on global phenomena, this book explores the idea of humanity in the modern age of globalization. Tracking the idea in the historical, philosophical, legal, and political realms, this is a concise and illuminating look at a concept that has defined the twentieth century.

A "close textual analysis" of the life and work of Karl Marx, emphasizing that his thought took the form of a secular religion, deeply affected by his Christian upbringing. Supports the research trend seeing a unity between the thought of the young, "humanist" Marx and the later "scientific" thinker. Marx's early essay "On the Jewish Question" is dealt with in ch. 6 (p. 70-77). In presenting Judaism as a synonym for capitalism, Marx echoes antisemitic stereotypes, perhaps influenced by self-hatred. In (...) the process, he reached fruitful insights about society and history. (shrink)

The article examines Jonathan Spence's book The Question of Hu, asking the central question as to what difference it makes if the book is viewed as history or fiction. In addition to raising specific questions as to Spence's treatment of his materials, the article addresses the question of the historical novel, following on the work of Georg Lukács and Sir Walter Scott, and concludes that Spence's work is not of this genre. Neither is it a history à la Herodotus or (...) Thucydides, where analysis--the raising of historical questions and sharing the evidence and inference with the reader--and narrative must go together. The article concludes that, wonderful as is The Question of Hu as literature, it is not a true piece of historical narrative. In coming to this judgment, the article has used Spence's book as a way of reflecting on fundamental questions concerning the nature of history, fiction, analysis, and narrative. (shrink)

Marx begins his Eighteenth Brumaire by attributing to Hegel the remark that "all facts and personages of great importance in world history occur, as it were, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second as farce." Marx has stung us here with another of his famous inversions. For Hegel, in the passage in question, describes repetition in world history as a mark of ratification, sanctifying what has happened. He has not "forgotten" to add, the first time (...) as tragedy, the second as farce; for such an addition would utterly contradict what he is saying. Actually, Marx borrowed the whole tragedy-farce notion from comments by Engels in a letter dated December 3, 1851. Marx has, however, held fast to Hegel's formulations about man being free only when he comprehends his history. (shrink)

Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies by Jared Diamond The Structure of Big History: From the Big Bang until Today by Fred Spier.