The claim that liberal democratic normative commitments are compatible with nationalism is challenged by the widely acknowledged fact that national identities invariably depend on historical myths: the nationalist defence of such publicly shared myths is in tension with liberal democratic theory’s commitment to norms of publicity, public justification, and freedom of expression. Recent liberal nationalist efforts to meet this challenge by justifying national myths on liberal democratic grounds fail to distinguish adequately between different senses of myth. Once this is (...) done (drawing on Arthur Danto’s analytical philosophy of history), it becomes apparent that historical narratives cannot be justifiably shielded from criteria of truth and significance, and that genuinely historical myths are incompatible with liberal democratic political philosophy. (shrink)

The author, dismissing the feasibility of attaining the real facts of history, proposes to define historical truth as the set of all possible worlds that agree with all the sources available to the historian. He remarks that this conception is very close to that necessairly assumed today by cosmologists, when describing the evolution of the phisical universe.

Three issues essential to our insight into the concept and function of historical consciousness, and the description thereof, form the core of this book: historical truth, historical comment and criticism, and ideology (including the historian's trustworthiness). Taking as a point of departure the workings of these concepts in Chinese historical thinking, the volume carefully draws comparisons with similar topics in the Western tradition. It thus advocates and shows a truly comparative approach that sets the stage (...) for an intercultural dialogue on this important subject. The first comprehensive work on the political and cognitive dimensions of Chinese historical consciousness set against its Western counterpart. (shrink)

The purpose of the study is to reveal the scientific inconsistency and reactionary political essence of traditional and modern concepts that distort the truth about the Great Patriotic War and the most common techniques used for this, on the one hand, and on the other hand, to propose measures to ensure an offensive strategy to protect historical truth. The scientific novelty consists in the unique author's classification of Russophobic concepts and techniques into two directions, and within their (...) framework in the analysis of their content through relevant aspects and discourses. The result of the analysis carried out are proposals to neutralize hostile propaganda, provide an offensive strategy to combat falsifiers and protect historical truth. (shrink)

This paper considers several philosophers’ efforts to explain the metaphysical orientations of historical narratives, ones which expose the lack of common ground in modes of establishing truth and documenting change. Although philosophers have been writing about history since before Plato’s time, this brief inquiry is primarily restricted to Hegel, Maritain, R. G. Collingwood, and W. H. Walsh. The relation between history and the concept of civilization reveals a major complication for establishing historical truth – the fact (...) of multiple meanings for the concept of civilization. (shrink)

Photography has often been scrutinized regarding its relationship to reality or historical truth. This includes not only the indexicality of photography, but also the question of how structures and processes that comprise history and historical events can be depicted. In this context, the Holocaust provides a particular challenge to photography. As has been discussed in numerous publications, this historic event marks the “limits of representation.” Nevertheless there are many photographs “showing” the Holocaust that have been produced in (...) different contexts that bespeak the photographers’ gaze and the circumstances of the photographs’ production. Some of the pictures have become very well known due to their frequent reproduction, even though they often do not show the annihilation itself, but situations different from that; their interpretation as Holocaust pictures results rather from a metonymic deferral. When these pictures are frequently reproduced they are transformed into symbolic images, that is, images that can be removed from their specific context, and in this way they come to signify abstract concepts such as “evil.” Despite being removed from their specific context these images can, as this essay argues, refer to historical truth. First, I explore the arguments of some key theorists of photography to investigate the relationship between photography and reality in general, looking at their different concepts of reality, history, and historical truth, as well as the question of the meaning of images. Second, I describe the individual circumstances in which some famous Holocaust pictures were taken in order to analyze, by means of three examples, the question what makes these specific pictures so particularly suitable to becoming symbolic images and why they may—despite their abstract meaning—be able to depict historical truth. (shrink)

This article retrieves Freud’s Paul as a forgotten predecessor and untapped critic of the “return to Paul” in contemporary political theology and continental philosophy. Given that Sigmund Freud published Moses and Monotheism in 1939 having barely escaped from Vienna, the text’s reception has justly been dominated by the question of Freud’s identification with Moses and the relationship between psychoanalysis and Judaism. However, I argue that this narrow focus has obscured the more fundamental problem of the connection between religion and Freud’s (...) enigmatic notion of “historical truth,” which he works out not through Moses but through Saint Paul. To do so, I first show how Freud’s genealogy of monotheism is modeled on the pathogenesis of hysterical symptoms. I then trace how Freud deepens his investigation into the etiology of symptom-formation until he arrives at the notion of historical truth and the archaic heritage that transmits it. Lastly, I demonstrate that Freud presents himself less as a Pauline figure than he does Paul as a proto-analyst. Through this staging, I contend that Freud parochializes the claims of Christianity as symptomatic of a more archaic historical truth that psychoanalysis alone is able to access. Freud’s Paul demonstrates that it is not a question of whether but how ostensibly modern secular discourses inherit the theological traditions in which they are imbedded. Reading Freud as a philosopher of religion ultimately offers an indictment of any philosophy or emancipatory politics naively modeled on theological universalism. (shrink)

The last decades are the time of significant interest in the problem of witnesses and their testimonies, both in interdisciplinary discourse and practical activities and institutions. An important philosophical category of testimony, is gaining growing practical importance. New forms of collection and distribution of testimonies, significant increase of their quantity and release to the public discussion and a group of witnesses new participants, creates some new problems requiring reflection. The growing problem of institutionalization may disrupt the natural availability of bearing (...) witness. Connecting testimonies with the historical truth and factual knowledge may lead to devaluation of testimonies and bearing witness. Ethics admits witnesses specific authority based on the personal experience and validity of the moral evaluations; this authority may explain who can (should) to bear witness. Meanwhile, the category of trust seems to explain the witnesses selection much better. The risk of numerous manipulations of testimonies is an important problem that has a negative impact on the reception of the social reception of testimonies and the situation of witnesses. In order to adequately respond to the experiences and needs of witnesses, an atmosphere of social trust should be build. (shrink)

The problematic nature of the relation between a politicized historical rhetoric and the presumed authority of brute fact was starkly outlined in the irreconcilable interpretations of the purge trials that tore apart the political Left in the 1930s. The conclusions of the Commission, headed by John Dewey, on the mock trial of Leon Trotsky in Mexico City in April 1937 rested on the evidence of the factual fabrications of key confessions. The critical contemporary responses were more or less predictable (...) in light of political partis pris. They either disparaged the entire procedure as a Trotskyite "court," where the driving purpose was to acquit Trotsky of guilt, deftly disposed of the key factual allegations, or saw the trial as attacking the Soviet system of justice itself, thus making irrelevant Trotsky's actual guilt or innocence. We now find the Commission's conclusions more persuasive than those of William Z. Foster, Malcolm Cowley, or F. L. Schuman not because of their superior tropological strategies, nor because of a skillful parade of rhetorical figures, nor because of the hermeneutic fusing of historical horizons, but because they satisfy familiar criteria of empirical inference and rational discourse. (shrink)

In this essay I attempt to answer a fundamental question about Žižek’s heterodox reading of Hegel’s dialectic: What project sustains this reading in the first place? That is, what is at stake for Žižek himself? The purpose of this essay is to develop in this fashion a reading of Žižek, although not one that is necessarily meant to compete against other alternatives. My argument, then, is that Žižek’s ontological and hermeneutical project is ultimately political, that when Žižek says we need (...) Hegel “now more than ever,” he has a political situation in mind. By finding an element of Hegel’s thought, the political subjectivity of the “rabble,” that resists the traditional picture of dialectical system, Žižek can overturn the distinction between Hegelian method and system by suggesting that there’s no comprehensible distinction at all. And by politicizing Hegel and drawing out the seeds of Lacanian thought that were nonetheless incomplete until Lacan, Žižek’s historiographical project takes on the character of ideological critique. As such, Hegel and Lacan reach us anew, as theoretical players in an anti-postmodern political gambit. (shrink)

In this scholarly but non-technical book, Campbell elucidates the concept of truth by tracing its history, from the ancient Greek idea that truth is timeless, unchanging, and free from all relativism, through the seventeenth-century crisis which led to the collapse of that idea, and then on through the emergence of historical consciousness to the existentialist, sociological, and linguistic approaches of our own time. He gives a scholarly but vivid and economical exposition of the views of a remarkably (...) wide range of thinkers, always showing how their ideas engage with our contemporary concerns. He argues that current problems with truth arise from the way differing past conceptions continue to resound in our contemporary use of the word, and suggests that we must formulate a new conception of truth that is compatible with awareness that human existence is finite and contingent--with awareness of our own historicity. (shrink)

Historicism -- Time -- Interpretation -- Representation -- Reference -- Truth -- Meaning -- Presence -- Experience (I) -- Experience (II) -- Subjectivity -- Politics.

Recent studies of historical synthesis have denied the possibility of "truth" in historical narratives, which they state impose meaning on a series of events. An historian is, however, capable of writing a true history, true in the sense that his or her narrative provides a fair representation of its central subject. Descriptions represent the world when they give us an idea that resembles part of the world itself. A subject can be said to be fairly represented if (...) an author follows certain procedures: events must be presented chronologically; the main changes that occurred in the subject must be described; there must not be descriptions or omissions which might give a misleading impression of the subject; and the subject should be explained at a consistent level of generality and with a consistent level of detail. An historian motivated by preconceptions rather than the desire to represent a subject fairly, will not write a true history. Preconceptions are not incompatible with writing true histories, however, as long as they are discarded when an historian learns that they are incompatible with a fair representation. Analysis can be supplementary to, but is never a substitute for, accurate historical representation of a subject. (shrink)

The Truth of Being and the Historicity of the Earth This essay reads Graeme Nicholson’s Heidegger on Truth in conjunction with Frank Schalow’s Heidegger’s Ecological Turn. It calls for the appropriation of Heidegger’s understanding of Da-sein to elaborate a radically other, earth-based political order. Nicholson and Schalow independently draw the conclusion that the technocratic world order, founded in the metaphysics of presence, is incapable of adequate response to a hermeneutic situation defined by instrumental reason and ecological collapse. Schalow’s (...) carefully elaborated contribution to eco-philosophy offers a creative adaption of Heidegger’s hermeneutic phenomenology and specifies how it is integrated into the project of the history of being. (shrink)

This edited collection provides the first comprehensive volume on A. J. Ayer’s 1936 masterpiece, Language, Truth and Logic. With eleven original chapters the volume reconsiders the historical and philosophical significance of Ayer’s work, examining its place in the history of analytic philosophy and its subsequent legacy. Making use of pioneering research in logical empiricism, the contributors explore a wide variety of topics, from ethics, values and religion, to truth, epistemology and philosophy of language. Among the questions discussed (...) are: How did Ayer preserve or distort the views and conceptions of logical empiricists? How are Ayer's arguments different from the ones he aimed at reconstructing? And which aspects of the book were responsible for its immense impact? The volume expertly places Language, Truth and Logic in the intellectual and socio-cultural history of twentieth-century philosophical thought, providing both introductory and contextual chapters, as well as specific explorations of a variety of topics covering the main themes of the book. Providing important insights of both historical and contemporary significance, this collection is an essential resource for scholars interested in the legacy of the Vienna Circle and its effect on ethics and philosophy of mind. (shrink)

This chapter shows that there is a notion of representation in which truth and representation go together while representation openly and proudly parades the roots it has in aesthetic representation. The main uses of representation are linguistic representation, political representation, and aesthetic representation. Truth has been used for political representation – when a political collectivity engages its political will. Representation becomes a mere spin‐off of the notion of truth adapting itself to anything the philosopher of language has (...) to say about truth. Toward the end of his Connections to the World, Danto characterizes the human being as an ens representans, suggesting that the capacity of representation is our essence, as human beings. Historical reality only comes into being ex post facto when the past no longer exists. Historical writing is the science of the ex post facto. (shrink)

This volume provides a geographically and historically diverse overview of philosophical traditions that establish a deep connection between truth and practice, or even see truth itself as a kind of practice. Under the label "practices of truth" are subsumed disparate approaches that can be fruitfully brought together to explore the intersections between truth and practice in philosophy as well as to address a range of intriguing questions about truth that fall outside the domain of pure (...) theory. The chapters in this volume provide a variety of perspectives on key practices of truth in philosophy and in the history of philosophy, enriching our understanding of the different ways in which truth and practice may be connected, including the role of certain practices in enabling philosophical insight into truth; the ways in which truth may actually be embedded in some practices; and the impact of truth on practice. Practices of Truth in Philosophy will appeal to scholars and advanced students interested in the history of philosophy, comparative philosophy, ethics, epistemology, and the metaphysics of truth. (shrink)

The object of this essay is to discuss two problems and to present solutions to them, which do not quite agree with what is generally said of them. The first problem concerns the history of methods for reaching firm historical knowledge. In three methodological manuals for historians, written by J. G. Droysen, E. Bernheim, and C.-V. Langlois and C. Seignobos and first published in the late nineteenth century, the task of the historian was said to be how to obtain (...) firm knowledge about history. The question is how this message should be understood. The second problem concerns the differences between the three manuals. If their common goal is firm historical knowledge, are there any major differences of opinion? The answer given in this article is yes, and the ground is sought in their theories of truth. (shrink)

Quasi-truth is a formal approach to a pragmatically-oriented view of truth. The basic plan motivating the framework consists in providing for a more realistic account of truth, accommodating situations where there is incomplete information, as typically happens in the practice of science. The historical sciences are a case in hand, where incomplete information is the rule. It would seem, then, that the quasi-truth approach would be the most appropriate one to deal with historical sciences, (...) then. In this paper, we explore this possibility and use the historical sciences as a test case for the approach of quasi-truth. Our claim is that, on what concerns historical sciences, the quasi-truth approach fails in two basic senses; first, by misrepresenting some cases concerning incomplete information, and second, by falling short of accounting for many features of incomplete information peculiar to historical sciences. We conclude that, despite its stated goals, quasi-truth must be either amended or substituted if the goal of a more faithful representation of scientific practice is to be achieved. (shrink)

The study brings about the contribution of Islam to world civilization. It traces the rise of Muslim power in Asia, Europe and Africa over more than ten centuries combining political ascendancy with promotion of basic sciences, philosophy, literature and arts. It deals with the prevailing myths which have for long blocked the way to a correct understanding of the faith and the traditions of Islam. Vigorously debated issues, such as jihad, status of women, and national patriotism are discussed in their (...) historical context. The book provides lucid exposition of theological concepts, the schools oflaw, the Shariah, the on-going conflict between orthodoxy and modernism, and Sufism, on the basis of the Quran and the Hadith. It gives interesting account of the willing acceptance in medieval Europe of Islamic scholarship in sciences along with bitter hostility against Islam in the ecclesiastical establishment of Christian period. The nature of the Muslim rule and its relationship with non-Muslim communities in the Caliphates, in the Ottoman realm and in the Sultanate and Mughal empire in the Indian subcontinent has been evaluated. The events and the personalities contributing to India's partition in 1947 are examined to assess the truth of the so-called separatism in the mind of Indian Muslims. The book gives the background of the tension between Muslim countries and Western nations which intensified with the conclusion of World War I in 1918 and rose to be acute with the end of the Cold War in 1990. The continued political, economic, and military intervention by European powers and the U.S.A. has been discussed in the context of the present situation when Muslims tend to look upon the West as anti-Islam and in the Western world-view Islam is considered to be a menace to civilization itself. (shrink)

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