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Books > History > Theory & methods > Historiography
In an attempt to counteract the doom and gloom of the economic crisis and the politicians' overused dictum that 'there is no alternative', this interdisciplinary collection presents a number of alternative worlds that were conceived over the course of the last century. While change at the macro level was the focus of most of the ideological struggles of the twentieth century, the real impetus for change came from the blue-sky thinking of scientists, engineers, architects, sociologists, planners and writers, all of whom imagined alternatives to the status quo. Following a roughly chronological order from the turn of the nineteenth century to the present, this book explores the dreams, plans and hopes as well as the nightmares and fears that are an integral part of alternative thinking in the Western hemisphere. The alternative worlds at the centre of the individual essays can each be seen as crucial to the history of the past one hundred years. While these alternative worlds reflect their particular cultural context, they also inform historical developments in a wider sense and continue to resonate in the present.
This is a cultural and intellectual biography of a neglected but important figure, Thomas Morgan (1671/2-1743). Educated at Bridgewater Academy, he was active as Presbyterian preacher, medical practitioner, and one of the first who called himself a Christian Deist. Morgan was not only a harbinger of the disparagement of the Old Testament, but also a prolific pamphleteer about things religious, and a publisher of medical books. He received praise for his medical work, but a negative press for his theological visions, and he ended as a forgotten figure in history; this book restores an overlooked writer to his due place in history. It is the first modern biography of Morgan and its readership comprises historians of deism, the enlightenment, the eighteenth century, theology and the church, Presbyterianism, and medical history.
The Enlightenment is generally painted as a movement of ideas and society lasting from the late seventeenth to the early nineteenth century, but this book argues that the Enlightenment is an essential component of modernity itself. In the course of the study, Martin Davies offers an original world-view and a critique of some recent interpretations of the Enlightenment.
This book uncovers practices surrounding acts of collecting, surveying, and antiquarianism during British colonial rule in India. By examining these practices, this book traces the colonial conditions of the production of 'sources, ' the forging of a new historical method, and the ascendance of positivist historiography in nineteenth-century India
This volume examines the idea of India as it emerges in the writing of its anglophone elite, post-2000. Drawing on a variety of genres, including fiction, histories, non-fiction assessments - economic, political, and business - travel accounts, and so on, this book maps the explosion of English-language writing in India after the economic liberalization and points to the nation's sense of its growing importance as a producer of culture. From Ramachandra Guha to William Dalrymple, from Arundhati Roy to Pankaj Mishra, from Jhumpa Lahiri to Amitav Ghosh, from Amartya Sen to Gurcharan Das, from Barkha Dutt to Tarun Tejpal, this investigation takes us from aesthetic imaginings of the nation to its fractured political fault lines, the ideological predispositions of the writers often pointing to an asymmetrically constituted India. A major intervention on how postcolonial India is written about and imagined in the anglophone world, this book will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of cultural studies, literature, history, and South Asian studies. It will also be of interest to general readers with an inclination towards India and Indian writing.
Cuban culture has long been available to English speakers via translation. This study examines the complex ways in which English renderings of Cuban texts from various domains-poetry, science fiction, political and military writing, music, film-have represented, reshaped, or amended original texts. Taking in a broad corpus, it becomes clear that the mental image an Anglophone audience has formed of Cuban culture since 1959 depends heavily on the decisions of translators. At times, a clear ideological agenda drives moves like strengthening the denunciatory tone of a song or excising passages from a political text. At other moments, translators' indifference to the importance of certain facets of a work, such as a film's onscreen text or the lyrics sung on a musical performance, impoverishes the English speaker's experience of the rich weave of self-expression in the original Spanish. In addition to the dynamics at work in the choices translators make at the level of the text itself, this study attends to how paratexts like prefaces, footnotes, liner notes, and promotional copy shape the audience's experience of the text.
Adam Smith (1723-1790) is widely regarded as one of the great thinkers of the Enlightenment period. Best-known for his founding work of economics, The Wealth of Nations, Smith engaged equally with the nature of morality in his Theory of Moral Sentiments. He also gave lectures on literature and jurisprudence, and wrote papers on art and science. In this outstanding philosophical introduction Samuel Fleischacker argues that Smith is a superb example of the broadly curious thinkers who flourished in the Enlightenment-for whom morality, politics, law, and economics were just a few of the many fascinating subjects that could be illuminated by naturalistic modes of investigation. After a helpful overview of his life and work, Fleischacker examines the full range of Smith's thought, on such subjects as: epistemology, philosophy of science, and aesthetics the nature of sympathy moral approval and moral judgement virtue religion justice and jurisprudence governmental policy economic principles liberalism. Including chapter summaries, suggestions for further reading, and a glossary, Adam Smith is essential reading for those studying ethics, political philosophy, the history of philosophy, and the Enlightenment, as well as those reading Smith in related disciplines such as economics, law, and religion.
Major philosophical history of the concept of Europe, the first full-scale book of its kind Author is a leading figure in pioneering the philosophical study of Europe Potential to appeal to readers in several broad areas of study: philosophy, European studies, politics, and history.
Major philosophical history of the concept of Europe, the first full-scale book of its kind Author is a leading figure in pioneering the philosophical study of Europe Potential to appeal to readers in several broad areas of study: philosophy, European studies, politics, and history.
Writing Russia offers the first systematic analysis of Anglophone national histories of Russia. By deconstructing preeminent historical works on the history of Russia, this book provides insight into the hidden ideological underpinnings of the texts and their representations of Russia in the West. It demonstrates that historians employ a range of literary techniques to smooth over contradictions in their narratives of Russia, generating a seemingly cohesive depiction of Russia as a liminal, Other nation. This is a process that this book theorises as "discordus", representing an original conceptual framework for examining national history texts. It identifies patterns in the language and emplotment of Anglophone Russian histories across several defining historical epochs from the Mongol conquests to the Putin presidency, revealing the extent to which historians wield the narrative power to "make or break" nations. Postmodern in approach, the work pushes the boundaries of historiography and calls into question the nature of history.
Major philosophical history of the concept of Europe, the first full-scale book of its kind Author is a leading figure in pioneering the philosophical study of Europe Potential to appeal to readers in several broad areas of study: philosophy, European studies, politics, and history.
Major philosophical history of the concept of Europe, the first full-scale book of its kind Author is a leading figure in pioneering the philosophical study of Europe Potential to appeal to readers in several broad areas of study: philosophy, European studies, politics, and history.
Since the 1990s scholars have focused heavily on the perpetrators of the Holocaust, and have presented a complex and heterogeneous picture of perpetrators. This book provides a unique overview of the current state of research on perpetrators. Contributions approach the topic from various expertise (history, gender, sociology, psychology, law, comparative genocide), and address several unresolved questions. The overall focus is on the key question that it still disputed: How do ordinary people become mass murderers?
Friedrich Hayek was the 20th century's most significant free market theorist. Over the course of his long career he developed an analysis of the danger that state power can pose to individual liberty. In rejecting much of the liberal tradition's concern for social justice and democratic participation, Hayek would help clear away many intellectual obstacles to the emergence of neoliberalism in the last quarter of the 20th century. At the core of this book is a new interpretation of Hayek, one that regards him as an exponent of a neo-Roman conception of liberty and interprets his work as a form of 'market republicanism'. It examines the contemporary context in which Hayek wrote, and places his writing in the long republican intellectual tradition. Hayek's Market Republicanism will be of interest to advanced students and researchers across the history of economic thought, the history of political thought, political economy and political philosophy.
James Steuart published An Inquiry into the Principles of Political OEconomy in 1767, the first systematic treatise on economics, nine years before Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations. Traditional historiography has tended to disregard and even deny Steuart's oeuvre, categorizing him as the last, outdated advocate of mercantilist policies in Britain. A clear portrait of a modernizing and enlightened Steuart emerges from this book, opening up an alternative approach to many key developments in economic theory. This book brings together a diverse international team of experts to overturn the "advocate of mercantilism" myth and explore different interpretations of Steuart's work within the context of the writings of other contemporary authors. A diverse range of specialists - historians, economists, political scientist, and sociologists - reflecting the diversity of James Steuart's work explore various aspects of the life, works, and influence of James Steuart, including his links to other authors who conceive - as Steuart did - the economic system of "natural liberty" as an artificial creation. The portrait of a demarginalized, modernizing, and enlightened Steuart emerges clearly in this book. This book is not reduced to old authors whose ideas would be at the Museum of Dead Ideas, it has a very contemporary resonance. The subjects and the way Steuart tackles them could have a big influence on future authors who recognized some advantages of an alternative approach to many key developments in economic theory. This will also be of interest to scholars of history of economic thought, intellectual history, and 18th century history.
This volume takes a fresh approach to the issue of 'space' in intellectual history and puts forward novel ways of rendering conceptions of space useful for historians of political thought. Notions of 'space' have become increasingly important to the practice of intellectual historians in recent years. This is evidenced by emerging locutions such as 'the international turn', 'global intellectual history', and 'political space'. Thus far, however, it is still unclear what it actually means to take 'space' seriously in intellectual history, and what we might gain from doing so. Ranging from the early modern period to the twentieth century, the contributions to this volume span a variety of diverse topics and showcase the rewards of a spatial focus in intellectual history, both as a kind of place and as an organising principle. The book reconstructs the role of the modern territorial state in grounding reflection on political legitimacy; the interface between oceans and empires as a source of political reflection; and the curious antecedents of today's spatial turn in German and Indian visions of geopolitics in the interwar years. In doing so, it makes a contribution to an ever-growing field. This book was originally published as a special issue of Global Intellectual History.
This book explores the intellectual world of Francesco Robortello, one of the most prominent scholars of the Italian Renaissance. From poetics to rhetoric, philology to history, topics to ethics, Robortello revolutionised the field of humanities through innovative interpretations of ancient texts and with a genius that was architectural in scope. He was highly esteemed by his contemporaries for his acute wit, but also envied and disparaged for his many qualities. In comparison with other humanists of his time such as Carlo Sigonio and Pier Vettori, Robortello had a deeply philosophical vein, one that made him unique not only to Italy, but to Europe more generally. Robortello's role in reforming the humanities makes him a constituent part of the long-fifteenth century. Robortello's thought, however, unlike that of other fifteenth-century humanists, sprung from and was thoroughly imbued with a systematic, Aristotelian spirit without which his philosophy would never have emerged from the tumultuous years of the mid-Cinquecento. Francesco Robortello created a system for the humanities which was unique for his century: a perfect union of humanism and philosophy. This book represents the first fully fledged monograph on this adventurous intellectual life.
This volume explores the response of liberals to rightwing attacks during the Red Scare of the late 1940s and early 1950s, establishing it as a defensive approach aimed at warding off efforts to conflate liberalism with communism, but not at striking back at the opposing ideology of conservatism itself. This book finds the combination of the liberal adherence to pragmatism and political pluralism to have been responsible for the weakness of this response. Analyzing the language used in interchanges between rightwing anticommunists and liberals, Michaels shows that those interchanges did not constitute an effort to persuade but rather an effort to discredit the opponent as "un-American." A variety of conflicts-a professor seeking to avoid dismissal by accusing his colleagues of disloyalty, an investigator of rightwing groups assailed for his activities, an openly communist student seeking to justify the existence of his student organization-embody a battle waged over conflicting versions of "America," an attempt by each side to lay exclusive claim to that word. Conflicts over freedom, individualism, Americanism, and the institution of private property demonstrate how rightwing anticommunists and moderate liberals actually subscribed to two mutually incompatible patterns of sociation, making the conflict profound and resistant to reconciliation.
The theme of conspiracy is central to Machiavelli's writing. His work offers observations and analysis of conspiracy as part of the armoury of the Renaissance politician. Surprisingly, the theme has not yet received the attention it merits. This volume corrects an interpretation which reduces Machiavelli's position to one of censorious observer of conspiracies. Quite to the contrary, as Campi demonstrates, Machiavelli developed an anatomy of conspiracy and provided a practical manual for coup d'etat" and violent seizure of power.
The articles in this volume employ source-work research to trace Kierkegaard's understanding and use of authors from the Greek tradition. A series of figures of varying importance in Kierkegaard's authorship are treated, ranging from early Greek poets to late Classical philosophical schools. In general it can be said that the Greeks collectively constitute one of the single most important body of sources for Kierkegaard's thought. He studied Greek from an early age and was profoundly inspired by what might be called the Greek spirit. Although he is generally considered a Christian thinker, he was nonetheless consistently drawn back to the Greeks for ideas and impulses on any number of topics. He frequently contrasts ancient Greek philosophy, with its emphasis on the lived experience of the individual in daily life, with the abstract German philosophy that was in vogue during his own time. It has been argued that he modeled his work on that of the ancient Greek thinkers specifically in order to contrast his own activity with that of his contemporaries.
The period of Kierkegaard's life corresponds to Denmark's "Golden Age," which is conventionally used to refer to the period covering roughly the first half of the nineteenth century, when Denmark's most important writers, philosophers, theologians, poets, actors and artists flourished. Kierkegaard was often in dialogue with his fellow Danes on key issues of the day. His authorship would be unthinkable without reference to the Danish State Church, the Royal Theater, the University of Copenhagen or the various Danish newspapers and journals, such as The Corsair, FA|drelandet, and KjAbenhavns flyvende Post, which played an undeniable role in shaping his development. The present volume features articles that employ source-work research in order to explore the individual Danish sources of Kierkegaard's thought. The volume is divided into three tomes in order to cover the different fields of influence. Tome III is dedicated to the diverse Danish sources that fall under the rubrics "Literature, Drama and Aesthetics." The Golden Age is known as the period when Danish prose first established itself in genres such as the novel; moreover, it was also an age when some of Denmark's most celebrated national poets flourished. Accordingly, this tome contains articles on Kierkegaard's use of the great Danish poets and prose writers, whose works are frequently quoted and alluded to throughout his writings. Kierkegaard regularly attended dramatic performances at Copenhagen's Royal Theater, which was one of Europe's leading playhouses at the time. In this tome his appreciation for the art of Denmark's best-known actors and actresses is traced. Finally, this tome features articles on the leading literary critics and aesthetic theorists of the Golden Age, who served as foils for Kierkegaard's own ideas.
The period of Kierkegaard's life corresponds to Denmark's "Golden Age," which is conventionally used to refer to the period covering roughly the first half of the nineteenth century, when Denmark's most important writers, philosophers, theologians, poets, actors and artists flourished. Kierkegaard was often in dialogue with his fellow Danes on key issues of the day. His authorship would be unthinkable without reference to the Danish State Church, the Royal Theater, the University of Copenhagen or the various Danish newspapers and journals, such as The Corsair, FA|drelandet, and KjAbenhavns flyvende Post, which played an undeniable role in shaping his development. The present volume features articles that employ source-work research in order to explore the individual Danish sources of Kierkegaard's thought. The volume is divided into three tomes in order to cover the different fields of influence. Tome I is dedicated to exploring the sources that fall under the rubrics, "Philosophy, Politics and Social Theory." With regard to philosophy, Kierkegaard read the works of all the foremost Danish thinkers of the time and their German antecedents, in particular Kant, Schilling and Hegel. While he was sympathetic to individual ideas offered by this tradition, he was generally keen to criticize the German model of philosophy and to propose a new paradigm for philosophical thought that was more in tune with lived existence. Kierkegaard also experienced the dynamic period in history that saw the great upheavals throughout Europe in connection with the revolutions of 1848 and the First Schleswig War. While it has long been claimed that Kierkegaard was not interested in politics, recent research supports a quite different picture. To be sure, he cannot be regarded as a political scientist or social theorist in a traditional sense, but he was nonetheless engaged in the issues of his day, and in his works one can certainly find material that can be insightful for the fields of politics and social theory.
The long period from the Renaissance to the nineteenth century supplied numerous sources for Kierkegaard's thought in any number of different fields. The present, rather heterogeneous volume covers the long period from the birth of Savonarola in 1452 through the beginning of the nineteenth century and into Kierkegaard's own time. The Danish thinker read authors representing vastly different traditions and time periods. Moreover, he also read a diverse range of genres. His interests concerned not just philosophy, theology and literature but also drama and music. The present volume consists of three tomes that are intended to cover Kierkegaard's sources in these different fields of thought. Tome II is dedicated to the wealth of theological and religious sources from the beginning of the Reformation to Kierkegaard's own day. It examines Kierkegaard's relations to some of the key figures of the Reformation period, from the Lutheran, Reformed and Catholic traditions. It thus explores Kierkegaard's reception of theologians and spiritual authors of various denominations, most of whom are known to history primarily for their exposition of practical spirituality rather than theological doctrine. Several of the figures investigated here are connected to the Protestant tradition of Pietism that Kierkegaard was familiar with from a very early stage. The main figures in this context include the "forefather" of Pietism Johann Arndt, the Reformed writer Gerhard Tersteegen, and the Danish author Hans Adolph Brorson. With regard to Catholicism, Kierkegaard was familiar with several popular figures of Catholic humanism, Post-Tridentine theology and Baroque spirituality, such as FranAois Fenelon, Ludwig Blosius and Abraham a Sancta Clara. He was also able to find inspiration in highly controversial and original figures of the Renaissance and the early Modern period, such as Girolamo Savonarola or Jacob BAhme, the latter of whom was at the time an en vogue topic among trendsetting philosophers and theologians such as Hegel, Franz von Baader, Schelling and Hans Lassen Martensen.
Awarded the Irish Historical Research Prize 2021 The Venerable Bede (c. 673-735) was the leading intellectual figure of the early Anglo-Saxon Church, and his extensive corpus of writings encompassed themes of exegesis, computus (dating of Easter and construction of calendars), history and hagiography. Rather than look at these works in isolation, Mairin MacCarron argues that Bede's work in different genres needs to be read together to be properly understood. This book provides the first integrated analysis of Bede's thought on time, and demonstrates that such a comprehensive examination allows a greater understanding of Bede's writings on time, and illuminates the place of time and chronology in his other works. Bede was an outstanding intellect whose creativity and ingenuity were apparent in various genres of writing. This book argues that in innovatively combining computus, theology and history, Bede transformed his contemporaries' understanding of time and chronology.
This volume tells the story of the legacy and impact of the great German polymath Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716). Leibniz made significant contributions to many areas, including philosophy, mathematics, political and social theory, theology, and various sciences. The essays in this volume explores the effects of Leibniz's profound insights on subsequent generations of thinkers by tracing the ways in which his ideas have been defended and developed in the three centuries since his death. Each of the 11 essays is concerned with Leibniz's legacy and impact in a particular area, and between them they show not just the depth of Leibniz's talents but also the extent to which he shaped the various domains to which he contributed, and in some cases continues to shape them today. With essays written by experts such as Nicholas Jolley, Pauline Phemister, and Philip Beeley, this volume is essential reading not just for students of Leibniz but also for those who wish to understand the game-changing impact made by one of history's true universal geniuses. |
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