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How History Works - The Reconstitution of a Human Science (Hardcover)
Loot Price: R4,579
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How History Works - The Reconstitution of a Human Science (Hardcover)
Series: Routledge Approaches to History
Expected to ship within 12 - 17 working days
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How History Works assesses the social function of academic
knowledge in the humanities, exemplified by history, and offers a
critique of the validity of historical knowledge. The book focusses
on history's academic, disciplinary ethos to offer a reconception
of the discipline of history, arguing that it is an existential
liability: if critical analysis reveals the sense that history
offers to the world to be illusory, what stops historical
scholarship from becoming a disguise for pessimism or nihilism?
History is routinely invoked in all kinds of cultural, political,
economic, psychological situations to provide a reliable account or
justification of what is happening. Moreover, it addresses a world
already receptive to comprehensive historical explanations: since
everyone has some knowledge of history, everyone can be manipulated
by it. This book analyses the relationship between specialized
knowledge and everyday experience, taking phenomenology (Husserl)
and pragmatism (James) as methodological guides. It is informed by
a wide literature sceptical of the sense academic historical
expertise produces and of the work history does, represented by
thinkers such as Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Valery, Anders and
Cioran. How History Works discusses how history makes sense of the
world even if what happens is senseless, arguing that behind the
smoke-screen of historical scholarship looms a chaotic
world-dynamic indifferent to human existence. It is valuable
reading for anyone interested in historiography and historical
theory.
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