September 5, 2017, 9:31 a.m.,
SERGE GRIGORIEV,
Allgemein.
ABSTRACT
This essay examines the relationship among some key elements of Charles Sanders Peirce's general theory of scientific inquiry (such as final causality, real possibility, methodological convergence, abductive reasoning, hypothesis formation, and diagrammatic idealization) and some prominent issues discussed in the current philosophy of history, especially those pertaining to the role of generalizations in historical explanation. The claim is that, appropriately construed, Peirce's recommendations with respect to rational inquiry in general can provide a reasonable basis for formulating a productive critical method for a responsible philosophy of history. The essay further seeks to reduce the tension between Peirce's interest in epistemic convergence and the arguments that champion the value of historical distance and perspectival pluralism. On the account offered, the kind of methodological convergence envisioned by Peirce need not conflict necessarily with a responsibly construed historical pluralism. On the other hand, the critical perspective of an epistemically disciplined philosophical inquiry may prove indispensable in weeding out wishful but unrealistic ideological perspectives from the writing of history. Hence, the resulting proposal envisions the critique of historical imagination as one potentially viable modality for the pragmatist philosophy of history.
Quelle: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/resolve/doi?DOI=10.1111%2Fhith.12023
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September 5, 2017, 9:31 a.m.,
Dale A. Wilkerson,
Allgemein.
ABSTRACT
This essay reflects critically on Martin Heidegger's remarks about authenticity and death with the aid of Christophe Bouton's Temps et liberté (2002), translated by Christopher Macann as Time and Freedom (2014). It first raises general questions concerning the possible thematic relationship between human endeavoring (action) and the experiences of finitude and freedom. Heidegger's Being and Time is particularly useful for exploring this relationship, but certain problems emerge when using this text for accessing the essay's themes. To wit: there are good reasons for mistrusting readings of Being and Time as a “practical” guide for grounding action. Against the practical reading, the essay wishes to reclaim the ontological-existential significance of Heidegger's text. Although Bouton's treatment of Being and Time excludes its ontological dimensions and is entirely practical, even to the point of disregarding certain theoretical risks inherent in this approach, Bouton's study is indispensable for situating Being and Time in a historical-intellectual context, whereby the experiences of freedom and time are understood within certain metaphysical presuppositions rendering them difficult to establish together on reliable grounds. Following Bouton's lead, the essay shows that the hermeneutic differences between practical and ontological readings of Being and Time can be explored through reflections on what Heidegger might have meant by the term “Möglichkeit” (“possibility”), from which Bouton infers “freedom.” It is alleged that Bouton does not fully consider all of Heidegger's assertions regarding Möglichkeit, most problematically the claim that the human being's most essential “possibility” is its “impossibility,” that is to say, its death.
Quelle: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/resolve/doi?DOI=10.1111%2Fhith.12033
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September 5, 2017, 9:31 a.m.,
Richard Eldridge,
Allgemein.
ABSTRACT
This review essay surveys and assesses Rage and Denials: Collectivist Philosophy, Politics, and Art Historiography, 1890–1947 by Branko Mitrović, focusing on a) Mitrović's case that German art-historical practices during this period were factually ill-founded, inconsistent, and motivated by narcissism and ethnic prejudice, and b) the broader issue of whether collectivist historical explanations of artistic and cultural developments can ever be apt.
Quelle: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/resolve/doi?DOI=10.1111%2Fhith.12032
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September 5, 2017, 9:31 a.m.,
History and Theory,
Allgemein.
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September 5, 2017, 9:31 a.m.,
History and Theory,
Allgemein.
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September 5, 2017, 9:31 a.m.,
Hans Ruin,
Allgemein.
ABSTRACT
Thomas Laqueur has brought together half a century of research on modern European mortuary culture into an impressive narrative of how the Christian churchyard was replaced by the modern cemetery, how interment was partly replaced by the technology of cremation, and how writing and preserving the names of the dead coincided with democratization and social reform. Beyond the grand narrative of the history of modern burial, he also shows how the modern culture of history and memory is intertwined with the transformation of mortuary practices. On a deeper level, he points toward new ways of conceptualizing the relation between the living and the dead, leading up toward, if not fully confronting, the challenge that propels his own endeavor, namely the existential-ontological predicament of living after those who have been and the nature of spectrality.
Quelle: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/resolve/doi?DOI=10.1111%2Fhith.12029
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September 5, 2017, 9:31 a.m.,
Richard J. Bernstein,
Allgemein.
ABSTRACT
Martin Jay's sweeping account of reason in Western philosophy provides the context for understanding the crisis that the Frankfurt School thinkers faced when they spoke of the “eclipse of reason.” In the background of the thinking of the first generation of Frankfurt thinkers such as Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno, and Herbert Marcuse is a hankering for a more substantive conception of reason that bears affinities with what Hegel called Vernunft (reason), which he contrasted with Verstand (understanding). According to Jay, the first generation of Frankfurt thinkers never quite succeeded in elaborating this substantive concept of reason and grew increasingly pessimistic in the face of the self-destruction of reason. Habermas sought to elaborate a communicative theory of rationality that did not fall into the misleading promises of Hegelian Vernunft but could nevertheless provide a normative basis for the critique of instrumental, strategic, and systems rationality—a normative basis for critical theory. Jay presents an extremely lucid account of Jürgen Habermas's theory of communicative rationality. He concludes by reviewing some of the outstanding problems and questions that have been raised about the adequacy and success of Habermas's project. I seek to do justice to the strengths and weaknesses of Jay's narrative, and I focus on a number of deep, unresolved issues that confront the future of critical theory in its attempt to develop an adequate conception of rationality. I also raise concerns about what precisely is distinctive about critical theory today.
Quelle: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/resolve/doi?DOI=10.1111%2Fhith.12030
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September 5, 2017, 9:31 a.m.,
Benjamin Aldes Wurgaft,
Allgemein.
ABSTRACT
In this review essay I explore the dynamics of “normalization” in historical and fictional depictions of the National Socialist past, examining both the “organic” normalization of catastrophic events through the passage of time, and efforts to normalize the Nazi past through aesthetics. Focusing on Gavriel Rosenfeld's Hi, Hitler: How the Nazi Past is Being Normalized in Contemporary Culture, I argue against many dimensions of Rosenfeld's account of normalization, particularly his claim that aesthetic normalization can undermine our moral judgments regarding the Holocaust. Drawing on Sigmund Freud on jokes, and Susan Sontag on Camp aesthetics, I argue that every effort to normalize the Holocaust, especially ones that work through humor and jokes (a major topic of Rosenfeld's book), actually maintain the Holocaust's status as a series of historical events resistant to “normalization.” If “normalization” is a process through which extraordinary, or morally charged, historical events lose their moral charge, then aesthetic efforts to normalize the Holocaust actually reinscribe the special moral status that Rosenfeld believes they erase.
Quelle: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/resolve/doi?DOI=10.1111%2Fhith.12031
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September 5, 2017, 9:31 a.m.,
MARÍA PÍA LARA,
Allgemein.
ABSTRACT
My goal in this essay is to show that myths have played a larger role than we might think in politics and in political theory and that myths are essential to politics. For this purpose I will use Schmitt's theory of myth, since he elaborated his theory with strong interpretations of two different myths: Hobbes's Leviathan and Shakespeare's Hamlet. I will compare Schmitt's interpretations of Hamlet with my own, as doing so will provide a critical view of Schmitt's conclusions, and it will enable me to develop my own conception of myth and its relations to political theory and history.
Quelle: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/resolve/doi?DOI=10.1111%2Fhith.12026
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September 5, 2017, 9:31 a.m.,
BENJAMIN CLAUDE BROWER,
Allgemein.
ABSTRACT
Carl Schmitt's influential text The Theory of the Partisan (1963) serves in this article to read the history of civilians in modern warfare, examining the case of Algeria (1954–62). Schmitt's argument that the partisan leads to a dangerous conceptual blurring in war, confusing soldier and civilian, friend and enemy, reveals important questions about the war, questions that are otherwise invisible in conventional readings of the archives. Notably it places in relief the figure of the “population,” a way that the French military conceptualized Algerian civilians and their place on the battlefield. The article argues that the population, as constituted in military theory, needs to be understood as the partisan's partner in contributing to the normlessness of violence. This offers both a new reading of the war in Algeria and the violence suffered by civilians, as well as a correction to Schmitt's politically one-sided explanation of the problem of normlessness and modern warfare. Whereas Schmitt's revolutionary partisan is a figure of the left, the notion of the population originated among counter-revolutionary French officers who rethought war in an effort to stop decolonization and reshape their own society along military lines. For them Algerian civilians served as a primary weapon against the National Liberation Front (FLN) by breaking up the nationalists’ claim to lead a single, undivided, and sovereign Algerian people. In effect, the notion of the population made Algerian civilians appear as potential enemies to the FLN, blurring the nationalists’ own understanding of the political configuration of the war, directly exposing civilians to its violence.
Quelle: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/resolve/doi?DOI=10.1111%2Fhith.12027
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