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Critical History and the Supernatural

C. Stephen Evans

in The Historical Christ and the Jesus of Faith: The Incarnational Narrative as History

A variation on the epistemological objection to special acts of God (miracles) investigated in the previous chapter is the claim that such acts cannot be recognized by anyone who is committed to ... More

A variation on the epistemological objection to special acts of God (miracles) investigated in the previous chapter is the claim that such acts cannot be recognized by anyone who is committed to critical, historical investigation. This kind of argument, which rests on the nature of historical knowledge and critical historical method, is considered in this chapter. If the incarnational narrative necessarily includes such divine actions, then the argument claims that we cannot have historical knowledge of it. The different sections of the chapter are: rationalism about religious knowledge; can the rationalist conception of religious knowledge be defended?; Hans Frei and the character of the biblical narrative; the assumptions of the ‘critical historian’; Troeltsch’s principles of correlation and analogy; and the sociology of knowledge and appeals to authority.Less

The Historics of Johann Gustav Droysen

Frederick C. Beiser

in The German Historicist Tradition

This chapter is an analysis of the historics of Johann Gustav Droysen. It considers several issues arising from his historics: the concept of historical explanation, the question of objectivity, the ... More

This chapter is an analysis of the historics of Johann Gustav Droysen. It considers several issues arising from his historics: the concept of historical explanation, the question of objectivity, the critique of the critical school of history. Droysen's position regarding naturalism and positivism is also examined in detail. It is argued that Droysen, not Dilthey, is the true father of the method of historical understanding or Verstehen.Less

On Dialectical Interpretation

Andrew Cole

in The Birth of Theory

This concluding chapter rewrites the history of Anglo-American criticism in its sweeping account of dialectical literary historicism—from Hegel and his contemporaries to the ... More

This concluding chapter rewrites the history of Anglo-American criticism in its sweeping account of dialectical literary historicism—from Hegel and his contemporaries to the mid-to-late-nineteenth-century Hegelians in the UK and US, to Lukács, Macherey, and Jameson. It identifies where, over the years, dialectical criticism has preferred to think exclusively with concepts rather than figures, and shows how the inclusion of premodern dialectical models within the dialectical paradigm can not only reintroduce conceptual figuration as a viable contemplative and utopian mode (after Plotinus), but can also offer a way of conjoining dialectics and Deleuzianism, which have long been at odds with one another.Less

Deleuze's Untimely: Uses and Abuses in the Appropriation of Nietzsche

Jeffrey A. Bell and Claire Colebrook (eds)

in Deleuze and History

This chapter explores the expression of Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche's untimely within a Deleuzian philosophy of history. Gilles Deleuze's use of the untimely appeared to be not only a departure but a ... More

This chapter explores the expression of Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche's untimely within a Deleuzian philosophy of history. Gilles Deleuze's use of the untimely appeared to be not only a departure but a productive misappropriation of Nietzsche, and as such a creation that might itself suggest a new time to come. It then investigates how Nietzsche diagnosed European degradation in the advent of ‘modern historical cultivation’ and ‘history as an objective science’. Nietzsche reports three types of history that form relations either in the service or disservice of life: monumental history, antiquarian history and critical history. Deleuze's interaction with Nietzsche's analysis of history and the untimely is explained. A philosophy of history should emerge in Deleuze that is not only more than a critique of facile historicism, but also a crucial part of his general philosophy of time.Less

Thrice Told: Narratives of Sociology's Relation to Social Work

Patricia Lengermann and Gillian Niebrugge

in Sociology in America: A History

There are three narratives of the relation of sociology to social work: a natural history, a social history, and a critical history. These stories are told by sociologists, historians of social ... More

There are three narratives of the relation of sociology to social work: a natural history, a social history, and a critical history. These stories are told by sociologists, historians of social science, and social workers, but the division among them is not by discipline but by interpretation. This chapter concerns both the content of these narratives and the fact of their coexistence. It suggests that an interpretation of these three stories can be used to link the first decades of sociology in the United States to the form of the profession in America today. The existence of these multiple narratives shows much about sociology's still contested and divided identity and purpose.Less

Philosophy’s Work

Rocío Zambrana

in Hegel'S theory of Intelligibility

The book ends with a discussion of the three syllogisms of philosophy with which the Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences comes to a close. The Conclusion argues that the syllogisms of ... More

The book ends with a discussion of the three syllogisms of philosophy with which the Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences comes to a close. The Conclusion argues that the syllogisms of philosophy are three distinct combinations of logic, nature, and Geist. The combinations represent three distinct philosophical perspectives from which to understand the relation between logic, nature, and Geist. The syllogisms, however, also represent philosophical perspectives that allow a critical history of the development of a practice or institution, since they make possible different perspectives from which a normative commitment is assessed. The syllogisms make possible an assessment of the history of a normative commitment along with the awareness of the irreducible precariousness and ambivalence of any given commitment.Less

An Introduction to a Critical History of Psychology in Education

Jack Martin and Ann-Marie McLellan

in The Education of Selves: How Psychology Transformed Students

This chapter sets the stage for the ways in which disciplinary psychology transformed students during the last half of the twentieth century. The traditional approach to psychological science is ... More

This chapter sets the stage for the ways in which disciplinary psychology transformed students during the last half of the twentieth century. The traditional approach to psychological science is briefly discussed. A critical history of psychology then is presented. The “psy” hypothesis, suggested initially by Foucault but elaborated within psychology and education by others (e.g. Rose, Popkewitz) is the assertion that the psy disciplines (disciplinary psychology in particular) are powerful practices or technologies of the self that, in Western societies, have shaped our experience of ourselves as free, self-governing, self-powering, and self-realized individuals. It is argued that psychological conceptions, categories, and practices of selfhood have contributed to the development of students as radically autonomous individuals more attuned to their own self-interest than to responsible community participation.Less

Introduction

David Bevington

in Murder Most Foul: Hamlet Through the Ages

This chapter provides an introduction to Hamlet's history — its critical history, performance history, in film, in television, publishing, and history.

History, Cosmos, Mind, and (Not Quite) Everything

Will D. Desmond

in Hegel's Antiquity

Hegel’s Lectures on the Philosophy of History explore the legacies of ancient history and historiography, at the levels of both theory and empirical detail. Their threefold typology of histories into ... More

Hegel’s Lectures on the Philosophy of History explore the legacies of ancient history and historiography, at the levels of both theory and empirical detail. Their threefold typology of histories into ‘original’, ‘reflective’, and ‘philosophical’ constitutes a concise argument that history has and must, in the course of its development, become theoretical, and that therefore history and philosophy have essentially converged in the modern era—not least in Hegel’s own deeply historical style of thinking. With their vision of a Spirit that develops through four essential stages of the ‘Oriental’, Greek, Roman and ‘Germanic’ worlds, these lectures reveal that, for Hegel, the middle (Greek and Roman) stages are pivotal to the story of progressive human freedom and self-knowledge. The Mediterranean as the ‘middle sea’ (Mittelmeer) is a central historical fact and metaphor for Hegel (long before Braudel), and it was as peoples of the Mediterranean that his Greeks and Romans proved so historically significant—the Greeks with their humanistic art, anthropomorphic religion, philosophical depth, and ‘invention’ of history as a genre; the Romans with their law, inclusive citizenship, universal histories, inclusive empire and pantheon, and ultimately Christianity. This narrative is, in many respects, simply Hegel’s systematization of a long-held consensus. It also looks forward to the even grander narratives of global and ‘big history’, which temporalize the notion of ‘evolution’ and extend it from (human) ‘Spirit’ to all of nature. If so, this serves as a reminder that many facets of Hegel’s antiquity have been revived in new, unexpected forms.Less

Finding Critical History

Joan Wallach Scott

in Becoming Historians

This chapter presents historian Joan Wallach Scott's memoirs, which trace how she became interested in critical history. Scott was not very much interested as a young student, but it was inevitable ... More

This chapter presents historian Joan Wallach Scott's memoirs, which trace how she became interested in critical history. Scott was not very much interested as a young student, but it was inevitable for her to become a historian because her parents were high school history teachers; their love and passion for history nurtured hers. Scott's latest project is a book on academic freedom; a history of the concept in the United States and an analysis of its applications.Less

How the Qur’an Has Been Read So Far: A Sketch of Research

Angelika Neuwirth

in The Qur'an and Late Antiquity: A Shared Heritage

A sketch of the previous research on the Qur’an is provided in detail. The overview of approaches and results in Western research goes back to the nineteenth century, following the story of Qur’an ... More

A sketch of the previous research on the Qur’an is provided in detail. The overview of approaches and results in Western research goes back to the nineteenth century, following the story of Qur’an research first up to the Wissenschaft des Judentums (science of Judaism) school of the early twentieth century. Following this, more recent trends in Qur’an research, including the more source-critical and skeptical methods of recent decades, are described. Finally, a sketch of the diversity of current approaches is given, situating the approach of this volume within its relevant scholarly context.Less

Thinking Geologically after Nietzsche

David Wood

in Deep Time, Dark Times: On Being Geologically Human

Being geologically human is the name of a question: what could it mean to understand ourselves as the products of historical, evolutionary, and geological processes? A lot hangs on how we take up the ... More

Being geologically human is the name of a question: what could it mean to understand ourselves as the products of historical, evolutionary, and geological processes? A lot hangs on how we take up the past, who “we” take ourselves to be, and how expansive a view we have of the past. The geological takes this question to the limit. Nietzsche’s essay The Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life was provoked by his sense that a surfeit of historical knowledge could crush the human spirit. Its failures would weigh upon us like coffins returned from the war zone. If things looked bad then, how much worse they are now! Continued enthusiasm for life depends on a certain capacity for active forgetting. We can and must learn from history in various ways—monumental (drawing inspiration), antiquarian (preserving continuity), and critical history (reflective engagement). Each relation to the past is essential, but taken separately can get out of control. Faced with apocalypse, this chapter argues for privileging critical history, and for extending beyond the human the purview of Nietzsche’s reference to Life.Less

The Different Faces of History in Postindustrial Landscapes

Jozef Keulartz

in Restoring Layered Landscapes: History, Ecology, and Culture

In order to highlight the role and significance of human history in restoring layered landscapes where natural and human histories are closely intertwined this chapter makes use of Friedrich ... More

In order to highlight the role and significance of human history in restoring layered landscapes where natural and human histories are closely intertwined this chapter makes use of Friedrich Nietzsche’s essay, “On the Use and Abuse of History for Life,” in which he distinguishes three different forms of history: antiquarian, monumental, and critical history. The chapter provides an overview of this triad of forms of history and applies them to different forms of design and management of postindustrial landscapes, using examples from England, Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands, and the United States.Less

Introduction: Sentencing Orlando

Elsa Högberg and Amy Bromley

in Sentencing Orlando: Virginia Woolf and the Morphology of the Modernist Sentence

The introduction advocates for a focus on individual sentences as a fruitful way to read Woolf. It contextualises this approach by outlining the critical history of Orlando, and discusses Woolf’s ... More

The introduction advocates for a focus on individual sentences as a fruitful way to read Woolf. It contextualises this approach by outlining the critical history of Orlando, and discusses Woolf’s theorising of the literary sentence in A Room of One’s Own, where Woolf’s emphasis on shape and form converges with her discussion of a gender and genre politics of the sentence. The introduction makes claims for Orlando as enacting this politics aesthetically, and therefore as especially suited for a study of the form and structure (morphology) of its sentences in the wider context of modernist aesthetics. It attends to the legal and discursive meanings of the word sentence, as a way into Orlando’s subversive treatment of reading practices, censorship, sexuality, gender and race – all of which are examined in this volume. The introduction also considers the stakes involved in reading Woolf alongside the new aestheticist critical practices currently shaping the field of modernist studies, delineating thereby the volume’s aim to open up further avenues for exploring a morphology of the modernist sentence.Less

War and the Republic

Stéphane Audoin-Rouzeau

in The French Republic: History, Values, Debates

This chapter discusses the influences of war on the French Republic. It argues that the Republic originated in war, which then shaped the representations and practices of the res publica. In ... More

This chapter discusses the influences of war on the French Republic. It argues that the Republic originated in war, which then shaped the representations and practices of the res publica. In particular, World War I had revived the century-old tradition of the embattled Republic, while casting an immense shadow on the nascent century. The chapter argues that the pacifism of the 1920s and 1930s and the Resistance of the 1940s were thus consequences of World War I and its memory, which was as much republican as it was national. The “Great War” is therefore particularly deserving of a place in a critical history of the Republic and of France.Less

Introduction: Beastmode

Derek J. Thiess

in Sport and Monstrosity in Science Fiction

The introduction presents the central thesis of the text that there is an important connection between the study of science fiction and that of sport. No unlike the marginalization of science fiction ... More

The introduction presents the central thesis of the text that there is an important connection between the study of science fiction and that of sport. No unlike the marginalization of science fiction itself, sport and athleticism have historically been viewed with suspicion and derision and the athlete (and their body) afforded a fear akin to that which we reserve for the most frightening monsters. Science fiction is a genre well suited to studying the monster and, while criticism on the topic is lacking, has a long history of highlighting the embodied exclusion of the athlete. These connections are mapped here, a methodology for the book laid out, and chapter synopses provided.Less