Jacob Katz, Tradition and Crisis: Jewish Society at the End of the Middle Ages , in Hebrew, Jerusalem, .1953, pp. 310. English translation, 1961.

The aim of this paper is to analyze the political development of the Belarusian society in the years 1986–2006 in order to answer the following questions: (i) what was the impact of support the nomenclature of the Belarusian Communist Party gave to the Belarusian independence after August 1991 on the process of decrease in power regulation (or in other words – democratization), (ii) why initial period of decrease in power regulation was replaced by its growth and (iii) why this growth (...) of power regulation did not encounter efficient civil reaction like in the neighbouring republics (ex. Ukraine). Finally, I would like to consider further political development in Belarus, especially the perspective of civil revolutions. Presented analysis will not be a chronicler’s presentation of facts from the current history of this country but will be based on a social theory – non–Marxian historical materialism, which will serve as a basis for answering these questions and considering posed problems. (shrink)

The book reveals different dimensions of modeling in the historical sciences. Papers collected in the first part (Ontology of the Historical Process) consider different models of historical reality and discuss their status. The second part (Modeling in the Methodology of History) presents various forms of idealization in historiographic research. The papers in the third part (Modeling in the Research Practice) present various models of past reality (e.g. of Poland, Central Europe and the general history of the feudal system) put forward (...) by historians. Other papers consider the status of scientific laws and historical generalizations. The volume will be of interest to those who study analytical philosophy of history, methodology of history and social sciences, social philosophy as well as theory and history of historiography. (shrink)

The author interprets the emergence of the manorial-serf economy in Central Europe on the basis of the concept of the cascadeness of historical process. The course of development in the XVIth century Central Europe relied on many insignificant factors which their joint influence gradually outweighed the impact of developmental regularities according to which societies in Central and Western Europe evolved from the XIth to circa the XVIth centuries. Factors that appear in the cascade of European differentiation are divided by the (...) author into its core, i.e., a set of factors which operated in each of the societies under study, i.e., Polish, Bohemian and Hungarian societies, and specific factors responsible for the development of each of those Central European societies. (shrink)

This paper is critical analysis of book by Anna Sosnowska, "Zrozumieć zacofanie. Spory historyków o Europę Wschodnią (1947-1994)" [To Understand Backwardness: Historians' Deabates about Eastern Europe (1947-1994)]. Warszawa 2004.

The aim of this paper is to analyze the beginnings and growth of civil movements in the Baltic republics in years 1985-1991, which led to their state independence. Proces of liberation of Baltic societies will be analyzed according to the following criteria: size and range of the civil movement and forms of its institutionalization (i), political concession made by republican authorities (ii) and level of control over the republican structure of power exercised by the civil movements (iii). Finally, I will (...) try to consider why evolution of the Baltic societies resulted in building of the stable democracies, whereas these same efforts are still unsuccesful in Belarus and were unsuccesful in Ukraine. This analysis will not be a chronicle's presentation of events from current history of the Baltic states but will be based on a coherent theoretical framework achieved by employing models and conceptual apparatus of non-Marxian historical materialism. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to consider the standard objections put against the construction of metanarratives in the philosophy of history. The author distinguishes following intelectual sources questioning the grasp of Entirety in the philosophy of history: anti-naturalistic German philosophy of science, dogmatic Marxism, liberalism and postmodernism. Analysis of the content of these stances allows for disclose of hidden methodological and theoretical premises which are responsible for misunderstanding and critique of the historiosophical discourse.

The paper conceptualizes five basic developmental paths the post-Soviet republics followed. The conceptual framework of this paper is expanded theory of real socialism in non-Marxian historical materialism, namely proposed the model of secession from socialist empire. The first developmental path was followed by societies in which an independent civil revolution took place. This path of development bifurcates into two furhter sub-variants. Namely civil revolutions in the Baltic republics (Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia) resulted in the independence and stable democracies. Civil revolution in (...) Caucasus republics (Armenia, Gergia) were partially succesfull because civil movement in these societies were unable to build stable democracies. Countries such as Azerbaijan, Belarus, Moldova and Ukraine followed next developmental path. Its characteristic feauture is active participation of republican communist nomenclatures in seceding from the Soviet Union and gaining state independence. In this variant of development, democratization - characteristic for the first period of independence was counterbalanced by the growing autocratization of political system. This path of development was divided into two developmental variants: in one group of countries (Ukraine) the growth of autocratization caused civil resistance (Ukraine), in the rest societies of this group (Azerbaijan, Belarus, Moldova) - not. Finally the countries of Central Asia (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan) followed the fith developmental path. In these societies, independence permitted to preserve dictatorship of local communist nomenclatures. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to present political development of the Ukrainian society in years 1991-2004 in the light of conceptual apparatus of non-Marxian historical materialism.

The aim of this paper is analyse the notion of Central Europe used in historiography. The author reconstructs different meanings of this term used in the works of George Schopflin, Peter Burke, Oskar Halecki, Piotr Wandycz. This notion has not only geographic but also social and historical meaning.

This paper aims to analyze the social structure of the society in Teutonic state (1226-1525), which was distinct from structure of estate societies. The author put hypothesis that Teutonic Knight monopolised in their state political, economical and spiritual power. In the light of this thesis certain trends from history of the state of Teutonic Order are explained.

The volume addresses a problem rarely discussed by philosophers - the question of provincialism in science (in the broadest sense of the term). There are only a few great centers of science, which attract funding and provide almost ideal opportunities for research and development. They also attract some of the best researchers. Some - but not all. For a variety of reasons, some of the best researchers, or ones who have that potential, may do science outside these centers, in the (...) provinces. The volume is devoted to the problems they face. What is an intellectual province? Who are the provincial thinkers? What is the mark of provincialism? Do provincial (or central) thinkers have any special duties? Are there ways of overcoming one's own provincialism? The authors address these questions across different disciplines, cultures, locations and time periods. -/- . (shrink)

I argue that, despite recent attempts, the strong program in the sociology of knowledge cannot be applied as a general method of inquiry in the history of ideas. My main point is that its methodological commitments only allow the strong program to be fruitful in those fields of knowledge whose content can be given by truth conditions. But even in these fields sociological questions can be asked that are not sensitive to truth conditional content. In these cases, as I argue, (...) a hermeneutic method is more promising. (shrink)

Finally, he looks at,the various kinds of unity of the body, both in itself and in its union with the soul.Spirits and Clocks continues Des Chene's highly ...

There are so many myths about the Middle Ages, it has to be suspected that the general level of "knowledge" about things medieval is actually negative. Here are some of the more famous ones.

The large Eastern European migration program to Australia in the late 1940s was driven not only by Australia's need for migrants, but by Catholic views on the rights of refugees and an international Cold War plan to resettle the million people who had fled the Red Army.

Reviews Lewis's account of the low interest Islamic culture has generally shown about other cultures, and suggests that Islamic openness caused by military weakness may be imitated by the Soviet Union.

THE HISTORY OF IDEAS is full of more tall stories than most other departments of history. Here are three which manage to combine initial implausibility with impregnability to refutation: that in the Middle Ages it was believed that the world was flat; that medieval philosophers debated as to how many angels could dance on the head of a pin; that Galileo revolutionised physics by dropping weights from the Leaning Tower of Pisa. None of these stories is true, and no competent (...) historian has asserted any of them, but none shows any sign of disappearing from the public consciousness. (shrink)

In a recent broadcast talk it was said that philosophers commonly base arguments and theories on garbled versions of science. Professor Passmore's article in the April number of Philosophy seems to go some way to justifying this complaint. The article discusses the objectivity of history by a series of comparisons with science under various heads representing criteria of objectivity.

The paper explores the question of the relationship between the practice of original philosophical inquiry and the study of the history of philosophy. It is written from my point of view as someone starting a research project in the history of philosophy that calls this issue into question, in order to review my starting positions. I argue: first, that any philosopher is sufficiently embedded in culture that her practice is necessarily historical; second, that original work is in fact in part (...) a reconstruction by reinterpretation of the past and that therefore it bears some relation to historiographic techniques for the restoration of damaged objects and texts; and third that the special oddities of the relations of present and past do not fail to ensnare the philosopher, who must restore the past but freely break from it. I describe this relationship as proleptic. Finally, I argue that this is a moral imperative in writing philosophy, derived from the imperative to be honest. (shrink)

The present monograph considers some macrohistorical trends along with the aspects of globalization. Macrohistory is history on the large scale that tells the story of the entire world or of some major dimensions of historical process. For the present study three aspects of macrohistory have been chosen. These are technological and political aspects, as well as the one of historical personality. Taken together they give a definite picture of unfolding historical process which is described from the beginning of human society (...) formation to the present day and near future. The combination in the monograph title of the two terms – macrohistory and globalization – is in no way artificial. On the contrary, the connection of these terms is organic at least as the real goal of macrohistory is to find mean-ing in the past so as to create new possibilities of meaning for the future. The analysis of globalization also includes three aspects: political, economic and futurological as today the world may well be regarded as being at the start of a new global reconfiguration. The author presents his ideas of the world prospective political and in some respects social-economic development basing on the analysis of macrohistory and contemporary globalization processes. The monograph also considers some global scenarios of the World System's near future. (shrink)

In the theory of the early state it was fundamentally new and important from a methodological point of view to define the early state as a separate stage of evolution essentially different from the following stage, the one of the full-grown or mature state. ‘To reach the early state level is one thing, to develop into a full-blown, or mature state is quite another’ (Claessen and Skalník 1978b: 22). At the same time they (as well as a number of other (...) authors) indicated quite soundly that not all early states were able to become and actually became mature ones (see e.g., Claessen and Skalník 1978a; Claessen and van de Velde 1987b; Shifferd 1987). Thus there was formed exactly an evolutionary sequence of statehood in the form of a two-stage scheme: the early state – the mature state. And that explained a lot in the mechanisms and directions of the political evolution. However, the former of these two stages of the evolution of statehood (the early state) has been studied rather thoroughly, whereas the latter (the mature state) has not become the subject of a similarly close examination. Unfortunately, the analysis of the mature state has been little advanced in those several contributions to the subsequent volumes of the Early State project (further referred to as Project) where the subject was touched upon. In the present paper after a brief analysis of the Project participants' views on the mature state I will present my own approach to the distinction of the stages of the evolution of statehood which to my mind develops and supplements Claessen – Skalník's ideas on the subject. However, this has made it necessary to suggest new formulations of the main characteristics of each stage of the evolution of the state. (shrink)

There is no doubt that periodization is a rather effective method of data ordering and analysis, but it deals with exceptionally complex types of processual and temporal phenomena and thus it simplifies historical reality. Many scholars emphasize the great importance of periodization for the study of history. In fact, any periodization suffers from one-sidedness and certain deviations from reality. However, the number and significance of such deviations can be radically diminished as the effectiveness of periodization is directly connected with its (...) author's understanding of the rules and peculiarities of this methodological procedure. In this paper we would like to suggest a model of periodization of history based on our theory of historical process. We shall also demonstrate some possibilities of mathematical modeling for the problems concerning the macroperiodization of the world historical process. This analysis identifies a number of cycles within this process and suggests its generally hyperexponential shape, which makes it possible to propose a number of forecasts concerning the forthcoming decades. (shrink)

The article presents a verbal and mathematical model of medium-term business cycles (with a characteristic period of 7–11 years) known as Juglar cycles. The model takes into account a number of approaches to the analysis of such cycles; in the meantime it also takes into account some of the authors' own generalizations and additions that are important for understanding the internal logic of the cycle, its variability and its peculiarities in the present-time conditions. The authors argue that the most important (...) cause of cyclical crises stems from strong structural disproportions that develop during economic booms. These are not only disproportions between different economic sectors, but also disproportions between different societal subsystems; at present these are also disproportions within the World System as a whole. The proposed model of business cycle is based on its subdivision into four phases: – recovery phase (which could be subdivided into the start sub-phase and the acceleration sub-phase); – upswing/prosperity/expansion phase (which could be subdivided into the growth sub-phase and the boom/overheating sub-phase); – recession phase (within which one may single out the crash/bust/acute crisis subphase and the downswing sub-phase); – depression/stagnation phase (which we could subdivide into the stabilization subphase and the breakthrough sub-phase). The article provides a detailed qualitative description of macroeconomic dynamics at all the phases; it specifies driving forces of cyclical dynamics and the causes of transition from one phase to another (including psychological causes); a special attention is paid to the turning point from the peak of overheating to the acute crisis, as well as to the turning point from the downswing to recovery. The proposed mathematical model of Juglar cycle takes into account the following effects that are typical for the market economy: • positive feedbacks between various economic processes; • presence of a certain inertia, time lags in reactions of the economic subsystem to the change in conditions; • amplification by the financial subsystem of positive feedbacks and time lags in the economic subsystem; • excessive reaction to changing conditions during the acute crisis sub-phase. The authors suggest that the current crisis turns out to be rather similar to classical Juglar crises; however, there is also a significant difference, as the current crisis occurs at a truly global scale. Yet, due to this truly global scale of the current crisis, the possibilities of regulation with the national state's measures have turned out to be ineffective,whereas the suprastate regulation of financial processes hardly exists. It is shown that all these have led to the reproduction of the current crisis according to a classical Juglar scenario. (shrink)

I examine the consistency of Kant's notion of moral progress as found in his philosophy of history. To many commentators, Kant's very idea of moral development has seemed inconsistent with basic tenets of his critical philosophy. This idea has seemed incompatible with his claims that the moral law is unconditionally and universally valid, that moral agency is noumenal and atemporal, and that all humans are equally free. Against these charges, I argue not only that Kant's notion of moral development is (...) consistent, but also that the assumption of the possibility of moral progress is indispensible for Kant's moral theory. (shrink)

India has been known for its diverse cultures and communities. But in the contemporary economic and social setup where global cultural and economic ideologies dominate markets, media and every aspect of the social life, the paper asks if the notion of cultural diversity is intact in the contemporary India. Culture is certainly not static but what about diversity, is it transforming as well alongside as cultures around the world assimilate, as many argue? Does the profit driven market and media logic (...) nurture diversity? In investigating cultural diversity, the paper argues that diversity is in the process of mainstreamisation as a result of similarisation of consumption of products, meanings and messages resulting in the reduction and simplification of diversity, as one is becoming the simulation of the other. It concludes that Indian society is in rapid transition from a diverse society to a post-diverse society which presents us with both unprecedented challenges and possible opportunities. (shrink)

The paper has a twofold aim. On the one hand, it provides what appears to be the first game-theoretic modeling of Napoleon’s last campaign, which ended dramatically on 18 June 1815 at Waterloo. It is specifically concerned with the decision Napoleon made on 17 June 1815 to detach part of his army against the Prussians he had defeated, though not destroyed, on 16 June at Ligny. Military historians agree that this decision was crucial but disagree about whether it was rational. (...) Hypothesizing a zero-sum game between Napoleon and Blücher, and computing its solution, we show that it could have been a cautious strategy on the former's part to divide his army, a conclusion which runs counter to the charges of misjudgement commonly heard since Clausewitz. On the other hand, the paper addresses methodological issues. We defend its case study against the objections of irrelevance that have been raised elsewhere against “analytic narratives”, and conclude that military campaigns provide an opportunity for successful application of the formal theories of rational choice. Generalizing the argument, we finally investigate the conflict between narrative accounts – the historians' standard mode of expression – and mathematical modeling. (shrink)

Pacifists and their opponents disagree not only about moral questions, but most often about factual questions as well. For example, they came to divergent descriptions of the crisis in Kosovo. According to my reconstruction of pacifism, this is not a surprise because the pacifist, legitimately, looks at the facts in the light of her system of value. Her opponent, in turn, looks at the facts in the light of alternative systems of value, and the quarrel between the two parties about (...) supposedly descriptive matters does not come to an end as there is no objective reality about the war in question that could settle the issue. If I am right, the pacifist's value-laden way of looking at reality can be reconstructed as an obedience to three epistemic imperatives. First, the Epistemic Imperative concerning Human Nature ("Resist against demonizing the other side; always try to understand the case from their point of view"). Second, the Epistemic Imperative concerning Non-Violent Alternatives ("Always search for non-violent alternatives to projected military action"). Third, the Epistemic Imperative concerning Uncontrolled Escalation ("Sharpen your attention for uncontrolled, irreversible side effects of military action, particularly for the danger of escalation to another world war"). Objective reality does not decide how far one should go in following these imperatives. Rather, the decision about this is our's—similarly as in case of the scientist who decides to search for common deep structure behind the chaos of the manifold. So the pacifist's epistemic imperatives can be compared to Kant's regulative principles that are necessary for guiding the scientific scrutiny of reality. (shrink)

This is a book review of Karen Armstrong's "The Spiral Staircase", the autobiography of a historian of religion. -/- To cite this article: Newstead, Anne. Compassion, Not Belief [Book Review] [online]. Quadrant, Vol. 49, No. 6, June 2005: 88-89. Availability: <http://search.informit.com.au/documentSummary;dn=203690937218529;res=IELLCC> ISSN: 0033-5002. [cited 06 Dec 12].

“There's one thing certain,” said a historian of my acquaintance when he heard the title of this paper, “that's a problem which would never perturb a working-historian.” He was wrong: a working-historian first drew it to my attention; and in one form or another it raises its head whenever historians discuss the nature of their own inquiries. Yet in a way he was right. His mind had turned to the controversies of epistemologists, controversies about “the possibility of knowledge”; historians, he (...) rightly felt, do not trouble their-heads about such matters. (shrink)

Benjamin Franklin's social and political thought was shaped by contacts with and knowledge of ancient aboriginal traditions. Indeed, a strong case can be made that key features of the social structure eventually outlined in the United States Constitution arose not from European sources, and not full-grown from the foreheads of European-American "founding fathers", but from aboriginal sources, communicated to the authors of the Constitution to a significant extent through Franklin. A brief sketch of the main argument to this effect is (...) offered in this essay. (shrink)

This paper focuses on two conflations which frequently appear within the philosophy of history and other fields concerned with action explanation. The first of these, which I call the Conflating View of Reasons, states that the reasons for which we perform actions are reasons why (those events which are) our actions occur. The second, more general conflation, which I call the Conflating View of Action Explanation, states that whatever explains why an agent performed a certain action explains why (that event (...) which was) her action occurred. Both conflations ignore the fact that there are at least two distinct objects that legitimately qualify as objects of action explanation2. As Jennifer Hornsby (1993) has previous suggested, one thing we might wish to explain is ‘why did A do what she did?’ another is, ‘why did the event of her doing it occur?’ -/- I shall argue that when these two views are combined they give rise to a futile debate about explanation in the philosophies of history and the social sciences, and to an almost identical debate in moral psychology and the philosophy of mind. In so doing, I shall also examine a proposed distinction between explaining a phenomenon, and rendering it intelligible. I conclude by distinguishing between four different objects of historical understanding, each of which is to be understood in the light of the aforementioned distinctions between event and thing done, and explanation and intelligibility. (shrink)

This critical review of Aviezer Tucker's Our Knowledge of the Past: A Philosophy of Historiography examines the character, scope, and limits of scientific historiography, the overall topic of Tucker's book. The review begins by arguing that the book both unwittingly juggles two criteria for scientific, as opposed to nonscientific, historiography - the production of knowledge and Kuhnian disciplinary matrices - and wrongly construes the subject matter of such historiography to be present evidence for the past as opposed to this evidence (...) in addition to the past itself. There ensues a lengthy discussion of the role of theories in scientific historiography that (1) contests Tucker's thesis that theories of information transmission and grand social theories are central to the enterprise, (2) criticizes his failure to distinguish technical from theoretical terms, and (3) claims that scholarly historiography is more of an art than a science. The review concludes by arguing that scientific historiography as Tucker conceives of it cannot meet the many needs society has vis- -vis the past. (shrink)

Stimulating and thought-provoking," A Brief History of Liberty" offers readers a philosophically-informed portrait of the elusive nature of one of our most ...

In this article, I seek to make sense of the oft-invoked idea of 'public emergency' and of some of its (supposedly) radical moral implications. I challenge controversial claims by Tom Sorell, Michael Walzer, and Giorgio Agamben, and argue for a more discriminating understanding of the category and its moral force.

Encyclopedia entry on the Confucian philosopher Dai Zhen 戴震 (1724-1777).

Abstract Recently, some philosophers of psychiatry (viz., Rachel Cooper and Dominic Murphy) have analyzed the issue of psychiatric classification. This paper expands upon these analyses and seeks to demonstrate that a consideration of the history of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) can provide a rich and informative philosophical perspective for critically examining the issue of psychiatric classification. This case is intended to demonstrate the importance of history for philosophy of psychiatry, and more generally, the potential benefits (...) of historically-informed approaches to philosophy of science. (shrink)