Politics and Modernity provides a critical review of the key interface of contemporary political theory and social theory about the questions of modernity and postmodernity. Review essays offer a broad-ranging assessment of the issues at stake in current debates. Among the works reviewed are those of William Connolly, Anthony Giddens, J[um]urgen Habermas, Alasdair MacIntyre, Richard Rorty, Charles Taylor and Roy Bhaskar. As well as reviewing the contemporary literature, the contributors assess the historical roots of current problems in the works of (...) Nietzsche and Max Weber. (shrink)

Emmanuel Levinas's Totality and Infinity is explicitly con cerned with the suppression of the voice of the Other by the synoptic totalizations of the voice of western philosophy. Levinas contests this emergence of Being and the systems of totality it indicates with the irruption of the face of the other, which signifies through contact and sensibility the presence of infinity within the human situation. Derrida's reading of this fundamental testing of western ontology rests on the accusation that western philosophy (...) already has a term for this: empiricism. That is, Derrida exposes an alien voice within Levinas's exposure of the voice alienated from ontological formulations. In the later Otherwise than Being or Beyond Essence Levinas implic itly recognizes the truth of Derrida's demonstration of a residual con ceptualism, and shifts from the thematization of infinite exteriority given by the Other, alterity and the face-to-face relation, to the search for a signifyingness that will breach the noema's identificational closure, that is, to the direct and exposed gesture of saying. Both the limit terms of Totality and Infinity and the response they produced in Derrida have become the starting-point of Otherwise than Being or Beyond Essence: the testimony that is irreducible to a thematizing knowledge. What saves this saying from becoming in its turn another theme is that, in addition to its acting in the text, it acts upon and as HISTORY OF THE HUMAN SCIENCES Vol. 10 No. 3 © 1997 SAGE Publications [0952-695110:3] the text. The vocabulary, form of composition and mode of address of Otherwise than Being or Beyond Essence strain against their inherited limits. And the work this obliges the reader to undergo is, of course, an ethical necessity, given the work's message. (shrink)

"In this concluding volume of his impressive study of the history of Western thought about the nature of love, Irving Singer reviews the principal efforts that have been made by 20th-Century thinkers to analyze the phenomenon of love.... [T]he bulk of the book is taken up with critical accounts of the modern thinkers who have systematically called into question the possibility itself of love as a union of distinct human selves. For the most part, these critiques are (...) effectively executed, and they bring a high level of critical acumen to bear on skeptical theses about love that are now too often accepted as truisms."—Frederick A. Olafson, _Los Angeles Times Book Review_ "Irving Singer... has developed a method of historical analysis flexible enough to deal with all kinds of love, from Greek homosexual love in Plato, to the _philia_ and _agape_ of the New Testament, to the courtly love of medieval romance, to the Romantics, for whom love was magic.... [This] final volume brings us to the present. In 'The Modern World,' Singer offers readings of Freud, Proust, and Sartre, among others. He shows how their work was formed in reaction to the 19th-century ideal of 'merging' of the identities of lover and beloved. More often than not, the great modern writers portray love as impossible, as a field of failure and regret.... This masterpiece of critical thinking is a timely, eloquent, and scrupulous account of what, after all, still makes the world go round."—Thomas D'Evelyn, _Christian Science Monitor_ "This is the third of a three-volume history of the philosophy of love. It begins with Kierkegaard, Tolstoy, and Nietzsche in the nineteenth century and treats Freud, Proust, Bergson, D. H. Lawrence, G. B. Shaw, Santayana, Sartre, and others in the twentieth. Although the author's approach is primarily historical, he intersperses critical remarks throughout. Most of the major themes which are discussed by philosophers of love make their way into this history, including friendship, sexual love, and the distinction between love that is based on the value of the beloved and love that bestows value on the beloved. Singer devotes a number of pages to his own views on falling in love, being in love, and staying in love.... Singer's exposition is lucid and organized; his criticisms are insightful."—_Ethics_ "In this third volume of historical overview of the development of the Western conception of love, Singer uses writers, philosophers, and psychologists to provide the reader with an overview of love in the late 19th and 20th century.... Analyzing authors such as Tolstoy, Proust, D. H. Lawrence, and Shaw and philosophers such as Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Sartre, and Santayana, as well as Freud, Singer... links each contributor's thoughts to the influence of previous writers and also provides some psycho-historical insight into their personal lives that might have been either a source or direct result of their views. In this final volume, Singer proceeds to look at not just the 'great men' influence but also provides a chapter overviewing scientific contributions to our understanding of love.... Singer's work is a significant contribution to understanding the social construction of important, abstract social and personal values. By tracing love through different historical periods through a variety of voices, Singer has created a rich history of the struggle between the ideal and the real, between the dreams of what love should provide and the reality of what relationships have been in each historical period. By personalizing the voice through psychohistorical analysis, Singer also provides insight into the shaping of ideas through the intimate struggles of the shapers."—Mark V. Chaffee, _Contemporary Psychology_. (shrink)

This section presents the four opening papers given at the conference 'Science's Social Standing', held at the University of Durham on 2-4 December 1994.

Introducing a special section of four papers to be presented at the Conference 'Constructing the Social', which will be held at the University of Durham on 7-8 April 1994.

This article is concerned with the relationship between British colonization and the intellectual underpinnings of natural history writing between the 17th and the early 19th centuries. During this period, I argue, a significant discursive shift reframed both natural history and the concept of humanity. In the early modern period, compiling natural histories was often conceived as an endeavour to understand God’s creation. Many of the natural historians involved in the early Royal Society of London were driven by a (...) theological conviction that the New World contained the natural knowledge once possessed by Adam, but lost in the Fall from Eden. By the early 19th century, however, this theological framework for natural history had been superseded by an avowedly progressive vision of the relationship between humanity and nature. No longer ontologically distinct from the rest of creation, the human became a subject of natural history writing in a new way. Encounters between colonizers and colonized thus became a touchstone for tensions between divine and natural historical knowledge. The resolution of these tensions lay in the emergence of a concept of savagery that imbibed both a rational account of historical progress towards civilization and a religious conviction that savage humanity needed rescue from its animal nature. (shrink)

Indeed, this is the first serious book-length study of the subject by a philosopher of science.

A comprehensive history of the human sciences -- psychology, sociology, anthropology, economics, and political science -- from their precursors in early human culture to the present.This erudite yet accessible volume in Norton's highly praised History of Science series tracks the long and circuitous path by which human beings came to see themselves and their societies as scientific subjects like any other. Beginning with the Renaissance's rediscovery of Greek psychology, political philosophy, and ethics, Roger Smith (...) recounts how the human sciences gradually organized themselves around a scientific conception of psychology, and how this trend has continued to the present day in a circle of interactions between science and ordinary life, in which the human sciences have influenced and been influenced by popular culture. (shrink)

The very juxtaposition of the terms “physical science” and “social sciences” in the same sentence is indicative of the definitive trend now present in both physical science and in the thinking of the physical scientist. The two fields of human interest represented by physical science and the social sciences have drawn closer together, have coalesced at least in those areas of implication deducible from the fields themselves and this conjunction is fraught with consequences important to both fields.

Inventing Human Science: Eighteenth Century Domains. Edited by Christopher Fox, Roy Porter, and Robert Wokler (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995) $45.00 and £24.00 cloth, xv + 357 pp.

This special issue is the product of a conference, The Future of the History of the Human Sciences, which was held at the University of York in April 2016. The meeting brought together scholars from a wide range of disciplinary backgrounds and at various stages of their careers to reflect on what were identified as major challenges and opportunities for the research that History of the Human Sciences publishes. The articles included here are a (...) sample of the responses that were generated and contain reflections on not only the boundaries of history of the human sciences research but also the methods used within the discipline. As this introduction explains, the overall aim of the conference was to explore these questions in order to think about both future directions for research and ways in which we can ensure the field remains dynamic and vital. (shrink)

This paper discusses the historical voice in the history of the human sci ences. I address the question, 'Who speaks?', as a question about disci plinary identities and conventions of writing - identities and conventions which have the appearance of conditions of knowledge, in an area of activity where academic history and the history of science or intellectual history meet. If, as this paper contends, the subject-matter of the history of the human (...) class='Hi'>sciences is inherently contestable because of fundamental differences about the subject, man, how is the field to be shaped as if it were a whole? The meta-narratives that once sustained synthetic writing, such as the teleological narratives of the emergence of a modern discipline or of progress towards truth, have lost authority. I ask whether the alternatives rely on 'wilful' authorial rhetoric, the use of the resources of language to sustain a narrative, the defence of which depends on intelligibility and inclusiveness, not detailed correspon dence to a supposedly independent past. If this is the case, an author's theoretical stance will inevitably be more out in the open - the author will have a 'theoretical voice' - than is common in most mainstream history writing. In the light of this, I reflect on my own effort to write a synthetic history of the human sciences. (shrink)

The Triumph of Life is Rabbi Irving Greenberg's magnum opus-a narrative of the relationship between God and humanity expressed in the Jewish journey through modernity, the Holocaust, the creation of Israel, and the birth of Judaism's next era.

This volume, modeled after those published in The Library of Living Philosophers, attempts to provide a coherent statement of the work of Abraham Edel in moral and political theory, and on the impact of his work on such diverse areas as education, law, and social science. The methodological element of Edel's work is to see ethical and social theory in the full context of human life; specifically how twentieth-century modes of analysis impact classical concerns about right and wrong, good (...) and evil. The volume is tightly integrated from start to finish, and has the benefit of Edel's thoughtful and thoroughgoing response to critics. In short, while this work is a tribute to the work of a scholar, it aims to serve as a basic guide through the labyrinthian world of contemporary ethical theory and social practice. Contents: Beryl Harold Levy, "Reflective Culture as Philosophy of Law"; Betty A. Sichel, "Abraham Edel's Contribution to Philosophy of Education"; Gerald E. Myers, "Person and Personality--and Respect for Both"; Mihailo Markovic, "Abraham Edel on the Method of Ethical Theory"; Helen Block Lewis, "Consequences for Ethical Theory of a Focus on the Psychology of Shame and Guilt"; Edmund L. Pincoffs, "Ethics as an Explanatory Undertaking"; Standish Thayer, "The Network of Concepts: A New View of Aristotle"; Mortimer R. Kadish, "Abraham Edel and the Dream of Science"; Michael Levin, "Reflections on Non-Cognitivism"; Ralph W. Sleeper, "Naturalizing Legal Positivism"; Irving Louis Horowitz, "The Political Philosophy of Abraham Edel"; Finbarr W. O'Connor, "Network Analysis in Ethics"; Elizabeth Flower, "A Moral Agenda for Ethical Theory"; Abraham Edel, "Responses to Critics"; "An Edel Bibliography.". (shrink)

With a new preface by the authorIn his widely acclaimed trilogy The Nature of Love, Irving Singer traced the development of the concept of love in history and literature from the Greeks to the twentieth century. In this second volume of his Meaning in Life trilogy, Singer returns to the subject of his earlier work, exploring a different approach. Without denying his previous emphasis on the role of imagination and creativity, in this book Singer investigates the ability of (...) them both to make one's life meaningful. A "systematic mapping" of the various facets of love, The Pursuit of Love is an extended essay that offers Singer's own philosophical and psychological theory of love. Rich in insight into literature, the history of ideas, and the complexities of our being, The Pursuit of Love is a thought-provoking inquiry into fundamental aspects of all human relationships.Irving Singer Library. (shrink)

My basic argument is that a computer cannot distinguish between metaphor and nonsense. This would be my new “Turing Test.” I was very fond of a particular Italian poem, but I was told by an Italian friend that it was a hackneyed poem of little worth. I then taught myself to experience the poem alternately, as real poetry and as the silly nonsense that my friend claimed it really was. Having done so, I realized that I could do the same (...) with any metaphor, such as “having a green thumb.” Thinking about the nature of this switch, from the literal to the metaphorical, I also realized that it was the sort of change that could not be prescribed or even described: this, the basic aesthetic gesture, remains beyond the boundary of logical definition. It then dawned on me that it might provide a test for the validity of a “Turing Test,” by any definition. Can a computer track a mind as it goes through this transformation? I could not envisage such a possibility. This would be a “Turing Test” based on the discipline of aesthetics rather than on technology. It may even be argued that the ability to experience metaphor is the very definition of the human. (shrink)

The name of the Genevan critic Jean Starobinski will most likely evoke masterful\nreadings of Rousseau and Montaigne, or insightful reconstructions of the world\nof the Enlightenment. With the possible exception of the history of melancholy,\nmuch more rarely will it be associated with the history of psychology and\npsychiatry. A small number of the critic’s contributions to this field have\nappeared in some of his books. Most of them, however, remain scattered, and\nnothing suggests that they are known as widely as they deserve.\nStarobinski’s (...) work in the history of psychology, psychiatry and psychoanalysis\nis exemplary in its perspective of the problematic relations between\npsychological concepts and experiences, and between medical thought and the\nlarger culture. (shrink)

In this philosophical exploration of creativity, Irving Singer describes the many different types of creativity and their varied manifestations within and across all the arts and sciences. Singer's approach is pluralistic rather than abstract or dogmatic. His reflections amplify recent discoveries in cognitive science and neurobiology by aligning them with the aesthetic, affective, and phenomenological framework of experience and behavior that characterizes the human quest for meaning. Creativity has long fascinated Singer, and in Modes of Creativity he (...) carries forward investigations begun in earlier works. Marshaling a wealth of examples and anecdotes ranging from antiquity to the present, about persons as diverse as Albert Einstein and Sherlock Holmes, Singer describes the interactions of the creative and the imaginative, the inventive, the novel, and the original. He maintains that our preoccupation with creativity devolves from biological, psychological, and social bases of our material being; that creativity is not limited to any single aspect of human existence but rather inheres not only in art and the aesthetic but also in science, technology, moral practice, as well as ordinary daily experience. (shrink)

A generation or more ago, as the Cold War flourished, the continental European\nscholars whom I met seemed odd to me. They were, virtually without\nexception, totally preoccupied with whether their scholarship harmonized\nwith Marxism or refuted Marxism. This focus cut across disciplinary lines.\nIndeed, a basic assumption united these colleagues: the scholars’ world,\nwhether Karl Marx or Max Weber, consisted of centralized bureaucracies\nsuitable for socialism or at least for orderly organization.\nNorth American scholars shared with the Europeans, not the preoccupation\nwith Marxism, but the idea that (...) centralized bureaucracies made up the\ninteresting world. In such a world, the human sciences were disciplines, and,\ncontrary to Michel Foucault, the discipline was applied to the scholar. The\nscholar was expected to search for empirical evidence and to interpret the evidence\nas objectively as was humanly possible. The human science disciplines\nhad identifiable functional structures, and most scholars (perhaps excepting\nsome anthropologists) tended to be structural functionalists. (shrink)

This collection presents a sort of counter-history or counter-genealogy of the globalization of French thought from the point of view of scholars working in the UK. While the dominating discourse would attribute the US as the source of that globalization, particularly through the 1966 conference on the Languages of Criticism and the Sciences of Man at Johns Hopkins University, this volume of essays serves as a reminder that the UK has also been a principal motor of that globalization. (...) The essays take into account how French thought and literary theory have institutionally taken shape in the UK from the 70s to today, highlight aspects of French thought that have been of particular pertinence or importance for scholars there, and outline how researchers in the UK today are bringing French thought further in terms of teaching and research in this twenty-first century. In short, this volume traces how the country has been behind the reception and development of French thought in Anglophone worlds from the late 70s to the present. (shrink)

Philologus, founded in 1846, is one of the oldest and most respected periodicals in the field of Classics. It publishes articles on Greek and Latin literature, historiography, philosophy, history of religion, linguistics, reception, and the history of scholarship. The journal aims to contribute to our understanding of Greco-Roman culture and its lasting influence on European civilization. The journal Philologus, conceived as a forum for discussion among different methodological approaches to the study of ancient texts and their reception, publishes (...) original scholarly contributions with a strong international focus. Publications languages are: German, English, Italian, French. As of 2014 the publication of supplementary volumes will be resumed. The series Philologus. Supplemente / Philologus. Supplementary Volumes will publish monographs and edited volumes pertaining to all aspects of the study of ancient literature and its reception, with a special focus on topics concerning literary theory, philosophy and the history of scholarship from an interdisciplinary perspective. (shrink)

Weber always judged political events on the basis of one thing to which he clung all his life: Intellectual freedom was to him the greatest good, and under no circumstances was he prepared to consider even interests of political power as more important and attainable for the individual. Not for reasons of expediency, but only in the name of conscience does a man have the right to oppose the conscientiously held different beliefs of others. Marianne Weber1 It was perhaps never (...) before in history made so easy for any nation to become a great civilized power as for the American people. Yet, according to human celebration, it is also the last time, as long as the history of mankind shall last, that such conditions for a free and great development will be given; the areas of free soil are now vanishing everywhere in the world. Max Weber. (shrink)

Professor Chisholm’s lively “Reflections on Human Agency” develop themes which have appeared in at least nine earlier papers of his on action and the kindred topic of events. His latest variations on the Incompatibility thesis will be my sole concern here. This is the doctrine that fully voluntary deeds of a free agent, for which we may justifiably hold him accountable, cannot result from earlier or contemporaneous events. Chisholm’s general Incompatibility formula reads.

In practice, scientists must convey data in a “representational style”. Various authors seek to explain the epistemic role of scientific visual representation in terms of formal conventions. Goodman also tends to dismiss the epistemic relevance of human cognition. My position is that visual conventions are nonarbitrary, in that they play to scientists’ cognitive abilities and limitations. My account draws on Perini's formal analysis, scientific case studies, and empirical literature on global pattern detection in neurotypicals, autistics, and dyslexics.

The traditional attitude of philosophers towards the analysis of language is that it may have some corrective value, but can make no positive contribution to philosophy. The world must be investigated in itself: an analysis of the language in which we describe it will perhaps give us greater insight into the description, but not into what is described. Many philosophers have been suspicious of language, considering it a hindrance rather than an aid in philosophical investigation. This tradition has a long (...) history, some of whose high points we can mention briefly. (shrink)

The traditional attitude of philosophers towards the analysis of language is that it may have some corrective value, but can make no positive contribution to philosophy. The world must be investigated in itself: an analysis of the language in which we describe it will perhaps give us greater insight into the description, but not into what is described. Many philosophers have been suspicious of language, considering it a hindrance rather than an aid in philosophical investigation. This tradition has a long (...) history, some of whose high points we can mention briefly. (shrink)

The historic task of Leibniz was to furnish a philosophy of personality, and at the same time, and in harmony with it, a general interpretation of the physical world. He conceives therefore of a plurality of Real Beings which in their most developed form he proposes to call individuals, defining individuality in terms of unique experience. Further, he finds the monads, or so-called metaphysical points, to be centres of life, held together by their own inner or intensive force and therefore (...) impenetrable. Consequently, when we enquire whether the Real Beings are parts of the universe, we find that since the universe is the aggregate of monadic forces, all Real Being is finite, and so in order to deal with the problem of Theism we have to reconcile the concept of divine personality with what we may define as personality in the case of human beings. (shrink)

I reconstruct my own journey into the history of the human sciences, which I show to have been a process of discovering the metaphysical standing of the human. I begin with Alexandre Koyré’s encounter with Edmund Husserl in the 1930s, which I use to throw light on the legacy of Kant’s ‘anthropological’ understanding of the human, which dominated and limited 19th-century science. As I show, those who broke from Kant’s strictures and set the stage for (...) the 20th-century revolutions in science - from Hegel, to John McTaggart, to Max Weber - typically were pursuing crypto-theological questions about how a finite being can comprehend an infinite universe. This journey is about the ‘common measure’ of being human, which is what links Plato to Kuhn, but has been most consistently taken up by law. I suggest that in seeking this ‘measure of man’, we may discover that to be human is not necessarily to be Homo sapiens, which would suggest a radical reorientation of the history of the human sciences. (shrink)