This book contains programmatic essays that focus on broad-ranging proposals for re-envisioning a discipline of comparative philosophy of religions. It also contains a number of case studies focussing on the interpretation of particular religio-historical data from comparatively oriented philosophical perspectives.

In A Historical Study of Anselm's Proslogion, Toivo J. Holopainen offers a new overall interpretation of Anselm's Proslogion by providing a historical explanation for the distinctive combination of argument and devotion that this treatise exhibits. Part 1 clarifies Anselm's outlook on the central arguments in the treatise by offering a careful analysis of the 'single argument', the discovery of which Anselm announces in the preface. Part 2 reassesses the conflicting views about faith and reason in the immediate background (...) of the Proslogion (the Eucharistic controversy, the publication of the Monologion). Part 3 examines the Proslogion from a rhetorical perspective and argues that applying the 'single argument' in a devotional setting constitutes a subtle attempt to affect the audience's ideas about method in theology. (shrink)

This paper develops the arguments in a previous paper on periodisation in comparative historical contexts by the same author in BJES (vol.42, no.3, September 1994, pp. 261-272).

The history of philosophy.--Socrates, the founder of moral science.--Aristotle.--Jacob Boehme, the German philosopher.--Descartes.--Kant.

The Routledge Companion to Historical Studies provides a much-needed critical introduction to the major historians and philosophers together with the central issues, ideas and theories that have prompted the rethinking of history that has gathered pace since the 1990s. With twenty-nine new entries, and many that have been substantially updated, key concepts for the new history are examined through the ideas of leading thinkers such as Kant, Nietzsche, Croce, Collingwood, White, Foucault and Derrida, and through subjects ranging over (...) class, empiricism, hermeneutics, inference, relativism and technology. New entries for the second edition include: * Carl Becker * Frank R. Ankersmit * Jean-François Lyotard * gender * justified belief * the aesthetic turn * race * film * biography * cultural history * critical theory and experimental history. With a revised introduction setting out the state of the discipline of history today, as well as an extended and updated bibliography, this is the essential reference work for all students of history. (shrink)

Steven Shapin argues that science, for all its immense authority and power, is and always has been a human endeavor, subject to human capacities and limits.

Dōgen: Textual and Historical Studies is an impressive volume that marks a significant leap forward in the study of Zen Master Eihei Dōgen, founder of the Japanese Sōtō School. Dōgen’s life and thought are closely examined in light of the wider historical and religious contexts of Song dynasty China and the Kamakura era in Japan. This collection offers a careful consideration of Dōgen’s rich literary legacy by examining his significance situated as he was at the historical (...) crossroads between the Chinese Chan tradition and the birth of Japanese Zen. In particular, the volume contemplates the manner in which Dōgen’s historical — perhaps mythological — figure has been endorsed and cultivated by the Sōtō.. (shrink)

This study aimed to examine the meanings that nurses attached to the ‘treatments’ administered to cure ‘sexual deviation’ (SD) in theUK, 1935–1974. In theUK, homosexuality was considered a classifiable mental illness that could be ‘cured’ until 1992. Nurses were involved in administering painful and distressing treatments. The study is based on oral history interviews with fifteen nurses who had administered treatments to cure individuals of theirSD. The interviews were transcribed for historical interpretation. Some nurses believed that their role was (...) to passively follow any orders they had been given. Other nurses limited their culpability concerning administering these treatments by adopting dehumanising and objectifying language and by focussing on administrative tasks, rather than the human beings in need of their care. Meanwhile, some nurses genuinely believed that they were acting beneficently by administering these distinctly unpleasant treatments. It is envisaged that this study might act to reiterate the need for nurses to ensure their interventions have a sound evidence base and that they constantly reflect on the moral and value base of their practice and the influence that science and societal norms can have on changing views of what is considered ‘acceptable practice’. (shrink)

Many contemporary historians and philosophers are dissatisfied both with the accounts traditional analytic philosophers have given of the epistemological dimensions of historical studies and also with the ways many continental philosophers more recently have brushed aside the need for any such accounts. Yet no one has yet proposed a unified research program that could serve as the central focus for a better epistemologically-oriented approach. Such a research program would not only address epistemological problems from a perspective that would (...) be of methodological interest to historians but would also be directly responsive to fundamental motivations people have for caring about historical studies in the first place. The main purpose of this review essay is to sketch and then illustrate the main outlines of such a research program.Basic to this research program is the recognition that the overwhelmingly central epistemological complication that arises in the attempt to say what happened in the past and what it means that it happened is that there are always competing ways to interpret evidence. The problem is to discover which among these competing interpretations is best, which involves, among other things, discovering which among them is most likely to be true. Strategies are suggested for solving this problem, which, at the limit, would result in the articulation of generally applicable criteria for assessing competing historical interpretations. (shrink)

This study investigated how Paul’s Jewish background, including some elements of pre-rabbinical Jewish literature, influenced the letter to the Galatians with regard to the concept of adoption (υἱοθεσία) (Gl 4:1–7). As Paul was writing to a Gentile audience, wanting to persuade them to return to the true gospel, metaphors of adoption, embedded in the understanding of the Graeco-Roman household, became effective communication bridges to reach his audience. Within this framework, Israel’s God was depicted as the caring father of the household, (...) who through his son Jesus Christ redeems all human beings from the status of slaves to that of children with full rights of inheritance. Contribution: God’s redemption is not merely a forensic sense of justification but also the imagery of relationship in the household by which God does not merely set one free from sin by securing us through Jesus Christ into the society of the righteous, but also adopts us into his family. (shrink)

Preface LITERARY FORM, PHILOSOPHICAL CONTENT: HISTORICAL STUDIES OF PHILO- sophical Genres aims at a wide audience and is intended to be serviceable for ...

The sharp separation of Eastern, and particularly Soviet and GDR, scholarship from the West is in part owing to ideological self-isolation, and part due to lack of interest or unwillingness to accept this scholarship in the West - The institutional framework within which historical studies take place in the GDR has placed severe limits on diversity within the historical profession. The official theoretical basis of historiography is represented by dialectical materialism, as a theory of reality, and (...) class='Hi'>historical materialism, as the conception of historical development intertwined with it. The political historian is subject to much closer direction than in social or cultural history, while social history deals primarily with local or regional history, and has begun conducting empirical case studies. Interestingly, biographies have acquired a new significance as historical works in both the GDR and the Federal Republic. In dealing with the German past, there is a conscious attempt in the GDR, as there has been recently in the Federal Republic, to overcome the fixation on 1933 and to reestablish a sense of pride in the past. There has been a greater openness and commitment to understanding historical phenomena with the reevaluation of the course of German history. (shrink)

Organized thematically, this important five-volume set brings together key essays from the field of historical studies. Including an extensive general introduction by the editor in the first volume, as well as shorter individual introductions in each of the following volumes, this set is essential reading for scholars and students alike. Coverage includes: 1. Foundations - The Classic Tradition - The Old Cultural History - Economic History 2: Society - Social History - Marxism - Annales - History of Mentalities (...) 3: Ideas - History of Ideas/ Intellectual History - History of Science - History of the Arts - History of Religion - History of Sexuality. 4: Culture - History and Anthropology - Microhistory - New Cultural History - History and Memory - The Poetics of History - Narrativity. Postmodernist Historiography and its Critics 5: Politics - Political History - Imperialism and Postcolonial History - World History - World-Systems Analysis. (shrink)

Discussions about abstraction are so important and so profound that this topic can hardly be neglected. It has inevitably cropped up again in various periods of philosophical enquiry. Despite these ancient roots and after the great debate that characterised the empirical and rationalistic tradition, interest in the problem has unfortunately been absent in large measure from the mainstream of mathematical logic and analytic philosophy. It seems that there is a gap between the epistemological theorization, in which it is difficult to (...) find new insights on the problem of abstraction, and the historical studies concerning the development of philosophical thought. Such studies, however, present a more fertile ground for such insights. Here the reader will find presented for the first time a collection of papers about the topic, considered from an historical point of view together with an awareness of the need for building a bridge between historical research and theoretical speculation. Accordingly the volume consists of both general overviews which sketch the signifcance and the fortunes of abstraction in science, philosophy and logic (the first part) and historical case studies which focus on abstraction in particular thinkers (the second part). This volume is of interest for both general philosophers and historians of philosophy. (shrink)

Reviewing a recent book about early medieval Chinese geographical writings, this essay asks what sort of historical contextualization is needed for historical study, and suggests looking at multiple factors, including the material conditions of textual production, that may be responsible for the proliferation of texts. It cautions against embracing a single story to account for a long historical period, especially if that story fits our modern concerns too neatly; even more importantly, we have to allow the primary (...) sources to take the lead, rather than looking for and presenting only evidence that serves a particular agenda. (shrink)

This article attempts to account for professional historians’ relative neglect of the history of economic life over the past thirty years, looking mainly at the American case. This neglect seems paradoxical, considering the remarkable transformations that have taken place in world capitalism during this same period. I trace the neglect to the capture of the once interdisciplinary field of economic history by mathematically inclined economists and to the roughly simultaneous turn of historians from social to cultural history. I conclude by (...) suggesting some topics in the history of economic life that seem both timely and exciting. I also suggest some intellectual resources that other disciplines, particularly economic sociology and economic history, could offer should historians decide to tackle the history of economic life once again. (shrink)