All speculations on «the meaning of history» are argued to exceed the epistemological capacities of historical science. Nevertheless, the author argues, such speculations are significant for a philosophy which treats historical development as a real phenomenon. For many philosophies of this sort, freedom of a human-being is the main goal of the historical process. The author notes that such «historical optimism» is in conflict historical practice. And he argues that it can be dangerous if transformed into a slogan.

All speculations on «the meaning of history» are argued to exceed the epistemological capacities of historical science. Nevertheless, the author argues, such speculations are significant for a philosophy which treats historical development as a real phenomenon. For many philosophies of this sort, freedom of a human-being is the main goal of the historical process. The author notes that such «historical optimism» is in conflict historical practice. And he argues that it can be dangerous if transformed into a slogan.

The oft-told story of Leibniz’s doctrine of the best world, or optimism, is that it enjoyed a great deal of popularity in the eighteenth century until the massive earthquake that struck Lisbon on 1 November 1755 destroyed its support. Despite its long history, this story is nothing more than a commentators’ fiction that has become accepted wisdom not through sheer weight of evidence but through sheer frequency of repetition. In this paper we shall examine the reception of Leibniz’s doctrine (...) of the best world in the eighteenth century in order to get a clearer understanding of what its fate really was. As we shall see, while Leibniz’s doctrine did win a good number of adherents in the 1720s and 1730s, especially in Germany, support for it had largely dried up by the mid-1740s; moreover, while opponents of Leibniz’s doctrine were few and far between in the 1710s and 1720s, they became increasing vocal in the 1730s and afterwards, between them producing an array of objections that served to make Leibnizian optimism both philosophically and theologically toxic years before the Lisbon earthquake struck. (shrink)

Technological change modelling (TCM) is quietly transforming the landscape of environmental debate. It provides a powerful new basis for technological optimism, which has long been a key battleground. The technique is at the heart of mainstream climate change mitigation policies and greatly strengthens environmentalism over ecologism. It seems to show that technological change can solve the problem. I argue that the models employ a flawed understanding of technological change and that policies based on them are a major gamble. The (...) article aims to begin a wider debate on TCM, offering a defence of ecologism rooted in the history of technology and SCOT literatures. (shrink)

A history of the development of the concept of hope in German philosophy immediately after Kant.

SummaryThe author studies the form of philosophical optimism in Slovak Lutheran ethics in the first half of the 19th century in the views of Ján Kollár and Ján Chalupka. Herder’s philosophy of history and his philosophy of historical progress significantly influenced Slovak Lutheran ethics of the given period. In the author’s view, Kollár and Chalupka mainly appreciated human history as progress in all parts of life and refused glorification of the past. However, they did not limit their assessment to (...) a positive evaluation of the present; they used one’s own mistakes and faults to appeal to moral development of man and placed to the forefront the belief in a better future of mankind in the form of humanity. (shrink)

How confident does the history of science allow us to be about our current well-tested scientific theories, and why? The scientific realist thinks we are well within our rights to believe our best-tested theories, or some aspects of them, are approximately true.2 Ambitious arguments have been made to this effect, such as that over historical time our scientific theories are converging to the truth, that the retention of concepts and claims is evidence for this, and that there can be no (...) other serious explanation of the success of science than that its theories are approximately true. There is appeal in each of these ideas, but making such strong claims has tended to be hazardous, leaving us open to charges that many typical episodes in the history of science just do not fit the model. (See, e.g., Laudan 1981.) Arguing for a realist attitude via general claims – properties ascribed to sets of theories, trends we see in progressions of theories, and claimed links between general properties like success and truth that apply or fail to apply to any theory regardless of its content – is like arguing for or via a theory of science, which brings with it the obligation to defend that theory. I think a realist attitude toward particular scientific theories for which we have evidence can be maintained rationally without such a theory, even in the face of the pessimistic induction over the history of science. The starting point at which questions arise as to what we have a right to believe about our theories is one where we have theories and evidence for them, and we are involved in the activity of apportioning our belief in each particular theory or hypothesis in accord with the strength of the particular evidence.3 The devil’s advocate sees our innocence and tries his best to sow seeds of doubt. If our starting point is as I say, though, the innocent believer in particular theories does not have to play offense and propose sweeping views about science in general, but only to respond to the skeptic’s challenges; the burden of initial argument is on the skeptic.. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Rhetoric 37.1 (2004) 1-20 [Access article in PDF] Endoxa, Epistemological Optimism, and Aristotle's Rhetorical Project Ekaterina V. Haskins Communication Department Boston College Aristotle's crucial role in institutionalizing the art of rhetoric in the fourth century BCE is beyond dispute, but the significance of Aristotle's rhetorical project remains a point of lively controversy among philosophers and rhetoricians alike. There are many ways of reading and evaluating Aristotle's (...) Rhetoric that depend on the philosophical, theoretical, and pedagogical purposes of the scholar.1 Most philosophical and rhetorical exegeses of the Rhetoric, however, while focusing on the text's connections to Aristotle's corpus and to the rhetorical tradition before and after Aristotle, seem to lack a critical perspective on Aristotle's relationship with his cultural context. Yet, like other parts of Aristotle's encyclopedic intellectual endeavor, much of Rhetoric 's cultural content was provided by endoxa, "reputable or received opinions."Since G. E. L. Owen's essay "Tithenai ta phainomena" (1961) many scholars have accepted the claim that endoxa, rather than empirical observations, are the source of Aristotle's own philosophical principles. The "linguistic" turn within Aristotelian studies has drawn attention to the role of "facts" of language and ordinary experience within Aristotle's philosophical method. As a result, a view of Aristotle as a hard-core empiricist has given way to a picture of a humanist who is attuned to the nuances of his cultural milieu. Still, this new portrait fails to take into account that Aristotle's manner of selecting and categorizing his linguistic resources allows him to transform what we would consider cultural beliefs into natural, and hence, atemporal premises. This pattern can be explained by Aristotle's "epistemological optimism," in itself a blend of several cultural assumptions about perception in general and vision in particular, the function of language, and the cyclical nature of human history. Part of this essay's objective, then, will be an explanation of these components of Aristotle's epistemological optimism. By appreciating Aristotle's difference [End Page 1] on these issues from our modern assumptions, we will be in a better position to understand why Aristotle relies on endoxa on all three levels of philosophical discourse (theoretical science, moral philosophy, and productive arts of poetics and rhetoric). Aristotle remains consistent in his treatment of endoxa throughout; rhetoric, however, presents a major challenge to Aristotle's epistemological optimism and his conception of language. I shall argue that Aristotle recognized this challenge and that he answered it by isolating proofs and rhetorical genres from their linguistic medium (lexis ), and postulating linguistic transparency (sapheneia ) as a stylistic norm. I. Aristotle's openness to appearances (phainomena ) and opinions (endoxa ) was accorded prominence especially thanks to the work of G. E. L. Owen and Martha Nussbaum. Owen was first to defend a linguistic translation of Aristotle's phainomena as "ordinary beliefs" and "appearances" against the then-prevalent rendition "observed facts." In so doing he asserted the crucial impact of the philosopher's cultural context on the formation of speculative discourse. Owen (1961) nonetheless demanded that phainomena be understood as empirical observations in Aristotle' treatises on biology and meteorology (84-86), so as to preserve the methodological and epistemological distinctions between inquiries into the natural world, on the one hand, and the world inhabited by human agents, on the other. Nussbaum (1986) went much further than Owen in asserting the role of phainomena and endoxa in Aristotle's inquiry. Unlike Owen, Nussbaum sees no fundamental difference between "experiences" of a philosopher and linguistic expressions of cultural beliefs and interpretations—his discursive data—from which Aristotle constructs his philosophical accounts. Nussbaum's chief (and highly influential) claim is that Aristotle's method is marked by a deep concern for the experiential world of his fellow men and their language. Aristotle's philosophical insights into the human condition, on this reading, echo and amplify classical Greek tragedy, despite the austere diction of Aristotle's extant treatises.Owing to this openness to the world of ordinary beliefs, Aristotle seems to depart from the Eleatic and Platonic distrust of human... (shrink)

Though the term “comparative philosophy” often brings to mind the relatively recent “East-West” encounter, the experience of cultural difference has helped to invigorate philosophical inquiry throughout human history. Doug Berger’s Encounters of Mind highlights this. Over the course of six chapters, Berger follows “the trek of [Vijñānavāda] Buddhism from South to East Asian worlds,” tracing the development of the idea of luminous mind and its centrality to the question of personhood in Chinese Buddhism and Neo-Confucianism. Rather than simply rehash antiquated (...) debates, he reveals nuances of a thriving dialogue that is pertinent to contemporary discussions of personal identity. (shrink)

"This book examines the longstanding debate between philosophical optimism and pessimism in the history of philosophy, focusing on Aristotle, Maimonides, Spinoza, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche and Camus. Philosophical optimists maintain that the world is optimally arranged and is accordingly valuable, and that the existence of human beings is preferable over their nonexistence. Philosophical pessimists, by contrast, hold that the world is in a woeful condition and ultimately valueless, and that human nonexistence would have been preferable over our existence. Schopenhauer criticizes the (...) optimism he locates in the Hebrew Bible and in Spinoza for being unable to square the presumed perfection of the world and its parts, including human life, with the suffering and misfortunes observable in them, and for leading to egoism and thereby to cruelty. Nietzsche, in turn, criticizes Schopenhauer's overtly pessimistic view, inter alia, for furtively positing a perfect state for one to aspire to, thus being latently optimistic. Similarly, Camus charges Nietzsche, who announces his rejection of both optimism and pessimism, with deifying the world and oneself, thereby reverting to optimism. Interestingly, Aristotle countenances an optimistic theory, later adopted and developed by Maimonides, that is arguably capable of facing Schopenhauer's challenge. Aristotelian optimism accounts for the perfection of the world in terms of a hierarchy of value between its parts, with human beings ranked relatively low, and recommends an attitude congruent with that ranking"--. (shrink)

This article compares investigations of the process of vision that were made in early nineteenth-century Britain and the German lands. It is argued that vision studies differed significantly east and west of the North Sea. Most of the German investigators had a medical background and many of them had a firm grasp of contemporary philosophy. In contrast, the British studies on vision emerged from the context of optics. This difference manifested itself in the conceptual tools for the analysis of vision, (...) deception and illusion and shaped the experiments on visual phenomena that were carried out. Nevertheless, both in Britain and in the German lands vision studies were driven by the same impetus, by epistemological concerns with the nature and reliability of knowledge acquisition in experience. The general epistemological conclusions drawn from researches on vision and deception were optimistic. Precisely because mechanisms of deception and illusion could be uncovered, the possibility of acquiring empirical knowledge could be secured. (shrink)

This book examines the longstanding debate between philosophical optimism and pessimism in the history of philosophy, focusing on Aristotle, Maimonides, Spinoza, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche and Camus. Philosophical optimists maintain that the world is optimally arranged and is accordingly valuable, and that the existence of human beings is preferable over their nonexistence. Philosophical pessimists, by contrast, hold that the world is in a woeful condition and ultimately valueless, and that human nonexistence would have been preferable over our existence. Schopenhauer criticizes the (...) optimism he locates in the Hebrew Bible and in Spinoza for being unable to square the presumed perfection of the world and its parts, including human life, with the suffering and misfortunes observable in them, and for leading to egoism and thereby to cruelty. Nietzsche, in turn, criticizes Schopenhauer's overtly pessimistic view, inter alia, for furtively positing a perfect state for one to aspire to, thus being latently optimistic. Similarly, Camus charges Nietzsche, who announces his rejection of both optimism and pessimism, with deifying the world and oneself, thereby reverting to optimism. Interestingly, Aristotle countenances an optimistic theory, later adopted and developed by Maimonides, that is arguably capable of facing Schopenhauer's challenge. Aristotelian optimism accounts for the perfection of the world in terms of a hierarchy of value between its parts, with human beings ranked relatively low, and recommends an attitude congruent with that ranking. (shrink)

In historiography there is a tendency to see the Great War as marking the end of scientific optimism and the period that followed the war as a time of discord. Connecting to current (inter)national historiographical debate on the question of whether the First World War meant a disruption from the pre-war period or not, this article strives to prove that faith in scientific progress still prevailed in the 1920s. This is shown through the use of Belgium as a case (...) study, which suggests that the generally adopted cultural pessimism in the post-war years did not apply to the public rhetoric of science in this country. Diverse actors—scientists, industrialists, politicians, the public opinion and the military staff—declared a confidence in science, enhanced by wartime results. Furthermore, belief in science in Belgium was not affected by public outcry over the use of mustard gas, unlike in the former belligerent countries where the gas became an unpleasant reminder of how science was used during the war. Even German science with its industrial applications remained the norm after 1918. In fact, the faith in science exhibited during the pre-war years continued to exist, at least until the 1920s, despite anti-German sentiments being voiced by many sections of Belgian society in the immediate aftermath of the war. (shrink)

May 2020 marked the 25th anniversary of the death of Miguel Sánchez-Mazas, founder of Theoria. An International Journal of Theory, History and Foundations of Science, and regarded as the person who brought mathematical logic to Spain. Here we present some of his biographical features and a summary of his contributions, from his early work in the 1950s - introducing contemporary advances in logic and philosophy of science in a philosophically backward milieu dominated by the scholasticism of that era in Spain (...) - to the development of a project of Lebnizian lineage aimed at producing an arithmetic calculation that would elude some of the difficulties confronting Leibniz’s calculus. (shrink)

There's no shortage of gloom-and-doom viewpoints about humanity: our history of violence and war, environmental profligacy, economic and social injustice, etc. Frank S. Robinson has written this "optimist manifesto" as an antidote to such poisonous pessimism. Here you will find some radical and refreshing assertions: that most people are fundamentally good, that global society is getting better all the time, and that, in the big picture, humankind is not at the end of a brief, tragic existence but, rather, has just (...) embarked on a long, bright future. What started as an extended letter to his daughter, one father's effort to leave an intellectual legacy, grew to comprehensively cover and tie together the big philosophical, political, social, and economic issues. Writing in a highly readable style, Robinson steadfastly emphasizes reason as our best tool for discovering truth and making objective decisions. It is through this consistently rational approach to life that he argues for a positive humanistic vision, based on people being left free to pursue their dreams. Celebrating our human character and achievement as well as American ideals of liberty and opportunity, this compelling work is packed with thought-provoking ideas that engage the mind. Good-humored and entertaining, yet intellectually rigorous, it has a positive, optimistic message: we can live good and happy lives; today's world is the best ever; and tomorrow's will be better still! (shrink)

Bioethicists have long been concerned that seriously ill patients entering early phase (‘phase I’) treatment trials are motivated by therapeutic benefit even though the likelihood of benefit is low. In spite of these concerns, consent forms for phase I studies involving seriously ill patients generally employ indeterminate benefit statements rather than unambiguous statements of unlikely benefit. This seeming mismatch between attitudes and actions suggests a need to better understand research ethics committee members’ attitudes toward communication of potential benefits and risks (...) of early phase studies to potential subjects. We surveyed the members of two U.S. research ethics committees using a phase I gene transfer study scenario, and compared the results to a previous survey of potential subjects’ perceptions and attitudes toward benefit and risk for the same protocol. The results show that there is indeed a gap between the subjects’ perceptions and the committee members’ views on what is appropriate to be communicated to research subjects. This discrepancy is the product of both the commonly assumed optimism of the subjects and to a “protective pessimism” of the research ethics committee members. We discuss this discrepancy using “frameworks of trust” and demonstrate the need to incorporate these frameworks into the existing model of informed consent. (shrink)

The author studies Leibniz’s views of vindicating God for the existence of evil in the world, as well as the idea of the best of all possible worlds, including the past and present criticism. Following Leibniz, he opted for the presentation of Herder’s philosophy of history as one of the most significant forms of philosophical optimism that influenced the first half of the 19th century, including contemporary debates on and critiques of the topic. He defines Herder’s concept as the (...) philosophy of historical progress, which also significantly influenced Slovak philosophy of the given period. The main goal of the article is to present Leibniz’s and Herder’s views as a starting point for the Slovak philosophy of optimism and historical progress of the 18th century and the first half of the 19th century. (shrink)

The COVID-19 vaccine has been a miraculous, life-saving advance, offering staggering efficacy in adults, and was developed with astonishing speed. The time from sequencing the virus to authorizing the first COVID-19 vaccine was so brisk even the optimists appear close-minded. Yet, simultaneously, United States’ COVID-19 vaccination roll-out and related policies have contained missed opportunities, errors, run counter to evidence-based medicine, and revealed limitations in the judgment of public policymakers. Misplaced utilization, contradictory messaging, and poor deployment in those who would benefit (...) most—the elderly and high-risk—alongside unrealistic messaging, exaggeration, and coercion in those who benefit least—young, healthy Americans—is at the heart. It is important to consider the history of COVID-19 vaccines to identify where we succeeded and where we failed, and the effects that these errors may have more broadly on vaccination hesitancy and routine childhood immunization programs in the decades to come. (shrink)

Today, “scientism“ is a concept with a negative connotation in every language. Although many definitions are circulating, they have the assessment in common that scientism implicates a blind faith in science, which is wrong, simple-minded and even dangerous. However, the question is, who actually is defending that kind of position? Is scientism not just a ghost, a projection, an intellectual scarecrow in order to use many people’s fear of science in order to bash rationalistic opinions? This article develops the argument (...) that scientism is a real historical current which can be analyzed in a concrete way. It starts by outlining the history of the French word “scientisme” and the debates around it and discovers that the word is not at all of recent invention, but goes back to the 1840s and received its negative emphasis in the late nineteenth century when “scientific spiritism” on the one hand and Catholicism on the other were struggling against the “exaggerated” claims of natural science. A polemical counter-concept was therefore needed. Soon afterward some scientists and philosophers emerge, like Félix Le Dantec, Abel Rey or Marcel Boll, who turn around the invective in order to describe their own optimistic and rationalistic conception of science. In conclusion the article argues that scientism has to be understood as an intellectual project and as an optimistic thought-style in science that does not at all correspond to the prejudices of the amoral scientist or the power-hungry technocrat, but is represented mostly by outsiders and nonconformists. (shrink)

C. I. Lewis (I883-I964) was the first major figure in history and philosophy of logic—-a field that has come to be recognized as a separate specialty after years of work by Ivor Grattan-Guinness and others (Dawson 2003, 257).Lewis was among the earliest to accept the challenges offered by this field; he was the first who had the philosophical and mathematical talent, the philosophical, logical, and historical background, and the patience and dedication to objectivity needed to excel. He was blessed with (...) many fortunate circumstances, not least of which was entering the field when mathematical logic, after only six decades of toil, had just reaped one of its most important harvests with publication of the monumental Principia Mathematica. It was a time of joyful optimism which demanded an historical account and a sober philosophical critique. Lewis was one of the first to apply to mathematical logic the Aristotelian dictum that we do not understand a living institution until we see it growing from its birth. (shrink)

In 1809 the radical English philosopher, novelist, and historian William Godwin published Essay on Sepulchres—a proposal to mark the burial sites of the morally great with a simple wooden cross. This paper explores Godwin's essay in terms of his evolution as moral philosopher and historian. While Godwin is commonly renowned as a utilitarian rationalist given to optimistic assertions on human perfectibility, this essay demonstrates the extent to which his moral theory depended on emotion and intuition and how he came to (...) posit an alternative mode of historical perception which queried the progressivist assumptions of ‘Enlightenment’ historiography. (shrink)

The European community that is in the process of being created is still searching for its history. For a few years now, the publishing market, which has been attempting - under the heading of ‘European history’ - to construct a shared past for a present that we now have in common, has been mushrooming. This communal experience is indisputably gaining ground (though more slowly and controversially than some well-known optimists hoped): it is promoted by freedom of movement within the European (...) Union, by the effect of tourism, which some time ago ceased being reserved only for the elite, by the availability everywhere of products that, a few years back, typically represented a certain type of national styles of consumption, and finally by the unifying influence of the media. To the extent that closer relations between the inhabitants of the ‘old world’ run in parallel with the attempt to create institutions to regulate these common goods, and to protect against movements of people from other areas with their own sets of values, a combination of powerful ingredients is in place that leads one to anticipate a strengthening of ‘European’ identity. It is well known in research into identity that history plays an important part in its construction. And indeed historians from European countries have set themselves the task of jointly putting together a school textbook in which presentations that might otherwise focus on national character and be likely to offend neighbours will be harmonized. Others are looking at ways of celebrating memory (places of memory) that are intended to stimulate European rather than national memory. In addition, German and French historians met a while ago, in the little place of Genshagen near Berlin, with the intention of identifying events that would be suitable for European celebrations, in that they would not be connected with events that one of the participants might be ashamed of, or refer directly to a victory of one over another. But to anyone who studies the history of the two neighbours separated only by the Rhine, it quickly becomes clear that there is not a lot of space left in the calendar for activities that would found a common tradition. (shrink)

Holograms have been in the public eye for over a half-century, but their influences have deeper cultural roots. No other visual experience is quite like interacting with holograms; no other cultural product melds the technological sublime with magic and optimism in quite the same way. As holograms have evolved, they have left their audiences alternately fascinated, bemused, inspired or indifferent. From expressions of high science to countercultural art to consumersecurity, holograms have represented modernity, magic and materialism. Their most pervasive (...) impact has been to galvanise hopeful technological dreams. Engineers, artists, hippies and hobbyists have played with, and dreamed about, holograms. This book explores how holograms found a place in distinct cultural settings. It is aimed at readers attracted to pop culture, visual studies and cultural history, scholars concerned with media history, fine art and material studies and, most of all, cross-disciplinary audiences intrigued about how this ubiquitous but still-mysterious visual medium grew up in our midst and became entangled in our culture. This book explores the technical attractions and cultural uses of the hologram, how they were shaped by what came before them, and how they have matured to shape our notional futures. Today, holograms are in our pockets (as identity documents) and in our minds (as gaming fantasies and faux hologram performers). Why arent they more often in front of our eyes? (shrink)

Miller's formulation of problems was controlled by tensions between conscious" and "mechanical" and between "understanding" and "mystery." The mechanical world, devoid of morality and purpose, was incompatible with conscious beauty and ethics; within the "conscious" the optimistic drive for knowledge about an intelligible universe conflicted with belief in an unknowable, awful universe. Miller's history was also informed by his sense of development: history proceeds in a continuing series of interactions between inherited cultural forms, and immediate environmental circumstances. Culture is never (...) merely the "product" of environment, but an active agent in the interaction. The search for "historical knowledge" itself proceeds on the terms of this interaction. Here Miller rejected both positivism and the capricious relativism of Becker for the harder relativism subsequently articulated by Kuhn and Toulmin: "forms" are neither wholly arbitrary nor entirely discovered in "the facts," but are instead the inheritance and creation of the historian, altered and confirmed by his experience. (shrink)

Given the history of the twentieth century, it is understandable that many contemporary philosophers—in the wake of Kierkegaard, Marx, and Nietzsche—have turned against Hegel’s seemingly unbridled optimism. As I will argue in this chapter, however, Hegel’s account of modern civilizations is much less optimistic than his account of the past. Hegel’s hesitation as to the capacity of modernity to resolve its immanent conflicts preeminently emerges in his account of the oppositions between poverty and wealth and between the state and (...) its citizens. In this chapter I will focus on passages from the Essay on Natural Law, the Lectures on the Philosophy of History, and the Philosophy of Right that express this hesitation and, hence, complicate the prevailing view of Hegel’s philosophy of world history. (shrink)

In the 1960s, without realizing it, AI researchers were hard at work finding the features, rules, and representations needed for turning rationalist philosophy into a research program, and by so doing AI researchers condemned their enterprise to failure. About the same time, a logician, Yehoshua Bar-Hillel, pointed out that AI optimism was based on what he called the “first step fallacy”. First step thinking has the idea of a successful last step built in. Limited early success, however, is not (...) a valid basis for predicting the ultimate success of one’s project. Climbing a hill should not give one any assurance that if he keeps going he will reach the sky. Perhaps one may have overlooked some serious problem lying ahead. There is, in fact, no reason to think that we are making progress towards AI or, indeed, that AI is even possible, in which case claiming incremental progress towards it would make no sense. In current excited waiting for the singularity, religion and technology converge. Hard headed materialists desperately yearn for a world where our bodies no longer have to grow old and die. They will be transformed into information, like Google digitizes old books, and we will achieve the promise of eternal life. As an existential philosopher, however, I suggest that we may have to overcome the desperate desire to digitalize our bodies so as to achieve immortality, and, instead, face up to and maybe even enjoy our embodied finitude. (Paper from PT-AI 2011 conference. Volume ed. Vincent C. Müller). (shrink)

This article overviews the scholarly history of research centred on the Socratic problem. Eight breaking points in this history are identified and the developments emerging from them are analysed. 1) The pre-history of the Socratic problem began with the varying and conflicting portrayals of Socrates that sprang up during his lifetime and shortly after his death. 2) The problem was first explicitly admitted in the 18 th century with the earliest historical investigations critically pursuing the truth behind the fiction. 3) (...) The problem was then established in research in the 19 th century as a result of the influential remarks of Schleiermacher and Hegel on the discrepancies in Plato’s and Xenophon’s portrayals of Socrates. 4) In the beginning of the 20 th century, an emerging disapproval of Xenophon as a reliable source was accompanied by an elevation of the source value of Plato. 5) The crisis of the mid-20 th century took the form of a denial of the very possibility of reaching genuine knowledge of the historical Socrates. 6) The reaction to the crisis assumed the two-folded shape of a broadened study of the sources and a partial reappraisal of Plato’s trustworthiness. 7) Beginning from the 1990s, an optimistic program claiming that all of Plato’s early dialogues recreates the philosophy of the historical Socrates gained ground. 8) Today’s research climate is characterised by a renewed pessimism regarding the possibility of approaching the historical Socrates. (shrink)

Based on the author's more than 50 years of experience as a professional historian in academic and other capacities, Being a Historian is addressed to both aspiring and mature historians. It offers an overview of the state of the discipline of history today and the problems that confront it and its practitioners in many professions. James M. Banner, Jr. argues that historians remain inadequately prepared for their rapidly changing professional world and that the discipline as a whole has yet to (...) confront many of its deficiencies. He also argues that, no longer needing to conform automatically to the academic ideal, historians can now more safely and productively than ever before adapt to their own visions, temperaments, and goals as they take up their responsibilities as scholars, teachers, and public practitioners. Critical while also optimistic, this work suggests many topics for further scholarly and professional exploration, research, and debate. (shrink)

This article presents the history of the medieval Latin translations of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics. It features the names of some key figures of the period like Burgundio of Pisa, Robert Grosseteste, and William of Moerbeke. The main focus lies on the question whether Robert Grosseteste had access to a complete copy of the earlier translation by Burgundio of Pisa, or only to the fragmentary version that has come down to us. To reach an answer, the Latin versions and their Greek (...) models are studied as “fluid texts”, which indicates that all individual witnesses of the text and of its translations contain readings and variants that differentiate them from each other and from the translator’s ultimate intentions. In their turn, the fluid elements cause changes to persist throughout the transmission process and continue to exert mutual influence. A detailed, though necessarily largely incomplete study of some of these aspects leads to unnoticed evidence and to an uncertain but optimistic conclusion. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Book Reviews,Shapes oS Philosophical History. By Frank E. Manuel. (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1965.Pp. 166.$1.95.) Based upon his seven Camp Lectures of 1962 at Stanford, Professor Manuel has issued this taut and recondite volume describing the forms philosophical history has taken in the West. He has performed a difficult task well, giving much scholarly substance to his theme that two archetypal shapes of speculative history-writing have dominated Western thought, (...) one an Augustinian teleological.unitary-procursus view, the other a Polybian, cyclical, Ixionlike, Stoic model. The first is broadly defined as "movement either to a fixed end, or to an indefinite end that defines itself in the course of the progression, history as novelty-creating and always variant"; the second as "circularity, eternal recurrence, return to the beginning of things, sheer reiteration or similar recapitulation." Comte and modem progressists are at the end of the first line, Nietzsehe and Spengler and other cylicists at the end of the second. However, broadly again, amalgamations of the two types are possible, syncretistic variants have often taken shape, and, Protean-hke, both lend themselves to almost infinite interpretive patterns. These typologies are psychological more than logical polarities, both emotional and intellectual alternatives, so they often stand for and serve contradictory purposes. Yet historians tend to betray their preference for one of these opposed conceptions, according to Manuel, as they "select an identity for historic man." Deliberately refraining from taking sides on the issue (thus implicitly casting some doubt on his contention that historians and others "inevitably betray their preference for one of these opposing conceptions"), Manuel addresses himself to the task of illuminating the polarity, exhibiting the multiplicity of its forms through time and focusing upon crucial moments of the debate in the West. Of these exhibits--early Christians vs. pagans, Augustine vs. Joachim, the virtual triumph of cyclicism in the Renaissance (albeit with a split developed between negative and positive, pessimist and optimist cyclicists), the ambivalence of the eighteenth-century Germans on the issue (particularly Kant and Herder), the triumphant optimism of the French perfectibilists, the vacillation of the German academists--Manuel's examination of the French and German writers stands out, although the range of his knowledge and first-hand inspection of archival sources from Augustine's time to Toynbee's demonstrates an admirable scholarship. Of the eighteenth-century Germans, Manuel well illustrates their ambivalent and paradoxical side. Herder, for example, nominally an opponent, debating against "abderite" cyclical theory and apparently concluding in favor of it; Goethe wondering whether the world "will become one great hospital in which we behave toward one another like benign male nurses" if Herder's more optimistic notions triumph; old Kant in his special language rejecting all then current models of world history (moral terrorism, abderitism and eudaemonism ) and opting for what Manuel calls a "mechanism... akin to the cunning of reason" to institute a just civil constitution and estabhsh perpetual peace, yet not really persuaded that his sanguine view of moral progress would prevail. As for the later Germans in and out of the Academy (particularly Hegel, Fichte, Schelling, HSlderlin and Hamann) while youthful enthusiasts of progress (everyone knows the story of the young Hegel and his friends planting the tree of liberty saluting the French revolution), their conceptions of history became more and more Platonic, more and more nostalgic and parochial. On the other hand Manuel's account of the eighteenth and nineteenth-century French relates their boundless energy and dedication to progressist conceptions, a development he holds as quite isolated and isolable from the German movement. Without doubt the French had the most imagination and the most confidence in developing philosophical history to an almost dizzying optimistic pitch. Manuel demonstrates a line from Voltaire through Turgot, Condorcet, Saint-Simon, Fourier and the Saint-Simonians to Auguste Comte, each building on the others in time, each theorizing "man's steady conquest of the external world, beginning in a period when he was still the member of a feeble and isolated band, and culminating in his present high estate." "The Golden Age of the human species is not behind us, it is before [171] 172 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY us," Saint-Simon... (shrink)

Politics presupposes an understanding of meaning in history, according to which it manages the actions that accord with or serve this meaning (as an ultimate good). The aim of this paper is to examine the process by which meaning in history is formed, as well as its character. To do this, I employ suitably modified phenomenological analyses of intentional consciousness to bring them as close as possible to the thematic of the psychoanalytic unconscious. I first try to sketch the basis (...) on which the modern problem of meaning in history arises and the fundamental responses produced by modern philosophy. Then, I delineate two basic understandings of meaning in history as developed by the founders of Phenomenology, Husserl and Heidegger, which are surprisingly close to those of modern metaphysics. Next, I draft the process by which the topic of the unconscious surfaces in the context of difficulties faced by critical epistemology in its effort to penetrate the unperceivable folds of reality, which should be acknowledged as a precondition of experience but also of action and ethics. After this, a brief phenomenological account regarding action and praxis in response to evil is presented as a specific concretization of this philosophy after its vaccination with the thematic of the unconscious. Next, I examine MerleauPonty’s final, although ultimately failed, attempt to construct a phenomenological proof of the possibility of objective knowledge regarding historical meaning. In addition, I consider how persistent maintenance of the ideologically optimistic reading of history simply concocts political action that crucially exposes humanity to the danger of perpetrating what Arendt called “banal evil.” The question, then, is whether Phenomenology can offer a non-nihilistic understanding of existence, action, and events in history. I argue that a cautious non-Marxist and de-Messianized reinterpretation of Benjamin’s “Theses on the Philosophy of History” (1940), in tandem with an Aristotelian analysis of praxis and Kantian-Arendtian “common sense,” offers a sober, perspectivist, realistic understanding of the place of humans in the cosmos and of the historical course we happen to take in it. (shrink)

This article evaluates Karl Popper's contribution to analytic philosophy, and outlines some of the contradictions in his work which make it difficult to locate in any particular tradition. In particular, the article investigates Popper's own claims to be a member of the rationalist tradition. Although Popper described himself as a member of this tradition, his definition of it diverged quite radically from that offered by other supporters of rationalism, like, for example, Mach, Carnap, and the logical positivists of the Vienna (...) Circle. The reason for this was that Popper believed the rationalist tradition, if it were to remain coherent and relevant, needed to overcome the dilemma posed by Hume's problem of induction. Popper believed that this problem rendered conventional understandings of rationalism, science, and inductive reasoning incoherent. This article suggests that Popper's principal contribution to modern philosophy was to reconfigure the rationalist tradition in such a way as to circumvent the problem of induction while preserving the rationalist commitment to reason, rational debate, and objective knowledge. Popper's reconfiguration of the epistemological bases of the rationalist tradition challenged dominant understandings of rationalist and analytic philosophy, and may be appropriately understood as part of a wider move among philosophers like Quine and Putnam to challenge conventional understandings of analytic philosophy, and of what philosophy itself could and could not achieve. It also informed a vision of social and political life (and of the social and political sciences) as rooted in principles of freedom, equality, and rational debate, but which cannot be fit within the traditional ideological landscape. (shrink)

What is the relation between past and present, and what role does historical research, writing and thinking play in regards to that relation? Does it, for instance, primarily record the features of objective breaks and continuities between past and future (as A. Danto has it) or does it rather institute those breaks and continuities (as C. Fasolt has recently argued)? Here I stress that historical understanding is a basic dimension of understanding in general, including understanding of the relation of past (...) and future. Historical research, writing and thinking promise indefinite expansion and qualification of that understanding. In contrast to Danto and with Fasolt, I hold that the possibilities of qualification cannot be definitively foreclosed; against Fasolt I urge an epistemological optimism about the consequences of that admission. (shrink)

In this chapter, Immanuel Kant's account of the history of the true (universal) church has a clear progression. It moves from a discussion of Jesus’ radical break with all that was nonuniversal in Judaism, to the tendency of Christians down through the ages to shape their faith into something just as nonuniversal as Judaism. Kant's account concludes with reflections on why we have good reason to be optimistic for the future, because Kant's own interpretation of pure moral religion portrays the (...) message of the coming of God's kingdom in symbolic terms that can be applicable to all good‐hearted people. Kant also focuses on the shortcomings not of Judaism, but of Christianity itself, when interpreted as just another historical faith‐particularly in the hands of biblical scholars. (shrink)

Hegel says that the task of the philosopher in history is to follow the trace of Reason in history, to discern the realization of the freedom which Spirit is. Hegel’s own discerning of Reason in history is tinged with a teleological optimism which is unconfirmed and perhaps even denied by history. This does not mean that the task which Hegel presents should be set aside. Today’s philosopher must still attempt to understand history. The question which seems to focus present (...) attempts to do so is: How can an understanding of history provide us with a grasp of the world in which we live so that we can do what is possible to provide that world with a future? This question reflects a strong sense of finitude. Yet, the questions which guide Hegel are very similar: What is the relation of the finite and the infinite? How does this relation appear on the scene in history? (shrink)