Pragmatism and Prophecy: H. G. Wells and the Metaphysics of Socialism

2017 ◽  
Vol 112 (2) ◽  
pp. 409-422 ◽  
Author(s):  
DUNCAN BELL
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Evolutionary Theory ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Philosophical Orientation ◽  
High Profile ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Main Components ◽  
Political Thinker

Read throughout the world, H. G. Wells was one of the most famous political thinkers of the early twentieth century. During the first half of the 1900s, he elaborated a bold and idiosyncratic cosmopolitan socialist vision. In this article, I offer a new reading of Wells's political thought. I argue that he developed a distinctivepragmatistphilosophical orientation, which he synthesized with his commitments to Darwinian evolutionary theory. His pragmatism had four main components: a nominalist metaphysics; a verificationist theory of truth; a Jamesian “will to believe”; and a conception of philosophy as an intellectual exercise dedicated to improving practice. His political thought was shaped by this philosophical orientation. Wells, I contend, was the most high-profile pragmatist political thinker of the opening decades of the twentieth century. Acknowledging this necessitates a re-evaluation of both Wells and the history of pragmatism.

Afterlives

Melania ◽  
2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Penn
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Popular Press ◽  
Scholarly Journals ◽  
Secretary Of State ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of

In 1903, the Vatican’s secretary of state, Cardinal Mariano Rampolla was heir apparent to the papacy. But he became unexpectedly out of a job due to a veto by the Austro-Hungarian emperor. Rampolla retreated to a life of scholarship to edit a manuscript he had discovered in a monastic library decades earlier, Gerontius’s Life of Melania the Younger. Rampolla’s publication spawned a series of early twentieth-century reactions to Melania’s biography. This work sometimes appeared in scholarly journals. Much appeared in popular press articles such as one that compared Melania’s fasts to those of early twentieth-century suffragettes’ or a series of newspaper headlines referring to “the richest woman in the history of the world!” The hagiography also inspired early twentieth-century imitations, such as Sainte Mélanie, a pious and expanded version of Melania’s Life. This chapter examines an earlier rediscovery of this “indomitable little saint” who was seen as “Richer than Rockefeller.”

‘The Most Beautiful Factory in the World’: the power of the garden image

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Helena Chance
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Working Conditions ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
The World ◽  
Fresh Perspective ◽  
History Of

An analysis of the extensive collections of photographs, illustrations, films and ephemera in company archives provides a fresh perspective on the factory gardens and parks. By means of illustrated lectures, publications and factory tours, in which the landscapes featured prominently, industrialists presented their enterprises as places of status, community, opportunity, health and hygiene and their products as authentic and modern. The landscapes and their representations defined this utopianist portrayal of working conditions and labour, and motivated myths about the commodities they produced. The advertising and packaging images from the early twentieth century of the companies discussed here are now iconic in the history of marketing and advertising, for it was largely through effective publicity that they became household names.

scholarly journals American magazine „Svoboda” about the world support of Miroslav Sochi by the Ukrainian population from 1908 to 1916

2021 ◽  
pp. 27-42
Author(s):  
Maria Alekseeva ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Active Part ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Political Views ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Scientific Value

The article examines the events associated with the murder of the governor of Galicia Andrzej Potoсky by lviv student Miroslav Sochinsky, and the process of his support by the Ukrainian population around the world. The source for researching the events connected with the history of Miroslav is the American magazine „Svoboda”, in which the events of the case were published in detail and actively. The magazine took an active part in supporting and defending M. Sochi in various ways. Numerous articles in „Svoboda” from 1908 to 1916 covered the thoughts of the American and European press, which was sympathetic to the student's act, and noted the deep internal political reasons that pushed the young man to risk his life for the sake of change. The magazine describes in detail the 46 chambers that were advertised on the front pages of Svoboda, about the distribution of petitions for pardon, which changed Miroslav's sentence from death to twenty years in prison, the activities of foundations that raised money for Miroslav, and so on. The conclusions indicate the scientific value of the American magazine „Svoboda” in studying the history of the aftermath of the assassination of Count A. Potocki and the process of unification of all concerned Ukrainians around the world, and the further formation of political views in the early twentieth century.

On Being Present to the Mind: A Sketch for the History of an Idea

Dialogue ◽  
1975 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 373-388 ◽  
Author(s):  
John W. Yolton
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Theory Of Knowledge ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Mind

I want to discuss a doctrine and a concept in theory of knowledge which has various manifestations from at least the seventeenth to the early twentieth century. The concept is that of direct or immediate cognition, the doctrine says that only what is like mind can be directly or immediately present to mind. This doctrine raises the question of how we can know things other than ourselves and our experiences: the concept of direct presence most usually had the consequence of making our knowledge of the world indirect, uncertain, or impossible. The directly present must in some way inform us about the indirectly present.

The Economic Dimension of Cicero's Political Thought: Property and State

1983 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 739-756 ◽  
Author(s):  
Neal Wood
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Private Property ◽  
The State ◽  
Economic Dimension ◽  
Self Interest ◽  
History Of ◽  
Political Thinker

AbstractCicero's great reputation as a political thinker has sharply declined in the twentieth century. Commentators, if treating him at all, usually focus briefly on his ethical ideas and neglect the significant economic dimension of his thought. In view of the importance of the conception of property in the history of political theory. Cicero deserves to be taken more seriously today by political scientists. An “economic individualist” who recommended the enlightened pursuit of self-interest and defended property differentials, he was the first major political thinker to conceive of the protection of private property as the primary purpose of the state.

scholarly journals The Laws and Customs of the Yorùbá People by E.A. Ajisafe Moore (Undated, M. A. Ola Fola Bookshops, Abeokuta, Nigeria. 87 pages. Price $21.95 on Amazon.com)

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-5
Author(s):  
Akinloye Ojo Ojo ◽  
Kingsley Opia-Enwemuche
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Ethnic Group ◽  
Ethnic Groups ◽  
Publication Date ◽  
Work History ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Customary Practices

The Laws and Customs of the Yorùbá People chronicles the prevalent customary practices and native laws of the Yorùbá people who have their ancestral home in South Western Nigeria and descendants in several cities around the world by virtue of forced and voluntary migrations. The book draws from extensive research – including painstaking collection of materials from several sub-groupings within the Yorùbá ethnic group. Ajisafe Moore acknowledges in the preface that the laws and customs of the Yorùbá people vary within the different Yorùbá sub-groupings. The book however sought to address customs and laws that are generally applicable across the entire Yorùbá ethnic group. It is not clear when The Laws and Customs of the Yoruba People (henceforth Laws and Customs) was actually published. The author’s reference in the preface to 1906 as the time when he commenced his research efforts for the book provides a first pointer to possible publication of the work in early twentieth century. Other sources such as the LitCaf Encyclopedia list laws and customs as being published in 1924, eight years after the publication of the first edition of Ajisafe Moore’s self-published work, History of Abeokuta in 1916 (reissued in 1948 and 1964 and now part of the United Kingdom’s Royal Collection Trust). James S. Coleman’s Nigeria: Background to Nationalism (1958) cites Laws and Customs as one of the “tribal and national histories of major ethnic groups” published in English in 1946 (Coleman, 1958: 327). Kash and Klare Bookshop, Lagos, Nigeria was listed as the publisher. Tis latter 320 Akinloye Ojo and Kingsley Opia-Enwemuche publication date of 1946 meant that Laws and Customs was a posthumous publication for Ajisafe Moore who passed away in 1940.

scholarly journals CULTURE THROUGH THE PRISM OF EXPRESSIONIST TRADITIONS IN CINEMA ART OF THE XX-XXI CENTURIES (IMAGE OF GOLEM)

2021 ◽  
Vol 23 (79(2)) ◽  
pp. 234-243
Author(s):  
E.A. Radaeva ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Mystical Experience ◽  
Cultural Development ◽  
Moral Law ◽  
Unsuccessful Attempt ◽  
Surrounding World ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of

In this article, the author comes to the conclusion that the expressionist tradition in cinema quite adequately reflects the laws of the cultural development of society: creative figures throughout the twentieth and first 20 years of the twentyfirst century. periodically return to the Golem theme; his image remains relevant, since it embodies the idea of sometimes the only defense (from the outside) of a person helpless before the collisions of the surrounding world, which means that this latent fear of the world cannot be considered exclusively the property of the modernist worldview of the early twentieth century. Unshakable to this day, however, remains the moral law: in every film product, the Golem is subject to destruction as a godless substance, as an unsuccessful attempt by a person to stand on the same level with the Creator. At the same time, the image of the Golem in the history of cinematography is influenced by the historical situation and the constantly changing spiritual and aesthetic demands of the viewer associated with it. Mythological Golem in the XXXXI centuries. ceases to be slow and clumsy, and for its revival, neither an ecstatic mystical experience, nor a righteous man, nor a whole group of such (obviously, because in modern reality it is very problematic to find them): for more than 100 years in cinema, the mythical Golem from an earthen image, thanks to the director's vision, she gradually follows the path of her increasing "incarnation" and eventually turns into a fragile girl, now into an unhappy child.

Hard Objects in George Oppen's Discrete Series

2018 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 496-517
Author(s):  
Ned Hercock
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Ludwig Wittgenstein ◽  
Discrete Series ◽  
Human Experience ◽  
John Ruskin ◽  
Gerard Manley Hopkins ◽  
Marcel Duchamp ◽  
The World ◽  
Production History ◽  
History Of

This essay examines the objects in George Oppen's Discrete Series (1934). It considers their primary property to be their hardness – many of them have distinctively uniform and impenetrable surfaces. This hardness and uniformity is contrasted with 19th century organicism (Gerard Manley Hopkins and John Ruskin). Taking my cue from Kirsten Blythe Painter I show how in their work with hard objects these poems participate within a wider cultural and philosophical turn towards hardness in the early twentieth century (Marcel Duchamp, Adolf Loos, Ludwig Wittgenstein and others). I describe the thinking these poems do with regard to industrialization and to human experience of a resolutely object world – I argue that the presentation of these objects bears witness to the production history of the type of objects which in this era are becoming preponderant in parts of the world. Finally, I suggest that the objects’ impenetrability offers a kind of anti-aesthetic relief: perception without conception. If ‘philosophy recognizes the Concept in everything’ it is still possible, these poems show, to experience resistance to this imperious process of conceptualization. Within thinking objects (poems) these are objects which do not think.

ENGLISH LABOUR AND TRADE UNIONISM OF THE EARLY TWENTIETH CENTURY IN THE COVERAGE OF THE BRITISH HISTORIAN G. D. H. COLE

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 22-33
Author(s):  
T.N. GELLA ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
First World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Trade Unionism ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
The First World War ◽  
History Of ◽  
Socialist Movement ◽  
First World

The main purpose of the article is to analyze the views of a famous British historian G.D.G. Cole on the history of the British workers' and UK socialist movement in the early twentieth century. The arti-cle focuses on the historian's assessment and the reasons for the workers' strike movement intensi-fication on the eve of the First World War, the specifics of such trends as labourism, trade unionism and syndicalism.

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