Walbank's Philip V of Macedon

1943 ◽  
Vol 63 ◽  
pp. 117-120
Author(s):  
P. Treves

Three or four years after the publication of Mr. Walbank's book it would be idle to join in the chorus of praise which the most eminent authorities on the history of the Hellenistic Age have unanimously and deservedly showered upon it. But the time has come to show how far the author has succeeded in combining pioneer-work in a new province with the results which a former generation of scholars had already been able to achieve. Nothing, indeed, can better testify to the vitality, timeliness, and many-sidedness of the present book than its author's efforts to put to the test, in his most recent writings, the conclusions which he had already reached, to enlarge and revise, if need be, some points he had not previously dwelt upon with all the desirable minuteness, and to sound again the principles on which this volume rests. Hence one might justifiably describe it as a Janus-like portrait of Philip V. On one side it connects with and reflects the labours of Mr. Walbank's predecessors, chiefly the late Maurice Holleaux. But its other face looks to a basically different treatment of the history of the late third and early second centuries B.C.— more in agreement with the intellectual requirements and the tenets of a new school of historical writing. In this way, if I may venture to use these words, Mr. Walbank's book partakes of the past and the future; and it is, I submit, a merit, and perhaps its strongest attraction, that it should stimulate the reader to recollect the experiences of its forerunners, and to work out new solutions for old problems.

Author(s):  
Antoine Borrut

Writing the history of the first centuries of Islam poses thorny methodological problems, because our knowledge rests upon narrative sources produced later in Abbasid Iraq. The creation of an “official” version of the early Islamic past (i.e., a vulgate), composed contemporarily with the consolidation of Abbasid authority in the Middle East, was not the first attempt by Muslims to write about their origins. This Abbasid-era version succeeded when previous efforts vanished, or were reshaped, in rewritings and enshrined as the “official” version of Islamic sacred history. Attempts to impose different historical orthodoxies affected the making of this version, as history was rewritten with available materials, partly determined by earlier generations of Islamic historians. This essay intends to discuss a robust culture of historical writing in eighth-century Syria and to suggest approaches to access these now-lost historiographical layers torn between memory and oblivion, through Muslim and non-Muslim sources.


Author(s):  
Joel Horowitz

This chapter examines Argentine historical writing. In the period before 1945, historical writing was not particularly distinguished, and the end of the war did not change that. Two major approaches to the writing of history existed: the Nueva Escuela Histórica (New School of History) and Revisionism. The dominant force was the former, which by 1945 was far from new. The Nueva Escuela historians were interested in questions of methodology, claiming to be focused on only the historical evidence. They closely read their documents and eschewed wider interpretations, particularly those that seemed tied to the current national situation. In the 1930s, Revisionism challenged the Nueva Escuela’s liberal vision of the past. Revisionism was a rejection of Argentina’s cosmopolitan modernizing tendencies and an exaltation of its Hispanic past, stressing nationalism and rejecting foreign influence. Its key goals were political: to rethink the past in order to shape the future.


2017 ◽  
pp. 5-21 ◽  
Author(s):  
E. Yasin

The article is devoted to major events in the history of the post-Soviet economy, their influence on forming and development of modern Russia. The author considers stages of restructuring, market reforms, transformational crisis, and recovery growth (1999-2011), as well as a current period which started in2011 and is experiencing serious problems. The present situation is analyzed, four possible scenarios are put forward for Russia: “inertia”, “mobilization”, “decisive leap”, “gradual democratic development”. More than 30 experts were questioned in the process of working out the scenarios.


2014 ◽  
Vol 59 (1) ◽  
pp. 49-60
Author(s):  
Davide Sparti

Obwohl jede menschliche Handlung mit einem gewissen Grad an Improvisation erfolgt, gibt es kulturelle Praktiken, bei denen Improvisation eine überwiegende Rolle spielt. Um das Risiko zu vermeiden, einen zu breiten Begriff von Improvisation zu übernehmen, konzentriere ich mich im vorliegenden Beitrag auf den Jazz. Meine zentrale Frage lautet, wie Improvisation verstanden werden muss. Mein Vorgehen ist folgendes: Ich beginne mit einem Vergleich von Improvisation und Komposition, damit die Spezifizität der Improvisation erklärt werden kann. Danach wende ich mich dem Thema der Originalität als Merkmal der Improvisation zu. Zum Schluss führe ich den Begriff affordance ein, um die kollektive und zirkuläre Logik eines Solos zu analysieren. Paradigmatisch wird der Jazzmusiker mit dem Engel der Geschichte verglichen, der nur auf das Vergangene blickt, während er der Zukunft den Rücken zugekehrt hat, und lediglich ihr zugetrieben wird. Weder kann der Improvisierende das Material der Vergangenheit vernachlässigen noch seine genuine Tätigkeit, das Improvisieren in der Gegenwart und für die Zukunft, aufgeben: Er visiert die Zukunft trotz ihrer Unvorhersehbarkeit über die Vermittlung der Vergangenheit an.<br><br>While improvised behavior is so much a part of human existence as to be one of its fundamental realities, in order to avoid the risk of defining the act of improvising too broadly, my focus here will be upon one of the activities most explicitly centered around improvisation – that is, upon jazz. My contribution, as Wittgenstein would say, has a »grammatical« design to it: it proposes to clarify the significance of the term »improvisation.« The task of clarifying the cases in which one may legitimately speak of improvisation consists first of all in reflecting upon the conditions that make the practice possible. This does not consist of calling forth mysterious, esoteric processes that take place in the unconscious, or in the minds of musicians, but rather in paying attention to the criteria that are satisfied when one ascribes to an act the concept of improvisation. In the second part of my contribution, I reflect upon the logic that governs the construction of an improvised performance. As I argue, in playing upon that which has already emerged in the music, in discovering the future as they go on (as a consequence of what they do), jazz players call to mind the angel in the famous painting by Klee that Walter Benjamin analyzed in his Theses on the History of Philosophy: while pulled towards the future, its eyes are turned back towards the past.


Author(s):  
Allan Megill

This epilogue argues that historians ought to be able to produce a universal history, one that would ‘cover’ the past of humankind ‘as a whole’. However, aside from the always increasing difficulty of mastering the factual material that such an undertaking requires, there exists another difficulty: the coherence of universal history always presupposes an initial decision not to write about the human past in all its multiplicity, but to focus on one aspect of that past. Nevertheless, the lure of universal history will persist, even in the face of its practical and conceptual difficulty. Certainly, it is possible to imagine a future ideological convergence among humans that would enable them to accept, as authoritative, one history of humankind.


How was history written in Europe and Asia between 400–1400? How was the past understood in religious, social, and political terms? And in what ways does the diversity of historical writing in this period mask underlying commonalities in narrating the past? The volume tackles these and other questions. Part I provides comprehensive overviews of the development of historical writing in societies that range from the Korean Peninsula to north-west Europe, which together highlight regional and cultural distinctiveness. Part II complements the first part by taking a thematic and comparative approach; it includes chapters on genre, warfare, and religion (amongst others) which address common concerns of historians working in this liminal period before the globalizing forces of the early modern world.


Author(s):  
Will Kynes

This chapter introduces the volume by arguing that the study of biblical wisdom is in the midst of a potential paradigm shift, as interpreters are beginning to reconsider the relationship between the concept of wisdom in the Bible and the category Wisdom Literature. This offers an opportunity to explore how the two have been related in the past, in the history of Jewish and Christian interpretation, how they are connected in the present, as three competing primary approaches to Wisdom study have developed, and how they could be treated in the future, as new possibilities for understanding wisdom with insight from before and beyond the development of the Wisdom Literature category are emerging.


Author(s):  
Andre Santos Campos

Historical analyses of the relations between political theory and time often hinge on two claims. The first is that political theorists have until recently put less emphasis on the future than the past when debating political legitimacy and obligation. The second is that the history of political theory draws a fundamental distinction between theories that invoke time to legitimate political structures and theories that reject temporal considerations in favor of timeless principles. This chapter disputes these two claims by maintaining that competing languages of legitimacy harbor different and interrelated conceptions of temporality. A survey of time conceptions in the history of political philosophy shows that normative political theory is inherently multitemporal, involving double regard for the past and the future. And, since even tenseless principles of legitimacy often depend on temporally related forms of formulation and application, considerations about time seem inescapable in normative political theory.


2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eileen Ka-May Cheng

“What is historiography?” asked the American historian Carl Becker in 1938. Professional historians continue to argue over the meaning of the term. This book challenges the view of historiography as an esoteric subject by presenting an accessible and concise overview of the history of historical writing from the Renaissance to the present. Historiography plays an integral role in aiding undergraduate students to better understand the nature and purpose of historical analysis more generally by examining the many conflicting ways that historians have defined and approached history. By demonstrating how these historians have differed in both their interpretations of specific historical events and their definitions of history itself, this book conveys to students the interpretive character of history as a discipline and the way that the historian’s context and subjective perspective influence his or her understanding of the past.


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