scholarly journals Repetition: Thinking Between G.W. F. Hegel’s Philosophy of History (1837) and Karl Marx’s The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (1852)

2019 ◽  
Vol 27 (54) ◽  
pp. 81-97
Author(s):  
Antonis Balasopoulos ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Philosophy Of History ◽  
Historical Events ◽  
The Past ◽  
Major Complications ◽  
Gravitational Pull ◽  
Exit Strategies ◽  
Revolution Counter

Taking its cue from the untimely paradoxes manifesting themselves in some of the most visible instances of Hegel’s and Marx’s reception in the twentieth century, this essay proceeds to explore the ground between the two thinkers with particular reference to their philosophico-historical grasp of repetition. After a number of preliminary observations on the ideological subtext involved in Marx’s reference to Hegel in the Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte and the temporality their intertextual conjuncture stages, I focus on four major complications that attend the comparison of Hegelian and Marxian notions of repetition, as well as on their correlation to the historical events of Revolution, Counter-Revolution and Restoration. I conclude with some reflections on the “exit strategies” Marx and Hegel adopt vis-à-vis the specter of iteration as a sign of submission to the gravitational pull of the past upon the present and future.

How Can We Seize the Past?

Philosophy ◽  
1989 ◽  
Vol 64 (247) ◽  
pp. 67-78
Author(s):  
Christopher Cherry
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of History ◽  
Direct Access ◽  
Perceptual Awareness ◽  
Historical Events ◽  
The Real ◽  
The Past ◽  
Direct Acquaintance ◽  
Real People ◽  
Intelligible World ◽  
Historical Past

My concern is to understand how it is that contemplation of the past— better, of this or that preferred past—evokes in some people an impression which is distinctively weird. It is unmistakable; and anyone who has felt it will soon know what I am talking about. What is the impression, and whence the impressionability?To help identify my concern (and make it seem less eccentric) I shall let it emerge from some highly selective remarks about an issue in philosophy of history which is, by contrast, familiar and respectable: the debate between constructionists and realists. We cannot conceivably have direct acquaintance with, direct access to, the past; by their very nature, past events are over and done with and so unavailable for inspection. This much both camps agree on. However, they differ massively over what follows from this truth. For the constructionist concludes that what he calls the ‘real past’, what actually happened, can play no part whatsoever in historical thought. It is necessarily hidden, and we can have no inkling of it. What, and all, the historian can sensibly claim to know is the ‘historical past’, something which is constituted by and exists only in relation to his thought. Against this, the realist maintains that of course historians do not, necessarily or even typically, constitute the past; rather, they construct accounts of it which will be true if they conform to it as it actually was and false if they do not. And he charges his opponent with a number of fundamental confusions: mistaking accounts of historical events for the events themselves, confusing epistemological matters with ontological, and worst of all equating knowledge with direct perceptual awareness. Now, the realist is, in basics at least, fairly obviously right. And his criticisms are reinforced when we note that constructionists tend to combine with their vision of the impenetrability of the ‘real’ past the thesis that we undoubtedly know that there is a real past, with real people and real events. However, this piece of knowledge must for him, like that of an intelligible world for Kant, ever remain contentless, ‘factually vacuous’.

scholarly journals Beyond the Battlefields of Memory: Historical Traumas and Hungarian Literature

Porównania ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 47-58
Author(s):  
Tamás Kisantal
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Collective Memory ◽  
Literary Fiction ◽  
Historical Events ◽  
Literary Works ◽  
Literary Representation ◽  
Hungarian Literature ◽  
The Past ◽  
Cultural Field ◽  
Literary Canons

One can describe the contemporary Hungarian collective memory as an interpretational field of some traumatic historical events of the twentieth century. The essay aims to sketch some important tendencies of the literary representation of these events after the millennium. At first, it outlines the wider social and political contexts of these literary works. Secondly, it models the current Hungarian cultural field as an opposition between two strategies of memory labeling them in Michael Rothberg’s terminology as competitive and multidirectional ones. These approaches to the past are also associated with different ideological implications and literary canons. Finally, with a brief overview of some recent novels, the essay demonstrates some pathways of representing multidirectional attitudes to the past in the Hungarian literary fiction of the 2000s.

New Frankensteins; or, the Body Politic

2017 ◽  
pp. 195-207
Author(s):  
Timothy C. Baker
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Body Politic ◽  
The Body ◽  
Historical Events ◽  
Cultural Contexts ◽  
Literary Traditions ◽  
Gothic Fiction ◽  
The Past ◽  
Gothic Novels

In the introduction to his 2001 anthology of ‘New Scottish Gothic Fiction’, Alan Bissett argues that Gothic ‘has always acted as a way of re-examining the past, and the past is the place where Scotland, a country obsessed with re-examining itself, can view itself whole, vibrant, mythic’ (2001: 6). While virtually every contemporary Scottish author has made use of Gothic elements or tropes in some part of their work, many of the most important recent texts to be labelled ‘Scottish Gothic’ are centrally concerned with such a re-examination of the past. For many authors, however, the past is not to be found in historical events or cultural contexts, but specifically in the interrelation between established Scottish and Gothic literary traditions. Beginning with Emma Tennant’s The Bad Sister (1978), one of numerous twentieth-century reworkings of James Hogg’s The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner (1824), many contemporary Gothic novels have explicitly relied on earlier texts; adapting the work of Hogg, Stevenson or even Shelley becomes a way of challenging preconceived notions of stable national and individual identities.

scholarly journals THE IMPORTANCE OF HISTORICAL MEMORY IN HUMAN FATE (ON THE MATERIAL OF THE NOVELS "OLD MAN" BY YURI TRIFONOV AND "PLANET OF MR. SEMMLER" SOLA BELLOU)

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (86) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ivan Bratus ◽  
◽  
Zoriana Sverdlyk ◽  
Anna Gunka ◽  
◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Detrimental Effect ◽  
Historical Memory ◽  
Traumatic Experience ◽  
Moral Choice ◽  
Historical Events ◽  
Literary Works ◽  
The Past ◽  
Personal Experiences ◽  
The Right

The article analyzes the significance of historical memory in the context of personal experiences of the heroes of the literary works of Solo Bellow and Yuri Trifonov. The question of comprehension of the lived years with elements of the analysis and first of all self-analysis is considered. Particular attention is paid to times of hardship – wars, revolutions, personal tragedies. The authors dwell on the importance of "the right moral choice", on the detrimental effect of "wrong choice". It is proved that the novels "Mr. Semmler's Planet" and "The Old Man" are in approximately the same plane of cultural and historical understanding of reality, the main characters have similar qualities and their general irritation with modernity is relative regardless of different countries (USA and USSR). In modern Ukraine, the problem of overcoming the totalitarian past is quite relevant. Ukrainians have gained a traumatic experience of counteraction and adaptation, comprehension and forgetting, condemnation and justification of certain historical events of the twentieth century. Turning to the literary works of the second half of the twentieth century allows us to better understand the nature of contemporary phenomena, to learn from the useful experience of intellectual writers in trying to "reconcile with reality", to overcome the inertia of oblivion and to find basic values of human existence. human layer. Sol Bellow and Yuri Trifonov were able to describe their main characters quite accurately – they are old, "locked in their memories". Only the past remains their "true" reality, but at the same time they have to live in a "present" alien to them. Continuation of their biological life does not satisfy the main characters of the analyzed works - they try to convey their memories or thoughts to the younger generation. But here they encounter a conditional wall of misunderstanding, a wall of alienation. The considerations and feelings important to them have mostly lost their relevance and turned into rudiments. Only a small part of the information about the past can be perceived only within the framework of interest in the fate of prominent personalities with whom the main characters had to intersect.

scholarly journals The Transformation of Historical Time: Processual and Evental Temporalities

2021 ◽  
Vol 31 (4) ◽  
pp. 219-246
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Artificial Intelligence ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Philosophy Of History ◽  
Historical Time ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Future ◽  
Positive Meaning ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Modern Era

The author takes on two interrelated tasks. The first is to justify the philosophy of history as an intellectual enterprise for the modern era and one which is dedicated to finding a positive meaning in the changes that occur within humanity as it moves from the past toward the future. The viability of that enterprise has been called into question by the catastrophes of the twentieth century. The second task is to propose a new concept of historical temporality instead of the “processual” one that was discredited in the previous century. Simon maintains that we are now living in a period similar to the “saddle time” (from 1750 to 1850) described by Reinhart Koselleck. The difference between that period and the current one lies in the replacement of the “processual” temporality that was established in that earlier time by an “evental” temporality, whose structure this article is intended to explain. The future plays a key role in the structure of evental temporality. The future no longer denotes the perspective that maps out the direction of historical changes but is instead synonymous with changes as such — changes so radical that the continued existence of mankind within its former ecological, biological and physiological boundaries is at stake. The author illustrates these changes with references to bioengineering, artificial intelligence, anthropogenic climate change, etc. Expectations about these changes are utopian and dystopian at the same time and can feed one’s wildest hopes and fantasies as well as inspire the darkest fears and dreads. In any case, these changes themselves are in no way determined by the previous course of history. The future they point to undermines the continuity of human experience because it is completely independent of the past.

What’s Forgotten About The Structure of Scientific Revolutions?

2021 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 323-339
Author(s):  
Jouni-Matti Kuukkanen
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Science ◽  
History Of Science ◽  
Historical Record ◽  
Philosophy Of History ◽  
First Century ◽  
Historical Events ◽  
Scientific Revolutions ◽  
The Past ◽  
Structure Of Scientific Revolutions ◽  
History Of

Abstract Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions is a classic, and it is certainly not forgotten. However, an essential aspect about it has been neglected. That is, Kuhn’s Structure is a book in philosophy of history in the sense that Structure attempts gives an account of historical events, focuses on the whole of the history of science and stipulates a structure of the history of science to explain historical events. Kuhn’s book and its contribution to the debates about the progress of science and the contingency and inevitability of the history of science shows why and how philosophy of history is relevant for the history and philosophy of science. Its successful integration of historical and philosophical aspects in one account makes it worthwhile reading also for philosophers of history in the twentieth-first century. In particular, it raises the question whether the historical record can justify philosophical views and comprehensive syntheses of the past.

Tropos Logikos: Gustav Shpet's Philosophy of History

Slavic Review ◽  
2003 ◽  
Vol 62 (2) ◽  
pp. 343-358
Author(s):  
Peter Steiner
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Paradigm Shift ◽  
Philosophy Of History ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Linguistic Turn ◽  
Comprehensive View ◽  
The Past ◽  
Theory Of History ◽  
Western Historiography

Gustav G. Shpet (1879-1937) is one of those formidable Russian thinkers who, in the early years of the last century, orchestrated a revolutionary paradigm shift across a broad swath of the humanities and social sciences that is still reverberating today. But we lack a comprehensive view of the manifold heterogeneity of Shpet's intellectual endeavors. This article focuses on one prominent lacuna in our knowledge of Shpet: the theory of history that he advanced in the 1910s. In many respects Shpet's theory anticipated the "linguistic turn" that occurred in western historiography during the last quarter of the twentieth century and that is most often identified with Hayden White's name. But while White analyzes the historian's discourse in terms of tropology and narratology, for Shpet predication is the key logical mechanism that generates production of texts about the past. The divergence of these two approaches can be explained through the hidden Kantian underpinnings of White's thought that contrasts sharply with the explicit Hegelianism of Shpet's theorizing.

Maturing of Pharmaceutical Education

1976 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 153-160 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph V. Swintosky
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Medical Education ◽  
Graduate Medical Education ◽  
Health Professions ◽  
Historical Events ◽  
Graduate Medical ◽  
The Past ◽  
Professional Doctor ◽  
Doctor Of Pharmacy ◽  
Pharmaceutical Education

In this paper the author recommends that American pharmaceutical education should move rapidly in the direction of a single terminal professional doctor of pharmacy degree for all of its graduates. An attempt is made to review for the reader: (1) some of the historical events of the twentieth century that influenced the direction of education in pharmaceutical, medical and related health professions,1,2,3,4 (2) the Pharmaceutical Survey of 19485,6 which was the last major introspective study prior to the present work underway by the Millis Commission, (3) the report of the Citizens Commission On Graduate Medical Education7 which appeared in 1966, (4) several tracts of the past few decades2,3,8,9,10 which have focused on the changing scene in American pharmaceutical education, (5) the development7,10 in medical education which have provided important precedents for pharmacy and (6) several recent papers11,12 which have espoused the professional doctor of pharmacy degree. The author particularly calls upon direct quotes and recommendations from the Findings And Recommendations of the Pharmaceutical Survey of 1948. Also, he draws upon and paraphrases remarks of The Report of the Citizens Commission and Graduate Medical Education, chaired by John S. Millis, and which appeared in 1966.

Nine Centuries of Man

2017 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Diverse Range ◽  
Gender Expectations ◽  
Court Records ◽  
The Past ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Police Reports ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
Scottish History ◽  
Late Twentieth Century

What did it mean to be a man in Scotland over the past nine centuries? Scotland, with its stereotypes of the kilted warrior and the industrial ‘hard man’, has long been characterised in masculine terms, but there has been little historical exploration of masculinity in a wider context. This interdisciplinary collection examines a diverse range of the multiple and changing forms of masculinities from the late eleventh to the late twentieth century, exploring the ways in which Scottish society through the ages defined expectations for men and their behaviour. How men reacted to those expectations is examined through sources such as documentary materials, medieval seals, romances, poetry, begging letters, police reports and court records, charity records, oral histories and personal correspondence. Focusing upon the wide range of activities and roles undertaken by men – work, fatherhood and play, violence and war, sex and commerce – the book also illustrates the range of masculinities that affected or were internalised by men. Together, the chapters illustrate some of the ways Scotland’s gender expectations have changed over the centuries and how, more generally, masculinities have informed the path of Scottish history

Modernism Under Review: Hugh Kenner's The Pound Era

2010 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 181-194
Author(s):  
Marjorie Perloff
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
First World War ◽  
World War ◽  
The Past ◽  
The First World War ◽  
Anglo American ◽  
First World

This essay offers a critical re-assessment of Hugh Kenner's The Pound Era. It argues that Kenner's magisterial survey remains important to our understanding of Modernism, despite its frankly partisan viewpoint. Kenner's is an insider's account of the Anglo-American Modernist writing that he takes to have been significant because it sought to invent a new language consonant with the ethos of the twentieth century. The essay suggests that Kenner's impeccable attention to the Modernist renovation of language goes beyond formalism, since, for him, its ‘patterned energies’ (a term derived from Buckminster Fuller's theory of knots) relate Modernism to the larger complex of artefacts within which it functions and, beyond these, to what he takes to be the great works of the past and to the scientific-technological inventions of the present. But the essay also points out that Kenner's is an eccentric canon, which makes no room for Forster, Frost, Lawrence, or Stevens. Furthermore, Kenner's emphasis on the First World War as a great cultural rupture, while plausible, works less well for Joyce and Williams than it does for Pound and Eliot.

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