Autobiografia jako narzędzie badań historyka idei. Casus „Wspomnień niezależnego” Richarda Pipesa

The aim of the article is to develop a research tool for a historian of ideas in the form of an autobiography. It is about framing when a personal document meets the criteria of being a tool for a historian of political thought. The conclusions included the thought that the memories must be meta-considerations on the subject of written autobiography or an analysis of the problem of auto-biography within the framework of the created philosophy or history vision. Examples representing this narrative type were left by, among others, Johann Gottfried Herder, Johann Wolfgang Goethe, Thomas Carlyle, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Friedrich Nietzsche, Benedetto Croce, Robin G. Collingwood, and in Poland Stanisław Brzozowski. The volume of Richard Pipes’ memoirs, Memoirs of a Non-belonger, which is the foundation for the analysis, has also become part of the trend. The most important thinkers who have studied the issue of autobiography in depth include Wilhelm Dilthey and Georg Misch. The conclusions of the analysis are as follows: autobiography has a philosophical and epistemological meaning in the field of knowledge about human nature. In this sense, autobiography becomes part of anthropology, while anthropology is the foundation for the history of ideas, including political thought.

John Stuart Mill – Zeitgeist und Zeitgenossen

Die Texte in diesem Band zeigen John Stuart Mills (1806- 1873) Einbindung in zeitgenössische Diskurse und reichen von ersten Veröffentlichungen bis hin zum Werk des Elder Statesman. Der autoritätskritische Impetus des »Einmischers« und »Aufwieglers« Mill zieht sich wie ein roter Faden durch diese Texte, die sich mit Zeitgenossen wie Auguste Comte, Thomas Carlyle oder William Hamilton auseinandersetzen. Seine schärfste Kritik gilt jeder Form von Machtmissbrauch wie Tyrannei, Despotismus und Totalitarismus. Mill präsentiert sich aber nicht nur als ein vehementer Kritiker jeglicher Machtanmaßung und der Idee unabänderlicher Vorherbestimmung, sondern auch als fundierter Theoretiker der Transformation und als ein öffentlicher Intellektueller, der für seine Überzeugungen in einem offenen Wettstreit eintrat. Ottfried Höffe schrieb zum Erscheinen der 5. Bandes in der FAZ 2017: »Für alle Freunde eines aufgeklärten Liberalismus: Die neue Ausgabe der Ausgewählten Werke ist abgeschlossen.«

Time "mechanization" and Thomas Carlyle

English historian,publicist and philosopher Thomas Carlylesle(1795-1881) created a lot of valuable works,but researchers mark out his critical Essays and among them “Signs of Time” is the best.In this work the writer tries to make the reader active.He describes Victorian period,uses intellectual heroes of the past and is against Mechanisation of the present.He gives many arguments for perfect description in order to maintain a contact with a reader and to make it clear for the reader the meaning of Mechanism.So,he wants to emphasise mechanical nature of the society of that time,as these mechanisms become the target for every human.The Essay was written in 1829 in a journal Edinburgh Review and there should have been three book reviews,but he went far more beyond his particular aim and presented increasing the admiration of technical and mechanical things and regarded it as a decay of society.

Transatlantic Exchanges and the Shifting “Geography of the Word”: Two New Letters from Emerson to Carlyle

This essay prints two previously unpublished letters from Ralph Waldo Emerson to Thomas Carlyle and contextualizes them against the background of the transatlantic collaboration between the two writers, shedding new light on their exchange of books and manuscripts between Boston and London during the second third of the nineteenth century.

Thomas Carlyle and the Australasian Labour Movement

The influence of the great Scottish man of letters Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881) on the British labour movement is well known. Drawing largely on the Australasian labour press, this article explores the influence of Carlyle on the intellectual culture of the Australasian labour movement, demonstrating that Australasian labour activists (including many Scots) derived considerable inspiration from Carlyle, with regard to idealist ethics and the nobility of work, social criticism, and constructive political thought. In all these regards, Carlyle provided not only ideas, but also language, rhetoric, and cultural authority. In this sense, Carlyle was just as crucial an influence on the Australasian labour movement as he was on the British labour movement.