Jacques Le Goff

Bio: Jacques Le Goff is an academic researcher from École Normale Supérieure. The author has contributed to research in topics: SAINT & Purgatory. The author has an hindex of 31, co-authored 220 publications receiving 4296 citations.

History and Memory

Abstract: Preface PAST/PRESENT The distinction between past and present in psychology The distinction between past and present in light of linguistics The distinction between past and present in primitive thought General reflections on the distinction between past and present in historical consciousness The evolution of the relation between past and present in European thought from ancient Greece to the nineteenth century The ghost of the past, the history of the present, and the fascination with the future in the twentieth century ANTIQUE (ANCIENT)/MODERN An ambiguous Western pairing In this pair the modern is the main problem The ambiguity of the antique (ancient): Greco-Roman antiquity and other antiquities The Modern and its copetitors: Modern and New, Modern and Progress Antique (ancient)/modern and history: Quarrels between Ancients and Moderns in preindustrial Europe from the sixth to the eighteenth centuries Antique (ancient)/modern and history: Modernism, modernization, modernity in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries Domains that reveal modernism The historical conditions of the recognition of modernism The ambiguity of the modern MEMORY Ethnic Memory The Rise of Memory: From Orality to Writing, from Prehistory to Antiquity Memory in the Middle Ages: Western Europe The Progress of Written and Figured Memory from the Renaissance to the Present Contemporary Revolutions in Memory Conclusion: The Stake of Memory HISTORY Paradoxes and Ambiguities of History Is History a science of the past, or is it true that "there is only contemporary history"? Knowledge and power: Objectivity and the manipulation of the past The singular and the universal: Generalizations and regularities in history The Historical Mentality: Men and the Past Philosophies of History History as a Science: The Historian's Craft History Today Endnotes Bibliography About the Author Index

The Birth of Purgatory

Abstract: In "The Birth of Purgatory," Jacques Le Goff, the brilliant medievalist and renowned "Annales" historian, is concerned not with theological discussion but with the growth of an idea, with the relation between belief and society, with mental structures, and with the historical role of the imagination. Le Goff argues that the doctrine of Purgatory did not appear in the Latin theology of the West before the late twelfth century, that the word "purgatorium" did not exist until then. He shows that the growth of a belief in an intermediate place between Heaven and Hell was closely bound up with profound changes in the social and intellectual reality of the Middle Ages. Throughout, Le Goff makes use of a wealth of archival material, much of which he has translated for the first time, inviting readers to examine evidence from the writings of great, obscure, or anonymous theologians.

The Medieval Imagination

Abstract: The marvelous in the medieval West -- the wilderness in the medieval West -- The perception of Christendom by the Roman curia and the organization of an Ecumenical Council in 1274 -- The time of Purgatory (third to thirteenth century) -- The time of the Exemplum (thirteenth century) -- Body and ideology in the medieval West -- Gestures in Purgatory -- The repudiation of pleasure -- Levi-Strauss in Broceliande: a brief analysis of a courtly romance -- Vestimentary and alimentary codes in Erec et Enide -- Warriors and conquering bourgeois: the image of the city in twelfth-century French literature -- An urban metaphor of William of Auvergne -- Social realities and ideological codes in the early thirteenth century: an Exemplum by James of Vitry -- Christianity and dreams (second to seventh century) -- The dreams of Helmbrecht the Elder.

La naissance du Purgatoire

Abstract: Des les premiers siecles, les chretiens ont cru confusement en la possibilite de racheter certains peches apres la mort. Mais dans le systeme dualiste de l'au-dela, entre Enfer et Paradis, il n'y avait pas de lieu pour l'accomplissement des peines purgatoires. Il fallut attendre la fin du XIIe siecle pour qu'apparaisse le mot Purgatoire, pour que le Purgatoire devienne un troisieme lieu de l'au-dela dans une nouvelle geographie de l'autre monde. Le Purgatoire s'inscrit dans une revolution mentale et sociale qui remplace les systemes dualistes par des systemes faisant intervenir la notion d'intermediaire et qui arithmetisent la vie spirituelle. Ce Purgatoire, c'est aussi le triomphe du jugement individuel au sein des nouvelles relations entre les vivants et les morts. Cette enquete suit les avatars de la naissance du Purgatoire de l'Antiquite a La Divine Comedie de Dante. Cette naissance est un des grands episodes de l'histoire spirituelle et sociale de l'Occident. Date de premiere edition : 1981.

International Norm Dynamics and Political Change

Abstract: Norms have never been absent from the study of international politics, but the sweeping “ideational turn” in the 1980s and 1990s brought them back as a central theoretical concern in the field. Much theorizing about norms has focused on how they create social structure, standards of appropriateness, and stability in international politics. Recent empirical research on norms, in contrast, has examined their role in creating political change, but change processes have been less well-theorized. We induce from this research a variety of theoretical arguments and testable hypotheses about the role of norms in political change. We argue that norms evolve in a three-stage “life cycle” of emergence, “norm cascades,” and internalization, and that each stage is governed by different motives, mechanisms, and behavioral logics. We also highlight the rational and strategic nature of many social construction processes and argue that theoretical progress will only be made by placing attention on the connections between norms and rationality rather than by opposing the two.

The Institutional Dynamics of International Political Orders

Abstract: The history of international political orders is written in terms of continuity and change in domestic and international political relations. As a step toward understanding such continuity and change, we explore some ideas drawn from an institutional perspective. An institutional perspective is characterized in terms of two grand issues that divide students of international relations and other organized systems. The first issue concerns the basic logic of action by which human behavior is shaped. On the one side are those who see action as driven by a logic of anticipated consequences and prior preferences. On the other side are those who see action as driven by a logic of appropriateness and a sense of identity. The second issue concerns the efficiency of history. On the one side are those who see history as efficient in the sense that it follows a course leading to a unique equilibrium dictated by exogenously determined interests, identities, and resources. On the other side are those who see history as inefficient in the sense that it follows a meandering, path-dependent course distinguished by multiple equilibria and endogenous transformations of interests, identities, and resources. We argue that the tendency of students of international political order to emphasize efficient histories and consequential bases for action leads them to underestimate the significance of rule- and identity-based action and inefficient histories. We illustrate such an institutional perspective by considering some features of the coevolution of politics and institutions, particularly the ways in which engagement in political activities affects the definition and elaboration of political identities and the development of competence in politics and the capabilities of political institutions.

Unsettling the Coloniality of Being/Power/Truth/Freedom: Towards the Human, After Man, Its Overrepresentation--An Argument

Abstract: One thing in any case is certain: man is neither the oldest nor the most constant problem that has been posed for human knowledge. Taking a relatively short chronological sample within a restricted geographical area—European culture since the sixteenth century—one can be certain that man is a recent invention within it.. .. In fact, among all the mutations that have affected the knowledge of things and their order, the. .. only one, that which began a century and a half ago and is now perhaps drawing to a close, has made it possible for the figure of man to appear. And that appearance. .. was the effect of a change in the fundamental arrangements of knowledge.. .. If those arrangements were to disappear as they appeared. .. one can certainly wager that man would be erased.

Social Memory Studies: From “Collective Memory” to the Historical Sociology of Mnemonic Practices

Abstract: Despite substantial work in a variety of disciplines, substantive areas, and geographical contexts, social memory studies is a nonparadigmatic, transdisciplinary, centerless enterprise. To remedy this relative disorganization, we (re-)construct out of the diversity of work addressing social memory a useful tradition, range of working definitions, and basis for future work. We trace lineages of the enterprise, review basic definitional disputes, outline a historical approach, and review sociological theories concerning the statics and dynamics of social memory.

What Makes the World Hang Together? Neo-utilitarianism and the Social Constructivist Challenge

Abstract: Social constructivism in international relations has come into its own during the past decade, not only as a metatheoretical critique of currently dominant neo-utilitarian approaches (neo-realism and neoliberal institutionalism) but increasingly in the form of detailed empirical findings and theoretical insights. Constructivism addresses many of the same issues addressed by neo-utilitarianism, though from a different vantage and, therefore, with different effect. It also concerns itself with issues that neo-utilitarianism treats by assumption, discounts, ignores, or simply cannot apprehend within its characteristic ontology and/or epistemology. The constructivist project has sought to open up the relatively narrow theoretical confines of conventional approaches—by pushing them back to problematize the interests and identities of actors; deeper to incorporate the intersubjective bases of social action and social order; and into the dimensions of space and time to establish international structure as contingent practice, constraining social action but also being (re)created and, therefore, potentially transformed by it.