Showing papers on "Intellectual history published in 1998"

Postcolonial Theory: A Critical Introduction

Abstract: 1 Introduction: after colonialism..2 Thinking otherwise: a brief intellectual history..3 Postcolonialism and the new humanities..4 Edward Said and his critics..5 Postcolonialism and feminism..6 Imagining community: the question of nationalism..7 One world: the vision of postnationalism..8 Postcolonial literatures..9 Conclusion: the limits of postcolonial theory..Bibliography..Index

Historiography in the Twentieth Century: From Scientific Objectivity to the Postmodern Challenge

Abstract: A preeminent intellectual historian here examines the profound changes in ideas about the nature of history and historiography. Georg G. Iggers traces the basic assumptions upon which historical research and writing have been based since history's emergence as a professional discipline in the nineteenth century, and describes how the newly emerging social sciences transformed historiography following World War II. The discipline's greatest challenge may have come in the last two decades, when postmodern ideas forced a reevaluation of the relationship of historians to their subject and called into question the very possibility of objective history. Iggers sees the contemporary discipline as a hybrid, moving away from a classical, macro-historical approach toward microhistory, cultural history, and the history of everyday life. Still, while the postmodern critique of traditional historiography offers important correctives to historical thought and practice, it "has not destroyed the historian's commitment to recapturing reality or his or her belief in a logic of inquiry."

Visions of the Past: The Challenge of Film to Our Idea of History

Abstract: Introduction: Personal, Professional, and (a Little) Theoretical PART 1: HISTORY IN IMAGES 1. History in Images / History in Words: Reflections on the Possibility of Really Putting History onto Film 2. The Historical Film: Looking at the Past in a Postliterate Age PART 2: THE HISTORICAL FILM 3. Reds as History 4.The Good Fight: History, Memory, Documentary 5. JFK: Historical Fact / Historical Film 6.Walker: The Dramatic Film as (Postmodern) History 7.Sans Soleil: The Documentary as (Visionary) Truth PART 3: THE FUTURE OF THE PAST 8. Re-visioning History: Contemporary Filmmakers and the Construction of the Past 9.Film and the Beginnings of Postmodern History 10. What You Think about When You Think about Writing a Book on History and Film Notes Sources Acknowledgments Index

Effortless Action: Wu-wei As Conceptual Metaphor and Spiritual Ideal in Early China

Abstract: This book presents a systematic account of the role of the personal spiritual ideal of wu-wei-literally "no doing," but better rendered as "effortless action"-in early Chinese thought. Edward Slingerland's analysis shows that wu-wei represents the most general of a set of conceptual metaphors having to do with a state of effortless ease and unself-consciousness. This concept of effortlessness, he contends, serves as a common ideal for both Daoist and Confucian thinkers. He also argues that this concept contains within itself a conceptual tension that motivates the development of early Chinese thought: the so-called "paradox of wu-wei," or the question of how one can consciously "try not to try." Methodologically, this book represents a preliminary attempt to apply the contemporary theory of conceptual metaphor to the study of early Chinese thought. Although the focus is upon early China, both the subject matter and methodology have wider implications. The subject of wu-wei is relevant to anyone interested in later East Asian religious thought or in the so-called "virtue-ethics" tradition in the West. Moreover, the technique of conceptual metaphor analysis-along with the principle of "embodied realism" upon which it is based-provides an exciting new theoretical framework and methodological tool for the study of comparative thought, comparative religion, intellectual history, and even the humanities in general. Part of the purpose of this work is thus to help introduce scholars in the humanities and social sciences to this methodology, and provide an example of how it may be applied to a particular sub-field.

Political Dissent in Democratic Athens: Intellectual Critics of Popular Rule

Abstract: How and why did the Western tradition of political theorizing arise in Athens during the late 5th and 4th centuries BC? By interweaving intellectual history with political philosophy and literary analysis, Josiah Ober argues that the tradition orginated in a high-stakes debate about democracy. Since elite Greek intellectuals tended to assume that ordinary men were incapable of ruling themselves, the longevity and resilience of Athenian popular rule presented a problem: how to explain the apparent success of a regime "irrationally" based on the inherent wisdom and practical efficacy of decisions made by non-elite citizens? The problem became acute after two oligarchic coups d'etat in the late 5th century BC. The generosity and statesmanship that democrats showed after regaining political power contrasted starkly with the oligarchs' violence and corruption. Since it was no longer self-evident that "better men" meant "better government", critics of democracy sought new arguments to explain the relationship among politics, ethics and morality. The author of this text offers readings of the political works of Thucydides, Plato and Aristotle among others, placing them in the context of a competitive community of dissident writers. These thinkers struggled against both democratic ideology and intellectual rivals to articulate the best and most influential criticism of popular rule.

The Gender of History: Men, Women, and Historical Practice

Abstract: In this study of the gendering of the practices of history, Bonnie Smith resurrects the amateur history written by women in the 19th century - a type of history condemned as trivial by "scientific" male historians. She demonstrates the degree to which the profession defined itself in opposition to amateurism, femininity and alternative ways of writing history. The male historians of the archive and the seminar claimed to be searching for "genderless universal truth", which in reality according to Smith prioritized men's history over women's, white history over non-white, and the political history of Western governments over any other. Meanwhile, women amateurs wrote vivid histories of queens and accomplished women, of manners and mores, and of everyday life. Following the profession up to 1940, this text traces the emergence of a renewed interest in social and cultural history which had been demeaned in the 19th century, when professoinal historians viewed themselves as supermen who could see through the surface of events to invisible meanings and motives. But Smith doesn't let late 20th-century historians off the hook. She demonstrates how, even in the late 1990s, the practice of history is propelled by fantasies of power in which researchers imagine themselves as heroic rescuers of the inarticulate lower classes.

The Cold War & the university : toward an intellectual history of the postwar years

Abstract: The years following 1945 witnessed a massive change in American intellectual thought and in the life of American universities. The effort to mobilize intellectual talent during the war established new links between the government and the academy. After the war, many of those who had worked with the military or the Office of Strategic Studies took jobs in the burgeoning post-war structure of university-based military research and intelligence agencies, bringing large infusions of government money into many fields. The essays in this text explore what happened to the university in these years and why. They show the many ways existing disciplines, such as anthropology, were affected by the Cold War ethos, and discuss the rise of new fields, such as area studies, and the changing nature of dissent and academic freedom during and since the Cold War.

Missing Persons a Critique of the Social Sciences

Abstract: The Western cultural consensus based on the ideas of free markets and individualism has led many social scientists to consider poverty as a personal experience, a deprivation of material things, and a failure of just distribution. Mary Douglas and Steven Ney find this dominant tradition of social thought about poverty and well-being to be full of contradictions. They argue that the root cause is the impoverished idea of the human person inherited through two centuries of intellectual history, and that two principles, the idea of the solipsist self and the idea of objectivity, cause most of the contradictions. Douglas and Ney state that Economic Man, from its semitechnical niche in eighteenth-century economic theory, has taken over the realms of psychology, consumption, public assistance, political science, and philosophy. They say that by distorting the statistical data presented for policy analysis, the ideas of the solipsist self and objectivity indeed often protect a political bias. The authors propose to correct this by revising the current model of the person. Taking cultural bias into account and giving full play to political dissent, they restore the 'persons' who have been missing from the social science debates. Drawing from anthropology, economics, political science, and sociology, the authors set forth a fundamental critique of the social sciences. Their book will find a wide audience among social scientists and will also interest anyone engaged in current discussions of poverty. This book is a copublication with the Russell Sage Foundation.

The Atom in the History of Human Thought

Abstract: The idea of the atom - the ultimate essence of physical reality, indivisible and eternal - has been the focus of a quest that has engaged humanity for 2,500 years. That quest is captured in The Atom in the History of Human Thought. Here is a panoramic intellectual history that begins in ancient Greece, ranges across the entire span of Western philosophy and science, and ends with the first direct visual proof of the atom's existence, just ten years ago. Bernard Pullman deftly captures the richness and depth of this remarkable debate, giving us not only the ideas of philosophers, church leaders, and scientists, but also the historical and social context from which these thoughts evolved. We have marvelous accounts of the work of such thinkers as Plato and Aristotle, Aquinas and Maimonides, Galileo and Descartes, Newton and Einstein - indeed, virtually every major philosopher of Western civilization, with excursions into the Hindu and Arab world - all presented against the backdrop of history. But perhaps most fascinating is the gradual shift in the book from a philosophical and religious perspective to a scientific perspective, especially in the 19th century, as science begins to dominate how humanity understands the world. Thus a book that begins with pre-Socratic philosophers such as Democritus and Empedocles ends with nuclear physicists such as Werner Heisenberg and Richard Feynman, and with a very different world view. Ably translated by Axel Reisinger, this is a vibrant look at humanity's search to understand the ultimate nature of physical reality, a quest that has spanned the entire course of Western civilization.

The Intellectual History of Materials Flow Analysis, Part I, I 860- I 970

Abstract: In this article,we inquire into the intellectual history ofthe application of the biological concept of metabolism to social systems-not as a metaphor; but as a material and energetic process within the economy and society vis-Avis various natural systems.The paper reviews several scientific traditions that may contribute to such a view, including biology and ecology, social theory, cultural anthropology, and social geography It assembles widely scattered approaches dating from the 1860s onward and shows how they prepare the ground for the pioneers of “industrial metabolism” in the late 1960s. In connection to varying political perspedives, metabolism gradually takes shape as a powerful interdisciplinary concept It will take another 25 years before this approach becomes one of the most important paradigms for the empirical analysis of the society-nature-interaction across various disciplines. This later period will be the subject of part II ofthis literature review.

From Plato to NATO: The Idea of the West and Its Opponents

Abstract: An in-depth intellectual history of the Western idea and a passionate defense of its importance to America's future, "From Plato to NATO" is the first book to make sense of the legacy of the West at a time when it is facing its greatest challenges Readers of Francis Fukuyama, John Gray, Samuel Huntington, and other analysts of the dilemmas of Western nations in the twenty-first century will find in David Gress's original account a fuller description of what the West really is and how, with the best of intentions, it has been misrepresented Most important, they will encounter a new vision of Western identity and how it can be recovered Early in the twentieth century, American educators put together a story of Western civilization, its origins, history, and promise that for the subsequent fifty years remained at the heart of American college education The story they told was of a Western civilization that began with the Greeks and continued through 2,500 years of great books and great ideas, culminating in twentieth-century progressive liberal democracy, science, and capitalist prosperity In the 1960s, this Grand Narrative of the West came under attack Over the next thirty years, the critics turned this old story into its opposite: a series of anti-narratives about the evils, the failures, and the betrayals of justice that, so they said, constituted Western history The victory of Western values at the end of the cold war, the spread of democracy and capitalism, and the worldwide impact of American popular culture have not revived the Grand Narrative in the European and American heartlands of the West David Gress explains this paradox, arguing that the Grand Narrative of the West was flawed from the beginning: that the West did not begin in Greece and that, in morality and religion, the Greeks were an alien civilization whose contribution was mediated through Rome and Christianity Furthermore, in assuming a continuity from the Greeks to modern liberalism, we have mistakenly downplayed or rejected everything in between, focusing on the great ideas and the great books rather than on real history with all its ambiguities, conflicts, and contradictions The heart of Gress's case for the future of the West is that the New must remember its roots in the Old and seek a synthesis For as the attacks have demonstrated, the New West cannot stand alone Its very virtues -- liberty, reason, progress -- grew out of the Old West and cannot flourish when removed from that rich soil

Choosing the Right Subjects in Significant Life Experiences Research

Abstract: Summary Research on significant life experiences (SLE) can achieve its potential importance only when it studies the right people for the right reason. Here I scrutinize ten research reports, and conclude that many do not. Historical information is incorporated in text and footnotes to place SLE research into the intellectual history of contemporary environmental education.

Information and Modernity: the History of Information and the Eclipse of Library History

Abstract: The author argues that library history should not be seen as an aspect of the history of institutions but as a sub-set of ‘information history’, particularly considering the role of librarians in the modern state in surveillance and bureaucracy. This paper was read at the Library History Group's ‘Libraries and Modernity’ conference held as part of the Library Association's UmbrelLA4 meeting at UMIST, Manchester, in June I997.

Learning and reasoning in history

Abstract: Section 1 Narrative and sociocultural approach to history teaching and learning: the structure of historical narratives and the teaching of history, Jeretz Topolski historical representation as mediated action - official history as a tool, William R. Penual and James V. Wertsch the Russian revolution - official and unofficial accounts, James V. Wertsch and Mark Rozin uses of historical knowledge - an exploration of the construction of professional identity in students of psychology, Alberto Rosa, Florentino Blanco and Juan A. Huertas total history and its enemies in present-day teaching, Carlos Martinez-Shaw. Section 2 Uses of texts, documents and images in history learning: understanding historical controversies - students' evaluation and use of documentary evidence, Jean-Francois Rouet, Maureen A. Marron, Charles A. Perfetti and Monik Favart what do students know and how do they seek to know more? - knowledge base and the search for strategies in the study of art history, Fernando Hernandez seeing the past - learning history through group discussion of iconographic sources, Alessandra Fasulo, Hilda Girardet and Clotilde Pontecorvo wildflowers, sheep and democracy - the role of analogy in the teaching and learning of history, Kathleen McCarthy Young and Gaea Leinhardt. Section 3 Historical explanations: causality in history - on the "intuitive" understanding of the concepts of sufficiency and necessity, James F. Voss, Joseph Ciarrochi and Mario Carretero influence of intentional and personal factors in recalling historical texts - a develomental perspective, Angel Riviere, Maria Nunez, Beatriz Barquero and Federico Fontela researching children's ideas about history, Peter Lee, Alaric Dickinson and Rosalyn Ashby evidence evaluation and reasoning abilities in the domain of history - an empirical study, Margarita Limon and Mario Carretero on reasoning in history, Ola hallden. Section 4 History teaching and understanding goals in history teaching, Peter N. Stearns generating explanations in history, Liliana Jacott, Asuncion Lopez-Manjon and Mario Carretero student perceptions of history and historical concepts, James F. Voss, Jennifer Wiley and Joel Kennet constructing historical knowledge at high school - the case of the industrial revolution, Teresa Fernandez-Corte and Juan Antonio Garcia-Madruga promoting the learning of causal explanations in history through different teaching strategies, Jesus Dominguez and Juan Ignacio Pozo repersentation and understanding of history, Bodo von Borres.

An introduction to the philosophy of history

Abstract: Preface. Introduction. A. The Importance and Fascination of History. B. Popularity of History. C. Contemporary Neglect of the Philosophy of History. D. Present State of the Philosophy of History. E. How the Philosophy of History relates to Other Disciplines. F. The Philosophy of History and Contemporary Concerns. G. Future Possibilities of the Philosophy of History. Part I: History, Philosophy and the Social Sciences:. A. The Corners of the Triangle. B. History and the Social Sciences -- the right--hand side. C. Philosophy and the Social Sciences -- the base. D. Philosophy and History -- the left--hand side. Part II: Main Themes:. A. History is Important but Reliable?. B. Objectivity in History. C. Evidence. D. Truth. E. Social Processes and Frameworks. F. Teleology. G. Pattern, Structure and Colligation. Part III: Cause and Explanation:. A. Causes. B. Explanation in General. C. Statistical Explanation. Part IV: Explanation in the Social Sciences and History:. A. Explanation in the Social Sciences. B. Explanation in History. Part V: Science, History and Historicism:. A. Science and History compared. B. Science and History contrasted: Structure, Time and Meaning. C. Historicism. Part VI: Mind:. A. Mind and the Historian. B. Imagination and Understanding. C. Action. Part VII: Meaning:. A. Language. B. Hermeneutics. C. Political Correctness. Part VIII: "Only Connect":. A. Communication and Culture. B. Narrative. Part IX: The End of History?: . A. The Linguistic Turn in History. B. The Loss of the Object. C. From the Enlightenment to Postmodernism. D. No End -- No Beginning.

The People's Houses and the Cult of the Peasant in Turkey

Abstract: 'Only one peasant stronghold remained in or around the neighbourhood of Europe and the Middle East -Turkey,' wrote historian Eric Hobsbawm, 'where the peasantry declined, but in the mid-1980s, still remained an absolute majority.' One can argue that Hobsbawm made a mistake or exaggerated a little. Statistics, however, confirm the historian's point.2 Indeed, until recently Turkey remained a 'peasant country', and the consequences of this fact, usually unnoticed, have had great impact on the social and intellectual life of the country. The structural reasons behind the predominance of a peasant economy and society in Turkey have been investigated to a great extent, owing largely to the extensive development of the fields of economic history and political economy. However, the subjective factors such as ideas and culture that helped shape and reproduce this phenomenon have not been studied adequately. The role and impact of ideas are essential, for they are the factors which affect the specific ways of historical development, especially when they inspire political movements or become institutionalized as part of a state policy. This paper argues that, as far as the intellectual level is concerned, the lack of a consistent, well-devised, serious and prolonged urban and industrial policy and the predominance of a peasantist outlook among the ruling circles of the single-party regime contributed to the persistence of a predominantly peasant society for much of the twentieth century in Turkey. In other words, the ambiguities and eclecticism of the ruling circles, hesitantly pretending to embrace an urban and industrial outlook on the one hand, and embracing a peasantist one on the other, most probably helped sustain a huge peasant mass. In order to substantiate this argument, we shall analyse the peasantist ideology, whose significance in Turkish intellectual history is underestimated, although it gained widespread currency among the intelligentsia of the 1930s. We shall focus on the People's Houses since this institution was directly founded for the purpose of disseminating the propaganda of the governing People's

Theopompus of Chios: History and Rhetoric in the Fourth Century BC

Abstract: Theopompus of Chios was one of the most important ancient Greek historians of the fourth century BC. Although his work has survived only in fragments - as quotations and paraphrases in later writers - these are still a rich and vital source of information for Greek political, social, and intellectual history during the age of Philip of Macedon. This book explores both Theopompus' historical method and the intellectual milieu in which he worked, whilst the fragments themselves are placed in 'context' by examining where and why they are cited by later authors. Through this illuminating and original study, the author leads up to some important new conclusions about historical writing in the fourth century BC: he argues that there was no so-called Isocratean school of rhetorical history; that Theopompus used moral explanations typical of Greek thought to account for historical changes; and that oral tradition, as opposed to rhetorical invention, was still vibrant in the fourth century. Professor Flower also provides a critical method for evaluating Theopompus' historical accuracy. All Greek in the book is translated.

Modern Japanese thought

Abstract: 1. Introduction B. T. Wakabayashi 2. Japan's turn to the West Hirakawa Sukehiro (translated by B. T. Wakabayashi) 3. Meiji conservatism Kenneth B. Pyle 4. Socialism, liberalism, and Marxism, 1901-31 Peter Duus and Irwin Scheiner 5. Japanese revolt against the West: political and cultural criticism in the twentieth century Tetsuo Najita and H. D. Harootunian 6. The postwar intellectual history of Japan Andrew Barshay.

Emily Dickinson and the art of belief

Abstract: Named an "Outstanding Academic Book" by Choice when it was published in 1998, Emily Dickinson and the Art of Belief has since been widely recognized as one of the finest biographies of the great American poet. This superb work by Roger Lundin is now available in a revised edition that, in addition to incorporating text updates, aligns all citations of Dickinson's poems with the newly established standard edition of Dickinson's writing. Lundin looks chronologically at Dickinson's life, paying special attention to her experience of faith. He skillfully relates her personal development -- as it can be charted through her poems and letters -- to nineteenth-century American political, social, religious, and intellectual history. Series: Library of Religious Biography Series Editors: Mark A. Noll (series editor), Nathan O. Hatch (series editor), Allen C. Guelzo (series editor) The Library of Religious Biography is a series of original biographies on important religious figures throughout American and British history. The authors are well-known historians, each a recognized authority in the period of religious history in which his or her subject lived and worked. Grounded in solid research of both published and archival sources, these volumes link the lives of their subjects -- not always thought of as "religious" persons -- to the broader cultural contexts and religious issues that surrounded them. Each volume includes a bibliographical essay and an index to serve the needs of students, teachers, and researchers. Marked by careful scholarship yet free of footnotes and academic jargon, the books in this series are well-written narratives meant to be read and enjoyed as well as studied. Titles in this Series: Aimee Semple McPherson: Everybody's Sister Blaise Pascal: Reasons of the Heart Charles G. Finney and the Spirit of American Evangelicalism The Divine Dramatist: George Whitefield and the Rise of Modern Evangelicalism Emily Dickinson and the Art of Belief Occupy until I Come: A. T. Pierson and the Evangelization of the World The Puritan as Yankee: A Life of Horace Bushnell Sworn on the Altar of God: A Religious Biography of Thomas Jefferson Thomas Merton and the Monastic Vision William Ewart Gladstone: Faith and Politics in Victorian Britain

Women, science and medicine, 1500-1700 : mothers and sisters of the Royal Society

Abstract: From 1500 to 1700, women made a substantial contribution to the development of science, medicine, technology and the philosophy of ideas. The contributors provide studies on women in science and medicine, and explore methodologies for women's history. This collection throws light on the achievements of women in the fields of science, medicine and technology and offers a basis for recondisering discipline boundaries which have conspired to write women out of much intellectual history.

Confucian commentary and Chinese intellectual history

Abstract: As early as the han dynasty, exegetes of the texts in the Confucian canon were preparing written commentary on them, and by the dynasty's end they were interspersing their glosses in the body of these texts as interlinear, running commentary. From this time on, few Chinese would have read any classic from the canon without commentarial companion. And, as Confucianism came to be identified over the course of the imperial period with the Chinese cultural tradition par excellence, the writing of interlinear commentary on the canon of texts became a standard, even dominant, mode of scholarly and philosophical discourse for Chinese literati. It was in commentary that these men would offer their reflections on the meaning of Confucian doctrine as it had evolved through the centuries and attempt to construct a philosophical or moral vision meaningful in a world far removed from that of the classical age.

Fabricating Israeli History: The 'New Historians'

Abstract: Fabricating Israeli History: The `New Historians,' by Efraim Karsh. London and Portland, OR: Frank Cass and Co., 1997. xii + 205 pages. Index to p. 210. $35 cloth; $17.50 paper. Since the mid-1980s a group of Israeli scholars known as the "new historians" has opened a debate on critical issues in the history of Israel and the Arab-Israeli conflict. The most prominent members of the group-Benny Morris, Ilan Pappe and Avi Shlaim-have revised radically the history of the 1948-49 Arab-Israeli War, the origins of the Palestinian refugee problem, and the border clashes and other encounters between Israel and its neighbors from 1949 to the second Arab-Israeli war in 1956. They have also covered British attitudes towards the establishment of Israel, and Zionist and Israeli relations with Amir (later King) `Abdallah of Transjordan. Fabricating Israeli History: The `New Historians' is an attack on this entire historical school. Efraim Karsh joins several other Israelis, including novelist Aharon Meged, journalist and biographer of Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion-- Shabtai Teveth-and historian Anita Shapira, who have previously and in similarly overwrought styles declared the "new historians" psychologically or professionally unfit. Karsh's vituperative tone may shock Anglo-American readers accustomed to more genteel scholarly debate, but this mode is not unusual in Israeli public culture. Fabricating Israeli History, challenges Morris, Pappe and Shlaim on four major points: The first is Morris's claim that the "transfer" of Palestinian Arabs was part of the thinking of Ben-Gurion and other labor Zionist leaders from the late 1930s through the 1940s. The second is Shlaim's argument that the secret meeting between Golda Meir, representing the Jewish Agency (the leadership body of the Zionist yishuv in Palestine), and King `Abdallah on 17 November 1947 produced a tacit agreement to divide Palestine between the Zionists and Transjordan. The third is Shlaim's and Pappe's interpretation of the meeting between Transjordanian premier Tawfiq Abu al-Huda and British foreign secretary Ernest Bevin on 7 February 1948, which, they argue, resulted in British acquiescence to this tacit agreement conditioned by Bevin's warning that the Arab Legion should not occupy the areas allotted to the Jewish state in the UN partition plan. Finally, Karsh questions the claims of Shlaim, Pappe, and Bevin's biographer, Alan Bullock, that British policy, in general, and Bevin's attitude, in particular, were less antagonistic to the emergent state of Israel than is commonly believed. Karsh correctly notes that Morris injudiciously dismisses the value of oral history and of Arabic sources more broadly. Morris does not seem to know Arabic well enough to use the full range of published materials or the Jordanian archives, which are apparently now available to researchers. And Morris's historical methodology is naively empiricist. Nonetheless, Karsh's main line of attack is tangential to the bulk of Morris's work. Morris is primarily a politico-military historian whose extensive work in the Israeli and British archives has revealed substantial contradictions between what Labor Zionists and Israeli leaders said and what actually occurred. Karsh's claim that Morris exaggerates and misrepresents the context in which Zionist leaders entertained the idea of "transferring" the Palestinian Arab population from the future Jewish state (pp. 37-68) misses this critical point. By returning the debate to the arena of intellectual history, Karsh constructs a defense of Ben-Gurion and Labor Zionism that avoids engaging Morris's archival discoveries. Karsh's main argument against Shlaim's collusion thesis is that Golda Meir never committed the Jewish Agency Executive to endorsing `Abdallah's territorial ambitions in Mandate Palestine and that, in any case, she had no authority to do so, nor did the Jewish Agency discuss or make a decision on this matter (pp. …

Encounters: Philosophy of History after Postmodernism

Abstract: Frustrated with the usual methods of scholarly inquiry, Ewa Domanska hit upon the idea of interviewing some of the world's most original and important theorists and philosophers of history to get at the heart of contemporary understandings of "history." The result is Encounters, an exciting collection of these dialogues. So old-fashioned as to seem revolutionary, the interview format allows for a concise presentation of the main ideas of each writer, providing easy access to theories that have shaped modern historiography.No one book could encompass the vast territory of contemporary historiography, but this text gives us a sense of what underlies some of the most interesting and challenging work in the field. Although Domanska's interlocutors hold widely divergent views, they agree about which issues are important. Most strikingly, all share the belief that aesthetics, objective reality, and meaning are the most crucial concerns in our understanding of history today. The interviews also address such pressing issues as the relation of history to its modes of presentation, the relation of particular works of history to the notion of history in general, and the personal and civic functions of history. Ewa Domanska's Encounters offers a unique look into the hearts and minds of today's most stimulating historical theorists.

Obligations in Early Thirteenth Century Paris: The Obligationes of Nicholas of Paris(?)

Abstract: Soulevant le probleme de l'attribution du traite des «Obligationes» a Guillaume de Sherwood au debut du XIII e siecle ou a W. Burley a la fin du XIII e siecle, l'A. presente le contenu du manuscrit latin de la Bibliotheque nationale de Paris (n°11.412), attribue a Nicolas de Paris dans l'edition de L. M. de Rijk, comme contribution systematique au debat sur la theorie des obligations et sur la pratique de la dispute au Moyen Age. Comparant la structure des traites attribues a Guillaume de Sherwood, W. Burley et Nicholas de Paris, l'A. montre qu'on ne peut defendre l'idee d'un seul et meme auteur, mais que l'on peut faire remonter l'origine de la theorie des obligations a la premiere moitie du XIII e siecle