scholarly journals Temporality and History in Spinoza

2021 ◽  
pp. 55-72
Author(s):  
Ericka Marie Itokazu
Keyword(s):  
Human History ◽  
Unsolvable Problem ◽  
Theory Of History ◽  
Sub Specie Aeternitatis

Spinoza’s philosophy is often characterized as a philosophy sub specie aeternitatis where time and temporality are notions without an expressive role. Consequently, understanding human history by means of the Ethics — using geometric demonstrations supported by metaphysical terms — and without the aid of the notion of time, can be considered as leading to an unsolvable problem. In this chapter, I draw upon Spinoza’s refusal of finalism to propose a renewed investigation about Spinozism and the issue of temporality, asking the question: could the absence of time in Spinoza’s work and his writings on efficient and immanent causality allow us to rethink a theory of history?

How Biological is Human History?

2011 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 155-169
Author(s):  
Liesbet Vanhaute
Keyword(s):  
Human History ◽  
Work History ◽  
Universal History ◽  
Biological Concepts ◽  
Theory Of History ◽  
Way Of Thinking ◽  
Independent Confirmation

Whereas in Idea for a Universal History Kant without much hesitation resorts to biological concepts to understand history, this fundamentally changes in Critique of the Power of Judgment. In this work, history and biology are separated; they are understood as two different forms of teleological judgments. The teleological concepts that make history intelligible are divorced from their biological origins and introduced in an explicitly non-biological way of thinking. I argue that because of this shift, after the Critique of the Power of Judgment Kant’s theory of history cannot any longer function as an independent confirmation of the possibility of human morality. Während es Kant in seiner Schrift Idee zu einer allgemeinen Geschichte in weltbürgerlicher Absicht für unproblematisch erachtet, biologische Konzepte auf die Geschichte anzuwenden, steht er diesem Unterfangen in der Kritik der Urteilskraft kritisch gegenüber. In seiner dritten Kritik trennt Kant Geschichte und Biologie: In ihnen treten jetzt unterschiedliche Formen teleologischer Urteile auf. Die teleologischen Konzepte, welche die Geschichte verständlich machen, werden von ihrer biologischen Herkunft getrennt und in einer explizit nicht-biologischen Weise eingeführt. Wie ich argumentiere, kann Kants Theorie der Geschichte aufgrund dieser Verschiebung nicht länger als unabhängige Bestätigung der Möglichkeit menschlicher Sittlichkeit herangezogen werden

Why Are So Many Important Events Unpredictable? Self-Organized Criticality as the ‘Engine of History’

2002 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-44 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gregory G. Brunk
Keyword(s):  
Dynamical Process ◽  
Social Changes ◽  
Human History ◽  
Nonlinear Dynamical ◽  
Self Organized ◽  
Future Events ◽  
Self Organized Criticality ◽  
Theory Of History ◽  
Big Events ◽  
Political Economic

The nonlinear dynamical process of self-organized criticality provides a new ‘theory of history’ that explains a number of unresolved anomalies: Why are the really big events in human history usually unpredictable? Why is it impossible to anticipate sudden political, economic, and social changes? Why do distributions of historical data almost always contain a few extreme events that seem to have had a different cause from all the rest? Why do so many of our ‘lessons of history’ fail to predict important future events? As people, organizations, and nations become increasingly sensitive to each other's behavior, trivial occurrences sometimes propagate into sudden changes. Such events are unpredictable because in the self-organized criticality environment that characterizes human history, the magnitude of a cause often is unrelated to the magnitude of its effect.

Simone Weil’s Philosophy of History

2019 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 66-85
Author(s):  
Bennett Gilbert
Keyword(s):  
Moral Dilemmas ◽  
Philosophy Of History ◽  
Human History ◽  
Moral Understanding ◽  
Moral Growth ◽  
Simone Weil ◽  
Theory Of History

Abstract The philosophical and religious ideas of Simone Weil bear on theory of history and historiography in ways not previously explored. They amount to a view of history as a consequence of the original creation, but they also generally exclude theodicy. By examining these ideas we see some of the ways in which to develop a theory of history centered on a conception of moral understanding that is impartialist and universal. For Weil such understanding is both inside of and outside of history. This leads to an approach to human history that centers on the moral dilemmas and choices of historical actors and that matches the force of compassion with that of power. Under an approach inspired by Weil’s ideas, the historian’s work of understanding can be an experience of moral growth.

Violence in Islamic Thought from the Qur'an to the Mongols

2015 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Perspective ◽  
Human History ◽  
Historical Approach ◽  
Islamic Thought

The topic of Legitimate and Illegitimate Violence in Islamic Thought (LIVIT) calls for an interdisciplinary, comparative and historical approach. This has been the underlying methodological assumption within the project which bore this name. Amongst the products of that three-year project is a series of collected studies by established and emerging scholars in the field, examining how Muslim thinkers have conceptualised violence and categorised (morally and legally) acts of violence. In this opening chapter, István Kristó-Nagy first explores how violence in Islamic thought can be set against a wider consideration of violence in human history. It is this comparative perspective which contextualises not only this volume, but also the two subsequent volumes in the LIVIT series. In the second half of this chapter, Robert Gleave explains how this volume is structured, addressing the different approaches used by the contributors, and examines the different ways in which violence can be categorised.

Veiled Theory: The Transmutation of Anthropology in T. S. Eliot's Critical Method

Paragraph ◽  
2006 ◽  
Vol 29 (3) ◽  
pp. 77-94 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adam Trexler
Keyword(s):  
Critical Theory ◽  
Literary Criticism ◽  
Literary Theory ◽  
Institutional Framework ◽  
Philosophical Investigation ◽  
Institutional History ◽  
Human History ◽  
Critical Practice ◽  
The Absolute ◽  
Historical Moment

While literary criticism is often seen as an unself-reflective forerunner to literary theory, this article argues that T.S. Eliot's theory of critical practice was a philosophically informed methodology of reading designed to create a disciplinary and institutional framework. To reconstruct this theory, it enriches theoretical methodology with intellectual and institutional history. Specifically, the article argues that Eliot's early critical theory depended on the paradigms of anthropology and occultism, developed during his philosophical investigation of anthropology and Leibniz. From this investigation, Eliot created an occult project that used spiritual monads as facts to progress toward the Absolute. The article goes on to argue that Eliot's methodology of reading was shaped by anthropology's and occultism's paradigms of non-academic, non-specialist reading societies that sought a super-historic position in human history through individual progress. The reconstruction of Eliot's intellectual and institutional framework for reading reveals a historical moment with sharp differences and surprising similarities to the present.

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