“The end of history ” and the fate of the philosophy of history

The “end of history” by Fukuyama is mainly based on Hegel’s treatise of the end of history and Kojeve’s corresponding interpretation. But Hegel’s “end of history” is a purely philosophical question, i.e., an ontological premise that must be fulfilled to complete “absolute knowledge.” When Kojeve further demonstrates its “universal and homogeneous state,” Fukuyama extends it into a political view: The victory of the Western system of freedom and democracy marks the end of the development of human history and Marxist theory and practice. This is a misunderstanding of Hegel. Marx analyzes, scientifically, the historical limitation of Western capitalism and maintains, by way of a kind of revolutionary teleology, the expectation of and belief in human liberation, which is the highest historical goal. His philosophy of history is hence characterized by theoretical elements from both historical scientificalness and historical teleology.     

Respiratory stuttering?: A case history

This report is a case history by the first author of his life-long speech disorder. The case involves sudden onset respiratory blocking without a prior history of disfluency. The disorder appears to be familial and has its onset and most frequent appearance under social stress. Attempts at treatment by psychoanalysis and psychotherapy were of no help. In commenting on the case, the second author suggests that the respiratory blocking is an example of tension and fixation characteristic of all secondary stuttering, which may be essentially independent from the primary stuttering that often but not always is a precursor to secondary stuttering. Flexible, multidimensional treatment based on the stimulus for tension and fixation is discussed.     

Fitts’ Law is modulated by movement history

Fitts’ Law is one of the most robust and well-studied principles in psychology. It holds that movement time (MT) for target-directed aiming movements increases as a function of target distance and decreases as a function of target width. The purpose of this study was to determine whether Fitts’ Law is affected not only by the demands of the target on the current trial but also by the requirements for performance on the previous trial. Experiments 1 and 2 examined trial-to-trial effects of varying target width; Experiment 3 examined trial-to-trial effects of varying target distance. The findings from Experiments 1 and 2 showed that moving a finger or cursor towards a large object on a previous trial shortened the movement time on the current trial, whereas the opposite occurred with a small object. In contrast, target distance on the previous trial had no effect on movement time on the current trial. These findings suggest that performance on trial n has a clear and predictable effect on trial n+1 (at least for target width) and that Fitts’ Law as it is normally expressed does not accurately predict performance when the width of the target varies from trial to trial.     

Heroism and history in Merleau-Ponty’s existential phenomenology

Whereas Phenomenology of Perception concludes with a puzzling turn to “heroism,” this article examines the short essay “Man, the Hero” as a source of insight into Merleau-Ponty’s thought in the early postwar period. In this essay, Merleau-Ponty presented a conception of heroism through which he expressed the attitude toward post-Hegelian philosophy of history that underwrote his efforts to reform Marxism along existential lines. Analyzing this conception of heroism by unpacking the implicit contrasts with Kojève, Aron, Caillois, and Bataille, I show that its philosophical rationale was to supply experiential evidence attesting to the latent presence of human universality. It is a mythic device intended to animate the faith necessary for Marxist politics by showing that universal sociality is possible, and that the historically transformative praxis needed to realize it does not imply sacrifice. This sheds considerable light on Merleau-Ponty’s early postwar political thought. But inasmuch as the latter cannot be severed from his broader philosophical concerns, the prospect is raised that his entire phenomenological project in the early postwar period rested on a myth. Not necessarily a bad myth, but a myth nonetheless.     

Art history, the problem of style, and Arnold Hauser’s contribution to the history and sociology of knowledge

Much of Arnold Hauser??s work on the social history of art and the philosophy of art history is informed by a concern for the cognitive dimension of art. The present paper offers a reconstruction of this aspect of Hauser??s project and identifies areas of overlap with the sociology of knowledge??where the latter is to be understood as both a separate discipline and a going intellectual concern. Following a discussion of Hauser??s personal and intellectual background, as well as of the shifting political and academic setting of his work, the paper addresses one of Hauser??s central questions, viz. how best to square a thoroughgoing commitment to the social nature of art with the reality of successive artistic styles, given that the latter seem to be characterizable on purely formal grounds. This is followed by a discussion of Hauser??s conflicted views on the relation between art, science, and technology. This injects a tension into Hauser??s work, due to his initial reluctance to explain just how the aesthetic and the cognitive realms relate. The final part of the paper, through a closer examination of the analogies and disanalogies that Hauser sees between art history and the history of science, attempts to give a positive answer????on Hauser??s behalf??, as it were??to the question of whether art may be credited with a specific cognitive dimension of its own, and if so, what its contribution to our cognitive enterprise may consist in.     

The extra mile—Case history of a homicide

This detailed case history is intended to stimulate psychological and theological reflection. Written in the style of a novella, it dramatically illustrates the effects of a client's murder on a pastoral psychotherapist.     

The Italian school of ‘history of religions’

This study sets out to cast light on the most significant theoretical and methodological aspects of the Italian School of History of Religions, a school that owes its particular character to the cultural commitment of Raffaele Pettazzoni, Ernesto de Martino and Angelo Brelich. Since these scholars are not well known internationally, this article aims at providing some keys to their interpretation for the purpose of a wider circulation. The thought of Pettazzoni, de Martino and Brelich has not exhausted its potential and can make a far from negligible contribution to today's discussions on subjects such as the role of the history of religions in contemporary culture, the meaning of the secular approach to the religious phenomenon, and the search for new conceptions of the comparative method. The most pregnant image of the history of religions provided by an analysis of the works of these Italian scholars is that of a discipline committed to tackling the problems of our time.     

Social representation of events in world history: Crosscultural consensus or Western discourse? How Turkish students view events in world history

The perceptions of historical events are considered to be an important cultural, political, and social psychological variable. Earlier studies have shown a crosscultural consensus on historical events that are considered to be important. It has been indicated that a strong Western–Christian European template dominates the view of which events are considered to be important events in history, by many samples across the world. It was the aim of this study to test this finding with a Turkish sample, which would represent some unique characteristics in that it is Muslim, comes from an Empire background, and has undergone a recent nation‐building process. College students (n = 372) responded to a questionnaire that was utilized in seven other countries. It was shown that Turkish students were not Eurocentric as expected by the literature: They were highly sociocentric; they gave importance to events related to Turkish history. They were similar to their European counterparts in that war and violence were given primary importance when selecting events as important in history. However, they did not behave as predicted by earlier literature: They did not see Western European events as having a primary importance in history but gave at least equal importance to events that originated from Ottoman Empire roots. The results were discussed in terms of the unique cultural and historical variables that contribute to the identity and social psychological attributions of Turkish students. Further research should focus on not only which events are considered as important historical events but also the reasons behind these.     

What’s ours is yours: recall of history for lesser-known countries is guided by one’s own national history

ABSTRACT

The present studies examine how people recall history. Sometimes, certain national histories are well known and sometimes they are not. We propose that, under certain circumstances, culturally distinctive representations of typical national histories can be used to guide recall, particularly in cases where the history is not well known. We focus on three national samples with varied levels of knowledge about each history: Great Britain, India, and the United States. In Study 1, we establish typical historical event templates for each nation consisting of events that a large proportion of participants from each sample identify as important in a typical nation’s history. We examine points of divergence between the different groups’ typical event templates and the valences of these events. In Study 2, we test and find that, in conditions of less knowledge, participants tend to refer to particular historical events that coincide with events unique to their own group’s typical history. In Study 3, we demonstrate that this effect can be found even when a group possesses a reasonable amount of knowledge about the target country. We conclude by discussing the implications in relation to how such a retrieval strategy might inform interpretations of events in the present.     

Who is my Jung? A personal and symbolic history

Identifying the reality of Jung in my life requires first of all a historical examination. How Jung first came into my life through my reading a book by P.W.Martin, Experiment in Depth, stands as a metaphor for the conscious unravelling of psychological development. His further appearance in a sequence of dreams demonstrated the significance of both the instinctual and the numinous in Jung's life and in my personal individuation. Finally, through a consideration of light and shadow, particularly in two photographs of Jung, a conclusion is reached that individuation requires an integration of shadow in the personality, in order to achieve wholeness, not perfection.     

Ross’s place in the history of analytic philosophy

With the recent revival of moral intuitionism, the work of W. D. Ross has grown in stature. But if we look at some recent well-regarded histories, anthologies and companions of analytic philosophy, Ross is noticeably absent. This discrepancy of assessments raises the question of Ross’s place in the history of analytic philosophy. Hans-Johann Glock has recently claimed that Ross is not an analytic philosopher at all, but is instead a ‘traditional philosopher’. In this article, I will identify several undeniable features of analytic philosophy that Ross’s work bears: a focus on linguistic analysis, great respect for pre-theoretical thoughts, the conviction that philosophy is a collaborative, piecemeal enterprise and so on. Such an investigation, I claim, reveals two historically significant results: Ross was the first ethicist to fully draw from commonsense beliefs about morality in light of characteristic analytic considerations to secure his theory. Two, concerning the matter of whether the notions ‘right’ and ‘good’ are reducible to other notions, Ross appears to have been right: ‘right’ and ‘good’ are irreducible notions. The classical analytic metaethicists, who based their entire research programme on the promise of finding suitable reductive semantic analyses of ‘right’ and ‘good’, were wrong. These results, I believe, suffice to secure W. D. Ross a high place in the history of analytic philosophy.     

Interests without history? Some difficulties for a negative Aristotelianism

This paper focuses on 3 features of Freyenhagen's Aristotelian version of Adorno. (a) It challenges the strict negativism Freyenhagen finds in Adorno. If we have morally relevant interests in ourselves, it is implicit that we have a standard by which to understand what is both good and bad for us (our interests). Because strict negativism operates without reference to what is good, it seems to be detached from real interests too. Torture, it is argued, is, among other things, a violation of those interests. (b) Freyenhagen identifies the “impulse” in Adorno as an untutored yet moral reaction to morally demanding situations. The plausibility of this primitivism and its compatibility with Adorno's general worries about immediacy are considered. (c) The disruptive character of Adorno's version of the categorical imperative, its willingness to complicate action through wholesale reflection on the norms of what we are committing ourselves to, is set in contrast with Freyenhagen's Aristotelian claim that certain notions, such as “humanity,” cannot be intelligibly questioned.     

Are individuals' reputations related to their history of behavior?

Functional theories of reputation imply that individuals' reputations are tied to their history of behavior. However, indirect evidence suggests that the relation between reputation and behavior might be tenuous at best. In 3 studies, the authors tracked the development of reputations among individuals who engaged in multiple negotiation tasks across several weeks. The authors found that on average, individuals' reputations were only mildly related to their history of behavior. However, the link between reputation and behavior was stronger for some individuals than others--specifically, for individuals who were more well-known and received more social attention in the community. In contrast, for less well-known individuals, their behavior had little impact on their reputation. The findings have implications for psychologists' understanding of reputations, person perceptions in larger groups, and the costs and benefits of social visibility.     

Nietzsche beyond correlationism: Meillassoux’s history of modern philosophy

Quentin Meillassoux’s speculative materialism rests on the historical claim that European philosophy since Kant is “correlationist” in its denial that thought can know being as it is in itself rather than merely for us. But though the claim is central to Meillassoux, it has not been much explored in the literature on his work. This paper argues that Nietzsche does not fit so easily into Meillassoux’s story. Though there are certain superficially correlationist elements in Nietzsche’s thought, part of his core project is an ethically motivated rejection of the issues with respect to which realism and correlationism are alternatives. Thus, rather than denying that thought can access being in itself, Nietzsche aims to leave behind ways of thinking within which the question of thought’s access or lack of access matters. This means that Meillassoux loses some of the motivation for his positive position.