Modern man sees with one eye of faith and one eye of reason. Consequently, his view of history is confused. For centuries, the history of the Western world has been viewed from the Christian or classical standpoint—from a deep faith in the Kingdom of God or a belief in recurrent and eternal life-cycles. The modern mind, however, is neither Christian nor pagan—and its interpretations of history are Christian in derivation and anti-Christian in result. To develop this theory, Karl Löwith—beginning with the more accessible philosophies of history in the nineteenth and eighteenth centuries and working back to the Bible—analyzes the writings of outstanding historians both in antiquity and in Christian times. "A book of distinction and great importance. . . . The author is a master of philosophical interpretation, and each of his terse and substantial chapters has the balance of a work of art."—Helmut Kuhn, Journal of Philosophy
This book underlines what is a stake in the learning of history in Europe. History plays a key political function in Europe today, allowing as it can for better understanding, tolerance & trust between individuals & nations of Europe. The book contains contributions from personalities from the world of academe & the media. Introduction by Marc Ferro.
Considering studying history at university? Wondering whether a history degree will get you a good job, and what you might earn? Want to know what it’s actually like to study history at degree level? This book tells you what you need to know. Studying any subject at degree level is an investment in the future that involves significant cost. Now more than ever, students and their parents need to weigh up the potential benefits of university courses. That’s where the Why Study series comes in. This series of books, aimed at students, parents and teachers, explains in practical terms the range and scope of an academic subject at university level and where it can lead in terms of careers or further study. Each book sets out to enthuse the reader about its subject and answer the crucial questions that a college prospectus does not.
Berdyaev considered the philosophy of history as a field that laid the foundations of the Russian national consciousness. Its disputes were centered on distinctions between slavophiles and Westerners, East and West. The Meaning of History was an early effort, following World War I, that attempted to revive this perspective. With the removal of Communism as a ruling system in Russia, that nation returned to an elaboration of a religious philosophy of history as the specific mission of Russian thought. This volume thus has contemporary significance. Its sense of the apocalypse, which distinguishes Russian from Western thought, gives the book its specifically religious character.
Interpreting National History examines the differences in black and white students' interpretations of U.S. history in classroom and community settings, illuminating how racial identities work with and against teachers’ pedagogies to shape students’ understandings of history and contemporary society.
The conclusions of this brilliant book by the author of Degeneration are summarized by him in his concluding paragraph where he says: "Thus, behind all appearances and all illusions, we find the real meaning of history to be the manifestation of the life force in mankind. This manifestation passes through successive forms parasitism, illusion, and knowledge -- in an ascending scale of human adaptation to nature. Any other meaning is not deduced from history but introduced into it." Into the quarrels of historians as to the proper way in which to write history, Dr. Nordau's work comes as a beneficent bombshell scattering all the little schools ruthlessly, and erecting a totally new conception upon the complete separation of history as such from the written word of the historian. History is the event, not the record of the event. Moreover, it is not the single, isolated event, chosen as significant to illustrate some view, or to prove some thesis, but every event that touches or affects man, even in his remote biological development. History, thus defined, is in reality coterminous with all scientific investigation, all imaginative expression, and its real books are the museums and libraries. "The purely natural events that are entirely outside the action of the human will have had a greater influence on the destiny, not only of individuals, groups, or nations, but of human existence as a whole, than the whole range of what is assumed by historians to be essential and important --the foundation of states, the establishment of religions, the rise and development of social institutions, the conceptions of law and property, constitutional and metaphysical ideas." Thus the historic genre goes the way of all other genres before the destructive criticism of today -- that of Croce and Spingarn in the field of aesthetics -- which sets out to free minds from the petty tyranny of narrow intellectual concepts, and to throw open all doors upon the vast and vivifying spectacle of reality. History will doubtless continue to be written to the end of time, but if the modern school of thought is able to impose itself generally, the historians of tomorrow will envisage their specific tasks more exactly, and will present their partial records of particular series of events with less of the arrogance of absoluteness and finality than those of yesterday. --The Bookman, Vol. 34.
