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Hans Radder
At issue in this paper is the question of the appropriate relationship between the philosophy and history of science. The discussion starts with a brief sketch of Kuhn’s approach, followed by an analysis of the so-called ‘testing-theories-of scientific- change programme’. This programme is an attempt at a more rigorous approach to the historical philosophy of science. Since my conclusion is that, by and large, this attempt has failed, I proceed to examine some more promising approaches. First, I deal with Hacking’s recent views on the issues in question, particularly his notion of a ‘style of reasoning’. Next, Nickles’s reconstructionist interpretation of the development of science and his views on Whig history are addressed. Finally, I propose an account of philosophy as a theoretical, an interpretative and explanatory, enterprise. Continue reading Beyond the Kuhnian Paradigm
In Congress, July 4, 1776,
THE UNANIMOUS DECLARATION OF THE THIRTEEN UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the Powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.
That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. Continue reading THE U.S. DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE
Michel Foucault
Volume I: An Introduction
Translated by: Robert Hurley Continue reading The History of Sexuality
Michel Foucault (1977)
in: Language Counter-Memory. Practice: Selected Essays and Interviews.
This essay first appeared in : Hommage à Jean Hyppolite (Paris, PUF 1971)… Continue reading Nietzsche, Genealogy, History
 David Harvey
Future historians may well look upon the years 1978–80 as a revolutionary turning-point in the world’s social and economic history. In 1978, Deng Xiaoping took the first momentous steps towards the liberalization of a communist-ruled economy in a country that accounted for a fifth of the world’s population. The path that Deng defined was to transform China in two decades from a closed backwater to an open centre of capitalist dynamism with sustained growth rates unparalleled in human history. On the other side of the Pacific, and in quite different circumstances, a relatively obscure (but now renowned) figure named Paul Volcker took command at the US Federal Reserve in July 1979, and within a few months dramatically changed monetary policy. The Fed thereafter took the lead in the fight against inflation no matter what its consequences (particularly as concerned unemployment). Across the Atlantic, Margaret Thatcher had already been elected Prime Minister of Britain in May 1979, with a mandate to curb trade union power and put an end to the miserable inflationary stagnation that had enveloped the country for the preceding decade. Continue reading A Brief History of Neoliberalism
Arnold I. Davidson
In presenting the topic of Michel Foucault’s significance as a writer of the history of ethics, I have two main goals. First, I hope to be able to elucidate Foucault’s own aims in shifting his attention, in his last , writings, to what he himself called “ethics.” These aims, in my opinion, have been widely misinterpreted and even more widely ignored, and the result has been a failure to come to terms with the conceptual and philosophical distinctiveness of Foucault’s last works. Volumes z and of The His-t-o r-y- of- S-e -xu-a lity are about sex in roughly the way that Discipline and Punish is about the-prison. As the modem prison serves as a reference point for Foucault to work out his analytics of power, so ancient sex functions as the material around which Foucault elaborates his conception of ethics. Although the history of sex is, obviously, sexier than the history of ethics, it is this latter history that oriented Foucault’s last writings. Continue reading Ethics as ascetics: Foucault, the history of ethics, and ancient thought
By Aysha Taryam Editor-in-Chief : The Gulf Today Last week His Highness Sheikh Mohammad Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice-President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, approved a resolution for establishing the Federal Demographic Council of th… [...]
(Les Structures élémentaires de la Parenté)
CLAUDE LEVI-STRAUSS
The fundamental characteristic of marriage as a form of exchange is seen particularly clearly in the case of dual organizations. This term defines a system in which the members of the community, whether it be a tribe or a village, are divided into two parts which maintain complex relationships varying from open hostility to very close intimacy, and with which various forms of rivalry and co-operation are usually associated. These moieties are often exogamous, that is, the men of one moiety can choose their wives only from the other, and vice versa. When the division into moieties does not regulate marriages, this role is frequently assumed by other forms of grouping.
There may be a second bipartition of the group, parallel or perpendicular to this earlier division, the moieties may embrace exogamous clans, sub-clans or lineages, or, lastly, the modalities of marriage may depend upon specialized forms called marriage classes. Continue reading The Elementary Structures of Kinship
Claude Lévi-Strauss
En 1952, l’UNESCO publiait une série de brochures consacrées au problème du racisme dans le monde. Parmi celles-ci, C. le Lévi-Strauss donnait avec “Race et Histoire” un court essai qui dépassait de beaucoup son sujet pour introduire à une réflexion nouvelle sur la culture occidentale, le sens de la civilisation, le caractère aléatoire du temps historique, etc… Continue reading Race et Histoire
Max Weber (1904-1905)
Tous ceux qui, élevés dans la civilisation européenne d’aujourd’hui, étudient les problèmes de l’histoire universelle, sont tôt ou tard amenés à se poser, et avec raison, la question suivante : à quel enchaînement de circonstances doit-on imputer l’apparition, dans la civilisation occidentale et uniquement dans celle-ci, de phénomènes culturels qui – du moins nous aimons à le penser – ont revêtu une signification et une valeur universelle? Ce n’est qu’en Occident qu’existe une science dont nous reconnaissons aujourd’hui le développement comme « valable ». Certes, des connaissances empiriques, des réflexions sur l’univers et la vie, des sagesses profondes, philosophiques ou théologiques, ont aussi vu le jour ailleurs – bien que le développement complet d’une théologie systématique, par exemple, appartienne en propre au christianisme, influencé par l’hellénisme (seuls l’Islam et quelques sectes de l’Inde en ont montré des amorces). Bref, nous constatons ailleurs le témoignage de connaissances et d’observations d’une extraordinaire subtilité, surtout dans l’Inde, en Chine, à Babylone, en Égypte. Mais ce qui manquait à l’astronomie, à Babylone comme ailleurs – l’essor de la science des astres à Babylone n’en est que plus surprenant -, ce sont les fondements mathématiques que seuls les Grecs ont su lui donner. Continue reading L’ETHIQUE PROTESTANTE ET L’ESPRIT DU CAPITALISME
TRANSLATED, EDITED, AND WITH AN INTRODUCTION By: Kurt H. Wolff
SIMMEL’S READERS MAY well find themselves puzzled once they try to analyze their impression: does it come from an extraordinary mind or from its product, from a process or from an achievement, from an attitude or from the discoveries made by virtue of it? The dichotomies may be clarified by testimonials of Simmel’s hearers, who “too, helped build”; Simmel took “his students down an oblique pit into the mine”; he was not a teacher, he was an “inciter.” “Just about the time when . . . one felt he had reached a conclusion, he had a way of raising his right arm and, with three fingers of his hand, turning the imaginary object so as to exhibit still another facet.” A lecture by Simmel was creation-at-the-moment-of-delivery: the essence of Simmel’s spell seems to have been the spontaneous exemplification of the creative process. Continue reading The Sociology of Georg Simmel
A cross-national data collection
Arno TAUSCH*
This data set combines the most up-to-date data on globalization and gender relations (combining these with data from the World Values Survey). The dataset in EXCEL format is freely available and draws on the following sources: Continue reading Globalization, global gender relations and value change in global society
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