Knowledge and Postmodernism in Historical Perspective

by Appleby, Joyce Oldham; Covington, Elizabeth; Hoyt, David; Latham, Michael; Sneider, Allison

• ISBN13: 9780415913829
• ISBN10: 0415913829
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1996-01-01
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

Knowledge and Postmodernism in Historical Perspectiveoffers answers to the questions, what is postmodernism? and what exactly are the characteristics of the modernism that postmodernism supercedes? This comprehensive reader chronicles the western engagement with the nature of knowledge during the past four centuries while providing the historical context for the postmodernist thought of Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Richard Rorty and Hayden White, and the challenges their ideas have posed to our conventional ways of thinking, writing and knowing. From the science of things to the science of human beings to the grand social theorizing associated with Adam Smith, Alexis de Tocqueville, Karl Marx and Max Weber,Knowledge and Postmodernism in Historical Perspectivepresents readings from the succession of thinkers whose writings helped define modern sensibilities by analyzing the human capacity for generating knowledge. The volume follows theknowledge-generating project of the modern age as it blossoms in the Enlightenment and bears fruit in the nineteenth century. The writings included reveal the linkages between science, the history of science, hermeneutics, anthropology, sociology, linguistics and philosophy from Francis Bacon's call for experimental engagement with nature in the seventeenth century to Jurgen Habermas' recent analysis of the civil society spawned by the Enlightenment.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	ix
Timeline	xi
Knowledge and Postmodernism in Historical Perspective
Introduction	1	(22)
THE SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION AND ENLIGHTENMENT THOUGHT
Introduction	23	(6)
Francis Bacon	29	(12)
The Advancement of Learning	31	(10)
Rene Descartes	41	(9)
Discourse on Method	42	(8)
John Locke	50	(11)
Essay Concerning Human Understanding	51	(10)
Adam Smith	61	(12)
The Wealth of Nations	62	(11)
David Hume	73	(20)
That Politics May Be Reduced to a Science	74	(4)
Of the Origin of Justice and Property	78	(8)
Of Scepticism with Regard to Reason	86	(7)
Gordon S. Wood	93	(12)
Conspiracy and the Paranoid Style: Causality and Deceit in the Eighteenth Century	94	(11)
Immanuel Kant	105	(5)
What Is Enlightenment?	106	(4)
Marquis De Condorcet	110	(13)
Sketch of the Progress of the Human Mind	112	(11)
Ernst Cassirer	123	(22)
Nature and Natural Science	124	(13)
NINETEENTH-CENTURY SOCIAL THEORY
Introduction	137	(8)
Alexis De Tocqueville	145	(19)
Democracy in America	146	(18)
Karl Marx	164	(25)
Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy	165	(3)
The Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844	168	(7)
The Communist Manifesto	175	(5)
The German Ideology	180	(9)
Friedrich Nietzsche	189	(24)
Selected Aphorisms from The Gay Science	191	(10)
Selected Aphorisms from Beyond Good and Evil	201	(12)
Max Weber	213	(32)
The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism	215	(26)
``Objectivity'' in Social Science and Science Policy	241	(4)
Norman Birnbaum	245	(20)
Conflicting Interpretations of the Rise of Capitalism: Marx and Weber	246	(13)
CHALLENGES TO NINETEENTH-CENTURY THEORY: The Emergence of the Culture Concept and the Sociology of Science
Introduction	259	(6)
John Dewey	265	(14)
Common Sense and Scientific Inquiry	266	(13)
Ruth Benedict	279	(17)
Patterns of Culture	281	(15)
Claude Levi-Strauss	296	(13)
The Savage Mind	298	(11)
Clifford Geertz	309	(15)
Thick Description: Toward an Interpretive Theory of Culture	310	(14)
Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno	324	(14)
Dialectic of the Enlightenment	326	(12)
Thomas Kuhn	338	(18)
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions	340	(16)
Alasdair Macintyre	356	(12)
Epistemological Crises, Dramatic Narrative, and the Philosophy of Science	357	(11)
Paul Ricoeur	368	(25)
The Model of the Text	369	(16)
POSTMODERNIST THOUGHT
The De[con]struction of Modernity
Introduction	385	(8)
Hayden White	393	(15)
The Value of Narrativity in the Representation of Reality	395	(13)
Michel Foucault	408	(27)
What Is Enlightenment?	410	(8)
The History of Sexuality	418	(17)
Jacques Derrida	435	(20)
Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences	437	(12)
Declarations of Independence	449	(6)
Richard Rorty	455	(20)
Private Irony and Liberal Hope	456	(8)
Science as Solidarity	464	(11)
Cornel West	475	(18)
A Genealogy of Modern Racism	476	(13)
RESPONDING TO POSTMODERNISM
Introduction	489	(4)
David Harvey	493	(15)
The Condition of Postmodernity	494	(14)
Jurgen Habermas	508	(12)
Philosophy as Stand-In and Interpreter	509	(11)
Craig Calhoun	520	(19)
Habermas and the Public Sphere	521	(18)
Seyla Benhabib	539	(16)
Feminism and the Question of Postmodernism	540	(15)
Suggestions for Further Reading	555	(2)
Glossary	557