Perspective Of Intellectual History Research Articles

Apuntes para una historia intelectual de la Fundación Friedrich Ebert en América Latina

The promotion of democracy was from its origins one of the banners of the Friedrich Ebert Foundation (FES), ideologically linked to the German Social Democratic Party (SPD) and which disembarked in Latin America in the 1960s. It is this transnationalization that we are interested in exploring from the perspective of intellectual history (Altamirano, 2005, Palti, 2004-2005), breaking with a unidirectional idea of transfers and circulations, in order to understand the exchange and connections between regions, ideas and people. The article first focuses on explaining the particularity of the German Political Foundations and the functioning of the FES in Latin America and then goes on to explore three intellectual projects of the Foundation, such as the Latin American Institutes for Social Science Research (ILDIS), the Center for Democratic Studies of Latin America (CEDAL) and the New Society Journal (NUSO). Based on the premise that ideas are important insofar as they conveyed meanings and representations in the region, this paper seeks to map the little known but strong presence of the FES in Latin America during the Cold War years. And how it became an important platform capable of connecting people, ideas and regions. In this framework, the FES, and this is our bet, can be thought of as an intellectual network that, while participating in and promoting debates on development, dependence, anti-imperialism, revolution and democracy, was building a space for indigenous social democracy.

Intellectual aristocracy in the dawn of Argentine democracy: José Ingenieros on genius and mediocrity.

This article explores how psychological categories linked to the mental level, such as genius, mediocrity, and intellectual superiority, were directly intertwined with political discourse in the early 20th century. To illustrate this, I analyze El Hombre Mediocre (The Mediocre Man) published in 1913 by José Ingenieros, seemingly as a direct critique of the law for free democratic elections in Argentina sanctioned in 1912. The book's main argument drew on psychological categories to explain that democracy was, in fact, a poor choice in government. Ingenieros' main concern was that the population was mostly mediocre and therefore unable to govern or elect a suitable candidate to run the country. One category that stood out in his analysis was the "genius." This term was reserved for men who demonstrated exceptional intelligence and remarkable morals and ideals. The methodology used in this article is based on the qualitative and interpretative analysis of bibliographical sources (which include books of essays, scientific papers, and books aimed at lay audiences) from the perspective of intellectual history and the critical history of psychology. I argue that Ingenieros' book served as a political essay founded on a comprehensive scientific explanation, even if it was aimed at a lay audience. This analysis shows the productivity of psychological categories referring to giftedness, intelligence, and talent, in adulthood for assessing political movements and planning new imagined societies through the history of psychology. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Rethinking The Religious Moderation through Intellectual History’s Lens: Mentifact, Sociofact, and Artefact

It must be admitted that there is indeed much research related to religious moderation, but there needs to be more research, especially when it comes to intellectual history discourse. As a contextual discourse, intellectual history still needs sufficient study space among Indonesian academics. Therefore, this study uses an intellectual history perspective to examine religious moderation discourse. Strengthening the study, the authors use the thoughts of Koentjaraningrat and Julian Huxley, who use an anthropological scientific lens to view the discourse of religious moderation. This research is the form of a literature review using the results of research related to intellectual history and the two figures as primary reference sources. Collecting data was carried out by re-reading the text, compiling it, and formulating it to analyze the mentifact, sociofact, and artefact aspects of the discourse of religious moderation. This research produces an academic offer to strengthen the epistemological structure of the discourse of religious moderation by dissecting it through these three dimensions, namely mentifact, sociofact, and artefact. The findings of this research offer the hierarchical relationship on the epistemological of religious moderation (the high ideas, the intermediate ideas, and the lower ideas).

Was Paul Hirst ever a Deweyan?

abstract It is widely known that Paul Hirst had two theories of education in his academic career. He had been conscious of this intellectual transformation and felt quite positive about it. From the perspective of intellectual history and curiosity about his personal intellectual development, I try, following leads from my private correspondence and conversations with him in the 1990s, to touch on the following questions: How does Hirst see his two theories? Why does he think his early theory cannot stand? Is his personal account adequate in explaining his own intellectual shift? How is it that his later theory seems to suggest John Dewey’s pragmatism? Was Paul Hirst ever a Deweyan? In tackling these questions, I sketch Hirst’s two theories, point out the differences and continuities between them, offer a suggestion as to why Hirst’s early theory cannot stand, and give a short account of Dewey’s theory of education. My conclusion is that even if his later theory might be said to suggest a Deweyan approach, Paul Hirst was never a Deweyan.

How to Cultivate the Modern Self: Development of the Concept of Mental Discipline in the University History of the United States

The development of the concept of mental discipline can be understood from three clues, as a puritanical phenomenon, as a phenomenon rooted in the classics, and, on the other hand, as one rooted in faculty psychology. The aim of this research is to explore whether there has been a fracture in the evolution of the concept of mental discipline and explain how and why it evolved in three stages. Centered on three figures, Timothy Dwight, William Torrey Harris, and Irving Babbitt, it can be found that mental discipline evolved into three contexts during its development. Harris’s ideas, to a large extent, reflected his absorption of the ideas of Hegelianism and the transcendental philosophy of Kant, and they also included Unitarianism. Babbitt hoped to solve the problem of how the general will formed by the individual of modern society not only guaranteed the public interest but also avoided excessively eroded individual spiritual freedom. Babbitt’s issue horizon was similar to that of Harris, but they slightly differed. A brief overview of the research may imply that, using the perspective of intellectual history, mental discipline is no longer regarded as a static and continuous ideal but as a concept embedded in different contexts and facing different issue horizons.

Brief overview of the factual and onto-epistemological developments of the idea of “civil society” in Japan

In the context of post-industrial societies, there are few resources left to ordinary citizens to respond to the totalizing logic of systemic dynamics characterized by the expansion of economic and formal subjectivity. Likewise, the damage done to the environment and the increasing incidence of natural disasters, both driven by anthropogenic action, make a more complex response from society necessary and, in turn, pose the need to find collective answers to transnational issues. This global situation leads us to consider how civil society can generate community cohesion, leverage common interest and respond to environmental problems. After several ethnographic investigations focused on social change in Japan, we identified some things that, together with the shocking initial images spread globally after the catastrophe of March 11, 2011 in Tōhoku, have helped us take the pulse of the associative Japanese world. These images highlighted some of the fundamental characteristics of Japanese civil society, contributing to the spread throughout the world of a series of constructs that are as typical of a society socially exemplary as they are culturally totalizing. It might seem the eleven years that have elapsed since the Triple Disaster of March 2011 in Japan have provided us with a broad perspective from which to interpret the dynamics of Japanese civil society and public administration in the face of these events. However, we consider that the analysis of socio-historical developments that embody Euro-Atlantic modernity, with indigenous cultural constructs and with globalization, is essential. For this reason, in this article, from the perspective of intellectual history and historical sociology, we will analyse the adaptability of the concept of civil society in Japan and a whole series of social processes that have been gestating for decades and whose development is brought together in entities of great factual importance for the future.
 Received: 31 May 2022Accepted: 25 July 2022

Rethinking Guo Xiang’s Concept of “Nothing” in the Perspective of His Reception of Laozi and Zhuangzi

Since Feng Youlan and Tang Yongtong, scholars have mostly understood Guo Xiang’s “supreme nothing” (至無, zhi wu) as “non-existence”, arguing that by denying Dao as the origin of the universe, the philosophical tradition of Laozi, Zhuangzi, and Wang Bi, he strives to prove “self-generation” (自生, zi sheng) of all things. This way of interpretation not only leads to various dilemmas from the perspective of intellectual history, but also diverges from Guo Xiang’s own account of Dao. The purpose of this paper is to argue that Guo Xiang, instead of dismissing it, solidifies the opinion of Laozi and Zhuangzi on the transcendence of Dao through the concept of “supreme nothing”, and that the self-generation of all things is the logical endpoint of this reinforcement. The seemingly opposite viewpoints of transcendence and immanence, “Dao generates all things” and “All things are self-generated”, merge with each other in the context of the proposition “Dao follows nature” (道法自然, dao fa zi ran) in Laozi.

Большие циклы, советская власть и экономисты: из истории дискуссий 1920-х годов

In perspective of intellectual history, the article studies Soviet discussions on long cycles. The study analyzes in detail the connection between Kondratiev’s economic and epistemological ideas, as well as the connection between the debate on long cycles and the political conjuncture of the 1920s. In particular, the article shows that criticism from L. D. Trotsky and Soviet economists prompted N. D. Kondratiev to turn to the issue of epistemology. The article also shows that we should not take the methodological criticism of Kondratiev’s opponents seriously because they were biased against him. In the mid-1920s, Soviet economists’ negative attitude to the idea of long cycles refl ects the conflict between N. D. Kondratiev and employees of the State Planning Committee, which escalated under the influence of the inner-party struggle. The attention of L. D. Trotsky, in its turn, was attracted to the idea of long cycle in connection with forecasts both attributed to N. D. Kondratiev and those formulated by him. The article publishes a previously unknown forecast, declared by N. D. Kondratiev in 1926, about the upcoming economic crisis and the dynamics of military and social conflicts at the turn of the decades.

Marin Getaldić – preteča novovjekovnog pristupa istraživanju prirode

Marin Getaldić – preteča novovjekovnog pristupa istraživanju prirode

Karl Löwith’s secularization thesis in the light of Hans Blumenberg’s critique

The article aims to defend Karl Löwith’s secularization thesis from the criticism made by Hans Blumenberg. Löwith’s thesis claims that modern philosophy of history is a secularized Christian eschatology. Blumenberg accuses Löwith’s thesis of substantialism. Following Sjoerd Griffioen, the article shows that this criticism fails. The article presents Blumenberg’s arguments that the idea of progress cannot be derived from eschatology. These arguments are refuted by the analysis of the work of Joachim of Fiore and providing a distinction between two kinds of progress. The article is written from the perspective of intellectual history, detaching from the dispute over the judgement of modernity.

Language Complexity in Historical Perspective: The Enduring Tropes of Natural Growth and Abnormal Contact

Focusing on the work of John McWhorter and, to a lesser extent, Peter Trudgill, this paper critically examines some common themes in language complexity research from the perspective of intellectual history. The present-day conception that increase in language complexity is somehow a “natural” process which is disturbed under the “abnormal” circumstances of language contact is shown to be a recapitulation of essentially Romantic ideas that go back to the beginnings of disciplinary linguistics. A similar genealogy is demonstrated for the related notion that grammatical complexity is a kind of “ornament” on language, surplus to the needs of “basic communication.” The paper closes by examining the implications of these ideas for linguistic scholarship.

A recepção internacional da obra de A. J. Greimas: viagens, traduções, transmissões

Este estudo de caso em história das ciências da linguagem insere-se na perspectiva metodológica da história intelectual, na qual analisamos o impacto internacional de A. J. Greimas (1917-1992) e de sua obra, por meio do estudo das práticas de comunicação, de deslocamento e de tradução. As missões científicas realizadas fora da França, o número e a origem dos estudantes estrangeiros matriculados no seu seminário, em Paris, bem como a cronologia e a geografia linguística das traduções de sua obra ajudam a traçar, avaliar e explicar a difusão e o desenvolvimento mundial das suas ideias. Seu projeto inspirou apropriações distintas e, às vezes, estruturas institucionais em vários contextos culturais e linguísticos, incluindo contextos românicos, anglo-americanos, germânicos, eslavos, lituanos e do leste asiático. A conclusão deste ensaio avalia a importância do contato pessoal, do contexto sócio-histórico e do status sociolinguístico e didático do francês para a recepção mundial de Greimas. Ademais, este trabalho é baseado em trabalhos científicos publicados, documentos de arquivo, entrevistas e comunicações pessoais com tradutores e editores, com Greimas e seus colaboradores e com especialistas das diferentes culturas estudadas.

COVID-19 and sexualities: The emergence of a new paradigm of sexualities

This paper aims to propose a provisional assessment of the research developed in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic since the beginning of 2020. It reviews the types of research already published, presents their methodologies and analyzes the questions posed. It places recent research in the perspective of the history of empirical research on sexuality, particularly in relation to research carried out in the context of HIV/AIDS. Situated in an intellectual history perspective, the article analyzes research currently being developed as the construction and prefiguration of a new paradigm of sexualities that distinguishes and associates sexual relations that take place in the presence of a real partner and those that take place with the help of a whole range of electronic devices qualified as “virtual” that provide support for the imagination and maintain sexual arousal for personal satisfaction.

De la revolución a la democracia. Algunas reflexiones sobre las ciencias sociales y el cambio cultural en la Argentina

El artí­culo se concentra en el proceso que hace posible el pasaje de la revolución a la democracia como tema central del campo cultural y las ciencias sociales en la Argentina. Para ello, se pone el foco en una perspectiva tributaria de la historia intelectual y la sociologí­a de los intelectuales en tres aspectos: las condiciones del escenario intelectual latinoamericano de los años 70; el debate de ideas que hizo propicio ese escenario; y por último, el resultado de ese proceso de discusión en la democracia recuperada de la Argentina de 1983 para las ciencias sociales y el campo intelectual, refiriéndose fundamentalmente a algunas figuras del campo intelectual de la Universidad de Buenos Aires.

Musical Classicisms in Italy before the Madrigal

Abstract Modern evaluations of the relation between music and the fashion for the antique in Italy in the period before the madrigal have tended to proceed from the perspective of intellectual history. This article aims to offer an alternative—although certainly related—perspective, by exploring the circulation of musical classicisms in Italian visual and material culture, roughly from 1450 to 1520. This period saw the rise to prominence in Italy of both commercial text printing and other multiple-copy formats such as the art print, the medal, the bronze plaquette, and a little later historiated maiolica. These technologies offer a particularly compelling lens through which to examine musical encounters with classical antiquity that were not motivated by an expert professional interest in either music or classical texts, but rather characterized by an investment in antiquity as a fashionable source of cultural capital.

Intelectuales, comunicación y democracia. El Instituto Latinoamericano de Estudios Transnacionales (ILET) en las trayectorias de Schmucler, Casullo y Argumedo (1977-1985)

Situados en el campo de la historia intelectual de los estudios en comunicación, en el presente trabajo nos proponemos reconstruir y analizar la experiencia del Instituto Latinoamericano de Estudios Transnacionales (ILET) en las trayectorias de Héctor Schmucler, Nicolás Casullo y Alcira Argumedo en el período 1977-1985. En el exilio mexicano, los intelectuales que aquí estudiamos se incorporaron al ILET y participaron de microsociedades políticas, culturales e intelectuales en las que se discutió sobre diversas temáticas, entre ellas el lugar de la comunicación en un futuro que se anhelaba democrático. Una vez iniciado el retorno y en el marco de la apertura institucional inaugurada por las elecciones presidenciales de 1983, establecieron una oficina del Instituto en Buenos Aires. Desde allí, participaron de la vida cultural porteña durante los primeros años de la “primavera alfonsinista”. Siguiendo un recorrido marcado por el exilio y el posterior retorno, en el artículo se pone de relieve cómo las trayectorias de Schmucler, Casullo y Argumedo contribuyeron a reflexionar sobre el lugar de la comunicación y la cultura en la transición a la democracia.

Sobre los inicios de un revisionismo filosófico en Argentina y sus derivas políticas: Homero Guglielmini, Saúl Taborda y Carlos Astrada

El presente artículo analiza los principales textos que con distintos intereses ideológicos funcionaron como iniciadores de un particular ensayismo filosófico organizacionista y anti-liberal en la Argentina desde espacios académicos y universitarios. Sus autores, Saúl Taborda (1885-1943), Homero Guglielmini (1903-1968) y Carlos Astrada (1894-1971) tuvieron una trayectoria teórica y política en buena medida común. Primero desarrollaron sus textos en términos nietzscheanos y soreleanos. Más tarde se interesaron en el romanticismo alemán y la obra de Heidegger. En este arco, desde la década de 1920 cuando estuvieron a cargo de incipientes revistas filosóficas y vanguardistas hasta el momento en que Astrada y Guglielmini se convirtieron de en dos de las más importantes plumas oficialistas del gobierno de Juan Domingo Perón, estos autores mantuvieron sus intereses anti-iluministas y anti-liberales, con los cuales se opusieron a los estudios históricos como modo de indagación. Frente a ellos, desarrollaron un ensayismo filosófico no histórico que el presente artículo periodiza y caracteriza en oposición al más estudiado revisionismo histórico. A diferencia de estos últimos, los filósofos no reaccionaron frente a las continuas olas inmigratorias, sino más bien a los proyectos políticos foráneos. Se enfocaron principalmente en la figura del gaucho, y no en la de Rosas, y propusieron una reivindicación no-católica del hispanismo. Pero, principalmente, ellos argumentaron contra el individualismo liberal y buscaron pensar herramientas teóricas a favor de un sujeto político colectivo.

On how Herodotus’s “Historia” became “History”

Since the latter half of the twentieth century, many Western scholars have questioned the veracity of Herodotus’s historical record from the angle of writing style, narrative model, the use of sources, and purpose of writing. They further deny Herodotus’s identity as a historian and the continuity between classical historiography and modern historiography. In response to these many criticisms and challenges, many scholars have also written in defense of Herodotus’s reputation as a historian. This article is written in the context of these two strands of scholarly thought in Herodotean studies. The article tries to comprehensively evaluate, from an intellectual history perspective, the philosophical background in which Herodotus produced his works, his cultural context, his writing model, and narrative logic. The writing genre started by Herodotus was a new model of understanding for ancient Greeks substantially connected to later “historiography” in terms of its influence.

Beyond the Myth of Idealism: North Korea’s Marxist-Leninist Materialism and Its Place in the Global Intellectual History of the Cold War

According to the conventional understanding, by the 1980s North Korean ideology had little to do with Marxism-Leninism, not to mention Marxist-Leninist materialism. Scholars typically highlight the ideology’s uniqueness and liken its philosophical worldview to an idealism. From the perspective of intellectual history, the resultant image resembles a disconnect between North Korean ideology and intellectual developments in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. This study aims to begin a process of reconnecting these locales into a global intellectual history by demonstrating the deep-seated Marxist-Leninist materialism inherent in North Korean ideology. Through a careful examination of political dictionaries, theoretical journals, and archival documents, this study offers the following reevaluation of North Korean ideology: Even in the 1980s, at the height of North Korean ideology’s particularity during the Cold War, Marxist-Leninist materialism remained a fundamental component, crucial to the rationalization of human willpower and North Korea’s leadership conception.

William Pinar Responding to Elliot Eisner

The paper that follows was read by William Pinar in 1976 at the Curriculum Conference in Milwaukee (United States). It is a response to a paper presented by Elliot Eisner titled “The Curriculum Field Today: Where we, Where we were, and Where we are Going”.
 From a perspective of intellectual history, I claim that it is with this paper that Pinar provoked a turning point in the field of curriculum studies, one that brought the focus of attention back to the subjectively existing individual at the center of educational experience and opened the way for a more careful and dedicated consideration of the problem of subjective reconstruction.
 While this notion was foreshadowed by Huebner, it is in this presentation that Pinar articulates clearly the importance of the concrete subject: a flesh and blood person appears. In this sense, the field of curriculum studies returns, however inadvertently at this point, to the continental views on education as formation.