Universal History Research Articles

Desde de Hegel, apesar de Hegel, mas com Hegel

this paper examines the reception of Hegel’s philosophy in Latin American “decolonial philosophies” from the 1960s onwards, especially in Enrique Dussel’s philosophy of liberation, whose “presence of Hegel” (sometimes explicit, sometimes implicit) is essential for the substantiation of the “analetic method” in terms of “absolute principle” and “final proposal”, despite the inversions. To this end, the text is divided into three moments. The first examines the significant participation of Hegelian philosophy in the foundation of Latin American decolonial thought. The second moment examines the substantiation of Dussel’s analetical method as a philosophical proposal to overcome Hegelian dialectics in epistemological, ontological and historical terms. In the third moment, we compare the “absolute principle” and “final proposal” of Dussel’s “practical-poietic method” with the principles and purposes of Hegel’s “dialectic of liberation” and “poietic”. In the end, we conclude that the “decolonial turn” claimed above all by Dussel’s method cannot escape the Hegelian idea of “universal history” as the “self-production of absolute freedom” in terms of principle and final solution, despite the methodological inversions.

“Superiority is due to us, and the king should come from among us”: The Arab Conquests and Conflicts of the Early Umayyad Era in a 7th-Century Syriac Universal History of Yoḥannān bar Penkāyē

Abstract The last few decades have seen considerable interest in non-Muslim sources that contain material on the earliest stage of Islam. This paper examines one such witness, The Book of the Main Points by Yoḥannān bar Penkāyē, a 7th-century Syriac universal history, that provides an account of the Arab conquests, the first decades of the Umayyad caliphate, with a special focus on the events of the Second Fitna. The paper includes a commentary on selected passages from the History concerning the conquests and early Muslim rule, a comparative study of Syriac Christian sources on the Second Fitna, and a lexico-historical sketch of the phenomenon of the šurṭa (slaves and prisoners of war) fighting on the side of al-Muḫtār during the Second Fitna.

Кантианский патриотизм

The article considers a paradoxical, at first glance, question – does the social and political philosophy of Immanuel Kant allow patriotism as a duty. The fact is that Kant is widely considered an icon of cosmopolitanism. His “cosmopolitan­ism” was reflected in such works as “Idea for a Universal History from a Cos­mopolitan Purpose” (1784), and later, with adjustments, in “Toward Perpetual Peace” (1795) and “Metaphysics of Morals” (1797). Considering that many philosophers reject patriotism on ethical grounds, believing that it cannot be a virtue, even more strange it may seem to pose the problem of “Kantian patriot­ism”. Nevertheless, modern researchers of Kant’s philosophy are trying to under­stand how his views can be combined with patriotism. In particular, this topic was raised several times (in 2000 and in 2003) by Pauline Kleingeld, a re­searcher of ethics and philosophy of Kant. To answer the question of whether patriotism is obligatory, permissible, or even harmful for Kant’s philosophy, she first described three types of patriotism – civic, nationalist, and patriotism based on the unique characteristics of the country, Kleingeld has done a lot of philo­sophical work, because now Kant’s social and philosophical concept can among other things be considered patriotic

Al-Makīn Ǧirǧis Ibn al-ʿAmīd: Universal History: The Vulgate Recension. Part 1, Section 1: From Adam to the End of the Achaemenids (Chapters 1–91), written by Martino Diez

al-Makīn Ǧirǧis Ibn al-ʿAmīd: Universal History: The Vulgate Recension. Part 1, Section 1: From Adam to the End of the Achaemenids (Chapters 1–91), written by Martino Diez

Tobias Smollett’s and John Campbell’s Contributions to the American Volumes in The Modern Part of an Universal History

ABSTRACT The second edition of the influential An Universal History (1747–1754) was entitled The Modern Part of an Universal History (1759–1766). Modern Part’s volumes 38–41, in octavo, cover the discoveries, settlements and conquests of the Americas. These American volumes were written, according to Guido Abbattista, by the mid-eighteenth-century Scottish-born historian, John Campbell (1708–1775). Tobias Smollett (1711–1771) will be shown, however, to be a significant contributor to the American volumes, which is most evident in passages or sections that draw from his histories, A Complete History of England (1757–1758, 2nd edition 1758–1760) and Continuation of the History of England (1760–1765). Smollett’s contributions to the American volumes likely prompted him to borrow from them to write his American section in his later work, The Present State of All Nations (1768–1769). Smollett’s politics and correspondence, along with textual and stylometric analysis, specifically the “rolling classify” function in R, will demonstrate Smollett’s contributions to Modern Part’s American volumes.

Ethnohistory as a research strategy for traditional architecture history: A systematic literature review

The history of Indonesian traditional architecture has not yet addressed the history of architecture itself; instead, it has only addressed national and regional universal history as a backdrop or ancestry. Furthermore, the sources mainly relied on Western paradigm-adhering written documents and literature rather than empirical sources from a specific cultural community, particularly oral traditions. As a result, the significance of historical context for the evolution of Indonesian architecture has diminished somewhat. Indeed, anthropology, archaeology, and history have long used ethnohistory as a research methodology. Furthermore, traditional architecture has been mentioned in these studies. How does one go about researching the history of traditional architecture using ethnohistory? The objectives of this research are to identify research trends on this topic as well as to discover novelty as a new direction for future studies. This study employs a systematic literature review (SLR) method to descriptively analyze a big dataset and examine the content of primary data selected from publications between 2013 and 2023. It indicates how very promising the research trend is for architecture science. Furthermore, this study develops three research focuses, approaches, implications and constraints in light of the data gathered and examined.

Sala Coronado: exponente principal del patrimonio documental y bibliográfico de la Universidad Central “Marta Abreu” de las Villas (Cuba)

Francisco de Paula Coronado is a significant personality in 20th-century Cuban historiography and library science. Due to his outstanding work, he served as the director of the National Library "José Martí" from 1920 to 1946. Throughout his life, he devoted himself to collecting important bibliographic heritage works, including three incunabula and original manuscripts of universal history and Cuba. Due to various reasons, his library came under the custody of the Universidad Central "Marta Abreu" de Las Villas, where it is currently located. This gem of the bibliographic heritage is little known and therefore not frequently consulted by researchers and historians. This contribution aims to characterize the Coronado Collection based on the heritage values of the documents it preserves. The study was categorized as descriptive with a theoretical contribution. Classic documentary analysis was used as the main method. The history of the collection, composition of the holdings, and level of preservation were analyzed.

Purposiveness, transcendental ideas, andphilosophical history. Notes on the Idea for aUniversal History with a Cosmopolitan Aim, in lightof the Transcendental Dialectic of the Critique ofPure Reason

This paper aims to point to relationship between Transcendental Dialectic of the Critique of Pure Reason (KrV) and Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Aim (IaG). Specifically, it seeks to show the theoretical and methodological foundation that the principle of purposiveness and the systematicity of reason, as presented in the KrV, offer to Kant’s philosophical conception of history in the IaG. The paper is divided into three sections. The first section presents – as problematic – the premises that, in the introduction to the IaG, Kant adopts in his philosophical investigation of history. The second section focuses on the Appendix to the Transcendental Dialectic, examining the legitimate use of transcendental ideas, as well as their indeterminate objective necessity. Finally, the third section examines some propositions of the IaG, suggesting that the repercussion of the Transcendental Dialectic on the IaG allows us to understand Kant’s distinctive investigative method in philosophical history.

STORIES OF THE PARASITE AND SYMBIOSIS AT A TIME OF CRISIS

Serres thought that humans had become the world’s parasites and that we must seek a more reciprocal partnership with our host. He put forward a legal justification for writing a new social contract that encompassed the more-than-human. Serres associated the foundation of the “natural contract” with the story of evolution, the biological relation between symbiosis and the parasite. Closely aligned to his proposal, Serres also envisioned the gathering together of a universal history revealed by the knowledge of the diverse sciences of matter and life and stories from the humanities and religion. He thought the “Grand Narrative” would bring people to an intimate understanding of our relation to the living world and the need for a contract of symbiosis. Serres referred to Molière’s Tartuffe, the fables of La Fontaine, the adventures of Tintin and Livy’s history of Rome to describe an underlying parasitical logic. Crossing social, medical, communicative and historical practices, the parasite is portrayed by Serres as an acquisitive guest, a contagious microbe, a confusing noise and part of ritualistic feasts. Crossing these specific examples, Serres depicts how the general operation of the parasite works in close partnership with the symbiotic. For instance, germs can both invade the body and strengthen immunity. As evolutionary biologists recognise, there is no simple division between parasitic and symbiotic processes. In this paper, I explore the biological–parasitic–symbiotic framework that Serres applies in the context of the ecological crisis and his proposal for a contract of symbiosis. I focus on pioneering research into the history of bacteria carried out by microbiologist Lynn Margulis and associated studies on the evolution of fungi and moss. I describe how this research contributes to Serres’s formulation of a universal story and at the same time helps both to supplement and critically engage with Serres’s thought on the natural contract. Specifically, I describe how Margulis’s contentions about the abilities of micro-organisms differ from Serres’s conception of the technology of “nature.” I also examine how his notion of the “Biosum,” a body that integrates all the perceptions and senses of the living world, informs his understanding of the divergent evolution of humankind. I conclude that Serres’s natural contract seeks to reinvent rather than imitate the rest of nature and briefly consider how his vision of inclusive global stories offers a glimpse of a new politics.

W. E. B. Du Bois’s universal history in Black Folk Then and Now (1939)

Abstract While debates about ‘Eurocentric’ versus ‘Afrocentric’ theories of history have driven previous studies of Du Bois’s writings on ancient Africa, I read his account of African antiquity in Black Folk Then and Now in the context of the moral and educational projects articulated within both Greco-Roman and African American historiography. I pay special attention to conventional ancient views of history that Diodorus expresses in his Bibliotheke, which treats history as a source of morally instructive examples and ‘universal history’ as especially educational because it synthesizes different historical narratives: these concepts of history were broadly influential into the nineteenth century, including among African American writers. An ancient model of universal history allows Du Bois to tell the story of a distinct human community and nevertheless insist on the unity of peoples, a principle which is central to his philosophy of race and of human history writ large.

The revival of traditional culture as an element of the national security policy of the Central Asian countries in the 1991-2010's.

The subject of the study is the formation of one of the ideological components of national security policy in the countries of the Central Asian region (CAR) - the concept of preserving historical, cultural and religious traditions as the basis of social stability and security. The authors focus on the process of incorporating this concept into the theory and practice of ensuring the national security of the CAR countries at different historical stages of their development after 1991. The objects of the research are scientific theories and legal acts reflecting the relationship between culture and security in the Central Asian states, official statements and writings of the first President of Kazakhstan, Nursultan Nazarbayev, and other political leaders of Central Asia. The article touches upon the problems of countering radical religious movements and other ideological influences from outside by the CAR states, and shows the controversial nature of the measures taken in this area by the authorities of Kyrgyzstan and Turkmenistan. Methodologically, the research is based on a civilizational approach to understanding the historical process, as well as on the idea of the influence of geopolitical trends on the internal life of countries and peoples of the modern world, including the Central Asian region. The work is based on the principles of historicism and consistency, using chronological, synchronous, dichronous, comparative and other methods of historical research. The novelty of the study lies in the generalization of data revealing the role of traditional values in the security systems of the CAR countries. The results of the work include a set of facts and theoretical provisions on the evolution of the security ideology of the CAR countries and can be used in scientific projects in the field of universal history and political science. The authors conclude that the revival of traditional culture and the local version of Islam (Hanafism) in the 1991-2010's were consistently considered by the leaders of the CAR countries as one of the most important factors in strengthening the state, its independence and international authority. This line was carried out most fully and consistently in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, which was reflected in the development programs, legislation, scientific and journalistic literature of these countries. There is a tendency in Kazakhstan to integrate cultural policy based on traditional civilizational values with national security policy.

Россия как страна-цивилизация в диалоге культур

The article examines the current geopolitical situation of Russia’s confrontation with the “collective West” in the light of a Special Military Operation (SMO) in Ukraine, in historical, political and cultural aspects. The relevance of the article is due to both the intensity of hostilities directly in the SMO, as well as rapid changes in the system of international relations and the position of Russia in connection with the conduct of the SMO. There is an accelerated reorientation of Russian economic, financial, military and – what is considered in this paper – historical and cultural ties, previously prioritized to the West, but now increasingly unfolding to the East. The novelty of the article lies in the application of the civilizational approach as a methodological key to the analysis of Russia’s conflict with the “collective West”, its rapprochement with the powerful states–civilizations of the East – China and especially India; in this “optics”, the optimal positioning of Ossetia in the intercivilization is rethought in a new way. Great importance is attached to the domestic, Russian tradition of relevant scientific research; it is emphasized that it was in Russia that the pioneering results on the subject under consideration were published, starting with the work of N.Y. Danilevsky, and today it is in Russia that A.G. Dugin has carried out an unprecedented research program on the philosophical and historical analysis of early and current civilizations. In Russia, A.D. Panov made the most important general scientific discovery of the twenty-first century about the singular limit of universal history, received the name “Panov – Snooks vertical” in the scientific literature. The conclusion of the work consists in summing up the results of the review and indicating the specific prospects and directions of the inter-civilizational dialogue and participation of Ossetia in it; at the same time, the first results have already been obtained.

«Дипломат поневоле»: страницы биографии Николая Васильевича Новикова

Introduction. The article analyzes the biography and diplomatic activities of Nikolai Vasilievich Novikov (1903–1989), a Soviet diplomat who represented the USSR in Cairo and in Washington during World War II and took part in the efforts to establish a new system of international relations at the beginning of the Cold War. Methods and materials. The article is based on published texts by Nikolai Novikov himself, diplomatic documents, periodicals, and materials from his personal archive, deposited in the Archive of the European University at St. Petersburg by the diplomat’s family. Analysis. The authors examine Novikov’s biography, the reasons for his rapid career in the People’s Commissariat of Foreign Affairs, his relations with Soviet foreign policy managers, and the circumstances of his resignation at a relatively young age. Special attention is paid to Novikov’s activities in the United States in the context of the emerging Cold War, the place of Novikov’s note (cable) in the process of shaping Soviet approaches to relations with the United States, and his own attitude to these approaches. Results. Novikov’s contribution to the shaping of the postwar world is underappreciated, as are his attempts to resist the changes that were breaking Soviet-American cooperation in the international arena. In fact, the strategic concepts formulated by Novikov in a memo to Molotov were the basis of the official Soviet interpretation of the causes and nature of the Cold War and were included in Soviet school and university textbooks on universal history and the history of international relations. Authors’ contributions. A.I. Kubyshkin analyzed the most important stages of Nikolai Novikov’s diplomatic activity and the general situation in relations between the USSR and the USA during the Second World War. He assessed Novikov’s activities from the political leadership of the USSR and foreign countries in which the Soviet diplomat worked. He also examined the most important aspects of the activities of Soviet diplomacy reflected in Novikov’s memoirs and carried out their internal criticism as a historical source. I.I. Kurilla processed the archive of Nikolai Novikov and identified and analyzed the corpus of sources of personal origin. He also analyzed the contents of Nikolai Novikov’s personal diaries, reviewed the personal contribution of N.V. Novikov in developing a strategy in relations with the United States in the initial period of the Cold War, and compared the contents of the “long telegram” of J. Kennan and the “Novikov telegram”.

Legal Knowledge among Late Roman Elites: The Evidence of Jerome

Abstract: Hans-Dieter Spengler sodali et iuris consulto Jerome's oeuvre is huge; it comprises translations and commentaries of many books of the Christian Bible, a universal history, a history of Christian literature, biographies of monks, many treatises, and more than 130 letters addressed to people from the educated upper classes of the late Roman West. This article investigates what role Roman law played in Jerome's writings, what he knew about it, and how he evaluated it. It also looks at his views on late Roman jurisdiction and collects the evidence he provides for petitions to the emperor and for imperial rescripts. The main section analyzes Jerome's ideas about imperial legislation, his knowledge of individual laws, and the way he presented them. On this basis, it is argued that Jerome's writings bear impressive witness to the importance of Roman law for both the social practice and the mindset of the provincial and local elites in the late Roman empire.

Transculturation and the porosity of cultures: Fernando Ortiz

AbstractFernando Ortiz introduced his account of transculturation to replace Melville Herskovits’s notion of acculturation as a way of describing the historical contact between cultures. Ortiz understood the idea of acculturation to be promoting a kind of assimilationist model very different from what he witnessed in his native Cuba. Transculturation conforms neither to the model of cosmopolitanism promoted by Kant’s universal history, nor to the kind of multiculturalism that is rooted in Herder’s rival approach to history. Instead, it presents a concept of cultural contact and cultural transformation that highlights the way the material and economic conditions of social existence shape the institutions in which cultures more narrowly conceived are embedded and relate to each other. By bringing transculturation into dialogue with the idea of the porosity of cultures initially promoted in 1925 by Walter Benjamin in his essay on Naples, we find a way to free transculturation from Ortiz’s tendency to lapse into biological metaphors with the danger of retaining a reference to cultural purity that he would not endorse. Transculturation, thus revised, recommends itself as a term helpful for thinking about a world shaped by mass migration and the new technological forms of ever more rapid cultural exchange. Properly understood, it promotes a future where openness and sharing are valued over ownership and preservation.

Józef Andrzej Gierowski – badacz i humanista – w obliczu problematyki dziejów nowożytnej Europy

Józef Andrzej Gierowski’s academic profile is presented in the light of his interest in the problems of universal history in relation to events, but above all to phenomena which allow for a better knowledge and understanding of the mentality of the people of the time, their activities and their consequences. Gierowski’s studies on the history of Europe were closely linked to the history of the Polish‑Lithuanian Commonwealth (especially the period of the Saxon Wettin dynasty on the Polish throne), highlighting its international position and associations, and the resulting foreign policy of its rulers. Among the questions raised, there was no shortage of issues relating to the culture and ideology of the Baroque and the Enlightenment and, of primary interest to the researcher, the problem‑laden, not fully deciphered transition period between the two currents. The second ‘part’ of the article emphasises Józef Andrzej Gierowski’s understanding of Europe as a certain whole, encompassing not only political history, social or economic affairs, but also cultural patterns and phenomena to which he was particularly sensitive.

Saberes docentes movilizados en adaptaciones del Método Zaba a la historia de Brasil hechas por profesores en Salvador, Bahia (1871)

The Zaba method was a variation of what became known in the 19th century West as the Polish mnemonic method for teaching Universal History, created by Antoni Jazwinski in the 1820s and modified by Jozef Bem in the 1830s. At 1840 another pole, Napoleon Felix Zaba, developed his own version of the method and, over the next four decades, lectured on it in several, including Brazil. This work aims to analyze the reception of the Zaba method at his passage through Bahia, in 1871 june and july, when his lectures were attended by the high echelon of public education of that province, by normalists and primary teachers, giving rise to attempts to adapt the method to Brazil history. We aim to understand how the leaders perceived the effectiveness of the method for History Teaching in Bahia, and how the teachers and normalists mobilized their knowledge and efforts to adapt the issues to primary classes.

Saberes docentes movilizados en adaptaciones del Método Zaba a la historia de Brasil hechas por profesores en Salvador, Bahia (1871)

The Zaba method was a variation of what became known in the 19th century West as the Polish mnemonic method for teaching Universal History, created by Antoni Jazwinski in the 1820s and modified by Jozef Bem in the 1830s. At 1840 another pole, Napoleon Felix Zaba, developed his own version of the method and, over the next four decades, lectured on it in several, including Brazil. This work aims to analyze the reception of the Zaba method at his passage through Bahia, in 1871 june and july, when his lectures were attended by the high echelon of public education of that province, by normalists and primary teachers, giving rise to attempts to adapt the method to Brazil history. We aim to understand how the leaders perceived the effectiveness of the method for History Teaching in Bahia, and how the teachers and normalists mobilized their knowledge and efforts to adapt the issues to primary classes.

Kant on race and the radical evil in the human species

AbstractReligion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason remains one of the most opaque of Kant's published writings. Though this opacity belongs, partly, to the text itself, a key claim of this article is that this opacity stems also from the narrow lenses through which his readers view this text. Often read as part of Kant's moral philosophy or his universal history, the literature has thus far neglected a different vantage point on the Religion, one that does not refute the utility of these lenses but complements them. This paper places the Religion alongside parts of Kant's corpus that it is less typically paired with, namely his natural history writings—in particular, his writings on the concept of race and the development of the human races. I argue that by doing so, we can shed much light on Kant's infamous claim that there is a radical evil in the human species. More precisely, we will come to appreciate that this evil is not, as it is usually understood, a static property or fixed characteristic of human beings. Instead, radical evil concerns a dynamic, changing defect in human nature that increasingly threatens our aspirations to collective moral perfection.

Mythologies of Time in the West

This paper presents the result of researching the mythical conceptions of history in the West, which shed light on numerous cultural and political data that entered the sphere of the imaginary reflected in religions, utopias, and finally, in art. The study is structured in three parts, namely: the three scenarios of universal history; the significant myths of great narratives; the problems of the myth of unique time. These aspects bring into question and demonstrate the importance of the imaginary for the understanding of cosmological and anthropological time.