History and Philosophy of the Humanities : An Introduction

The humanities include disciplines as diverse as literary theory, linguistics, history, film studies, theology, and philosophy. Do these various fields of study have anything in common that distinguishes them from, say, physics or sociology? The tripartite division between the natural sciences, the social sciences and the humanities may seem self-evident, but it only arose during the course of the 19th century and is still contested today. 'History and Philosophy of the Humanities: An Introduction' presents a reasoned overview of the conceptual and historical backgrounds of the humanities. In four sections, it discusses: - the most influential views on scientific knowledge from Aristotle to Thomas Kuhn; - the birth of the modern humanities and its relation to the natural and social sciences; - the various methodological schools and conceptual issues in the humanities; - several themes that set the agenda for current debates in the humanities: critiques of modernity; gender, sexuality and identity; and postcolonialism. Thus, it provides students in the humanities with a comprehensive understanding of the backgrounds of their own discipline, its relation to other disciplines, and the state of the art of the humanities at large. Cover 1 Table of Contents 6 Preface 12 1. Introduction 16 1.1 The Tasks of the Philosophy of the Humanities 16 1.2 Knowledge and Truth 20 1.3 Interpretation and Perspective 24 1.4 Unity and Fragmentation 27 Summary 36 Part 1: Standard Images of Science 38 2. The Birth of the Modern Natural Sciences 40 2.1 The Scientific Revolution 40 2.1a Aristotle and the Medieval Sciences 43 2.1b Renaissance Humanism: Eloquence and Learning 47 2.1c The Rejection of Humanism and Aristotelian Science 51 2.1d What Was the Scientific Revolution? 58 2.2 Epistemology and Metaphysics of Classical Natural Science; Immanuel Kant’s ‘Copernican Turn’ 62 Summary 70 3. Logical Empiricism and Critical Rationalism 72 3.1 Logical Empiricism: The Vienna Circle 72 3.1a Rudolf Carnap: The Logic of Science 75 3.1b The Analytic-Synthetic Distinction and Reductionism 80 3.2 The Vienna Circle and the Humanities 85 3.3 Karl Popper: The Logic of Refutation 89 3.3a Induction, Deduction, Demarcation 91 3.3b Testing Theories 94 3.3c Explanation, Prediction, and the Laws of History 98 Summary 100 4. Historicizing the Philosophy of Science 102 4.1 From Empiricism to Pragmatism 102 4.1a The Duhem-Quine Thesis 104 4.1b Willard Quine’s Meaning Holism 106 4.1c Wilfrid Sellars and the Myth of the Given 112 4.2 The Development of Scientific Knowledge According to Thomas Kuhn 115 4.3 Kuhn’s Philosophy of Science: Empiricism, Neo-Kantianism, or Pragmatism? 122 4.4 The ‘Anthropological Turn’ 127 Summary 130 Part 2: The Rise of the Humanities 132 5. The Birth of the Modern Humanities 134 5.1 Michel Foucault’s Archaeology of the Human Sciences 134 5.2 Philosophical Backgrounds: Immanuel Kant and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel 141 5.2a Kant: Subject and Object 142 5.2b Hegel: Geist and Historicity 144 5.3 Cultural-Historical Backgrounds 148 5.4 Institutional Transformations: Wilhelm von Humboldt’s University Reforms, Bildung, and Nationalism 153 5.5 Conclusion 156 Summary 157 6. Developing New Disciplines 160 6.1 Hegel’s Philosophical History 160 6.2 The Rise of Modern Philology 165 6.3 Historiography and Genealogy 170 6.3a Leopold von Ranke 170 6.3b Friedrich Nietzsche 173 6.4 The Emergence of Sociology and Its Rivalry with the Humanities 175 Summary 179 7. Between Hermeneutics and the Natural Sciences: In Search of a Method 180 7.1 Introduction 180 7.2 From Biblical Exegesis to General Method: Friedrich Schleiermacher and Wilhelm Dilthey 183 7.2a Schleiermacher and Hermeneutics 183 7.2b Dilthey and the Humanities 185 7.3 Psychoanalysis between Hermeneutics and Natural Science 187 7.4 Neo-Kantianism: Heinrich Rickert and Ernst Cassirer 192 7.4a Rickert 192 7.4b Cassirer 194 7.5 Understanding in the Social Sciences: Max Weber 197 7.6 Hermeneutics as an Ontological Process: Hans-Georg Gadamer 201 7.7 Conclusion 205 Summary 206 Part 3: Styles and Currents in the Humanities 208 8. Critical Theory 210 8.1 Karl Marx and Dialectics 210 8.2 Marxism, Language, and Literature: György Lukács, Valentin Voloshinov, Mikhail Bakhtin 212 8.3 Antonio Gramsci 218 8.4 The Frankfurt School 222 8.4a Walter Benjamin 223 8.4b Theodor Adorno 227 8.5 Jürgen Habermas 232 Summary 236 9. Positivism and Structuralism 238 9.1 Introduction 238 9.2 Émile Durkheim’s Sociology 240 9.2a Sociology of Religion and Sociology of Knowledge 245 9.3 Ferdinand de Saussure and General Linguistics 248 9.4 Noam Chomsky and the Cognitive Revolution 254 9.5 Structuralism in Literary Theory 259 9.6 Structuralism and Psychoanalysis: Jacques Lacan 262 9.7 Conclusion 266 Summary 268 10. The Practice Turn 270 10.1 Introduction 270 10.2 Words as Deeds: J.L. Austin and Ludwig Wittgenstein 271 10.2a Wittgenstein on Language Games 271 10.2b Austin’s Speech Act Theory 273 10.3 Michel Foucault’s Genealogy 276 10.4 Pierre Bourdieu’s Reflexive Sociology 280 10.4a The Notion of Habitus: Beyond Structure and Agency 281 10.4b Bourdieu’s Sociology of Culture: Fields and Capitals 283 Summary 286 Part 4: Modernity and Identity 288 11. Critique of Modernity 290 11.1 Introduction: Modernity, Postmodernity, and Postmodernism 290 11.2 Postmodernism, Poststructuralism, and the Philosophy of Difference: ‘French Theory’ 294 11.2a Jacques Derrida: Deconstruction 295 11.2b Gilles Deleuze: The Philosophy of Difference 299 11.3 Thinkers on Postmodernity 303 11.3a Postmodernism and the Legitimation of the Humanities: Jean-François Lyotard 303 11.3b Richard Rorty’s Postmodern Bildung 305 11.4 Conclusion: Beyond (Western) Modernity 310 Summary 312 12. Gender, Sex, and Sexuality 314 12.1 Introduction 314 12.2 Gender and Gender Metaphors 319 12.3 Foucault and the History of Sexuality 322 12.4 Gender and Performativity: Judith Butler and Queer Theory 325 Summary 330 13. Postcolonialism 332 13.1 Introduction 332 13.1a Frantz Fanon 332 13.2 Postcolonialism and the Humanities: Edward Said and Martin Bernal 335 13.2a Said and Orientalism 335 13.2b Bernal and Classical Philology 337 13.3 The Subaltern Studies Group and Its Offshoots 338 13.4 Beyond Postcolonialism: Globalization and Global History 344 Summary 349 Further Reading 352 Glossary 360 Index of Names 384 Index of Subjects 388