HISTORY AND RELIGION IN THE MODERN AGE

This essay seeks to clarify the relationship between history and religion in the modern age. It proceeds in three steps. First, it draws attention to the radical asymmetry between first‐person and third‐person statements that Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations rescued from the metaphysical exile to which it had been condemned by Descartes's definition of the self as a thing. Second, it argues that religion is designed to alleviate the peculiarly human kind of suffering arising from this asymmetry. Third, it maintains that history relies on the same means as religion in order to achieve the same results. The turn to historical evidence performed by historians and their readers is more than just a path to knowledge. It is a religious ritual designed to make participants at home in their natural and social environments. Quite like the ritual representation of the death and resurrection of Christ in the Mass, the historical representation of the past underwrites the faith in human liberty and the hope in redemption from suffering. It helps human beings to find their bearings in the modern age without having to go to pre‐industrial churches and pray in old agrarian ways. History does not conflict with the historical religions merely because it reveals them to have been founded on beliefs that cannot be supported by the evidence. History conflicts with the historical religions because it is a rival religion.     

THE RULES OF THE GAME IN THE STUDY OF ANCIENT HISTORY

“The Rules of the Game,” expounded in ten remarkably bold theses, can easily be read as a synthetic retrospective or introduction to the formidable oeuvre of Arnaldo Momigliano. Indeed, this piece served as the opening chapter to his Introduzione bibliografica alla storia greca fino a Socrate (Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1975), and its subsequent reprints as an independent essay in several Italian journals and anthologies signal its importance for Momigliano. In this provocative and occasionally brilliantly witty essay, Momigliano sets forth his programmatic views on the ethos of the historian, as well as on the historical method and its applications in the study of ancient history. Here, as elsewhere, Momigliano is interested in detailing the link between ancient documents and their historical interpretations in later millennia. Ancient sources, he cautions, do not capture ancient realities transparently or completely, but are mediated documents whose historical value hinges, within certain limits, on the historian's analytical questions, inflected as they inevitably are by different ideological commitments. For this reason, he places special emphasis on the comparative method, stressing difference rather than similarity, and advises that historians with various areas of expertise collaborate, a point underscored throughout the essay. What is more, the essay contains the salutary reminder that the historian ought to attend not only to the surviving documents but also to the conspicuous silences and lacunae in the evidence.     

TRANSCENDING DICHOTOMIES IN HISTORY AND RELIGION

At first glance, to speak of “history and religion” presents no problem. We merely identify two items to discuss in the same study. We quickly discover, however, that since at least the twentieth century the pair “history and religion” has tended to operate as a dichotomy. Within the dominant traditions of discourse originating in Europe, over many centuries, the verbal pair “history and religion” became a dichotomy encoded as the dichotomy “secular and religious,” signifying the opposition “not religious and religious.” This dichotomy does not usually appear alone, but commonly comes associated with other dichotomies whose terms align with either history or religion. The short list of associated dichotomies includes: temporal and spiritual, natural and supernatural, reason and faith, public and private, social and personal, scientific and theological, objective and subjective, rational and emotional, and modern and medieval. The opposing parts come gendered as masculine and feminine. Usage of the dichotomies creates tensions with practitioners of virtually all religions in all regions of the world. Rigorous and consistent users of the dichotomies misunderstand the character of religions as ways of life, fail to account for the persistence and revival of religion in the twenty‐first century, and overlook the intrinsic manner in which history manifests religion and religion manifests history. The defective outcomes prompt a number of constructive suggestions for transcending dichotomies in history and religion. These reflections on dichotomies refer to several varieties of Christianity, the emergence of the secular option, and the imagined triumph of Hindu dharma.     

ARCHAEOMAGNETIC SECULAR VARIATION STUDY IN THE UKRAINE AND MOLDAVIA

Measurements of the remanent direction in forty-eight fired structures are reported, spanning 500 b.c. to the present. From the third to the fourteenth centuries a.d. there is continuous coverage and the composite Declination and Inclination curve shows counterclockwise motion.     

ON THE BIAS OF MULTIPLIER ESTIMATES*

ABSTRACT. This paper considers the bias of the matrix of multipliers when the underlying data are random. The traditional approach is to specify the stochastic nature of the input coefficients directly. It is shown that this approach implies a transactions table which is biased in a most unbalanced way. Next the practitioner's point of view, i.e., taking the transactions table as the source of random errors, is adopted. One of the results states that, within each row of the multiplier matrix, either the biases are zero, or positive biases are canceled out by negative biases in the sense that their weighted average is zero. The conditions are based on the idea that information on aggregates is more exact than information on their details. The usual asumptions of independence and unbiasedness of the individual errors are avoided. The results are shown to have a direct interpretation in connection with the RAS-updating procedure.     

3. NATURE,RELIGION, AND IMAGINATION: COMMENTS ON IMAGES OF HISTORY

After sharing some reflections, I raise three questions. The first asks about the role of nature and reason according to Kant's teleological history, and the extent to which Kant's essays written before the Critique of the Power of Judgment (1790) are “dogmatic,” as his phrase “aim of nature” might suggest. The second asks about Kant's “impure” ethics and the role of religion. What would Kantian religion look like today? The last question concerns the relation between images and ideas—a thornier issue than Kant's initial definitions of imagination and reason would seem to suggest.     

A TURNING POINT IN THEORY OF HISTORY: THE PLACE OF HAYDEN WHITE IN THE HISTORY OF METAHISTORY

This article intends to place Hayden White's reflection on the basic principles of meaning-construction in history into the historical context of modern historical studies. It first presents the self-understanding of professional historians in which they emphasize the academic (wissenschaftlichen) character of the discipline. In this way of reflection, the traditional (premodern) interpretation of history as a part of rhetoric was pushed back and replaced by methodological argumentation about the rules of research (with an emphasis on source critique). Historiography, or the presentation of the results of research in a narrative form, was not completely neglected, but was not widely recognized. After the analytical insight into the narrative form of historical knowledge, significant discussion of the principles of historical thinking dramatically changed from the issue of research to that of representation (historiography). Hayden White's Metahistory (1973) marked this change paradigmatically. It turned the shift from rhetoric to science in its contrary direction: a new turn to rhetoric was proclaimed. This new anti-turn set off a hitherto unanswered question as to how research methodology should be treated. Source critique was not refuted but did not attract significant attention. The research procedure of interpretation, in contrast, was met by a new understanding and interest: it was identified as representation by the linguistic procedures of meaning-construction. Its role as a part of historical method, however, was completely ignored. The article ends with a still unresolved problem of metahistory, namely the relationship between interpretation and representation. They are not identical, but are closely related. Their synthesis and their differences have to be systematically inquired into and reflected upon if metahistory is to step forward and engage in this task. Then the merits of White's return to rhetoric will be appreciated as well as its one-sidedness criticized, before a further step is taken.     

THE CRITICAL THEORY OF HISTORY: RETHINKING THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY IN THE LIGHT OF KOSELLECK'S WORK

There are many ways to consider the philosophy of history. In this article, I claim that one of the most viable approaches to the philosophy of history today is that of critical theory of history, inspired by Reinhart Koselleck. Critical theory of history is based on what I call known history, history as it has been established and expounded by historians. What it contributes—its added value, so to speak—is a reflection on the categories employed to think about historical experience at its different levels, not only as a narrative but also as a series of events: their origins, contexts, terminology, functions (theoretical or practical), and, finally, eventual relevance.     

MODERNITY IN RELIGION: A RESPONSE TO CONSTANTIN FASOLT'S “HISTORY AND RELIGION IN THE MODERN AGE”

Contrary to Constantin Fasolt, I argue that it is no longer useful to think of religion as an anomaly in the modern age. Here is Fasolt's main argument: humankind suffers from a radical rift between the self and the world. The chief function of religion is to mitigate or cope with this fracture by means of dogmas and rituals that reconcile the self to the world. In the past, religion successfully fulfilled this job. But in modernity, it fails to, and it fails because religion is no longer plausible. Historical, confessional religions, then, are no longer doing what they are supposed to do; yet the need for religion is still very much with us. Fasolt's account would be a tragic tale, if not for his claim that there is a new religion for the modern age, a religion that fulfills the true reconciling function of religion. That new religion is the reading and writing of history. Indeed, for Fasolt, reading history is religiously redemptive, and writing history is a sacred act. The historian, it turns out, is the priest in modernity. In my response, I challenge both Fasolt's remedy (history as religiously redemptive) and its justification (the fall of historical religions). Indeed, I reject both his romantic view of past religion as the peaceful reconciler, as well as his pessimistic view of present religion as the maker of “enemies” among modern people. In the end, I argue that the way Fasolt employs his categories—“alienation,”“salvation,”“religion,”“history”— is too vague to do much useful work. They are significant categories and they deserve our attention. But in my view, the story Fasolt tells is both too grim (on human alienation) and too cheerful (on historian as modern savior).     

宋钱版别研究珍贵史料——读叶适《淮西论铁钱五事状》

叶适（1150～1223）,字正则,学者称水心先生,浙江永嘉（今浙江温州）人,为南宋著名思想家、文学家、政论家,是与朱熹的道学派、陆九渊的心学派并列为南宋三大学派的永嘉学派的集大成者和主要代表。南宋淳熙五年（1178）,叶适以进士第二名及第,后历任吏部员外郎、吏部侍郎、江东安抚使兼沿江制置使等职,官至宝文阁学士、光禄大夫。     

THE IMPACT OF MIGRATION ON MOBILITY OF OTHER FAMILY MEMBERS IN THAILAND

The effect of initial migration of a household member on the subsequent migration of other household members is investigated. Previous research has documented the strong impact of migration experience in predicting future migration. This article builds on this experience by adopting a social network approach to explain the association between an initial migration from a household and the subsequent migration of other household members. Differentials in socio-economic characteristics of subsequent migrants and factors associated with the encouragement of subsequent migration by initial migrants are analysed. Longitudinal data from the Kanchanaburi Demographic Surveillance System, which allow for accurate modelling of the flow and pattern of subsequent migration, and which help to highlight the importance of household social networks on the migration decisions of left-behind household members, are used. The results indicate that the number of male and female initial migrants in the household, duration of initial migration, relationship to initial migrant, and number of migrants in the village are factors most likely to predict a subsequent move.     

THE TEETH OF TIME: PIERRE HADOT ON MEANING AND MISUNDERSTANDING IN THE HISTORY OF IDEAS1

The French philosopher and intellectual historian Pierre Hadot (1922–2010) is known primarily for his conception of philosophy as spiritual exercise, which was an essential reference for the later Foucault. An aspect of his work that has received less attention is a set of methodological reflections on intellectual history and on the relationship between philosophy and history. Hadot was trained initially as a philosopher and was interested in existentialism as well as in the convergence between philosophy and poetry. Yet he chose to become a historian of philosophy and produced extensive philological work on neo‐Platonism and ancient philosophy in general. He found a philosophical rationale for this shift in his encounter with Wittgenstein's philosophy in the mid‐1950s (Hadot was one of Wittgenstein's earliest French readers and interpreters). For Hadot, ancient philosophy must be understood as a series of language games, and each language game must be situated within the concrete conditions in which it happened. The reference to Wittgenstein therefore supports a strongly contextualist and historicist stance. It also supports its exact opposite: presentist appropriations of ancient texts are entirely legitimate, and they are the only way ancient philosophy can be existentially meaningful to us. Hadot addresses the contradiction by embracing it fully and claiming that his own practice aims at a coincidence of opposites (a concept borrowed from the Heraclitean tradition). For Hadot the fullest and truest way of doing philosophy is to be a philosopher and a historian at the same time.