Hugh Trevor-Roper and the history of ideas

A wave of recent publication connected to Hugh Trevor-Roper offers cause to take stock of his life and legacy. He is an awkward subject because his output was so protean, but a compelling one because of his significance for the resurgence of the history of ideas in Britain after 1945. The article argues that the formative period in Trevor-Roper's life was 1945–57, a period curiously neglected hitherto. It was at this time that he pioneered a history of ideas conceived above all as the study of European liberal and humanist tradition. Analysis of the relative importance of contemporary and early modern history in his oeuvre finds that, while the experience of Hitler and the Cold War was formative, it was not decisive.Trevor-Roper was at heart an early modernist who did not abjure specialization.However, he insisted that specialized study must be accompanied by “philosophical” reflection on the workings of a constant human nature present throughout history, a type of reflection best pursued by reading classical historians such as Gibbon and Burckhardt.Yet this imperative in turn fostered purely historical research into the history of historical writing – another branch of the history of ideas.     

Samuel Taylor Coleridge on ideas actualized in history

ABSTRACT

Situating Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s thought on historically actualized ideas with reference to a range of classical thinkers, this article examines his intriguing philosophical theory about how ideas become progressively actualized in history. This cultural growth can be understood as contemplation-in-action, although it occurs through mainly fumbling – or else overenthusiastic – human agents. I distinguish Coleridgean first-order, transcendent ideas (such as God, infinity, the good, the soul) from second-order, historical ones (such as church, state, the constitution). It has been argued that Coleridge’s theory of ideas develops from Bacon’s inductive method for discovering laws of nature through experiment and natural law through common law. I further claim that Coleridge upholds the reality of “Forms” in science, and of rights in ethics and politics; that his later political thought is inherently more progressive than is generally admitted; and that his account differs from Schelling’s and Hegel’s respective theories by maintaining the transcendence of ideas above the immanence of their evolving historical actualizations. Coleridge’s philosophy is therefore, whether political or metaphysical, ultimately an ontological defence of the transcendence of ideas above the immanence of their progressive but imperfect actualization.     

Against the current. Essays in the history of ideas

In An Essay upon Civil Government (1722), Andrew Michael Ramsay mounted a sustained attack upon the development throughout English history of popular government. According to Ramsay, popular involvement in sovereignty had led to the decline of society and the revolutions of the seventeenth century. In his own time, Parliament had become a despotic instrument of government, riven with faction and driven by a multiplicity of laws that manifested a widespread corruption in the state. Ramsay's solution to this degeneracy was the extirpation of Parliament, and its substitution with a monarchy moderated by an aristocratic senate. Ramsay's adoption of certain “Country” elements, including a return to the first principles of the constitution, claimed to reflect the principles of contemporary French aristocratic theory which called for the reform of government through the nobility. In his desire to exclude popular government, and reverse the decline of the state, however, Ramsay utilised the theory with which Bossuet had defended Louis XIV's absolute France. Intriguingly, traces of the natural law system which fortified Ramsay's theory can be found in Viscount Bolingbroke's subsequent attack on Walpole's Whig ministry and the corruption of the state.     

The tyranny of the definite article: Some thoughts on the art of intellectual history

This essay argues, following an insight of Burckhardt, that the philosophy of history is a ‘centaur’, and that it has a tendency to hinder rather than to encourage the practice of history. It challenges many of the presuppositions of Bevir's study, demonstrating that The Logic of the History of Ideas is not, in any meaningful sense, an historically minded work. The ‘logic’ of the essay looks to the arts, especially literature and music, as providing genuinely illuminating parallels to the discipline involved in the practice of intellectual history. History cannot be understood as a process of philosophical abstraction; pertinent examples are of its essence, and plurality is therefore central to its richly textured nature. It still has much to learn from the reflexive procedures of anthropology. By examining the idea of ‘tradition’ the essay demonstrates that ‘the past’ is never dead, and that the relationship between texts is a living process: the intellectual historian is him/herself an artist, and his/her task is no less demanding than that of the creative artist, and it is always humblingly provisional.     

The tyranny of the definite article: Some thoughts on the art of intellectual history

This essay argues, following an insight of Burckhardt, that the philosophy of history is a ‘centaur’, and that it has a tendency to hinder rather than to encourage the practice of history. It challenges many of the presuppositions of Bevir's study, demonstrating that The Logic of the History of Ideas is not, in any meaningful sense, an historically minded work. The ‘logic’ of the essay looks to the arts, especially literature and music, as providing genuinely illuminating parallels to the discipline involved in the practice of intellectual history. History cannot be understood as a process of philosophical abstraction; pertinent examples are of its essence, and plurality is therefore central to its richly textured nature. It still has much to learn from the reflexive procedures of anthropology. By examining the idea of ‘tradition’ the essay demonstrates that ‘the past’ is never dead, and that the relationship between texts is a living process: the intellectual historian is him/herself an artist, and his/her task is no less demanding than that of the creative artist, and it is always humblingly provisional.     

论民本思想在中国历史上的作用

文章对自先秦以来,特别是在中国漫长的封建社会中民本思想的形成,以及这种思想对调节、缓和社会矛盾,同时产生的消极影响和局限性,都作了较全面的论述;并对后来的民主思想的产生和发展也进行了一定分析。     

The history of econometric ideas. Historical perspectives in modern economics

This article presents a comparative analysis of the concepts of totalitarian democracy and positive liberty in the work of Jacob Leib Talmon and Isaiah Berlin. Its main purpose is to show that a combined analysis of Talmon and Berlin's biographical relationship and their individual texts demonstrates that Talmon's idea of totalitarian democracy may have had a greater influence on Berlin's notion of positive liberty than Berlin seems to have ever acknowledged. The article first summarises the intellectual and biographical relationships that tied these two authors together in a personal friendship and an intellectual fellowship that lasted for more than three decades. In the second part, the insights drawn from the investigation of the authors' intellectual and biographical relationships are linked to an analysis of their texts, The Origins of Totalitarian Democracy and Two Concepts of Liberty. Finally, in the third part of the article, three crucial aspects of Talmon's definition of totalitarian democracy are considered: the interpretation of the Enlightenment and Rousseau's thought, the view of the French revolution, and the possible impact each of these has on subsequent Marxist and socialist reflection, to see how they are addressed in Berlin's idea of positive liberty.     

Change and continuity in the recent 30 years of research on modern Chinese history: Some unsystematic reflective thoughts

Research on modern Chinese history in the past 30 years can be equally divided into two parts, which are different in terms of attended issues, observed objects, and investigated topics, and also employ different perspectives to explore “problems,” utilize different materials, and resort to different formats for narration. To understand this “thirty-year” (post-1978) historiography, it is necessary to go back to the “seventeen-year” (1949–1966) research before the Cultural Revolution and examine and analyze these studies for trends of continuity and fracture in the accumulation of scholarship. On the other hand, future research should be cautious about even an unconscious tendency of self-isolation, keep an open mind, and fully consider the numerous foreign elements “present in China” in the modern period, their consequences, and impact.     

坚持用唯物史观认识和把握中国国情——学习华岗史学思想的一点体会

华岗同志是一位忠诚于党的事业的革命前辈,卓越的马克思主义理论家.在思想理论战线,他所关注的领域,涉及哲学、政治学、美学、历史学诸方面.华岗的史学思想,具有鲜明的特色,至今仍有强烈的现实意义.他强调研究历史是为了推动历史、创造历史;他发扬中国史学的"求真"传统,把追求历史的真实看作是史学研究的生命;他大力提倡学术创新,认为创新是史学发展的本质要求.     

朱子伦理思想与明清徽州商业伦理观的转换和建构

朱子以理欲之辨为核心,在公私、义利和诚信及四民职业伦理问题上承继传统儒家伦理的核心价值观,对之做了系统的新阐发。它要求每个人践行儒家伦理道德,正确处理各层面的公私关系,实现儒家的理想人格,以建立一个儒家的理想社会。在秉承朱子之学和家礼的明清徽州,为了适应新的商业社会发展需要,人们以朱子伦理观为基础,同时吸收明清思想家重视个人主体精神、个人治生及"新四民观"等职业伦理思想,建构起一种新的商业伦理观。明清徽州以天理为旨归和价值目标,崇尚"勤俭治家"和"崇俭黜奢"的原则。在处理与家族、乡里、社会和国家等不同层面的公私关系时,践行朱子的公私之辨,以奉公和利公为原则与理想追求。秉承朱子义利观,将以义取利、以义制利和化利为义落实到经营和生活的诸多方面。徽商在经营中崇奉朱子的诚信观,以契约理性来规范商业经营。在看待士商(儒贾)关系及其职业伦理价值时,对朱子的职业伦理观既有突破,更有持守。     

Spatialities and the feeling of doing

Recent discussions of non-representational theory and expressive/sensuous embodied practice have provided new orientations for rethinking how people live and feel, and inform notions of spatialities and lay geographies. These arguments I develop in this paper through a consideration of an ethnography of recreational caravanning in the UK. I consider how spatialities may be developed in practice in relation to a refiguring of contexts and embodied semiotics.     

关于旅游业现状的一点思考

<正>目前,全国旅游业有一些新的发展趋势,其中,积极和消极并存。下面,简单地提出一些,并作适当的分析和思考,以期引起大家对于目前旅游业的关注和重视。