FROM VAGUE SYMBOLS TO CONTESTED CONCEPTS: PEIRCE,W. B. GALLIE,AND HISTORY

This article explores Walter Bryce Gallie's notion of “essentially contested concepts” from a viewpoint that has hitherto been neglected, namely its relation to the philosophy of Charles S. Peirce. As a matter of fact, Gallie was an authoritative reader of the American philosopher. All areas of his work are influenced by his attempt to take up and further articulate a major insight of Peirce's semiotics, namely the idea that symbols are inherently vague, and that their meaning is in a state of perpetual growth. At the same time, Gallie rejected another crucial tenet of Peirce's philosophy, that is, the idea that the growth of signs is regulated by the possibility of a final agreement among sign‐users. Examining this ambivalent relation between the two authors will help us shed light on a question that was of crucial importance for Gallie: to what extent should we let our appreciation of concepts or beliefs depend on a historical examination of their meaning?     

Forms of secularism and multiculturalism: Charles Taylor and Ireland

This article seeks to frame the work of the Canadian political philosopher Charles Taylor in terms of its significance for Irish culture. Taylor came to wide prominence for his work on multiculturalism, but the varying ways he understands this term are especially important for Ireland. “Multiculturalism 1” speaks to the kinds of difficulties between nationalist and Unionist communities in Northern Ireland. “Multiculturalism 2” speaks to the more widely understood meaning of the term, which is connected to a cultural diversity that is often born of immigration. Taylor has had a strong role in the emergence of the term “interculturalism” to describe a form of cultural diversity that explicitly seeks to balance the needs of minority and majority cultures, and in Canada and Quebec that term has taken on a different understanding than the one that is common in Ireland. That work on interculturalism also strongly underwrites Taylor’s work on secularism, and he traces that social phenomenon in ways with clear relevance for Ireland. Although Taylor’s explicit engagement with Ireland is rare, it is clearly time to bring his work into the mainstream of studies of Irish culture.     

“An auxiliary,not an usurper”: John Saunders,Temperance, and Secularisation

In his influential account of the political history of early colonial Australia, Michael Roe identified the temperance movement of the 1830s–1840s as a pivotal factor in the secularisation of Australian culture and institutions. The belief system that drove the movement, he argued, was not traditional Christian doctrine but a “new faith” of “moral enlightenment.” In this article I test the validity of Roe's claim, drawing on the work of a more recent generation of historians and sociologists who have argued for more “porous” and “reciprocal” accounts of concepts such as reason, religion, the Enlightenment, and the secular. Its focus is on the writings and activities of John Saunders, whose endeavours on behalf of the temperance cause were such that he was described by his contemporaries as the “life and soul” of the society, the “father” of the movement, and the “apostle of temperance.” It examines the role played by key Enlightenment motifs such as improvement, optimism, reason and cooperation within the rhetoric of Saunders's writings and the reasoning that informed his actions, exploring the various and complicated ways in which he articulated the relationship between evangelical religious conviction and the quest for the common good.     

MISREPRESENTING MARX: A LESSON IN HISTORICAL METHOD

In this book Jonathan Sperber deploys his extensive knowledge of nineteenth‐century European social and political history, and his diligent research into sources that have become readily available only recently, to produce a substantial biography of Karl Marx. We find, however, that Sperber is mistaken in his treatment of Marx's ideas and of the intellectual contexts within which Marx worked. In fact, we suggest that he is systematically mistaken in this regard. We locate a root source of the error in his reductive approach to theoretical ideas. In section I we focus on the claim, taken for granted in the book, that Marx's ideas are instantiations of “materialism.” By detailed reference to the record of Marx's writings, we show that there is no justification for describing Marx as a “materialist” in the usually accepted senses of that term. In section II we review how Soviet and other interpreters of Marx, taking their lead from the later Engels, insisted that “materialism” was fundamental to Marxism. We suggest that Sperber's presentation of Marx's thinking as “materialist and atheist” aligns far better with such interpretations than it does with what Marx actually wrote. In sections III and IV we criticize Sperber's “contextualist” approach to dealing with ideas in history. His approach may seem reminiscent of Quentin Skinner’ s, but where Skinner deploys the discursive conventions prevailing in a past time to illuminate theoretical ideas, Sperber reduces theoretical ideas to context. We name Sperber's approach “theoretical nominalism,” a term that we use to denote the view that theoretical ideas are nothing but interventions into particular situations. We end by suggesting that greater attentiveness to philosophy and theory would have enriched Sperber's efforts in this book.     

ON THE ELUSIVENESS OF CONTEXT

How can we decide the pertinent context in which a given object of historical study should be examined? This question has long puzzled historians. In the field of intellectual history, the Cambridge contextual school represented by Quentin Skinner triggered a series of methodological debates, in part relating to its opaque notion of context; critics have argued that a satisfactory answer to the question—how to recover a relevant context—has yet to be given. This article tackles why the question has continued to elude us. The article demonstrates that it is simply impossible to propose a practical set of guidelines on how to reconstruct a correct context because the identification of the relevant context is presupposed in the logical structure of inference in historical inquiries; identifying a relevant context is logically antecedent to the inquiry. In order to show this, the article deploys Charles Sanders Peirce's theory of inference. Thus the article submits that Skinner conceptualized his method as what Peirce called “abduction,” which specifically seeks authorial intention as an explanatory hypothesis. This observation entails two ramifications in relation to the notion of context. One is that context in Skinner's methodology operates on two levels: heuristic and verificatory. Confusing the two functions of context has resulted in a futile debate over the difficulty of reconstructing context. The other ramification is that abduction always requires some sort of context in order to commence an inquiry, and that context is already known to the inquirer. Any attempt to reconstruct a context also requires yet another context to invoke, thus regressing into the search for relevant contexts ad infinitum. The elusiveness of context is thus inherent in the structure of our logical inference, which, according to Peirce, always begins with abduction.     

Mindful Activists

It used to be said of the Movement of the 1960s that we were “mindless activists.” This characterization has recently come under scholarly attack. Charles Payne, in his I've Got the Light of Freedom: The Organizing Tradition and the Mississippi Freedom Struggle, described the “complex intellectual legacy” utilized by youthful organizers for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Kevin Mattson has done something similar for the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), focusing on “the ideas that influenced and sometimes oriented the New Left” (2–3). Mattson's method is an in-depth examination of four intellectuals (C. Wright Mills, Paul Goodman, William Appleman Williams, and Arnold Kaufman) and two journals (New University Thought and Studies on the Left). His conclusion is that Kaufman in particular began to create a “radical liberalism” very much worthy of salvage and further development.     

Engels and the question about cities

In his 1969 Trevelyan Lectures, Franco Venturi argued that Kant's response to the question “What is Enlightenment?” has tended to promote a “philosophical interpretation” of the Enlightenment that leads scholars away from the political questions that were central to its concerns. But while Kant's response is well known, it has been often misunderstood by scholars who see it as offering a definition of an historical period, rather than an attempt at characterizing a process that had a significant implications. This article seeks (1) to clarify, briefly, the particular question that Kant was answering, (2) to examine – using Jürgen Habermas’ work as a case in point – the tension between readings that use Kant's answer as a way of discussing the Enlightenment as a discrete historical period and those readings that see it as offering a broad outline of an “Enlightenment Project” that continues into the present, and (3) to explore how Michel Foucault, in a series of discussions of Kant's response, sketched an approach to Kant's text that offers a way of reframing Venturi's distinction between “philosophical” and “political” interpretations of the Enlightenment.     

“Talk & talk & talk”: Virginia Woolf's responses to Ireland

The complexity of Virginia Woolf's relationships with Empire can be illustrated by considering her responses to Ireland. Woolf's relationship with Ireland and Irish writers has received only cursory attention. Those critics who have addressed the topic have assumed that she responded positively to her experience of Irish “talk” on her holiday in Ireland in 1934. However, her response on that holiday reveals some underlying imperial presumptions and a sense of Ireland as stereotypically a land of “talk, talk, talk”. Indeed, this is in keeping with her responses to a wide range of Irish writers over many years (most notably, it chimes with her reading of Ulysses). This essay brings together for the first time Woolf's comments on Ireland and Irish writers, from her diaries, letters, essays and reviews, in order to show that she consistently characterised them as loquacious. Ireland was thus merely a subject of talk, a “question” that could only by discussed, and then only in stereotypical and liberalist terms. Further, Woolf associated talk with looseness and bad writing, and sought to maintain a mode of semi-privacy, apart from the “talk” that went on around her.     

DOES HISTORY MATTER? CHARLES TAYLOR ON THE TRANSCENDENTAL VALIDITY OF SOCIAL IMAGINARIES

Since its appearance in 2007, Charles Taylor's monumental book A Secular Age has received much attention. One of the central issues in the discussions around Taylor's book is the role of history in philosophical argumentation, in particular with regard to normative positions on ultimate affairs. Many critics observe a methodological flaw in using history in philosophical argumentation in that there is an alleged discrepancy between Taylor's historical approach, on the one hand, and his defense of fullness in terms of openness to transcendence, on the other. Since his “faith‐based history” is unwittingly apologetic, it is not only “hard to judge in strictly historical terms,” but it also proves that “when it comes to the most ultimate affairs history may not matter at all.” This paper challenges this verdict by exposing the misunderstanding underlying this interpretation of the role of history in Taylor's narrative. In order to disambiguate the relation between history and philosophy in Taylor's approach, I will raise three questions. First, what is the precise relation between history and ontology, taking into account the ontological validity of what Taylor calls social imaginaries? Second, why does “fullness” get a universal status in his historical narrative? Third, is Taylor's position tenable that the contemporary experience of living within “an immanent frame” allows for an openness to transcendence? In order to answer these questions, I will first compare Peter Gordon's interpretation of the status of social imaginaries with Taylor's position and, on the basis of that comparison, distinguish two definitions of ontology (sections I and II). Subsequently, I try to make it clear that precisely Taylor's emphasis on the historical character of social imaginaries and on their “relaxed” ontological anchorage allows for his claim that “fullness” might have a trans‐historical character (section III). Finally, I would like to show that Taylor's defense of the possibility of an “openness to transcendence”—as a specific mode of fullness—is not couched in “onto‐theological” terms, as suggested by his critics, but that it is the very outcome of taking into account the current historical situation (section IV).     

Obedient children and reckless rebels: Jabotinsky's youth politics and the case for authoritarian leadership, 1931–1933

This article traces the pivotal role that ideas about “youth” and “generationhood” played in Vladimir Jabotinsky's political strategy as leader of the Union of Revisionist Zionists and its youth movement, Brit Yosef Trumpeldor (Betar). During the leadership struggle within the movement between 1931 and 1933, Jabotinsky believed that he could draw upon debates sweeping across Europe about the nature of youth, their role in politics, and the challenges of “generational conflict” in order to convince his followers that his increasingly authoritarian behavior was the only mode of leadership available to Zionist leaders in the 1930s. The article demonstrates that Jabotinsky's deliberately ambiguous and provocative constructions of “youth” and “generationhood” within the movement's party literature and in articles addressed to the Polish Jewish public, as well as the innovative ways in which he delimited “youth” from “adult” in his movement's regulations, allowed him to further embrace authoritarian measures within the movement without publicly abandoning his claim to be a firm proponent of democracy.     

On national dress and the problem of authenticity in Ulysses

This article considers James Joyce’s representation of Irish dress, arguing that his ambivalent treatment of it accurately reflects his fractious relationship with the Irish Revival movement. The article begins with a discussion of the metaphor of performance and relates this to issues around “authenticity”. From here, it discusses Douglas Hyde’s thoughts on dress, as presented in “The Necessity for de-Anglicising Ireland”, contextualising these within a brief history of nineteenth and early-twentieth-century Irish dress history, and recognising the important work of women in this. Assessing Joyce’s depictions of Irish dress, especially in “Scylla and Charybdis”, “Cyclops” and “Circe”, this article argues that Joyce sees Irish dress as a contingent and fragile cultural performance.     

The greening of Oscar Wilde: situating Ireland in the Wilde wars

The importance of Ireland to an understanding of Oscar Wilde has been the subject of contentious discussion in recent years. For one group of critics Wilde has been considered “a militant Irish republican”, an Irish “terrorist by another name”, whose literary practices resembled those of “guerrilla warfare”, an ardent Home Ruler and Parnellite, and committed Irish nationalist whose work is suffused with references to Ireland and the Irish Question, very influenced by his Irish background and political views, possibly shaped by a genuine interest in and awareness of Irish folklore and the Irish oral tradition, and deeply engaged with issues of Irish identity and culture. For an opposing set of critics Wilde should at best be considered a “reluctant” Irish patriot, who referenced his Irish “identity” only when it suited him commercially, was more interested in exploiting intellectual fashions and fads than making genuine political points, was a shallow thinker in most areas of life and certainly didn’t use his writing to pursue Irish nationalist issues, was probably more of a British imperialist than an Irish nationalist, knew precious little about Irish folklore or Irish oral traditions, and his works contain few if any references to Irish issues or themes. The differences between these two interpretive communities certainly seem quite large, and these differences have been emphasised in a disputatious manner which has shed more heat than light on the messy matter of Wilde’s national identity. In this article I want to begin to clear up some of the misunderstandings I think have crept into this critical dispute and suggest fruitful ways in which opposing critics can come together in if not harmony then perhaps a less acrimonious, more productive way.     

NE ME RACONTE PLUS D'HISTOIRES: DERRIDA AND THE PROBLEM OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY

This essay reads Derrida's early work within the context of the history of philosophy as an academic field in France. Derrida was charged with instruction in the history of philosophy at the École Normale Supérieure, and much of his own training focused on this aspect of philosophical study. The influence of French history of philosophy can be seen in Derrida's work before Of Grammatology, especially in his unpublished lectures for a 1964 course entitled “History and Truth,” in which he analyzed the semantic richness of the word “history.” According to Derrida, “history” comprised both the ideas of change and of transmission, which allowed the writing of history at a later time. In the Western tradition, Derrida suggested, philosophers had consistently tried to reduce the idea of history as transmission, casting it simply as empirical development in order to preserve the idea that truth could be timeless. Derrida's account of the evolving opposition between history and truth within the history of philosophy led him to suggest a “history of truth” that transcended and structured the opposition. I argue that Derrida's strategies in these early lectures are critical for understanding his later and more famous deconstruction of speech and writing. Moreover, the impact of this early confrontation with the problem of history and truth helps explain the ambivalent response by historians to Derrida's analyses.     

“Mad” Elves and “Elusive Beauty”: Some Celtic Strands of Tolkien's Mythology [1]

Contrary to Tolkien's refutation of “Celtic things” as a source for his own mythology, this article attempts to show how his work has been inspired by Celtic folklore and myth. The article is not just a source study. It concentrates on one main example from Tolkien's early literary writings that betrays a Celtic influence. At the same time it discusses Tolkien's complex attitude towards “things Celtic” within the context of his strong sense of English identity. Finally, it seeks to explain Tolkien's derogatory comments on Celtic material as a result of popular ideas of “Celticity.”     

The texted and textured construction of Irish identity in the theatrical world of Charleston,South Carolina

On the eve of the American Civil War, the Irish who had immigrated to the United States as a result of the Great Famine were in the process of constructing an Irish working-class identity in Charleston, South Carolina. A “legacy” for such construction had been created in the previous century: those who had come from Ireland then had used public displays of celebration and concomitant rhetorical devices to create the impression that they were willing and eager to assimilate. Their rituals at banquets and other public occasions “set the stage”, so to speak, for the next century's generation of immigrant Irish who also found it necessary to articulate publicly their claim to an ethnic American identity. Theatrical venues and staged performances served the Famine Irish well in this endeavour.     

A Door of Hope Re‐opened: The Fifth Monarchy,King Charles and King Jesus

A Door of Hope was the manifesto of the Fifth Monarchists’ desperate uprising in London in January 1661, a few months after the Restoration of Charles II. While the rising itself is well known, its manifesto has never been examined in detail. Probably based on a sermon to Venner's congregation, it displays a defiant conviction that the Restoration could be understood as part of God's providential plan, the next step towards the imminent kingdom of Christ on earth. But it also reaches out to a much wider constituency, all the supporters of the “Good Old Cause,” offering a programme that might appeal to many radicals. And the author draws on secular, republican discourse to buttress his apocalyptic claims, revealing close links between even the most extreme Fifth Monarchists and wider currents of interregnum radicalism.     

HISTORY AND KAIRÓS

The recent wave of interest in the “theological‐political” has focused scholarly attention on the constellation of ideas associated with “messianic time.” The term kairós belongs to this constellation, and Giacomo Marramao's brief but ambitious text of the same name both proposes and performs a “kairological” reconfiguration of the close relationship between philosophy and time. Marramao's argument for the productive potential of “cosmic disorientation” and contingency will merit the attention of historians interested in Benjamin's blend of messianism and historical materialism, and of anyone who is intrigued by the prospect of a messianism without apocalypticism.     

Antiquarianism,archaeology, and aporetic immanence in Beckett’s prose

Beckett derides those antiquarians unaware of “the rupture of the lines of communication” between subject and object in his 1934 essay “Recent Irish Poetry”. However, Beckett will come to incorporate into the late prose specific terminology used by archaeologist, including those involved in the Ordnance Survey of Ireland, who were contemporaries of the same antiquarians he scorns so contemptuously in his early career. This paper traces and examines the Irish antiquarian elements in relation to megalithic archaeology in Beckett’s prose. The elements of antiquarian archaeology in Beckett function to present the existence of those populating the work as mediated by the aporia between ancient and modern epochs. Allusions to antiquarian and archeological terminology contribute to the issues of representation in Beckett’s work. Instances where historical material resides in Beckett’s prose will be analysed through the logic of reverberation. Based on the physics of sound, it will be argues that the fragments of historical material act like artefacts which do not represent historical discourse but reverberate within an aporia of chronological time.     

KOSELLECK ON MODERNITY,HISTORIK, AND LAYERS OF TIME

In the scholarly reception of his work, Reinhart Koselleck's notion of modernity and his theory of multiple times have been cast as essentially at odds with each other. This article argues that although these positions are valid, Koselleck's writings can also accommodate an interpretation according to which the theory of multiple temporalities, or “layers of time,” provides theoretical ground for the modern understanding of time and history. Elaborating on this insight, the article shows the linkages sustaining the unity between Koselleck's formal theory of multiple times and his interpretation of modernity. To that end, I outline the main premises of the temporalization thesis that lies at the heart of Koselleck's theory of modernity, scrutinize his notion of Historik within which the framework “layers of time” belongs, and explore Niklas Olsen's and Helge Jordheim's interpretive accounts on how to conceive of the relationship between the two strands in Koselleck's thought. Ultimately, I argue that “layers of time” entails the formal conditions for historical acceleration, which is crucial for explaining the emergence of a specifically modern temporality wherein experience and expectation increasingly grow apart.     

“The Enchanter's Wand”: Charles Darwin,Foreign Missions,and the Voyage of H.M.S. Beagle*

It often goes unmentioned that one of the primary purposes of the famous circumnavigation of H.M.S. Beagle was foreign missions. Charles Darwin, the voyage's most famous participant, was at best noncommittal about the missionary activity surrounding him for most of the trip. He emerged from the voyage, however, as an enthusiastic and outspoken proponent of missions. The British missions at Tahiti prompted him to change his view. Sailing to Tahiti, he read several accounts about the South Sea missions, and had already begun making arrangements to publish his “Diary” as a travel journal. Darwin became convinced that missionaries helped “advance” the natives toward “civilization” and thereafter enthusiastically defended missionaries in an ongoing public debate.