FUTURE BY HISTORY: RETHINKING PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY

Philosophy of history has a threefold dimension: material, formal, and functional, which have largely been conceptualized as mutually exclusive. It is high time to mediate them into a coherent relationship, and Rohbeck's book is a decisive step toward such a new philosophy of history. The book is divided into three parts: the first deals with the relationship between history and the future, the second analyzes the relationship between history and ethics, and the third synthesizes these two aspects into a pragmatics of history. With regard to the first part, historical thinking is based on a perception of temporal otherness related to the past. Rohbeck prolongs the time perspective by bridging this time gap into the future. As to the second, Rohbeck replaces teleology by ethics. Teleology includes ethics but limits its scope to a one‐sided development. Ethics allows many more options. Finally, who is the agent for historical ethics? Rohbeck proposes the “generation” as the basic actor in historical change and the addressee of ethical commitment. At the end of his work, Rohbeck draws consequences for the idea of philosophy of history from his idea of historical ethics. He shows that history has a new perspective if it is viewed through the lens of ethical elements in the fundamental relationship between past, present, and future. Of course, many questions follow this fascinating new version of the old philosophy of history. I raise only three of them: (1) What synthesizes the three dimensions of time into one and the same history? (2) Did we not learn from historicism that values in ethics have an inbuilt temporality? This argument does not run against the idea of an ethics of history, but should sharpen its genuine historical character. (3) Who is the agent of this change: who brings it about and at the same is subjected to it? An anonymous sum of generations in space and time is not a convincing answer. We need an integrative idea that covers the vast field of experience of the human world in space and time and that covers the strong commitment to universal values. In this respect it would be worthwhile to pick up the idea of humankind as it was conceptualized as the red thread of history in traditional, modern philosophy of history.     

“If in Truth You are Odysseus” – Distrust and Persuasion in the Odyssey†

When Odysseus decides in the course of the Odyssey finally to reveal his true identity to a few chosen characters, he regularly meets with deep scepticism. The depth of this distrust is to no small degree owed to the unusually long duration of Odysseus’ absence and the concomitant loss of familiarity. With the typical skill of a versatile narrator, Homer subtly brings out the nature of the psychological gap in each case and shows the means by which it can eventually be overcome. The paper addresses the salient points and main characteristics of the relevant recognition scenes and ends by suggesting an explanation for the feature that some of Odysseus’ interlocutors tend to suppress his name for some time while others do not.     

Tropes of fear and the crisis of the west: Trumpism as a discourse of post-territorial coloniality*

We examine ‘Trumpism’ as a contemporary form of colonial domination, showing how this discourse represents both a crisis of coloniality and a stimulus for a movement of ‘decoloniality’. A critical discourse analysis is applied to seven speeches delivered by Donald Trump between his announcement of his presidential candidacy in June 2015 and his inauguration in January 2017. In assessing Trump's arguments, we focus mainly on those concerning national security, illegal immigration, and the threats posed by various foreign countries. Although these arguments sit within a long colonial tradition, they also indicate a crisis of modernity, as witnessed in the growing challenges to colonial masculinity, nationalism, and rationality. We conclude that Trumpism articulates a reaction to these challenges, and that Trump's rise to power is a symptom of the crisis of post-territorial coloniality in contemporary global society.     

Characterization Of Early Imperial Lacquerware From The Luozhuang Han Tomb,China

This paper focuses on the characterization of materials from fragmented pieces of an imperial lacquer plate in the Luozhuang Han tomb, which dates to the early Western Han dynasty. Various non‐invasive and minimally invasive techniques were performed, including optical and electron microscopy, XRF, Raman spectromicroscopy, FT–IR, XRD and THM‐Py–GC/MS. The lacquerware pieces consist of a five‐layer structure, which includes (from the top): a red pigmented layer, two lacquer finish layers, a ground layer and a canvas/wood foundation layer. The red layer consists of ground cinnabar mixed with urushi. The lacquer finish layers are made of urushi mixed with perilla or tallow tree oil, without any pigment. The ground layer is a mixture of organic materials including urushi, tree oil and amorphous carbon (possibly burned ashes) and inorganic fillers such as quartz, albite and potassium feldspar. Urushi was also identified in the canvas/wood foundation layer. Though highly degraded, the canvas is probably made of hemp (bast fibres). The identification of high concentration of drying oil indicates an intentional addition of oil into the urushi to retard the rate of hardening and to increase gloss.     

A Late Bronze Age Ship from Liman Tepe with Reference to the Late Bronze Age Ships from İZMIR / Bademgediği Tepesi and Kos / Seraglio

In this article, a Mycenaean pottery sherd from Liman Tepe is discussed. The piece, which was locally produced, probably belongs to a ring‐based crater (FS 281). Comparisons with other, similar sherds suggest that warriors aboard a ship are depicted. As one of the few examples of its period decorated in this way, the sherd has been dated to the early or middle phase of LH III C, belonging to the period after the collapse of the Hittite Empire in Anatolia and the Mycenaean kingdoms in mainland Greece. The depictions on this sherd are highly significant, as they contribute to the corpus of evidence for migrations from the western to the eastern Mediterranean and the unrest which characterized the period.     

A Unique Drachm Coin of Shapur I

The Sasanian king Shapur I held a ten year series of campaigns against the Roman Empire. Returning to Iran after these campaigns, in order to immortalize his victories he built a series of reliefs and gave broad information in his famous work, Ka’be-ye Zardosht. However, the term he used to define himself in these articles, “King of Kings of Iranians and non-Iranians,” was not used on coins, which has become a subject of discussion. This work aims to clarify such arguments based on a unique drachm belonging to Shapur I which is present in the Elazig Museum of Archaeology and Ethnography.     

Confronting a history of war loss in a Spanish family archive

The article discusses how relatives of left-wing Republicans killed and buried in mass graves by Francoist groups during the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939) recompose the stories of violent death of their ancestors in connection to documentary evidence that emerges during the search for their human remains. Mass grave searches have taken place in the midst of a process of historical investigation that has brought families, historians, activists and archaeologists together in order to document and seek official recognition for these extrajudicial executions. In so doing, they have also prompted the circulation of personal papers and official Francoist files that bear poignant information about the victims. Both sets of documents converge in the family archive, eliciting different re-readings and acts of memory. The article considers how familial interactions with these material sources attempt to grasp and recreate a history of loss marked by rupture and filled with absences. It also explores how such historical and familial uncertainties marks the experience of disappearance in the Spanish context.     

Reconstructing prey selection,hunting strategy and seasonality of the early Holocene frozen site in the Siberian High Arctic: A case study on the Zhokhov site faunal remains,De Long Islands

The Zhokhov site is one of the northern most archaeological sites in the world and a very ancient vestige of occupation of high latitudes by people, indicating that this territory was settled as early as about 8000 years ago. Investigation of the site began in 1989–1990 and then continued in 2000–2005. Here we consider the taphonomy, spatial distribution, species and age- and sex-related composition of the faunal remains from the Zhokhov site. These data allow conclusions regarding the subsistence strategy practiced by Zhokhov inhabitants, including the hunting tactics. This was a peculiar adaptation model based on reindeer and polar bear hunting in a 2:1 ratio. Reindeer hunting was all-seasonal, whereas polar bears were hunted mostly in winters at their dens. Mortality data for reindeer and polar bears depict the yearly subsistence cycle. The Zhokhov site is found to be a base camp occupied year-round with modest summer activities, while wintertime is characterised by intense polar bear hunting. Most reindeer were hunted in the fall. Subsistence strategy of the Zhokhov hunters was largely facilitated by the fact that at the time of occupation Zhokhov Island was still part of the coastal Siberian plain margin.