The Logic of the History of Ideas

This book provides a philosophical analysis of the reasoning appropriate to the history of ideas.

Mark Bevir (Author)

9780521016841, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 20 June 2002

352 pages
23 x 15.3 x 2.4 cm, 0.565 kg

"...ambitious and well-reasoned book...[Bevir] gives us a more valuable - if less ground-breaking - book. It is more valuable precisely because it engages the methodological and phenomenological literatuer to a degree that a rigidly defined 'logic' would not...this worthwhile study should be of interest not only to philosophers of the history of ideas but also to those who see themselves primarily as practicing historians of ideas." The Review of Politics

Human cultures generate meanings, and the history of ideas, broadly conceived, is the study of these meanings. An adequate theory of culture must therefore rest on a suitable philosophical enquiry into the nature of the history of ideas. Mark Bevir's book explores the forms of reasoning appropriate to the history of ideas, enhancing our understanding by grappling with central questions such as: What is a meaning? What constitutes objective knowledge of the past? What are beliefs and traditions? How can we explain why people held the beliefs they did? The book ranges widely over issues and theorists associated with post-analytic philosophy, post-modernism, hermeneutics, literary theory, political thought, and social theory.

1. On analytic philosophy
2. On meaning
3. On objectivity
4. On belief
5. On synchronic explanation
6. On diachronic explanation
7. On distortion
8. Conclusion.

Subject Areas: History of ideas [JFCX]