Historical Teleologies in The Modern World

Description

Historical Teleologies in the Modern World tracks the fragmentation and proliferation of teleological understandings of history – the notion that history had to be explained as a goal-directed process – in Europe and beyond throughout the 19th and into the 20th century. Historical teleologies have profoundly informed a variety of other disciplines, including modern philosophy, natural history, literature, humanitarian and religious philanthropism, the political thought and practice of revolution, emancipation, imperialism, colonialism and anti-colonialism, the conceptualization of universal humankind, and the understanding of modernity in general. By exploring the extension and plurality of historical teleology, the essays in this volume revise the history of historicity in the modern period. Historical Teleologies in the Modern World casts doubt on the idea that a single, if powerful, conception of time could function as the unifying principle of all modern historicity, instead pursuing an investigation of the plurality of modern historicities and its underlying structures. By bringing together Western and non-Western histories, this book provides the first extended treatment of the idea of historical teleology. It will be of great value to students and scholars of modern global and intellectual history. Cover page Halftitle page Series page Title page Copyright page CONTENTS ILLUSTRATIONS NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS PREFACE PART I TWO GENEALOGIES OF HISTORICAL TELEOLOGY INTRODUCTION: TELEOLOGY AND HISTORY –NINETEENTH-CENTURY FORTUNES OF AN ENLIGHTENMENT PROJECT 1. Teleology, the project 2. Bastard physics 3. Manifold teleology 4. The nature of history 5. Revisiting the history of historicity 6. Structure of the volume Notes THE POLITICS OF ESCHATOLOGY: A SHORT READING OF THE LONG VIEW * I II Notes PART II BOTCHED VANISHING ACTS: ON THE DIFFICULTIES OF MAKING TELEOLOGY DISAPPEAR ‘THE VOCATION OF MAN’ – ‘DIE BESTIMMUNG DES MENSCHEN’: A TELEOLOGICAL CONCEPT OF THE GERMAN ENLIGHTENMENT AND ITS AFTERMATH IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY * 1. Teleology and narration 2. Spalding, Blanckenburg, Wieland: ‘Bestimmung des Menschen’ in the eighteenth century 3. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: ‘Bildung’ as a solution to the problem of ‘Bestimmung’ 4. Aftermath in the nineteenth century Notes EARTH HISTORY AND THE ORDER OF SOCIETY: WILLIAM BUCKLAND, THE FRENCH CONNECTION AND THE CONUNDRUM OF TELEOLOGY 1. Man as a ‘Crocodile Superior’? 2. The holy order of nature and society Notes AGAINST DARWIN: TELEOLOGY IN GERMAN PHILOSOPHICAL ANTHROPOLOGY * 1. Introduction: the problem of the human being 2. ‘Science’ and teleology in late nineteenth- century German thought 3. Rampant teleology: Tylor and Darwin 4. Contingent teleology: Nietzsche, Alsberg, Blumenberg 5. Concluding remarks Notes PART III BEFRIENDING TELEOLOGY: WRITING HISTORIES WITH ENDS SAVE THEIR SOULS: HISTORICAL TELELOGY GOES TO SEA IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY EUROPE * 1. A veil withdrawn 2. The five hundred hands, a history 3. Tyrannizing over kairos, a commentary Notes READING HISTORY IN COLONIAL INDIA: THREE NINETEENTH-CENTURY NARRATIVES AND THEIR TELEOLOGIES * Prologue: two historians from Cuttack 1. Birth of the reader as a teleological event 3. Sentimental histories of colonial life 4. Beyond the sympathetic reader 5. Itihasa Sarasangraha : colonial historiography and its judicious reader 6. Judgement and comparison: bibechana and taula 7. Decline and fall of an empire 8. Bibechana in eighteenth- century Oriya literary discourse 9. Beyond the judicious reader 10. Odisara Itihasa: sentimental reception of a disciplinary reader 11. Between history and literature: the question of discipline 12. Beyond the disciplinary reader 13. A sentimental reception Epilogue: of history and pedagogy Notes A GIFT OF PROVIDENCE: DESTINY AS NATIONAL HISTORY IN COLONIAL INDIA 1. Providence and Indian history 2. Not anachronism 3. Character mediates destiny 4. Character as a historiographical category 5. Character and the cultivation of discipline 6. Character as the mediator of providence and history Notes PART IV TELEOLOGY IN THE REVOLUTIONARY POLIS THE ‘DEMOCRACY OF BLOOD’: THE COLOURS OF RACIAL FUSION INNINETEENTH-CENTURY SPANISH AMERICA 1. Veritas ante omnia 2. Of ancient and modern constitutions 3. Diversity, miscegenation and democracy 4. Imagining desire 5. Conclusion: redemptive violence Notes BETWEEN CONTEXT AND TELOS: REVIEWING THE STRUCTURES OF INTERNATIONAL LAW 1. Internal teleology 2. External teleology 3. Anti- teleology 4. Hyper- teleology 5. Conclusion Notes MARXISM AND THE IDEA OF REVOLUTION:THE MESSIANIC MOMENT IN MARX 1. ‘Le monde va changer de base’ 2. Demos , or the revolutionary subject as a ‘full subject’ 3. Proletarians: the empty subject Notes PART V TRANSLATING FUTURES: ESCHATOLOGY, HISTORY AND THE INDIVIDUAL RELIGIOUS TELEOLOGIES, MODERNITY AND VIOLENCE: THE CASE OF JOHN BROWN * 1. Terms and definitions: salvation history and eschatology as religious teleology 2. Christian teleological thinking and its political impact in Europe: before and after the French Revolution 3. Puritan teleology, politics and violence in the United States:the case of John Brown 4. Conclusion Notes ‘BUT WAS I REALLY PRIMED?’: GERSHOM SCHOLEM’S ZIONIST PROJECT 1. The argument 2. Zionism 3. ‘There is no God but He promised us the Land’: the problem of Zionist Israeli secularity 4. Zionist theology 5. Scholem’s Jewish history as ‘mythology of prolepsis’ 6. Intimate disclosures 7. The heretikons 8. By way of conclusion Notes CATCHING UP WITH ONESELF: ISLAM AND THE REPRESENTATION OF HUMANITY 1. The thief of Baghdad 2. Losing Islam to the infidel 3. Catching up to oneself 4. The guilt of being still alive Notes PART VI HISTORICAL FUTURES WITHOUT DIRECTION? AUTONOMY IN HISTORY: TELEOLOGY INNINETEENTH-CENTURY EUROPEAN SOCIAL AND POLITICAL THOUGHT 1. Immanuel Kant’s plan of nature: hope or despair 2. Karl Marx’s history of class struggle: socialism or barbarism 3. Max Weber’s ‘dwelling- place of steel’: old ideas and new prophets 4. European modernity between teleology and contingency 5. European modernity between domination and critique 6. Conclusions for the present and for a future that we do not know Notes THE FACES OF MODERNITY: CRISIS, KAIROS, CHRONOS – KOSELLECK VERSUS HEGEL 1. Kant laid the groundwork 2. Hegel’s temporary and preliminary end points 3. The idealization of Hegel 4. The revolutionary Hegel with openness towards the future 5. Koselleck’s crisis and pathogenesis between experiences and expectations 6. Koselleck’s kairos as an instrument to identify historical openness 7. Koselleck’s enlightenment view Notes INDEX