Synopses & Reviews
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, philanthropism, revolutionary politics, European thought and practice in colonialism and empire, 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.
About the Author
Henning Trüper is a member of the School of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton University, USA and the Centre de Recherches Historiques, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris, France.
Dipesh Chakrabarty is Lawrence A. Kimpton Distinguished Service Professor in History, South Asian Languages and Civilizations, and the College at the University of Chicago, USA.
Sanjay Subrahmanyam is Distinguished Professor of History at the University of California, Los Angeles, USA.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction: History and Teleology - Nineteenth-Century Fortunes of an Enlightenment Project
Henning Trüper (IAS Princeton, USA/EHESS-CRH, Paris), Dipesh Chakrabarty (University of Chicago, USA) and Sanjay Subrahmanyam (University of California, Los Angeles, USA)2. Messianism
Sanjay Subrahmanyam3. The 'Vocation of Man': A Teleological Concept of the German Enlightenment and its Aftermath in the Nineteenth Century
Philip Ajouri (University of Stuttgart, Germany)4. Earth History and the Order of Society: William Buckland, the French Connection, and the Conundrum of Teleology
Marianne Sommer (University of Lucerne, Switzerland)5. After Darwin: Teleology in German Philosophical Anthropology
Angus Nicholls (Queen Mary University London, UK)6. Save Their Souls: Historical Teleology Goes to Sea in Nineteenth-Century Europe
Henning Trüper7. Reading History in Colonial Cuttack: Three Nineteenth-Century Narratives and their Teleologies
Siddharth Satpathy8. The 'Democracy of Blood': The Colors of Racial Fusion in Nineteenth-Century Spanish America
Francisco Ortega (Universidad Nacional de Colombia)9. Marxism and the Idea of Revolution in 1844: The Messianic Moment
Etienne Balibar (Université Paris 8, France/Columbia University, USA)10. Between Context and Telos: Reviewing the Structures of International Law
Martti Koskenniemi (University of Helsinki, Finland)11. Religious teleologies: Violence and the Apocalypse in the United States Antebellum
Carola Dietze (University of Giessen, Germany)12. 'But Was I Really Primed?' Gershom Scholem's Zionist Project Gabriel Piterberg
(University of California, Los Angeles, USA)13. Catching Up to Oneself: Islam and the Representation of Humanity
Faisal Devji (Oxford University, UK)14. Autonomy in History: Teleology in Nineteenth-Century European Social and Political Thought
Peter Wagner (Universitat de Barcelona, Spain)15. The Faces of Modernity: Crisis, Kairos, Chronos - Koselleck versus Hegel
Bo Stråth (University of Helsinki, Finland)16. Climate Change, Teleology, and the Narratives of Industrial Civilization
Dipesh ChakrabartyIndex