Truth and the Past

Truth and the Past PDF Author: Michael Dummett
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231131771
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 138

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Book Description
Includes Michael Dummett's John Dewey Lectures and two essays. In this work, Dummett clarifies his positions on the metaphysical issue of realism and the philosophy of language.

Truth and the Past

Truth and the Past PDF Author: Michael Dummett
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231131771
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 138

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Book Description
Includes Michael Dummett's John Dewey Lectures and two essays. In this work, Dummett clarifies his positions on the metaphysical issue of realism and the philosophy of language.

Historical Truth and Lies About the Past

Historical Truth and Lies About the Past PDF Author: Alan B. Spitzer
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
ISBN: 0807864692
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 173

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Book Description
Historians have long struggled with the questions of historical relativism, objectivity, and standards of proof and evidence. Intellectual historian Alan Spitzer focuses on the contradiction between theory and practice by presenting case studies of four politically charged debates about the past: the response to the report of the commission chaired by John Dewey that evaluated the accusations made against Leon Trotsky in the Moscow Purge Trials of 1937, the Dreyfus Affair in turn-of-the-century France, the allegations about the extent and meaning of literary critic Paul de Man's complicity with the German occupation forces in wartime Belgium, and Ronald Reagan's justification for his 1987 visit to a German cemetery where Nazi SS officers are buried. Spitzer's argument centers on the ways in which the authority of 'objective' criteria for historical judgment are introduced in politicized disputes about the past, regardless of the theoretical qualification or repudiation of such standards. The higher the political stakes, the more likely the antagonists are to appeal to generally warranted standards of relevant evidence and rational inference. Spitzer's commentary speaks to issues that transcend the specific content of the four cases he discusses.

Telling the Truth about History

Telling the Truth about History PDF Author: Joyce Appleby
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393078914
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 336

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Book Description
"A fascinating historiographical essay. . . . An unusually lucid and inclusive explication of what it ultimately at stake in the culture wars over the nature, goals, and efficacy of history as a discipline."—Booklist

Truth and History in the Ancient World

Truth and History in the Ancient World PDF Author: Lisa Hau
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317558049
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
This collection of essays investigates histories in the ancient world and the extent to which the producers and consumers of those histories believed them to be true. Ancient Greek historiographers repeatedly stressed the importance of truth to history; yet they also purported to believe in myth, distorted facts for nationalistic or moralizing purposes, and omitted events that modern audiences might consider crucial to a truthful account of the past. Truth and History in the Ancient World explores a pluralistic concept of truth – one in which different versions of the same historical event can all be true – or different kinds of truths and modes of belief are contingent on culture. Beginning with comparisons between historiography and aspects of belief in Greek tragedy, chapters include discussions of historiography through the works of Herodotus, Xenophon, and Ktesias, as well as Hellenistic and later historiography, material culture in Vitruvius, and Lucian’s satire. Rather than investigate whether historiography incorporates elements of poetic, rhetorical, or narrative techniques to shape historical accounts, or whether cultural memory is flexible or manipulated, this volume examines pluralities of truth and belief within the ancient world – and consequences for our understanding of culture, ancient or otherwise.

Reason, Truth and History

Reason, Truth and History PDF Author: Hilary Putnam
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139935666
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 244

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Book Description
Hilary Putnam deals in this book with some of the most fundamental persistent problems in philosophy: the nature of truth, knowledge and rationality. His aim is to break down the fixed categories of thought which have always appeared to define and constrain the permissible solutions to these problems.

The Truth about History

The Truth about History PDF Author: Russell Miller
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780276427510
Category : Curiosities and wonders
Languages : en
Pages : 319

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Book Description
This volume offers the reader information on scientific discoveries from early man to World War II, offering a view of world events.

The Truth of History

The Truth of History PDF Author: C. Behan McCullagh
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134696256
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 344

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Book Description
Modern relativism and postmodern thought in culture and language challenge the 'truth' of history. This book considers how all historians, confined by the concepts and forms of argument of their own cultures, can still discover truths about the past. The Truth of History presents a study of various historical explanations and interpretations and evaluates their success as accounts of the past. C. Behan McCullagh contests that the variety of historical interpretations and subjectivity does not exclude the possibility of their truth. Through an examination of the constraints of history, the author argues that although historical descriptions do not mirror the past they can correlate with it in a regular and definable way. Far from debating in the abstract and philosophical only, the author beds his argument in numerous illuminating concrete historical examples. The Truth of History explores a new position between the two extremes of believing that history perfectly represents the past and that history can tell us nothing true of the past.

Truth in History

Truth in History PDF Author: Oscar Handlin
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351301020
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 437

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Book Description
Like scholars in other fields, historians have long occupied themselves in self-justification. In a society which calibrates all measures by a single standard, the proof of scientific worth became relevance, which in turn was interpreted as a search not for truth but for political correctness. In a blistering professional critique of this tendency in academic scholarship, perhaps the first of its kind, Oscar Handlin offers an analysis that, if anything, has grown more pertinent over the past decade. In seventeen chapters, written with the brilliant assurance of a master craftsman, Handlin shows why the turn to partisanship and meaning has undermined the calling of historical research. As his new introduction makes clear, partisanship has taken the best and brightest from the field into different callings. Both widely heralded upon its initial appearance as well as attacked with vigor, Truth in History emanates from a half-century's experience of reading, writing, teaching, researching, and publishing in history and related disciplines. The passage of time has only confirmed the concerns of Handlin and the accuracy of his predictions for the field. This book will be valuable for sociologists, economists, political scientists, and historians. It is a must read for those who contemplate a life of scholarship in liberal arts.

History in a Post-Truth World

History in a Post-Truth World PDF Author: Marius Gudonis
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000198227
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 273

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Book Description
History in a Post-Truth World: Theory and Praxis explores one of the most significant paradigm shifts in public discourse. A post-truth environment that appeals primarily to emotion, elevates personal belief, and devalues expert opinion has important implications far beyond Brexit or the election of Donald Trump, and has a profound impact on how history is produced and consumed. Post-truth history is not merely a synonym for lies. This book argues that indifference to historicity by both the purveyor and the recipient, contempt for expert opinion that contradicts it, and ideological motivation are its key characteristics. Taking a multidisciplinary approach, this work explores some of the following questions: What exactly is post-truth history? Does it represent a new phenomenon? Does the historian have a special role to play in preserving public memory from ‘alternative facts’? Do academics more generally have an obligation to combat fake news and fake history both in universities and on social media? How has a ‘post-truth culture’ impacted professional and popular historical discourse? Looking at theoretical dimensions and case studies from around the world, this book explores the violent potential of post-truth history and calls on readers to resist.

Truth Has a Power of Its Own

Truth Has a Power of Its Own PDF Author: Howard Zinn
Publisher: The New Press
ISBN: 1620975181
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 241

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Book Description
American history told from the bottom up by Howard Zinn himself—and the perfect all-ages introduction to his eye-opening viewpoint, published on Zinn’s hundredth birthday Truth Has a Power of Its Own is an engrossing collection of conversations with the late Howard Zinn and “an eloquently hopeful introduction for those who haven’t yet encountered Zinn’s work” (Booklist). Here is an unvarnished, yet ultimately optimistic, tour of American history—told by someone who was often an active participant in it. Viewed through the lens of Zinn’s own life as a soldier, historian, and activist and using his paradigm-shifting A People’s History of the United States as a point of departure, these conversations explore the American Revolution, the Civil War, the labor battles of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, U.S. imperialism from the Indian Wars to the War on Terrorism, World Wars I and II, the Cold War, and the fight for equality and immigrant rights—all from an unapologetically radical standpoint. Longtime admirers and a new generation of readers alike will be fascinated to learn about Zinn’s thought processes, rationale, motivations, and approach to his now-iconic historical work. Zinn’s humane (and often humorous) voice—along with his keen moral vision—shine through every one of these lively and thought-provoking conversations. Battles over the telling of our history still rage across the country, and there’s no better person to tell it than Howard Zinn.