Search

This article deals with the material presence of the past and the recent call in the human sciences for a 'return to things.' This renewed interest in things signals a rejection of constructivism and textualism and the longing for what is 'real,' where 'regaining' the object is conceived as a means for re-establishing contact with reality. In the context of this turn, we might wish to reconsider the (ontological) status of relics of the past and their function in mediating relations between the organic and the inorganic, between people and things, and among various kinds of things themselves for reconceptualizing the study of the past. I argue that the future will depend on whether and how various scholars interested in the past manage to modify their understanding of the material remnants of the past, that is, things as well as human, animal, and plant remains. In discussing this problem I will refer to Martin Heidegger's distinction between an object and a thing, to Bruno Latour's idea of the agency of things and object-oriented democracy, and to Don Ihde's material hermeneutics. To illustrate my argument I will focus on some examples of the ambivalent status of the disappeared person (dead or alive) in Argentina, which resists the oppositional structure of present versus absent. In this context, the disappeared body is a paradigm of the past itself, which is both continuous with the present and discontinuous from it, which simultaneously is and is not. Since there are no adequate terms to analyze the 'contradictory' or anomalous status of the present-absent dichotomy, I look for them outside the binary oppositions conventionally used to conceptualize the present-absent relationship in our thinking about the past. For this purpose I employ Algirdas Julien Greimas's semiotic square.

This paper addresses an ongoing debate concerning the dimensionality of Inglehart's (1971, 1977, 1981, 1990) concept of materialism-postmaterialism. According to Inglehart, this concept is unidimensional, distinct from the traditional left-right political belief continuum, and central to explaining the changes taking place in the values of advanced industrial societies. To date, the debate has sought answers in different item sets, factor analytic solutions, and rotations. This paper approaches the problem through psychological models of social values. Materialism-postmaterialism, it is argued, involves a prioritizing of values from two orthogonal value orientations which have grown out of the work of Rokeach (1973): national strength and order and international harmony and equality.

Criticisms have been levelled against previous research postulating the textual significance of geography. Such critiques re-enact past controversies involving realism against idealism in geographical analysis. However, the opinion that the textuality of geography is too idealistic must be rejected, since this theory was advanced not to oppose a realist perspective, but to analyze the mutual influences of man, society and environment on each other.

Keynes severely criticized the 'Benthamite tradition,' the overvaluation of the 'economic criterion.' He found 'the love of money' corrosive of community and esthetic values and an encouragement to reckless exploitation of places that should be in the public domain. In 'Art and the State,' he proposes the rebuilding of large sections of modern cities to rekindle popular feelings of beauty and community values. One of the factors behind this philosophy was G. E. Moore's Principia Ethica (1930). It criticizes Bentham for committing 'the naturalistic fallacy' of confusing means with ends and idealizes two 'goods' in themselves, the pleasure of human relations and the enjoyment of beauty in nature and art. These ideals Keynes saw undermined by the Benthamite tradition. Such criticism is the 'moral-political paradigm' on which The General Theory is erected. Minute calculation of advantages and disadvantages, on which classical economics is based, is rejected. Behind consumption and investment functions are sociological and psychological factors, 'animal spirits,' and the like. Calculation prevails in the stock and bond markets (liquidity preference)--to everybody's sorrow. The proposed slow elimination of institutions that make liquidity preference possible, and of the rentier, follow logically. Econometrics, viewed as the tool of the overvaluation of the economic criterion, is also rejected. In many articles Keynes aimed at much more than revolutionizing political economy, he aimed at weaning England from Benthamite utilitarianism and raising the cultural values of the populace. By 1938 he knew that he had failed. EVEN A SUPERFICIAL SURVEY of the Collected Writings of John Maynard Keynes suggests that comfortable academic boundaries were not for him. He often wrote as a technical economist and an academic philosopher, but just as often, he wrote as a sociologist, a philosopher of history, a social critic or a gifted journalist. One theme stands out in Keynes' 'lesser writings'--the theme of anti-Benthamism. It has hitherto been ignored or dismissed as 'purple prose.' This article starts with the presupposition that Keynes' utterances on Benthamism should be taken seriously as part of a cohesive political philosophy and view of society. Furthermore, we shall show that his anti-Benthamism carried over to his General Theory. Keynes' attitude toward Benthamism may, in fact, be viewed as the metaphysical foundation, the moral-political 'paradigm' on which his technical economic works stand. Accordingly, we will first review the nature of Keynes' anti-Benthamism, then relate it to one of its sources, and finally, we shall trace its influence in The General Theory.

John Dun Scotus's statement that immaterial objects must be abstract is incorrect, but his belief that immaterial objects lack physical properties is correct. Immaterial objects such as God can exist, and these immaterial objects are not abstractions because they have efficacy in the world. Abstractions such as numbers exist outside of the spatial-temporal realm and do not have efficacy.

Much of Thomas Reid's unpublished work responds to that of his contemporary, Joseph Preistley. Both philosophers based arguments on Newtonian method, but Reid failed to fully demonstrate how Newton's work favored mind-body dualism over materialism.