Friedrich Engels German philosopher (1820–1895) Friedrich Engels ( ENG-gəlz;[2][3][4] German: [ˈfʁiːdʁɪç ˈʔɛŋl̩s]; 28 November 1820 – 5 August 1895) was a German philosopher, political theorist, historian, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. He was also a businessman and Karl Marx's closest friend and collaborator. Engels also wrote wide-ranging works of his own, including The Condition of the Working Class in England (1845), Anti-Dühring (1878), Dialectics of Nature (written 1878–1882), The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State (1884), and Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy (1886). Biography[edit] Early life[edit] Whilst at Bremen, Engels began reading the philosophy of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, whose teachings dominated German philosophy at that time. In 1841, Engels performed his military service in the Prussian Army as a member of the Household Artillery (German: Garde-Artillerie-Brigade). Manchester and Salford[edit] Paris[edit] Brussels[edit]
Dialectic - Wikipedia Discourse method for resolving disagreement by reasoned argument Dialectic (Greek: διαλεκτική, dialektikḗ; related to dialogue; German: Dialektik), also known as the dialectical method, is a discourse between two or more people holding different points of view about a subject but wishing to establish the truth through reasoned argumentation. Dialectic resembles debate, but the concept excludes subjective elements such as emotional appeal and the modern pejorative sense of rhetoric.[1][2] Dialectic may thus be contrasted with both the eristic, which refers to argument that aims to successfully dispute another's argument (rather than searching for truth), and the didactic method, wherein one side of the conversation teaches the other. Dialectic is alternatively known as minor logic, as opposed to major logic or critique. Within Hegelianism, the word dialectic has the specialised meaning of a contradiction between ideas that serves as the determining factor in their relationship.
New Historicism A critical approach developed in the 1980s through the works of Michel Foucault and Stephen Greenblatt, similar to Marxism. Moving away from text-centered schools of criticism such as New Criticism, New Historicism reopened the interpretation of literature to the social, political, and historical milieu that produced it. To a New Historicist, literature is not the record of a single mind, but the end product of a particular cultural moment. New Historicists look at literature alongside other cultural products of a particular historical period to illustrate how concepts, attitudes, and ideologies operated across a broader cultural spectrum that is not exclusively literary. In addition to analyzing the impact of historical context and ideology, New Historicists also acknowledge that their own criticism contains biases that derive from their historical position and ideology. Because it is impossible to escape one’s own “historicity,” the meaning of a text is fluid, not fixed.
Karl Kautsky Karl Johann Kautsky (16 October 1854 – 17 October 1938) was a Czech-Austrian philosopher, journalist, and Marxist theoretician. Kautsky was recognized as among the most authoritative promulgators of Orthodox Marxism after the death of Friedrich Engels in 1895 until the outbreak of World War I in 1914. Following the war, Kautsky was an outspoken critic of the Bolshevik Revolution, engaging in polemics with Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky on the nature of the Soviet state. Life and career[edit] Early years[edit] Karl Kautsky, born in Prague of an artistic and middle class Jewish family, his parents were Johann Kautsky (a scenic designer) and Minna (an actress and writer). Political career[edit] In 1883, Kautsky founded the monthly Die Neue Zeit ("The New Times") in Stuttgart, which became a weekly in 1890. Wartime years[edit] Polemics with the Bolsheviks[edit] A collection of excerpts of Kautsky's writings, Social Democracy vs. And: Death and legacy[edit] Works in English[edit] See also[edit]
Discovery of a huge, mysterious jade pendant could rewrite Maya history Researchers have just published a paper on one of the most fascinating and mysterious Maya discoveries in recent years - a huge jade pendant that has a detailed story about the king it was made for etched into its back. First uncovered back in 2015, researchers have now tentatively translated the inscriptions, and it turns out it's even more unusual than originally thought, and could rewrite our current understanding of Maya history. This type of T-shaped jade plate was worn on a king's chest during Maya religious ceremonies. At 19 cm (7.4 inches) wide, 10 cm (4.1 inches) high, and 0.8 cm (0.3 inches) thick, this is the second largest Maya jade ever found in Belize. But it's also the first known to be inscribed with historical text - on the pendant's back, around 30 carved hieroglyphs reveal details about its first owner. "It was like finding the Hope Diamond in Peoria instead of New York," said lead researcher Geoffrey Braswell from the University of California, San Diego. UC San Diego
New Historicism & Cultural Materialism: A Reader: Kiernan Ryan: Bloomsbury Ac... New Historicism and Cultural Materialism have become two of the most powerful and appealing movements in modern criticism. Their conquest of Renaissance studies has escalated into global colonialisation of English and American literary history. A wealth of innovative work has emerged on everything from the "Canterbury Tales" to the "Cantos", bringing intense theoretical controversy in its wake. This reader pulls the diversity and polemical vigour of this new critical constellation into focus for the first time. The introduction identifies the distinctive concerns of both approaches, unpacks their theoretical assumptions and clarifies their chief points of convergence and antagonism. New Historicism and Cultural Materialism have become two of the most powerful and appealing movements in modern criticism.
Action theory (sociology) In sociology, action theory is the theory of social action presented by the American theorist Talcott Parsons. Parsons established action theory in order to integrate the study of social order with the structural and voluntaristic aspects of macro and micro factors. In other words, it may be described as an attempt to maintain the scientific rigour of positivism, while acknowledging the necessity of the "subjective dimension" of human action incorporated in hermeneutic types of sociological theorizing. Parsons sees motives as part of our actions. The separation of the cultural and social system had various implications for the nature of the basic categories of the cultural system; especially it had implications for the way cognitive capital is perceived as a factor in history. Jump up ^ Talcott Parsons, The Structure of Social Action. Parsons, Talcott; Shils, Edward (1951).
Historical materialism - Wikipedia Marxist historiography Historical materialism, also known as the materialist conception of history, is a methodology used by some communist and Marxist historiographers that focuses on human societies and their development through history, arguing that history is the result of material conditions rather than ideas. This was first articulated by Karl Marx (1818–1883) as the "materialist conception of history".[1] It is principally a theory of history which asserts that the material conditions of a society's mode of production or in Marxist terms, the union of a society's productive forces and relations of production, fundamentally determine society's organization and development. Historical materialism is an example of Marx and Engel's scientific socialism, attempting to show that socialism and communism are scientific necessities rather than philosophical ideals.[2] History and development[edit] Origins[edit] Continued development[edit] Key ideas[edit] Primitive communism[edit] See also[edit]
New Historicism - Literary and Critical Theory - Oxford Bibliographies Owing to its success, there has been no shortage of textbooks and anthology entries on new historicism, but it has often had to share space with British cultural materialism, a school that, though related, has an entirely distinct theoretical and methodological genesis. The consequence of this dual treatment has resulted in a somewhat caricatured view of both approaches along the axis of subversion and containment, with new historicism representing the latter. While there is some truth to this shorthand account, any sustained engagement with new-historicist studies will reveal its limitations. Readers should be aware, therefore, that while accounts that contrast new historicism with cultural materialism—for example, Dollimore 1990, Wilson 1992, and Brannigan 1998—can be illuminating, they can also by the terms of that contrast tend to oversimplify. Brannigan, John.