HISTORY OF IDEAS
WORLD VIEWS
Dr Helena Sheehan
School of Communications
Dublin City University
SOME QUESTIONS
? ? ? ? ?
how does the ancient problem of "the one and the many" pose itself today ?
can the world be seen in a unitary perspective or is it irreducibly plural ?
which came first: idea or matter ?
could the universe have evolved from primal matter or did it need a creator to set it in motion ?
which is more basic: substance or process ?
can structure be apprehended abstracted from the flow of historical context ?
is it possible to construct a world view ?
what philosophies of history have contended with each other over time ?
is it possible to have a philosophy of history in our time ?
is there a coherent story to tell ?
are there discernible patterns in history ?
what moves history forward ?
how are world views rooted in the social order ?
how to explain the transitions
from primitive to classical to medieval to modern thought ?
how to characterise the relationship of philosophy to economics, politics, culture, science and technology ?
what are the defining characteristics of modernity ?
what forces have shaped the modern mind ?
what is the relationship of capitalism, protestantism & the scientific revolution ?
why is the legacy of the enlightenment so sharply contested today ?
what contemporary positions flow from
rationalism v empiricism ?
anti-enlightenment reaction: romanticism ?
what are the defining features of liberalism v conservatism ?
what are the enduring effects of evolutionary ideas:
of historicism ?
of naturalism ?
how did positivism arise ?
what explains the trajectory from logical positivism to neo-positivism to post-positivism ?
what is the real meaning of pragmatism ?
why the contemporary revival ?
what forces have shaped existentialism, phenomenology and the varieties of continental philosophy
?
some overlapping questions
why the association of philosophies with places ?
why is pragmatism "american philosophy" ?
why is analytic philosophy anglo-saxon ?
why are existentialism, phenomenology, structuralism, critical theory "continental" ?
why did marxism take hold in eastern europe ?
why the transformations in the relationships between philosophies & societies ?
how have societies where the social order was grounded in a specific world view worked ?
can there be such societies in the future ?
how to define postmodernism ?
what is it about contemporary experience which gives rise to it ?
have we come to the end-of-ideology ?
what gives rise to end-of-ideology theories ?
how to characterise the contemporary ideological spectrum ?
what is at issue between :
the right: paleo-cons v neo-cons ?
the crowded centre: varieties of liberalism
the left: marxism v new age multiculturalist primitivism and postmodernist anarchism
why the fierce debate over the western canon ?
what is going on "the pc wars", "the culture wars", "the science wars" ?
do women need a feminist epistemology ?
what is swirling around the black athena battle ?
is it possible to articulate a credible grand narrative ?
is it possible to construct a coherent world view ?
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E-mail:
helena.sheehan@dcu.ie
