Inspired by Michel Foucault's 'The Order of Things', this text tells a story about epochal change in the modern world. While both books are concerned with how we moderns think about ourselves and our world, this work emphasizes the conceptual links in the ways we think, talk, get things done, conduct ourselves, and run societies.
This book examines epochal change in the modern world within the confines of a "mightie frame". From epoch to epoch, the mighty frame has gained features that continue to function even as they recede from view, all the while fixing the limits of possible knowledge for modern minds and the conditions of rule in the modern world.
What can we know? -- Modernity's mighty frame -- Traditional societies -- Transitional figures : Hugo Grotius, Thomas Hobbes, Samuel Pufendorf -- Interlude : 'working models' -- 'This quarter of the globe' -- Transitional figures : Immanuel Kant, Adam Smith, James Madison -- State-nations -- Transitional figures : Edmund Husserl, Emile Durkheim, the Fabian Society -- Interlude : growth rates -- Epochal destruction -- Transitional figures : J.L. Austin, Jay Forrester, Donna Haraway -- Paradise lost? -- Relative virtue -- Epilogue : 'saving constructivism.'
World Affairs Online
Englisch
Oxford University Press
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