Suchergebnisse

Historians tend to present what they do in terms of prevailing epistemic values that have little to do with their actual practices. Practical knowledge of how does not generate necessarily abstract theoretical knowledge of what. Mark Bevir's The Logic of the History of Ideas attempts to integrate his normative philosophy of historiography with contemporary philosophy of language and epistemology, intentionalist theory of meaning, and coherentist epistemology, on a sophisticated and well-informed level. Yet it is written from the perspective of a particular school and set to normatively defend its research program and assumptions. Sewell's Logics of History is innocent of contemporary epistemology and the philosophies of science and the social sciences, and it shows, mostly in conceptual confusions. Katz's God's Last Words is completely innocent of philosophy, but is still excellent precisely because it makes no theoretical assumption and unreflectively carries on with making sense of the evidence.

A review essay on a book by Barbara J. Falk, The Dilemmas of Dissidence in East-Central Europe: Citizen Intellectuals and Philosopher Kings (Budapest & New York: Central European U Press, 2003).

'Markets and People: The Czech Reform Experience in a Comparative Perspective' by Jiri Vecernik and 'Institutional Design in Post-Community Societies: Rebuilding the Ship at Sea' by Jon Elster, Claus Offe, Ulrich K. Preuss, Frank Boenker, Ulrike Goetting and Friedbert W. Rueb are reviewed.

A review essay on books by Jacques Derrida, (1) The Gift of Death (Wills, David [Tr] IL: Chicago U Press, 1995); & (2) Specters of Marx: The State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning, and the New International (Kamuf, Peggy [Tr], London: Routledge, 1994). Jacques Derrida's effort to account for responsibility is critiqued against the backdrop of the complicity of numerous intellectuals with totalitarian & other states. Derrida's inversion of responsibility & irresponsibility, sacrifice & murder, is juxtaposed with the philosophy & biography of Czech dissident Jan Patocka, to whom Derrida refers but misunderstands. In contrast to Patocka, who upheld & enacted individual freedom & the responsibility of self-sacrifice, Derrida uses linguistic gymnastics to confound responsibility & its opposite & to defend murder as the sacrifice of another person, who is given the "gift of death." It is argued that this stance legitimizes state-sponsored & terrorist atrocities & appeals to intellectuals who trade conviction for comfort. E. Blackwell

A review essay on books by (1) Jiri Vecernik, The Czech Reform Experience in a Comparative Perspective (Aldershot: Avebury, 1996); & (2) Jon Elster, Claus Offe, Ulrich K. Preuss, Frank Boenker, Ulrike Goetting, & Friedbert W. Rueb, Institutional Design in Post-Communist Societies: Rebuilding the Ship at Sea (Cambridge: Cambridge U Press, 1998). It is argued that the rule of law, the institution of private property, & an independent police & judicial system are necessary for a free market; substantive economic reform cannot oocur in postcommunist countries in which these social conditions do not exist. Vecernik examines the economic transition in the Czech Republic at the household level from a sociological perspective. Elster et al compare institutional transitions in the Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia, & Bulgaria. J. Ferrari

Examines political and economic aspects of post-communist transition and privatization of public enterprises. Discussion of labor policies, subsidies, privatization, corporatism, and restructuring policies.