Contents - Introduction; The Problem of Thomas Hobbes; Formalistic Views of Representation; 'Standing For' - Descriptive Representation; 'Standing For' - Symbolic Representation; Representing as 'Acting For' - The Analogies; The Mandate ...

Divided into three essays, this title offers an investigation into the origins of our moral values, or as the author calls them 'moral prejudices'. It addresses the concept of guilt and its role in the development of civilization and religion. It also considers suffering and its role in human existence.

While social scientists and historians have been exchanging ideas for a long time, they have never developed a proper dialogue about social theory. William H. Sewell Jr. observes that on questions of theory the communication has been mostly one way: from social science to history. Logics of History argues that both history and the social sciences have something crucial to offer each other. While historians do not think of themselves as theorists, they know something social scientists do not: how to (...) think about the temporalities of social life. On the other hand, while social scientists’ treatments of temporality are usually clumsy, their theoretical sophistication and penchant for structural accounts of social life could offer much to historians. Renowned for his work at the crossroads of history, sociology, political science, and anthropology, Sewell argues that only by combining a more sophisticated understanding of historical time with a concern for larger theoretical questions can a satisfying social theory emerge. In Logics of History, he reveals the shape such an engagement could take, some of the topics it could illuminate, and how it might affect both sides of the disciplinary divide. (shrink)

Wahrman argues that toward the end of the 18th century there was a radical change in notions of self & personal identity - a sudden transformation that was a revolution in the understanding of selfhood & of identity categories including race, gender, & class.

This Article explores the success of the new science of statistics in establishing order within the pandemonium of industrial revolution in the nineteenth century. This success was based on the fact that the expanding circulation of both men and goods that characterized capitalism constituted the ontological foundation of statistics as well. In this respect, one can say that statistics turned variety and multiplicity into the basis of system, if not of uniformity. The study focuses on the 1850 federal census of (...) the United States and, more specifically, on the new taxonomy adopted in the census’s manufacturing schedule for enumerating industrial activity. This taxonomy was organized around a single, universal threshold of capital investment applied to each enterprise, a criterion that replaced various systems applied in previous censuses, all of which were based on an a priori definition of what actually constituted production. The innovation of 1850 resulted in a far more extensive account of manufacturing and was consequently perceived to be a most effective means of measuring the dramatic expansion of the economy. In fact, this was accomplished by making money the rule of measure, and so redefining the essence of industry to be financial rather than material. Profit-making consequently achieved a scientific, and even neutral, status. As such, statistics can be said to have made an epistemological contribution to the legitimization of the new capitalist order. (shrink)

Block offers a new perspective on the formation of the modern American self and society. He roots self and society in the concept of agency, rather than liberty, and dispenses with the national myth of the “sacred cause of liberty”—with the Declaration of Independence as its “American scripture.”.