Why Bother with History? Ancient, Modern and Postmodern Motivations
Why Bother with History? Ancient, Modern and Postmodern Motivations
Editorial Reviews
Book Description
No longer is it 'History for it's own sake'.
- Challenges conventions of modern history.
- Provides examples from antiquity to present.
- Emphasizes the future moral role for history.
Why Bother With History? argues for an increasingly important role for a revitalized historical study. Examining the motivations of past historians, the author rejects the ancient aspiration to a 'history for its own sake' and argues that historians' importance lies in their own adoption of a moral standpoint, from which a story of the past can be told, that facilitates the attainment of a future we desire. Why Bother With History? challenges the conventions of modern history and will prompt and discussions of contemporary concerns while emphasizing the future moral role for history. Inevitably controversial, in that it challenges many of the assumptions of modernist history, Beverly Southgate draws in on psychology and literature, as well as history, in stating her case.
From the Back Cover
In the wake of heated debates on the nature of history, `Why Bother With History?' considers its very purpose: why should we bother with it anyway? At a time when the subject is under threat both from political `modernisers' and from some postmodernist theorists, Beverley Southgate argues for an increasingly important role for a revitalised historical study.
Rejecting ancient and modern aspirations to a history `for its own sake' produced by supposedly objective and attached authors, Southgate proposes rather that historians' importance lies in their own moral standpoint. Their story of the past facilitates the future we desire.
Focusing on history's relationship with:
Psychology
Politics and Power
Religion
Education
Postmodernity
and using global examples from the ancient world to the present, this book is timely and inevitably controversial, challenging many of the assumptions of modernist history.
Beverley Southgate is Reader Emeritus, University of Hertfordshire. His many publications include `History: What and Why?' (1996).
Why Bother with History? Ancient, Modern and Postmodern Motivations,Beverley Southgate,Longman,0582423902,General,History,History & Surveys - General,History - General History,History: World,Philosophy Of History,Study & Teaching,World - General,History / General
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