Eelco Runia - Academia.edu (original) (raw)
Talks by Eelco Runia
In this interview, Marek Tamm asks questions concerning some of the main developments and argumen... more In this interview, Marek Tamm asks questions concerning some of the main developments and arguments in Eelco Runia's thinking about history. The following topics are discussed: the relations between history, psychology and fiction; the critique of representationalism in the contemporary philosophy of history; the presence of the past; the question of continuity, discontinuity and mutation in history; the importance of metonymy as the quintessential historical trope; the influence of Giambattista Vico on Runia's thinking; the intellectual affinities between Runia and Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht; and Runia's ongoing research project on Red Queen history.
In this interview, Marek Tamm asks questions concerning some of the main developments and argumen... more In this interview, Marek Tamm asks questions concerning some of the main developments and arguments in Eelco Runia's thinking about history. The following topics are discussed: the relations between history, psychology and fiction; the critique of representationalism in the contemporary philosophy of history; the presence of the past; the question of continuity, discontinuity and mutation in history; the importance of metonymy as the quintessential historical trope; the influence of Giambattista Vico on Runia's thinking; the intellectual affinities between Runia and Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht; and Runia's ongoing research project on Red Queen history.
A conversation with Avenali Chair in the Humanities Eelco Runia about new ways of thinking, theor... more A conversation with Avenali Chair in the Humanities Eelco Runia about new ways of thinking, theorizing, and writing about the past, history, time, rupture, presence, and narrative, featuring: Hayden White (UC Santa Cruz, emeritus), Martin Jay (UC Berkeley), Carol Gluck (Columbia), Harry Harootunian (Columbia), and Ethan Kleinberg (Wesleyan).
Papers by Eelco Runia
PubMed, Feb 1, 1991
The book, "The Doctor, His Patient, and the Illness," published in 1957 by Dr. Michael ... more The book, "The Doctor, His Patient, and the Illness," published in 1957 by Dr. Michael Balint of London's Tavistock Clinic, had a deeper effect on the practice of medicine in the Netherlands than it did in any other nation. According to Balint, a physician sees in a patient the symptoms he or she expects to see based upon his or her specific mind-set, and treatment of the patient is often determined more by his or her personal opinions than by sound scientific principles. The book appeared just as the Netherlands Family Practice Association was being organized and its agenda of placing family practice on a firm biomedical basis, tempered by a genuine concern for the patient, was a close match with Balint's concerns. By the early 1960s, more than 400 family physicians were participants in Balint-oriented discussion groups. At the same time, contraceptive pills were beginning to become available, although (until 1969) they were illegal under Netherlands anticontraception laws. Family physicians were thus under pressure from patients who wanted the pills but were also inhibited by the law as well as their own moral standards in a religiously conservative nation from prescribing them. The existence of the Balint groups facilitated the formation of a national medical consensus on contraception as well as on a restructuring of the pattern of the doctor-patient relationship. Once this consensus had been reached, the immediate need for the Balint groups evaporated and by the mid-1970s their place was taken by other organizations devoted to more specific aspects of sexual reform and medical ethics.
Geschiedenis Magazine, 2010
Nederlands tijdschrift voor geneeskunde, Jan 26, 1987
Tijdschrift Voor Geschiedenis, 2006
Because it ostentatiously refrains from giving meaning and yet somehow is satisfactory, the recen... more Because it ostentatiously refrains from giving meaning and yet somehow is satisfactory, the recent commemorative strategy of reciting the names of the victims of history does not square well with the (meaning-oriented, representationalist) paradigm of modern historiography. In this essay my thesis is that reciting the names of the dead caters to a need-and reflects a reality-that is just as fundamental as 'meaning': this need, and this reality, I call 'presence.' I argue that whereas meaning is brought about by metaphor, presence ('the unrepresented way the past is present in the here and now') is brought about, and transferred, by metonymy. A name is the primordial metonymy-it doesn't tell us anything about its bearer (that is to say: it doesn't confer meaning) but it is a repository of the reality of a lived life. Reciting the names of the dead thus is a strategy, not to give their death some kind of meaning, but to have ourselves moved by the prese...
Advances in Medical Education, 1997
It may well be maintained that the raison d’itre of vocational training (of, in this case, GPs) i... more It may well be maintained that the raison d’itre of vocational training (of, in this case, GPs) is not so much the transmission of textbook-knowledge, but the development of the potential to act rationally in ‘uncharted territory’. Post hoc reflection on what has taken place in the doctor-patient relationship is a suitable mean to achieve this goal. Reflection tends to be more fruitful if the peculiarities of the doctor-patient relationship can be clarified by means of what goes on in educational relationships — and vice versa. A method like ‘experience-sharing’ offers good opportunities to establish such a cross-fertilization between professional practice and the peer learning group. In order to prevent this mutual reflection from getting bogged down in dogma and cliche, experience-sharing should be embedded in a ‘congruent’ curriculum — a curriculum, that is, that can be regarded as a living metaphor for professional practice.
Tijdschrift Voor Geschiedenis, 2006
Despite the fact that Aristotle couldn't imagine that knowledge of the past could yield '... more Despite the fact that Aristotle couldn't imagine that knowledge of the past could yield 'truths about life', nineteenth-century historicists believed just that: they were convinced that history, as it welled up from I the sources', revealed more about human existence than might be gleaned from what we see around us. At the time I started to study history, the belief in 'historia magistra vitae' had long evaporated. Yet, when I look back upon my student days, it was precisely a wish to learn I truths about life' that had attracted me to the discipline. Rather frustratingly, instead of truths about life, I learned that in order to become a historian I had to juggle with phrases like 'centralization', 'the emergence of the middle class, and 'rising grain prices.' It was only by reading Lev Tolstoy's War and Peace that I discovered that historical cliches are not innocuous: they may influence the way history is made. It is one of Tolst...
Rethinking History, 2014
Dews, P. 1995. The Limits of Disenchantment: Essays on Contemporary European Philosophy. London: ... more Dews, P. 1995. The Limits of Disenchantment: Essays on Contemporary European Philosophy. London: Verso. Dreyfus, H. L., and P. Rabinow. 1983. Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics. 2nd ed. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Han, B. [1998] 2002. Foucault’s Critical Project: Between the Transcendental and the Historical. Translated by E. Pile. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
In this interview, Marek Tamm asks questions concerning some of the main developments and argumen... more In this interview, Marek Tamm asks questions concerning some of the main developments and arguments in Eelco Runia's thinking about history. The following topics are discussed: the relations between history, psychology and fiction; the critique of representationalism in the contemporary philosophy of history; the presence of the past; the question of continuity, discontinuity and mutation in history; the importance of metonymy as the quintessential historical trope; the influence of Giambattista Vico on Runia's thinking; the intellectual affinities between Runia and Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht; and Runia's ongoing research project on Red Queen history.
In this interview, Marek Tamm asks questions concerning some of the main developments and argumen... more In this interview, Marek Tamm asks questions concerning some of the main developments and arguments in Eelco Runia's thinking about history. The following topics are discussed: the relations between history, psychology and fiction; the critique of representationalism in the contemporary philosophy of history; the presence of the past; the question of continuity, discontinuity and mutation in history; the importance of metonymy as the quintessential historical trope; the influence of Giambattista Vico on Runia's thinking; the intellectual affinities between Runia and Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht; and Runia's ongoing research project on Red Queen history.
A conversation with Avenali Chair in the Humanities Eelco Runia about new ways of thinking, theor... more A conversation with Avenali Chair in the Humanities Eelco Runia about new ways of thinking, theorizing, and writing about the past, history, time, rupture, presence, and narrative, featuring: Hayden White (UC Santa Cruz, emeritus), Martin Jay (UC Berkeley), Carol Gluck (Columbia), Harry Harootunian (Columbia), and Ethan Kleinberg (Wesleyan).
PubMed, Feb 1, 1991
The book, "The Doctor, His Patient, and the Illness," published in 1957 by Dr. Michael ... more The book, "The Doctor, His Patient, and the Illness," published in 1957 by Dr. Michael Balint of London's Tavistock Clinic, had a deeper effect on the practice of medicine in the Netherlands than it did in any other nation. According to Balint, a physician sees in a patient the symptoms he or she expects to see based upon his or her specific mind-set, and treatment of the patient is often determined more by his or her personal opinions than by sound scientific principles. The book appeared just as the Netherlands Family Practice Association was being organized and its agenda of placing family practice on a firm biomedical basis, tempered by a genuine concern for the patient, was a close match with Balint's concerns. By the early 1960s, more than 400 family physicians were participants in Balint-oriented discussion groups. At the same time, contraceptive pills were beginning to become available, although (until 1969) they were illegal under Netherlands anticontraception laws. Family physicians were thus under pressure from patients who wanted the pills but were also inhibited by the law as well as their own moral standards in a religiously conservative nation from prescribing them. The existence of the Balint groups facilitated the formation of a national medical consensus on contraception as well as on a restructuring of the pattern of the doctor-patient relationship. Once this consensus had been reached, the immediate need for the Balint groups evaporated and by the mid-1970s their place was taken by other organizations devoted to more specific aspects of sexual reform and medical ethics.
Geschiedenis Magazine, 2010
Nederlands tijdschrift voor geneeskunde, Jan 26, 1987
Tijdschrift Voor Geschiedenis, 2006
Because it ostentatiously refrains from giving meaning and yet somehow is satisfactory, the recen... more Because it ostentatiously refrains from giving meaning and yet somehow is satisfactory, the recent commemorative strategy of reciting the names of the victims of history does not square well with the (meaning-oriented, representationalist) paradigm of modern historiography. In this essay my thesis is that reciting the names of the dead caters to a need-and reflects a reality-that is just as fundamental as 'meaning': this need, and this reality, I call 'presence.' I argue that whereas meaning is brought about by metaphor, presence ('the unrepresented way the past is present in the here and now') is brought about, and transferred, by metonymy. A name is the primordial metonymy-it doesn't tell us anything about its bearer (that is to say: it doesn't confer meaning) but it is a repository of the reality of a lived life. Reciting the names of the dead thus is a strategy, not to give their death some kind of meaning, but to have ourselves moved by the prese...
Advances in Medical Education, 1997
It may well be maintained that the raison d’itre of vocational training (of, in this case, GPs) i... more It may well be maintained that the raison d’itre of vocational training (of, in this case, GPs) is not so much the transmission of textbook-knowledge, but the development of the potential to act rationally in ‘uncharted territory’. Post hoc reflection on what has taken place in the doctor-patient relationship is a suitable mean to achieve this goal. Reflection tends to be more fruitful if the peculiarities of the doctor-patient relationship can be clarified by means of what goes on in educational relationships — and vice versa. A method like ‘experience-sharing’ offers good opportunities to establish such a cross-fertilization between professional practice and the peer learning group. In order to prevent this mutual reflection from getting bogged down in dogma and cliche, experience-sharing should be embedded in a ‘congruent’ curriculum — a curriculum, that is, that can be regarded as a living metaphor for professional practice.
Tijdschrift Voor Geschiedenis, 2006
Despite the fact that Aristotle couldn't imagine that knowledge of the past could yield '... more Despite the fact that Aristotle couldn't imagine that knowledge of the past could yield 'truths about life', nineteenth-century historicists believed just that: they were convinced that history, as it welled up from I the sources', revealed more about human existence than might be gleaned from what we see around us. At the time I started to study history, the belief in 'historia magistra vitae' had long evaporated. Yet, when I look back upon my student days, it was precisely a wish to learn I truths about life' that had attracted me to the discipline. Rather frustratingly, instead of truths about life, I learned that in order to become a historian I had to juggle with phrases like 'centralization', 'the emergence of the middle class, and 'rising grain prices.' It was only by reading Lev Tolstoy's War and Peace that I discovered that historical cliches are not innocuous: they may influence the way history is made. It is one of Tolst...
Rethinking History, 2014
Dews, P. 1995. The Limits of Disenchantment: Essays on Contemporary European Philosophy. London: ... more Dews, P. 1995. The Limits of Disenchantment: Essays on Contemporary European Philosophy. London: Verso. Dreyfus, H. L., and P. Rabinow. 1983. Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics. 2nd ed. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Han, B. [1998] 2002. Foucault’s Critical Project: Between the Transcendental and the Historical. Translated by E. Pile. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Discontinuity and Historical Mutation, 2014