Martin Wiklund | Stockholm University (original) (raw)

Monographs by Martin Wiklund

Articles and chapters by Martin Wiklund

Konsten att kontextualisera: Om historisk förståelse och meningsskapande (red. Staffan Bergwik; Linn Holmberg; Karin Dirke), Stockholm: Stockholm University Press, 167-181, 2022

Whereas historical contextualization is often understood in terms of reconstructing conditions an... more Whereas historical contextualization is often understood in terms of reconstructing conditions and circumstances in the past, this chapter analyses how to historicize the present. More specifically, it investigates how to construct large diachronic contexts of meaning for practical questions in the present. Philippe Ariès’ history of how attitudes toward death have changed from the Middle Ages to the present in Western culture is used as a guiding example. Compared to many other historians of mentalities who also use large diachronic perspectives, a particular feature of Ariès’ perspective is that the present is included in the diachronic context of meaning and that the diachronic context is used to historicize the present and to throw critical light on normative issues, such as how to handle death and dying. The structure of Ariès’ diachronic context of meaning is analyzed in three parts: a) a main theme that connects the past to the present (attitudes toward death), b) a differentiation of aspects of the main theme (e.g. whether death is preferably well prepared or unexpected, and whether dying is public or private), c) a periodization of the changes of attitudes that exposes contrasts and transformations that in Ariès’ view have resulted in the tendency to avoid talking about people’s own death in the twentieth century. This form of contextualization can be used also for other topics. The analysis provides guidance for historians who wish to historicize phenomena in the present by constructing a large diachronic context of meaning.

Storia della Storiografia, 2021

This article is an analysis of José Ortega y Gasset’s conception of historical reason (la razón h... more This article is an analysis of José Ortega y Gasset’s conception of historical reason (la razón histórica) as a response to the crisis of historicism in the early twentieth century. Ortega’s efforts to historicise and vitalise the concept of reason was not formulated only as a new direction for philosophy, but also as a new direction for history. The analysis traces the development and meaning of Ortega’s historical reason, and draws attention to peculiar parallels with Ernst Troeltsch’s perspective on historicism. It also articulates a number of problems related to the crisis of historicism that Ortega addressed in the formulation of la razón histórica. This analysis indirectly throws light on problems that are relevant also for contemporary theory of history. Compared to other directions, such as Hayden White’s practical past, historicist contextualism and neo-realist objectivism, Ortega indicates an alternative that goes beyond the distinction between the practical and the historical past, transcends the fact/value distinction of Neo-Kantianism and positivism and provides a dimension of practical reason based on historical experience. Ortega’s response to the crisis of historicism in terms of a reconstruction of a dialectical series of historical experiences can be understood as a historical form of practical argumentation.

Dödens idéhistoria (red. Karin Dirke, Andreas Hellerstedt & Martin Wiklund), Stockholm: Appell förlag, 7–25, 2022

This is the introduction to an edited volume on the history of death, with a focus on the history... more This is the introduction to an edited volume on the history of death, with a focus on the history of ideas and attitudes.

Dödens idéhistoria (red. Karin Dirke, Andreas Hellerstedt, Martin Wiklund), Stockholm: Appell Förlag , 297-309, 2022

This is the concluding chapter of an edited volume on the history of death, with a focus on histo... more This is the concluding chapter of an edited volume on the history of death, with a focus on history of ideas and attitudes.

Dödens idéhistoria (red. Karin Dirke, Andreas Hellerstedt & Martin Wiklund), Stockholm: Appell förlag, 229–259, 2022

This article analyses the attitudes toward death and attempts to find reconciliation with life in... more This article analyses the attitudes toward death and attempts to find reconciliation with life in four films by Ingmar Bergman (Eva; The Seventh Seal; Wild Strawberries; Cries and Whispers). The films are related to Nietzsche’s philosophy of life, the Swedish intellectual tradition of ”faith in life” (Ellen Key, Pär Lagerkvist) and the earlier tradition of ars moriendi. They are interpreted as responses to a new historical and existential situation characterized by secularization and the loss of legitimacy of earlier Christian frameworks and conceptions of death and life. As opposed to the general tendency in early post war culture to avoid addressing death as a personal problem, Bergman’s films persistently confront the viewer with finitude and emphasize the importance of death as an integrated dimension of life. At the same time, they also present attempts to find reconciliation with life under new existential conditions, without reference to gods or a transcendent afterlife. Central aspects of this art of dying (and art of living) include to confront the painful sides of one’s own life history in order to change and to reconcile with oneself and one’s closest before it is too late, to become conscious of one’s limited life time and to use it for something meaningful with regard to other people, as well as to try to adopt an attitude of gratitude rather than an attitude of self-absorbed discontent.
(This chapter can be read on the webpage of the publishing house, Appell förlag. See link)

Svenska begreppshistorier: från antropocen till åsiktskorridor, red. Jonas Hansson & Kristiina Savin, Stockholm: Fri Tanke, 391–417, 2022

This article is a brief history of the concept of modernity with a focus on Sweden and uses of th... more This article is a brief history of the concept of modernity with a focus on Sweden and uses of the concept in Swedish. It makes analytical distinctions and describes the etymological background. In order to trace the history of the concept of modernity, several expressions are included in the analysis. The concept of modernity is a particularly complex concept since its meanings does not only correspond to different answers to one question, but involves different answers to different questions. Apart from the particular content given to the concept, ”modernity” and ”modern” (”modernitet”, ”modern”) can be used to refer to the quality of being a new or contemporary phenomenon as opposed to an older, previous or eternal one, but also refer to quite different ideas such as an epoch, to a type of society or to a direction of progress. Examples are given of uses in Swedish of the word ”modernitet”, of the concept of the epoch (”den moderna tiden”), of the concept of modern society (”det moderna samhället”), of the concept of progress, of the rhetoric of the modern breakthrough (”det moderna genombrottet”) and of the concept of modernism. Critical interpretations of ”modernity” and the rhetoric of ”postmodern society” in late 20th century have furthered an objectification of ”modernity” as an epoch of the past and separated the concept of modernity from the dimension of progress. ”Modernity”, which used to refer to the ”new” society and provide future orientation, thus seems conceptually to have become a thing of the past.

Moderniteten som framgång och tragedi. En vänbok till Lars M Andersson om ett föränderligt 1900-tal, red. Malin Thor Tureby, Mattias Hessérus, Karin Kvist Geverts & Pontus Rudberg, Lund: Nordic Academic Press 2021, 257–270, 2021

This article aims to reveal an underlying pattern in the theory of history in the 20th century: t... more This article aims to reveal an underlying pattern in the theory of history in the 20th century: the loss and revival of historical experience. While the dominant approach of the 19th century was characterized by historical perspectives, in the 20th century practical orientation was more often characterized by ahistorical approaches. This shift can be traced to the crisis of historicism and its crisis of the relevance of history for the present. The crisis gave rise to various ahistorical perspectives on society and values. But the experiences of the 20th century and the loss of experience also motivated some historians to develop new perspectives to make it possible to regain historical experience for practical orientation. This is illustrated with examples from three directions in historical research: Reinhart Koselleck, Hans-Ulrich Wehler's Gesellschaftsgeschichte and a concept of listening to the voices of the past in memory studies. A central trajectory for the theory of history in the 20th century can thus be formulated in terms of historical experience lost and regained.

En plats för tänkande. Essäer om universitetet och filosofin, red. Anders Burman, Marcia Sá Cavalcante Schuback & Synne Myrebøe Huddinge: Södertörns högskola, 2020), 2020

This article analyses José Ortega y Gasset’s ideas of the tasks of philosophy and the university ... more This article analyses José Ortega y Gasset’s ideas of the tasks of philosophy and the university and how they were related to his diagnosis of the crisis of modern European culture. The texts ’Misión de la universidad’, ’Qué es filosofía?’ and ’La rebelión de las masas’, all written around 1930, are interpreted in light of each other to expose this relationship. Instead of simply declaring tasks for philosophy and the university, Ortega turned these issues into objects of historico-philosophical analysis. The tasks of philosophy and the university were historicized, corresponding to their changing roles in society, and related to the demands of the new situation in the present. The character of the present was not simply determined by applying a ready-made understanding of society, but was itself made an object of historico-philosophical diagnosis. The tasks that Ortega formulated for philosophy (to formulate a new form of reason related to life; to analyse the fundamental structure of ’life’ in the present) and the university ¬(to transmit culture at the level of cultural development; to build a new cultural foundation as a vital system of ideas based on the current level of the disciplines; to act as a cultivating counter-balance to the power of the media) can be seen as part of the solution to the problems diagnosed in La rebelión de las masas: the loss of the former cultural foundation; violence and nihilistic lack of respect for basic norms of civilization; self-righteous presentism and narrow-minded specialization. The final part points to worrying parallels between Ortega’s diagnosis and our contemporary populist condition and raises the question of a future alternative: a philosophical condition with a philosophical democracy based on philosophical citizens. Whether this is possible or not, Ortega’s analysis demonstrates the need to relate the question of the tasks of philosophy and the university to a diagnosis of the present.

The Engaged Historian. Perspectives on the Intersections of Politics, Activism and the Historical Profession, 2019

During the twentieth century the intellectual typically had the role of a prosecutor, criticizing... more During the twentieth century the intellectual typically had the role of a prosecutor, criticizing wrongs and injustices, paradigmatically expressed by Emile Zola. The paper uses the analogy of a court of justice to articulate the responsibilities and pitfalls of the historian as intellectual and defends the importance of justice as a regulative idea for interpretations and judgments. The reasonable critique of intellectuals’ sometimes overestimated claims to truth, universality and ideological validity calls for a new ethics of intellectual engagement, that goes beyond specific ideological commitments, value neutrality, scientific method or mere empirical correspondence as criteria. The paper claims that justice of memory is an important dimension of such an ethics and points to a number of relevant aspects of the meaning of justice for historical interpretations.

Tempo, 2019

The very idea of a theme issue about History as Diagnosis emerged from a need to show how Histori... more The very idea of a theme issue about History as Diagnosis emerged from a need to show how Historical Theory could be understood as an independent approach towards ready-made theories and abstract models, especially in historical moments immediately perceived as critical. The idea of history as diagnosis offers possibilities of interpreting symptoms and identifying pathologies in both society and in research in an empirically sensitive and theoretically innovative way.

Intelligere, Revista de História Intelectual (ISSN: 2447-9020), 2017

Although Rüsen only discusses the crisis of historicism explicitly in his work occasionally, his ... more Although Rüsen only discusses the crisis of historicism explicitly in his work occasionally, his general perspective on historical knowledge can be interpreted as a response to the crisis. Different responses to the crisis of historicism correspond to different interpretations of its main problems. In order to specify Rüsen's response, a number of aspects of his perspective are pointed out as solutions to such problems. Indirectly, the analysis discloses problems that any plausible attempt to come to terms with the crisis of historicism ought to handle. By identifying differences to other contemporary responses to the crisis of historicism, the continuing relevance of Rüsen's approach is demonstrated.

Den pragmatiska och praktisk-filosofiska dimensionens återupprättande

Konsten att kontextualisera: Om historisk förståelse och meningsskapande (red. Staffan Bergwik; Linn Holmberg; Karin Dirke), Stockholm: Stockholm University Press, 167-181, 2022

Whereas historical contextualization is often understood in terms of reconstructing conditions an... more Whereas historical contextualization is often understood in terms of reconstructing conditions and circumstances in the past, this chapter analyses how to historicize the present. More specifically, it investigates how to construct large diachronic contexts of meaning for practical questions in the present. Philippe Ariès’ history of how attitudes toward death have changed from the Middle Ages to the present in Western culture is used as a guiding example. Compared to many other historians of mentalities who also use large diachronic perspectives, a particular feature of Ariès’ perspective is that the present is included in the diachronic context of meaning and that the diachronic context is used to historicize the present and to throw critical light on normative issues, such as how to handle death and dying. The structure of Ariès’ diachronic context of meaning is analyzed in three parts: a) a main theme that connects the past to the present (attitudes toward death), b) a differentiation of aspects of the main theme (e.g. whether death is preferably well prepared or unexpected, and whether dying is public or private), c) a periodization of the changes of attitudes that exposes contrasts and transformations that in Ariès’ view have resulted in the tendency to avoid talking about people’s own death in the twentieth century. This form of contextualization can be used also for other topics. The analysis provides guidance for historians who wish to historicize phenomena in the present by constructing a large diachronic context of meaning.

Storia della Storiografia, 2021

This article is an analysis of José Ortega y Gasset’s conception of historical reason (la razón h... more This article is an analysis of José Ortega y Gasset’s conception of historical reason (la razón histórica) as a response to the crisis of historicism in the early twentieth century. Ortega’s efforts to historicise and vitalise the concept of reason was not formulated only as a new direction for philosophy, but also as a new direction for history. The analysis traces the development and meaning of Ortega’s historical reason, and draws attention to peculiar parallels with Ernst Troeltsch’s perspective on historicism. It also articulates a number of problems related to the crisis of historicism that Ortega addressed in the formulation of la razón histórica. This analysis indirectly throws light on problems that are relevant also for contemporary theory of history. Compared to other directions, such as Hayden White’s practical past, historicist contextualism and neo-realist objectivism, Ortega indicates an alternative that goes beyond the distinction between the practical and the historical past, transcends the fact/value distinction of Neo-Kantianism and positivism and provides a dimension of practical reason based on historical experience. Ortega’s response to the crisis of historicism in terms of a reconstruction of a dialectical series of historical experiences can be understood as a historical form of practical argumentation.

Dödens idéhistoria (red. Karin Dirke, Andreas Hellerstedt & Martin Wiklund), Stockholm: Appell förlag, 7–25, 2022

This is the introduction to an edited volume on the history of death, with a focus on the history... more This is the introduction to an edited volume on the history of death, with a focus on the history of ideas and attitudes.

Dödens idéhistoria (red. Karin Dirke, Andreas Hellerstedt, Martin Wiklund), Stockholm: Appell Förlag , 297-309, 2022

This is the concluding chapter of an edited volume on the history of death, with a focus on histo... more This is the concluding chapter of an edited volume on the history of death, with a focus on history of ideas and attitudes.

Dödens idéhistoria (red. Karin Dirke, Andreas Hellerstedt & Martin Wiklund), Stockholm: Appell förlag, 229–259, 2022

This article analyses the attitudes toward death and attempts to find reconciliation with life in... more This article analyses the attitudes toward death and attempts to find reconciliation with life in four films by Ingmar Bergman (Eva; The Seventh Seal; Wild Strawberries; Cries and Whispers). The films are related to Nietzsche’s philosophy of life, the Swedish intellectual tradition of ”faith in life” (Ellen Key, Pär Lagerkvist) and the earlier tradition of ars moriendi. They are interpreted as responses to a new historical and existential situation characterized by secularization and the loss of legitimacy of earlier Christian frameworks and conceptions of death and life. As opposed to the general tendency in early post war culture to avoid addressing death as a personal problem, Bergman’s films persistently confront the viewer with finitude and emphasize the importance of death as an integrated dimension of life. At the same time, they also present attempts to find reconciliation with life under new existential conditions, without reference to gods or a transcendent afterlife. Central aspects of this art of dying (and art of living) include to confront the painful sides of one’s own life history in order to change and to reconcile with oneself and one’s closest before it is too late, to become conscious of one’s limited life time and to use it for something meaningful with regard to other people, as well as to try to adopt an attitude of gratitude rather than an attitude of self-absorbed discontent.
(This chapter can be read on the webpage of the publishing house, Appell förlag. See link)

Svenska begreppshistorier: från antropocen till åsiktskorridor, red. Jonas Hansson & Kristiina Savin, Stockholm: Fri Tanke, 391–417, 2022

This article is a brief history of the concept of modernity with a focus on Sweden and uses of th... more This article is a brief history of the concept of modernity with a focus on Sweden and uses of the concept in Swedish. It makes analytical distinctions and describes the etymological background. In order to trace the history of the concept of modernity, several expressions are included in the analysis. The concept of modernity is a particularly complex concept since its meanings does not only correspond to different answers to one question, but involves different answers to different questions. Apart from the particular content given to the concept, ”modernity” and ”modern” (”modernitet”, ”modern”) can be used to refer to the quality of being a new or contemporary phenomenon as opposed to an older, previous or eternal one, but also refer to quite different ideas such as an epoch, to a type of society or to a direction of progress. Examples are given of uses in Swedish of the word ”modernitet”, of the concept of the epoch (”den moderna tiden”), of the concept of modern society (”det moderna samhället”), of the concept of progress, of the rhetoric of the modern breakthrough (”det moderna genombrottet”) and of the concept of modernism. Critical interpretations of ”modernity” and the rhetoric of ”postmodern society” in late 20th century have furthered an objectification of ”modernity” as an epoch of the past and separated the concept of modernity from the dimension of progress. ”Modernity”, which used to refer to the ”new” society and provide future orientation, thus seems conceptually to have become a thing of the past.

Moderniteten som framgång och tragedi. En vänbok till Lars M Andersson om ett föränderligt 1900-tal, red. Malin Thor Tureby, Mattias Hessérus, Karin Kvist Geverts & Pontus Rudberg, Lund: Nordic Academic Press 2021, 257–270, 2021

This article aims to reveal an underlying pattern in the theory of history in the 20th century: t... more This article aims to reveal an underlying pattern in the theory of history in the 20th century: the loss and revival of historical experience. While the dominant approach of the 19th century was characterized by historical perspectives, in the 20th century practical orientation was more often characterized by ahistorical approaches. This shift can be traced to the crisis of historicism and its crisis of the relevance of history for the present. The crisis gave rise to various ahistorical perspectives on society and values. But the experiences of the 20th century and the loss of experience also motivated some historians to develop new perspectives to make it possible to regain historical experience for practical orientation. This is illustrated with examples from three directions in historical research: Reinhart Koselleck, Hans-Ulrich Wehler's Gesellschaftsgeschichte and a concept of listening to the voices of the past in memory studies. A central trajectory for the theory of history in the 20th century can thus be formulated in terms of historical experience lost and regained.

En plats för tänkande. Essäer om universitetet och filosofin, red. Anders Burman, Marcia Sá Cavalcante Schuback & Synne Myrebøe Huddinge: Södertörns högskola, 2020), 2020

This article analyses José Ortega y Gasset’s ideas of the tasks of philosophy and the university ... more This article analyses José Ortega y Gasset’s ideas of the tasks of philosophy and the university and how they were related to his diagnosis of the crisis of modern European culture. The texts ’Misión de la universidad’, ’Qué es filosofía?’ and ’La rebelión de las masas’, all written around 1930, are interpreted in light of each other to expose this relationship. Instead of simply declaring tasks for philosophy and the university, Ortega turned these issues into objects of historico-philosophical analysis. The tasks of philosophy and the university were historicized, corresponding to their changing roles in society, and related to the demands of the new situation in the present. The character of the present was not simply determined by applying a ready-made understanding of society, but was itself made an object of historico-philosophical diagnosis. The tasks that Ortega formulated for philosophy (to formulate a new form of reason related to life; to analyse the fundamental structure of ’life’ in the present) and the university ¬(to transmit culture at the level of cultural development; to build a new cultural foundation as a vital system of ideas based on the current level of the disciplines; to act as a cultivating counter-balance to the power of the media) can be seen as part of the solution to the problems diagnosed in La rebelión de las masas: the loss of the former cultural foundation; violence and nihilistic lack of respect for basic norms of civilization; self-righteous presentism and narrow-minded specialization. The final part points to worrying parallels between Ortega’s diagnosis and our contemporary populist condition and raises the question of a future alternative: a philosophical condition with a philosophical democracy based on philosophical citizens. Whether this is possible or not, Ortega’s analysis demonstrates the need to relate the question of the tasks of philosophy and the university to a diagnosis of the present.

The Engaged Historian. Perspectives on the Intersections of Politics, Activism and the Historical Profession, 2019

During the twentieth century the intellectual typically had the role of a prosecutor, criticizing... more During the twentieth century the intellectual typically had the role of a prosecutor, criticizing wrongs and injustices, paradigmatically expressed by Emile Zola. The paper uses the analogy of a court of justice to articulate the responsibilities and pitfalls of the historian as intellectual and defends the importance of justice as a regulative idea for interpretations and judgments. The reasonable critique of intellectuals’ sometimes overestimated claims to truth, universality and ideological validity calls for a new ethics of intellectual engagement, that goes beyond specific ideological commitments, value neutrality, scientific method or mere empirical correspondence as criteria. The paper claims that justice of memory is an important dimension of such an ethics and points to a number of relevant aspects of the meaning of justice for historical interpretations.

Tempo, 2019

The very idea of a theme issue about History as Diagnosis emerged from a need to show how Histori... more The very idea of a theme issue about History as Diagnosis emerged from a need to show how Historical Theory could be understood as an independent approach towards ready-made theories and abstract models, especially in historical moments immediately perceived as critical. The idea of history as diagnosis offers possibilities of interpreting symptoms and identifying pathologies in both society and in research in an empirically sensitive and theoretically innovative way.

Intelligere, Revista de História Intelectual (ISSN: 2447-9020), 2017

Although Rüsen only discusses the crisis of historicism explicitly in his work occasionally, his ... more Although Rüsen only discusses the crisis of historicism explicitly in his work occasionally, his general perspective on historical knowledge can be interpreted as a response to the crisis. Different responses to the crisis of historicism correspond to different interpretations of its main problems. In order to specify Rüsen's response, a number of aspects of his perspective are pointed out as solutions to such problems. Indirectly, the analysis discloses problems that any plausible attempt to come to terms with the crisis of historicism ought to handle. By identifying differences to other contemporary responses to the crisis of historicism, the continuing relevance of Rüsen's approach is demonstrated.

Den pragmatiska och praktisk-filosofiska dimensionens återupprättande

Stockholm: Appell Förlag, 2022

In Dödens idéhistoria, nine scholars examine the history of ideas of death from antiquity to the ... more In Dödens idéhistoria, nine scholars examine the history of ideas of death from antiquity to the present day. The volume has a general chronological structure but each chapter has its own perspective and focus. The following general questions guide the volume: What conceptions of life after death have people had in different epochs? What significance have such conceptions had for how people have lived and related to life? What fears and hopes have been linked to death? What conceptions of how one should relate to one's own death have dominated in different epochs? How have people dealt with the dead - the bodies, souls and spirits of the dead? How has killing been viewed - taking one's own life, killing other people or killing animals? All questions are not addressed in all of the chapters, but all chapters throw light on several of them. Some of the phenomena and themas analyzed are imaginary journeys to the world of the dead, the early modern view of death and the afterlife in the Protestant tradition with examples from funeral sermons, the attitude towards death in 18th century Sweden with examples from theology, poetry and funeral monuments, conceptions of death among Romantic poets in early 19th century Sweden, theory and practice of spiritism around 1900, attitudes to animal death and animal killing in the context of hunting and industrialization, the dead body as a valuable object of knowledge in anatomical science, how reconciliation with death (and life) are dealt with in some of Ingmar Bergman's films as a new form of ars moriendi under secularized conditions, and how the expanded spatial and temporal dimensions of death through nuclear radiation came to change societal perceptions of death and disaster. The book has a focus on Western and Swedish history of ideas. It historicizes ideas and attitudes towards death and illustrates links between religion, science, politics, morality and aesthetics in specific historical examples. The diversity of approaches and the long time perspectives make clear how notions of death are linked to changing worldviews, currents of ideas and living conditions.

Tempo, 2019

The very idea of a theme issue about History as Diagnosis emerged from a need to show how Histori... more The very idea of a theme issue about History as Diagnosis emerged from a need to show how Historical Theory could be understood as an independent approach towards ready-made theories and abstract models, especially in historical moments immediately perceived as critical. The idea of history as diagnosis offers possibilities of interpreting symptoms and identifying pathologies in both society and in research in an empirically sensitive and theoretically innovative way.

Collection of texts by Jörn Rüsen. The file to be downloaded contains: Introduction (by Martin W... more Collection of texts by Jörn Rüsen.
The file to be downloaded contains: Introduction (by Martin Wiklund) and Contents.

Respons, 2019

Recension av Svante Nordin, Sveriges moderna historia. Fem politiska projekt 1809–2019

Respons, 2018

Recension av två böcker: Ulf Bjereld & Marie Demker, 1968 – När allt började; Henrik Berggren, 68

Respons, 2016

Recension av Anders Burman (red.), Hans-Georg Gadamer och hermeneutikens aktualitet

Historisk Tidskrift , 2019

red.), Tiden (Göteborg/Stockholm: Makadam Förlag 2017). 222 s.

International Network for Theory of History [http://www.inth.ugent.be/reviews/\]

In his new book Experience and History, David Carr defends the phenomenological approach to histo... more In his new book Experience and History, David Carr defends the phenomenological approach to history he developed in Time, Narrative, and History (1986) and tries to show the continued relevance of phenomenology to the basic problems of philosophy of history. During recent decades philosophy of history was first dominated by the linguistic turn and then by the themes of memory, the ethical turn and the presence of the past. Carr emphasises that his perspective differs from objectivist realism and representationalism, as well as from versions of narrativism such as Frank Ankersmit's and Hayden White's.

I ljuset av dagens heterogena kunskapskulturer är den övergripande ambitionen med den här boken a... more I ljuset av dagens heterogena kunskapskulturer är den övergripande ambitionen med den här boken att reflektera över relationen mellan universitetet och filosofin med öppningar för frågor som är av betydelse för demokratin och samhället i stort. I antologins sexton artiklar diskuteras filosofisk forskning och högre utbildning i förhållande till universitetets ständigt förändrade funktioner men också tänkandets förmåga att förändra verkligheten. Gentemot en bred idéhistorisk fond som sträcker sig från den tyska idealismen för drygt tvåhundra år sedan till vår egen tid är det ett försök att diagnostisera filosofins och tänkandets villkor, status och möjligheter inom dagens universitetsväsende. I vilka avseenden kan universitetet fortfarande fungera som en plats för tänkande?