Columbia Studies in Political Thought, Political History
INTERNAL BIBLIOGRAPHIES/INDEXES NOTE
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Includes bibliographical references and index.
CONTENTS NOTE
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Conjectural history : the Enlightenment form -- Political economy and the question of progress -- Comte, Spencer, and the science of society -- The origins of culture and of anthropology -- Darwin, Nietzsche, and the prehistory of the human -- The social psychology of religion -- Novels as conjectural histories -- Conclusion -- Appendix 1: Enlightenment conjectural histories -- Appendix 2: Hegel, history, and conjecture -- Appendix 3: Were conjectural histories racist?
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SUMMARY OR ABSTRACT
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Frank Palmeri sees the conjectural histories of Rousseau, Hume, Herder, and other Enlightenment philosophers as a template for the development of the social sciences in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Without documents or memorials, these thinkers employed conjecture to formulate a naturalistic account of society's commercial and secular progression. This approach informs the work of political economists, anthropologists, sociologists, and sociologists of religion, and its speculative framework creats a surprising ambivalence toward modernity.