Mark R. Lindner

HIS 497

Summer 2002

Seminar Paper 1

What are the differences between positivist and idealist views of history?

Bibliography for Positivist and Idealist History

Boucher, David. "The Creation of the Past: British Idealism and Michael Oakeshott's Philosophy of History." History and Theory 23, no. 2 (1984): 193-214.

      Intended to "ground Oakeshott's philosophy of history and interpretation in the context of the concerns of British idealism." [p. 193]

Collingwood, R. G. "History as Re-enactment of Past Experience." In Theories of History: Readings from Classical and Contemporary Sources, Edited by Patrick Gardiner. New York: The Free Press, 1959.

      Is a condensed version of several sections of "Part V. Epilegomena" of The Idea of History, including section 4 "History as Re-enactment of Past Experience" [1936], and section 5 "The Subject-matter of History" [1936].

Collingwood, R. G. The Idea of History, Rev. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994.

      The classic English language text on historical idealism, and the first serious work on the philosophy of history in the English langauge.

Gardiner, Patrick. "Collingwood (1889-1943)." In Theories of History: Readings from Classical and Contemporary Sources, Edited by Patrick Gardiner. New York: The Free Press, 1959.

      Editor's introduction to the excerpted "History as Re-enactment of Past Experience."

Iggers, Georg G. "Introduction: The Transformation of Historical Studies in Historical Perspective." In International Handbook of Historical Studies: Contemporary Research and Theory. Edited by Georg G. Iggers and Harold T. Parker. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1979.

      A short history of historical scholarship.

Parker, Christopher. "English Historians and the Opposition to Positivism." History and Theory 22, no. 2 (1983):120-145.

      Maintains "that virtually all important figures in the development of historiography and of history as an academic subject, from the 1850s to the end of the Victorian era, were explicitly hostile to positivism and to its chief practitioners, Comte and Buckle." [p. 121]

Tollefson, Roy M. "Idealism." In Handbook of World History: Concepts and Issues. Edited by Joseph Dunner. New York: Philosophical Library, 1967.

Tosh, John. The Pursuit of History: Aims, Methods and New Directions in the Study of Modern History, 3^rd ed. Harlow, England: Longman, 1999.

      Textbook for History 497.