Objectivity Is Not Neutrality: Explanatory Schemes in History

Haskell, Thomas L. L.

ISBN 10: 0801865352 / ISBN 13: 9780801865350

Published by Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000

About this Item

[Interesting provenance: From the private library of renowned historian, Philip D. Morgan.] Softcover. Good binding and cover. Shelf wear. Reading crease to spine. Contains Philip Morgan's personal notes. From the professional library of Dr. Philip D. Morgan, a professor of History at Johns Hopkins University. Morgan specializes in the African-American experience, the history of slavery, the early Caribbean, and the study of the early Atlantic world. Morgan is the author of more than 14 books on Colonial America and African American history. He has won both the Bancroft Prize and the Frederick Douglass Prize for his book Slave Counterpoint: Black Culture in the Eighteenth-Century Chesapeake and Lowcountry (1998).

Seller Inventory # 2502100143

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Objectivity Is Not Neutrality: Explanatory Schemes in History
• Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
• Publication Date: 2000
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0801865352
• ISBN 13: 9780801865350
• Binding: Paperback
• Condition: Good
• Weight: 21 ounces
• Seller catalogs:
  • History

About this title

Synopsis

In Objectivity Is Not Neutrality, Thomas L. Haskell argues for a moderate historicism that acknowledges the force of perspective and reaffirms the pluralistic practices of a liberal democratic society—even while upholding time-honored distinctions between fact and fiction, scholarship and propaganda, right and might. Haskell addresses questions that will interest philosophers and literary theorists no less than historians, exploring topics ranging from the productivity of slave labor to the cultural concomitants of capitalism, from John Stuart Mill's youthful "mental crisis" to the cognitive preconditions that set the stage for antislavery and other humanitarian reforms after 1750. He traces the surprisingly short history of the word responsibility, which turns out to be no older than the United States. He examines the reasons for the rising authority of professional experts in nineteenth-century America. And he wonders whether the epistemological radicalism of recent years leaves us with any adequate basis for justifying human rights—rights of academic freedom, for example, or the right not to be tortured.

Written by a thoughtful critic of the historical profession, Objectivity Is Not Neutrality calls upon historians to think deeply about the nature of historical explanation and to acknowledge more fully than ever before the theoretical dimension of their work.

About the Author

Thomas L. Haskell is the McCann Professor of History at Rice University.