Expert: Michel Cahier - 8/27/2008

Question
QUESTION: Hi Mr. Cahier!

Can you explain to me what this quote means!

"So there is a very clear sense in which we can assert that is constituted by historical interpretation and traditions of historical interest-even though the underlying happenings themselves are not."

What does this quote mean? Do you agree? Why or why not?

ANSWER: in my humble opinion, this obnoxious and pretentious sentence means that there is a good  possibility that we have a tendency to give meanings and significance to events and history developments that do not deserve it...  it is by the way exactly what the author of this sentence does.  best regards, michel cahier

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QUESTION: thank you very much for helping me and I rated you 10s

please tell me if my answer makes sense to you at the very bottom!

thanks again for your time


2. Explain the difference between the historicism of people like Herder and the universalism of people like Vico.

). Vico's interpretation of the history of civilization offers the view that there is an underlying uniformity in human nature across historical settings that permits explanation of historical actions and processes. The common features of human nature give rise to a fixed series of stages of development of civil society, law, commerce, and government: universal human beings, faced with recurring civilizational challenges, produce the same set of responses over time. Two things are worth noting about this perspective on history: first, that it simplifies the task of interpreting and explaining history (because we can take it as given that we can understand the actors of the past based on our own experiences and nature); and second, it has an intellectual heir in twentieth-century social science theory in the form of rational choice theory as a basis for comprehensive social explanation.

Johann Gottfried Herder offers a strikingly different view about human nature and human ideas and motivations. Herder argues for the historical contextuality of human nature in his work, Ideas for the Philosophy of History of Humanity (1791). He offers a historicized understanding of human nature, advocating the idea that human nature is itself a historical product and that human beings act differently in different periods of historical development (1800–1877, 1791). Herder's views set the stage for the historicist philosophy of human nature later found in such nineteenth century figures as Hegel and Nietzsche. His perspective too prefigures an important current of thought about the social world in the late twentieth century, the idea of the “social construction” of human nature and social identities (Anderson 1983; Hacking 1999; Foucault 1971).
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2. Explain the difference between the historicism of people like Herder and the universalism of people like Vico.



ANSWER

The difference between the historicism of Herder and Vico are that Herder argued that human beings itself are a peoduct that changes during time while Vico believed that there is a hidden connection about human that is self explanatory within time.


Answer
my understanding is that Vico thinks that history passes the dishes of the past again and again because human nature is invariable whereas Gottfried thinks that human nature changes so much with time that no century can look like the previous ones. i  think that you summarize very well the problem in your answer to the question.