Thinking of Questions by Peter Limm

Author:Peter Limm
Format: epub

7. HISTORICAL CHANGE, IDEAS, SIGNIFICANT PEOPLE AND CULTURE

In general try A. C. Grayling, Ideas that Matter: A Personal Guide for the Twenty-First Century, Phoenix, 2009*; S. Trombley, Fifty Thinkers Who Shaped the Modern World, Atlantic Books, 2012*; J. Lechte, Fifty Key Contemporary Thinkers: From Structuralism to Post-Humanism, Routledge, 2007*; I. Adams and R. W. Dyson, Fifty Major Political Thinkers, Routledge, 2007*; A. Heywood, Key Concepts in Politics, Macmillan, 2000* and also his Political Ideologies: An Introduction, Macmillan,1992.

To what extent can human beings deliberately affect the course of history? Is a person ‘made by history’ and cannot ‘make it’? How far do human beings act out roles economic conditions have given them? How far are the French and Russian revolutions good/poor examples of human beings, via deliberate thought and action, affecting the course of history? If individuals cannot, in the grand scale, affect the course of history, can they still influence microscopic history at the local level by choosing between alternative courses of action? If so, how far would this mean they have contributed to larger events? To what extent, for instance, did Gavrilo Princip’s assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in 1914 have a great impact on the ensuing course of events (even if Princip probably did not wish to help cause a massive European War)? For the latter, try B. Bell, ‘What If Archduke Franz Ferdinand Had Lived in 1914?’, BBC News, Inside Europe Blog, 11 November 2014; D. Damon, ‘Bosnia and WW1: The Living Legacy of Gavrilo Princip’, BBC News Magazine, 26 June 2014; see the next three questions.

For the French Revolution try M. Linton, Choosing Terror: Virtue, Friendship and Authority in the French Revolution, OUP, 2015; T. Kaiser and D. Van Kley (eds.), From Deficit to Deluge: The Origins of the French Revolution, Stanford University Press, 2011; R. Ballard, The Unseen Terror: The French Revolution in the Provinces, I. B. Tauris, 2010; E. Hazan, A People’s History of the French Revolution, Verso, 2014; D. Andress, The Terror: Civil War in the French Revolution, Abacus, 2006 Edition; J. Israel, Revolutionary Ideas: An Intellectual History of the French Revolution From ‘The Rights of Man’ to Robespierre, Princeton University Press, 2014.

For the Russian Revolution try O. Figes, A People’s Tragedy: The Russian Revolution, 1891-1924, Bodley Head, 2014 Edition; V. Serge, Year One of the Russian Revolution, Haymarket Books, 2015; R. Stites, Revolutionary Dreams and Experimental Life in the Russian Revolution, OUP, 1991 Edition; R. Wade (ed.), Revolutionary Russia: New Approaches to the Russian Revolution of 1917, Routledge, 2004.

Are there now, or have there ever been, any real examples of ‘the people’ of a nation wielding power?Who are ‘the people’? What does ‘power to the people’ mean? How can ‘power to the people’ be implemented? Will the information revolution and digitalisation mean that ‘the people’ have ‘power’ to shape their lives and their environments, or is this technological process a new evil in the making? How far would ‘power to the people’ mean anarchism? Try E. S. Morgan, Inventing the People: The Rise of Popular Sovereignty in England and America, New York, 1988; L.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.