Historical Consciousness: The Remembered PastOne of the most important developments of Western civilization has been the growth of historical consciousness. Consciously or not, history has become a form of thought applied to every facet of human experience; every field of human action can be studied, described, or understood through its history. In this extraordinary analysis of the meaning of the remembered past, John Lukacs discusses the evolution of historical consciousness since its first emergence about three centuries ago. |
Contents
stage of the decay of scientific history xxvii 3 | 1 |
History as a form of thought Its definition? 3 What | 9 |
the last three | 16 |
hundred years 16 5 History a Western form | 31 |
7 Our interregnal condition 39 8 History the | 44 |
HISTORY IN THE DEMOCRATIC AGE or the new texture | 50 |
duction plunging in medias res on page 1 which I now know may have | 59 |
1 Tocqueville on democratic historianship 50 2 | 63 |
ABOUT HISTORICAL FACTORS or the hierarchy of powers | 171 |
Appendix to Chapter V The problem of religious his | 216 |
THE REMEMBERED PAST or the function of recognition | 224 |
5 About free will and the acquisition of char | 258 |
HISTORY AND PHYSICS or the end of the Modern Age | 273 |
POSTSCRIPT | 316 |
CONCLUSION or participant historical knowledge 1985 | 324 |
CERTAIN NOTES | 361 |
5 Who are the people? 69 6 | 88 |
FACTS AND FICTIONS or describing the past | 98 |
THINKING ABOUT CAUSES or the structure of events | 128 |
| 397 | |
| 403 | |
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Common terms and phrases
American become believe bourgeois Burckhardt causality causes chapter character characteristics Christian concept condition consequences contemporary course cultural democracy democratic ages Descartes E. H. Carr economic English Europe European evidence evolution example existence fact factor form of thought function German Gifford Lectures happened Heisenberg Herbert Butterfield historian historianship historical consciousness historical thinking human ideas ideological imagination important intellectual interest involved John Lukacs kind least less Lukacs matter mean mental merely mind Modern Age motives nature nineteenth century novel novelist Ortega Owen Barfield past perhaps philosophy philosophy of history physics political popular potential principal problem professional historians public opinion reaction reality reason recognition recognize relatively Russian scientific scientific method scientism Second World War sense sentiment significant social society Stalin statement Stendhal suggests tendency things tion Tocqueville torical true truth twentieth century understand universe Western Western world words writing wrote
Popular passages
Page xii - Think now History has many cunning passages, contrived corridors And issues, deceives with whispering ambitions, Guides us by vanities. Think now She gives when our attention is distracted And what she gives, gives with such supple confusions That the giving famishes the craving. Gives too late "What's not believed in, or if still believed, In memory only, reconsidered passion. Gives too soon Into weak hands, what's thought can be dispensed with Till the refusal propagates a fear. Think Neither fear...