City Intelligible

A Philosophical and Historical Anthropology of Global Commoditisation Before Industrialisation
Erscheinungsjahr 2020
ISBN: 978-90-04-41491-4
Verlag: Brill

Buch, Englisch, Band 38, 632 Seiten, Format (B × H): 157 mm x 236 mm, Gewicht: 1179 g

Reihe: Studies in Global Social History

City Intelligible seeks to integrate a transcendental philosophical anthropology of commoditisation before industrialisation with a social and cultural, thus empirical anthropology of commodity production and exchange that is global, thus inter-cultural. It treats commodification as a singular and privileged evidence of the universal status of human reasoning, and one that grounds the translational character of human exchange throughout the early centuries, and yet that simultaneously founds ubiquitous cultural differentiation. The book constitutes, therefore, a refutation of the predominant tendency in the humanities to represent cultural difference as inhibiting the very possibility of effective intercultural translation.

It treats the factors of economic history as forms of cultural expression, but determined, in their turn, by a continuum of complex societal formation from the very beginnings of intensive agricultural and social settlement. It seeks to derive evidence for the universal foundations of human reasoning through analysis of the culture of commoditisation in marrying a thoroughgoing Kantian analysis with the historical evidence, an approach aspiring to ground the very concept and possibility of a universal human cultural nature underlying all human differentiation.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Perlin, Frank

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Kultur- und Ideengeschichte
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Spezielle Soziologie Globalisierung, Transformationsprozesse
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Mentalitäts- und Sozialgeschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Philosophie: Allgemeines, Methoden

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Foreword by Ravi Ahuja

Acknowledgements

Notice to the Reader

List of Illustrations

More than a Preface or Introduction!: The Transcendental Constitution of the Cultural, Historical and Empirical Object: The Problem and Task of the Two Anthropologies

1Initial Notice—an Order of Reading

2The Subject Matter and the Project

3To Constitute History and Society … the Two Taxonomies

4The Three Criticisms

5A Critical and Transcendental Anthropology of Intercultural Translatability—the Question of Method

6Final Resolution of a Dilemma: The A-Priori, at Once Universal and Empirical

7The Composition of the Book

Part 1: Artifice & Nature: A Kantian and Historical Anthropology of Commoditisation before Industrialisation

1 From the Closed World to the Open Continuum

1Complexity, Language & Uncertainty

2Order, Unit & Convenience in Economic History. Language-Use as Problem

3Production and Marketing as an Issue of Complexity

4Alternative Principles of Order & Method

iThe Propositions

iiSampling as Method

iiiResources for Sampling, and a Hypothesis

ATextile Market-Censuses

BRaw Cottons

CPre-Spun Wools & Woollen Yarns

DThe Knowledge Problem

ELists of Coinages Brought to Particular Markets

2 Unpacking, Disengaging and Linking

1The Production and Marketing of Type: Phases, Extensions, Disengagements and Articulations

iThe ' Raw Materials ' of Production

AEmpirical Linkage

BInitial Implications

iiCloth Typologies

iiiSpeciation in Field & Market (Autonomy for Connection)

2Quality and Number

3A Second Object World

1The Continuum

iA Problem of Method

iiCommodity Nature

AAn Artificial Object World, & Its Taxonomy

BMarketisation as Communication

aMarkets & Complexity

bThe Issue of Translatability—Markets & Frontiers

cMarkets & Information

2Kant’s Tower of Babel & the Cultural Universal

iMetaphor & Construction

iiA Kantian Approach to Commoditisation & Translatability

iiiThe Universal and Cultural Difference

AThe Problem of the Very Idea of a Universal Culture and Mind

BFirst Invalid—the Biological A-Priori

CSecond Invalid—Plurality of Societies as a Priori

DAn Answer—Historical Generation of the Universal as a History of Differentiation

3Cultural and Natural Space/Times

iIntroduction. for an Explanation of Difference

iiNewtonian Space/Time & Practical Knowledge

iiiSpecies Construction and Its Transcendental Space/Time

ivExtension in Space/Time

ARephrasing the Coordinates of Choice & Limit with Respect to Reason

BNeither Closed nor Infinite, but Finite & Illimitable

aA Unity of Formative and Constructional Principle of the Exotic

bBut What Kind of Unity?

cA Poesis of the Incomparable

dNot an Infinity but Finitude

eA Finitude Closed and Bounded? or Open and Illimitable? Our Return to Kant!

fThinking the Object into Being and the Reality-Status of That Thought

gAn Edifice Built Only with Matter Accessible to Human Kind

CFurther Thoughts about the Meaning of a ' Universal ' Culture of Practice and Mind

vIntersubjectivity and Non-Essentialist Construction

4Postface

Part 2: Taxonomy & Commodity: In Global Transfers of Plant Forms and Plant Products into Early-modern Europe (the cultural production of nature, or the foundations of early botany)

Introduction to Part 2: Plant Artifice/Plant Nature

4A General Framework

1Introduction: Artifice & Nature

2Contexts, Empirical & Intellectual

3Foundational Difficulties

iProblem Domains

iiSubstantive Discussion

AThe Continuum of Culture, Language and Systematics, and Thus Translatability

BThe Cultural Specificity of Any Grown Plant. Selection in Artificial Botanies

CMarket Determination of ' Artificial ' Plant Variation

DA Partial Explanation in Terms of Transmission of Cultural Universals, in the Kantian Sense

5Foundations of Botany in Western Europe

1Europe and the World: The Phases and Aspects of Botanical Taxonomy and Abstraction

iMedical Botany, Horta Botanica, Taxonomies & Pharmacopoeia

iiThe Concept of Type, Agricultural Part-Products & Market Continua

6A Postface: Narrative Style, Evolutionary Form, and the Shaping of an Early Science: Botany

Appendix 1Order in Artificial and Spontaneous Natures

Appendix 2' The Phenomenology Lesson '. A Commentary on the Illustrations

Bibliography

1Introduction: Selection and Translation

2Kant, Hegel and Husserl 54

3General Bibliography

Index

Über Autor(innen)

Frank Perlin, University of London BA History Honours First Class; University of Leiden PhD; author of The Invisible City, and Unbroken Landscape, and substantial articles. Specialisations: historical-anthropological archival research; methodology interdisciplinary and comparative; philosophy of knowledge; derivation of the universal foundation of human reason and difference.