J. Bos

The rise and decline of character: humoral psychology in ancient and early modern medical theory

Humoralism, the view that the human body is composed of a limited number of elementary fluids, is one of the most characteristic aspects of ancient medicine. The psychological dimension of humoral theory in the ancient world has thus far received a relatively small amount of scholarly attention. Medical psychology in the ancient world can only be correctly understood by relating it to psychological thought in other fields, such as ethics and rhetoric. The concept that ties these various domains together is character (êthos), which involves a view of human beings focused on clearly distinguishable psychological types that can be recognized on the basis of external signs. Psychological ideas based on humoral theory remained influential well into the early modern period. Yet, in 17th-century medicine and philosophy, humoral physiology and psychology started to lose ground to other theoretical perspectives on the mind and its relation to the body. This decline of humoralist medical psychology can be related to a broader reorientation of psychological thought in which the traditional concept of character lost its central position. Instead of the focus on types and stable character traits, a perspective emerged that was primarily concerned with individuality and transient passions.

Individuality and Interpretation in Nineteenth-Century German Historicism

The methodological controversy in the humanities and the social sciences between the advocates of an explanatory approach similar to that of the natural sciences (erklaren) and the proponents of an interpretative perspective (verstehen) has its roots in a wide-ranging cultural transformation that took place in Europe around 1800. Traditionally, this transformation has been described as the shift from Enlightenment to Romanticism, involving, among other things, the rise of a new, expressivist conception of art and the substitution of a universal notion of rationality by an emphasis on the incommensurability of individual ages and cultures. A different account of the cultural transformation of the early nineteenth century is given by Foucault (1966, 314-354). According to Foucault, a fundamental epistemological rupture took place in the period around 1800, which he describes as the shift from the classical to the modern episteme. A crucial aspect of the rise of the modern episteme is the discovery of man as a transcendental subject that can also be the object of empirical knowledge. Furthermore, in contrast with the emphasis on stable taxonomies of the classical age, the modern episteme perceives the order of things as essentially historical.

Before the parting of the ways: Nederlandse filosofen over geschiedenis en geschiedwetenschap, 1920-1970

Institutionally, the flourishing of Dutch philosophy of history after the 1970s was primarily connected with history programmes and departments. Dutch philosophers, on the other hand, have not shown much interest in philosophy of history in the past four decades. Before 1970 this situation was completely different: philosophy of history was an important theme in Dutch academic philosophy. It is sometimes assumed that philosophy of history in The Netherlands before the 1970s mainly involved speculation about the meaning of the historical process from a religious perspective. Most academic philosophers, however, rejected more speculative forms of philosophy of history, and focused on a critical analysis of the foundations of historiography. This article examines the work of four Dutch philosophers of history in the period between 1920 and 1970, Goedewaagen, Pos, Kuypers, and Beerling, and positions their work within the historical development of Dutch philosophy. The strong interest in philosophy of history before 1970 and its sudden disappearance thereafter is explained by the late occurrence in The Netherlands of the parting of the ways between analytic and continental philosophy.

Historical research after the demise of the grand narratives [Review of: A. Megill (2007) Historical knowledge, historical error: a contemporary guide to practice]

In 1874, Friedrich Nietzsche published a short text with the title On the Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life. The theme he addressed in this book is the position of historical knowledge in the social and cultural setting of his time. According to Nietzsche, late nineteenth-century Germany suffers from an excess of history that threatens its vitality. Particularly dangerous in his eyes is the wide-spread tendency among his contemporaries to regard history as a collection of pure facts without a direct use for their lives. Nietzsche, however, considered the view that historiography should be practiced as an objective science an extremely harmful perspective. In his opinion, there are three healthy ways of relating to the past. In the monumental perspective on history, we look at the past in search of examples of great men and great deeds that can serve as sources of inspiration for our actions in the present. The central aspect of the antiquarian view of history is preservation; in this relationship to the past, people venerate the seemingly insignificant history of, for instance, their own town or village. The critical approach to the past wants to redress injustice in the present by showing that it is the result of a contingent historical development. Crucial in each of these ways of relating to the past is the equilibrium between memory and forgetting: People only incorporate the knowledge of past events that they can use in their lives. In Historical Knowledge, Historical Error: A Contemporary Guide to Practice, Allan Megill analyzes the role of historical knowledge in contemporary society in terms that are comparable to Nietzsche’s terms, although Megill