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Why Bother with History?: Ancient, Modern and Postmodern Motivations

Why Bother with History?: Ancient, Modern and Postmodern Motivations
By Dr Beverley Southgate

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Product Description

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Why Bother With History?
argues for an increasingly important role for a revitalised historical study. Examining the motivations of past historians, the author rejects the ancient aspiration to a 'history for its own sake' and argues that historians' importance lies in their own adoption of a moral standpoint, from which a story of the past can be told, that facilitates the attainment of a future we desire.
Inevitably controversial, in that it challenges many of the assumptions of modernist history, this is an interdisciplinary book, which draws in particular on psychology and literature.

Product Details

  • Amazon Sales Rank: #875879 in Books
  • Published on: 2000-11-29
  • Original language: English
  • Number of items: 1
  • Binding: Paperback
  • 200 pages

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover
In the wake of heated debates on the nature of history, `Why Bother With History?' considers its very purpose- why should we bother with it anyway? At a time when the subject is under threat both from political `modernisers' and from some postmodernist theorists, Beverley Southgate argues for an increasingly important role for a revitalised historical study.
Rejecting ancient and modern aspirations to a history `for its own sake' produced by supposedly objective and attached authors, Southgate proposes rather that historians' importance lies in their own moral standpoint. Their story of the past facilitates the future we desire.
Focusing on history's relationship with-
Psychology
Politics and Power
Religion
Education
Postmodernity
and using global examples from the ancient world to the present, this book is timely and inevitably controversial, challenging many of the assumptions of modernist history.
Beverley Southgate is Reader Emeritus, University of Hertfordshire. His many publications include `History- What and Why?' (1996).