Volume 65
Written By Elizabeth Boyle
ARTICLES
Antoon De Baets, "Preambular History: The View of the Past in Key Human Rights Instruments," History and Theory 65, no. 1 (2026).
This article claims that the preambles of foundational human rights instruments, taken together, articulate a consistent view of the past. This view is firmly rooted in historical processes, embedded in metaphysical truths, and enacted in service of the future. Part 1 assesses the strengths and weaknesses of the “preambular approach to history” and selects four instruments from a group of twenty-two: the United Nations Charter, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Genocide Convention, and the International Criminal Court Statute. Part 2 reconstructs the discussions during which the historical recitals in the preambles of these instruments emerged. Part 3 analyzes these findings. In writing the historical recitals, the drafters of these key instruments opted for either the approach of the contemporary historian (the “recent history approach”) or the approach of the philosopher of history (“the holistic approach”). Both approaches are explained and compared. The conclusion contains a thought experiment in which the human rights view of the past embedded in these historical recitals is articulated.
Alf Lüdtke and Alexandra Oeser, "Eigensinn and Domination in Liberal and Illiberal Societies," History and Theory 65, no. 1 (2026).
This article is a posthumously published text that was written by Alf Lüdtke and Alexandra Oeser but was left unfinished when Lüdtke died in February 2019. It examines two central notions—and their articulations—that Lüdtke and Oeser use differently in their work: domination and Eigensinn. On domination, it focuses on perspectives of Max Weber's work and different translations in English and French that have led to distinct receptions of the notion of domination in these languages. While locating the notion of Eigensinn back in its 1980s academic context, this article reconceptualizes Eigensinn as a blind spot of Weber's definition of domination that addresses the question of how people produce a “will to obey,” which Weber's work does not tackle. The article also debates the possibilities of using the notion of Eigensinn for liberal and illiberal societies. Oeser has written an introduction to guide the reader through the text and to recall the conditions surrounding its production.
João Ohara, "On Historical (Anti-)Realism," History and Theory 65, no. 1 (2026).
The problem of historical realism has gained some new momentum recently, with a fresh challenge to what is taken to be an anti-realist hegemony in the theory and philosophy of history. Unfortunately, this has also provided the opportunity for the reheating of old polemics and lazy scholarship that characterized the 1990s reaction to “postmodernism.” Ill-defined questions distract us from more important issues. Here, I offer a map that aims to clarify the conceptual space. I distinguish between a metaphysical problem, which is the problem of historical realism proper, and an epistemological problem, which is sometimes treated under the same phrase but is more adequately called the problem of historical skepticism. I then consider what the targets of each of these discussions are and map the conceptual space of possibilities in them.
F. R. Ankersmit, "Historical Reality: A Manifesto," History and Theory 65, no. 1 (2026).
From the times of Herodotus and Thucydides until deep into the eighteenth century, the eyewitness account (or “autopsy”) was the model for historical knowledge. The eighteenth-century Historical Revolution replaced this emphasis on autopsy by introducing the notion of the point of view, as explicated in Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz's Monadology. That notion radically separated the historian's present from the world of the eyewitness's past. Historical knowledge was, from this point on, essentially ex post facto, and autopsy was reduced to the status of that which offers essentially questionable historical evidence. This amounted to the greatest revolution in Western historical thought, and it led to the birth of historist professional writing as it still exists today. Unfortunately, after the 1850s, historist reflection on professional historical writing was abandoned for a neo-Kantian approach. Since then, many other approaches have been tried out on professional historical writing; pragmatism is the most recent variant. None of these approaches produced lasting results, nor are any such results to be expected. Results were never cumulative: Each time the blackboard was wiped clean again in order to write a new attempt. This is because historical writing must be seen from its historist inside and not from an external perspective. This article is a manifesto that invites philosophers of history to recognize that historist professional historical writing was born from Leibniz's Monadology and that Leibniz's thought is, therefore, the inside of its inside. Accepting this is necessary in order to bring about a more fruitful and, above all, more interesting philosophy of history than we've had for almost two centuries.
REVIEW ARTICLE
Martin Jay, "Origami Philosophy of History," History and Theory 65, no. 1 (2026).
Drawing on Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz's monadological metaphysics, with its nominalist emphasis on the integrity of the individual, the eminent Dutch philosopher of history Franklin Rudolf Ankersmit proposes a radically new interpretation of the way historical representations create “historical reality” based on the “death” of the no longer actual past. Representation: The Birth of Historical Reality from the Death of the Past is an unapologetically baroque exercise that seeks to fashion a unified argument by drawing on the most diverse of elements. Gilles Deleuze's emphasis on the importance of the “fold” in his study of Leibniz and the baroque gives us an insight into the origami figure that results, a figure that is circular, closed on itself, and impermeable. After attempting to reconstruct the logic of Ankersmit's convoluted argument, this review article raises questions about his claim that the past can ever be unequivocally “dead,” his reliance on Leibniz's “principle of sufficient reason” to justify “historical rationality,” and his hope that historicism can be revived on the basis of a monadological metaphysics.
REVIEW ESSAYS
Serge Grigoriev on The Exemplifying Past: A Philosophy of History by Chiel van den Akker, History and Theory 65, no. 1 (2026).
David A. Hollinger on Popularizing the Past: Historians, Publishers, and Readers in Postwar America by Nick Witham, History and Theory 65, no. 1 (2026).
ARTICLES
Andréa Delestrade, "Universality in the Climate Catastrophe: Rethinking Chakrabarty’s Anthropocene Philosophy of History with Merleau-Ponty’s Philosophy of Nature," History and Theory 65, no. 2 (2026).
This article critically examines Dipesh Chakrabarty's concept of Anthropocene history, a philosophy of history that is designed to respond to the universal challenge of the Anthropocene. It uses the work of Maurice Merleau-Ponty to mitigate the pitfalls of Chakrabarty's concept and to propose an alternative relation between nature and history. I argue that the problem of Chakrabarty's Anthropocene history resides not in its use of the category of the universal per se but in its insufficient articulation of the particular. Even if he is correct in asserting that it is impossible to conceptualize the ecological crisis within the modern logic of history and that it is necessary to conceptualize the ecological crisis from a non-Eurocentric perspective, Anthropocene history still leaves the modern structure of history untouched, resulting in a structure that is unable to meaningfully articulate particularity and universality because of its reliance on teleology and phenomenological emptiness. With this in mind, I show how Merleau-Ponty's conceptual redefinition of nature as a foundational universality, when combined with the chiasmic intertwining of history and nature and a reflection on the concept of the institution as a point of passage between nature and history, enables us to rearticulate universality and particularity in the face of the ecological crisis. This in turn enables a freer conceptual navigation between the existential and political dimensions of the ecological crisis with which environmental philosophy is concerned.
Christopher Holman, "On the Idea of a Critical History of Political Thought: Textual Interpretation and Thinking in Constellations," History and Theory 65, no. 2 (2026).
This article intervenes in recent methodological debates in the history of political thought, particularly those involving the question of whether its practice should be considered primarily as a historical endeavor or as a philosophical endeavor. Moving beyond this binary, I propose an approach that utilizes both historical and philosophical techniques for the sake of recuperating the unintentional meaning embedded within any complex text. In order to clarify the operations characterizing such an approach, I take inspiration from early critical theory to develop an interpretive frame drawn from the philosophical notion of thinking in constellations. The analyst, mining the surplus of meaning that necessarily inheres in the work, can perform an original illocutionary act meant to advance a particular political end. Such an act may proceed through critically identifying the necessary gaps and ambiguities that traverse a substance that is never adequate to the thematization of the political world and reconstructing the text via the creative reorganization of its textual elements in new configurations, configurations that work to illuminate an otherwise concealed dimension of signification.
Christian de Pee, "The Naitō Hypostasis: Naitō Konan (1866–1934) and the Japanese Imperialist Legacy in the Historiography of Middle-Period China (800–1400 CE)," History and Theory 65, no. 2 (2026).
In 1955, Hisayuki Miyakawa published an article that sought to introduce American and European scholars to the work of the Japanese Sinologist Naitō Konan (1866–1934). Miyakawa drew particular attention to what he called the “Naitō hypothesis”—that is, Naitō’s argument that China became modern during the Song dynasty (960–1279). Miyakawa neglected to explain, however, that Naitō conceived his periodization of the Chinese past in order to interpret current political developments in Japan and China and shape current political decisions rather than to interpret historical documents and that Naitō adjusted his periodization as relations between Japan and China deteriorated. Naitō supported and justified Japanese imperialist and colonialist policies by writing newspaper articles and scholarly publications as well as by working for the Foreign Ministry, as his own sons and the Black Dragon Society (or Amur River Society) acknowledged after his death. Naitō’s historical publications and political activities closely resemble those of German historians of Poland and the Baltic during the Weimar and National-Socialist periods. This article recommends that historians of Middle-Period China (800–1400) stop honoring Naitō as a founding figure of their field, both because the image of Naitō they honor derives from deliberately misleading Cold War representations of him and his work and because the political purposes of his scholarship have lastingly compromised his assumptions, analytical terms, evidence, interpretations, and conclusions.
Francesca Trivellato, “‘The Normal Exception’: Edoardo Grendi, Microanalysis, and Generalizations,” History and Theory 65, no. 2 (2026).
“The normal exception” has long been a slogan of microhistory. This oxymoronic phrase is the iconic rendering of an incidental sentence that appeared in a 1977 article by Edoardo Grendi. His article, titled “Micro-analisi e storia sociale” (Microanalysis and Social History), is cited more often than it is read. In this issue of History and Theory, Grendi's seminal article appears in English for the first time. This companion piece introduces Grendi's contribution by situating it within contemporary debates between historians and anthropologists. It also sheds light on the fate of the concept of “the normal exception” among its supporters and detractors. Finally, it clarifies some of the possibilities that other Italian microhistorians have laid out for deriving generalizations from case studies.
Edoardo Grendi,, “‘The Normal Exception’: ‘Microanalysis and Social History’ (1977),” trans. Francesca Trivellato, History and Theory 65, no. 2 (2026).
“The normal exception” has long been a slogan of microhistory. This oxymoronic phrase is the iconic rendering of an incidental sentence that appeared in a 1977 article published by Edoardo Grendi in the Italian journal Quaderni storici, which functioned as the incubator of Italian microhistory. Grendi's article, titled “Micro-analisi e storia sociale” (Microanalysis and Social History), is here translated into English for the first time. Although foundational to the project of Italian microhistory, the article is not entirely self-explanatory. A companion piece by Francesca Trivellato in this issue of History and Theory places this contribution in the context of the historiographical debates of the time, traces its influence, examines the controversies it generated, and points to some of its continued heuristic potentials.
REVIEW ARTICLE
Jouni-Matti Kuukkanen, "Unwarrented Confidence: A Critical Review of The Poverty of Anti-Realism," History and Theory 65, no. 2 (2026).
The Poverty of Anti-Realism: Critical Perspectives on Postmodernist Philosophy of History, edited by Tor Egil Førland and Branko Mitrović, celebrates the new dawn of historical realism, which it claims supersedes the erroneous and harmful anti-realism. The volume indeed contributes to reinvigorating the debate surrounding realism and anti-realism and draws attention to a relatively neglected philosophical approach in the philosophy of historiography: realism. However, both the tone and content of this New Historical Realism leave much to be desired. The book displays unwarranted confidence regarding the quality of its content and its grasp of philosophical issues. Many of the essays in this volume exhibit a lack of understanding about the basic issues of realism and anti-realism and are riddled with conceptual confusions. Philosophical notions such as anti-realism, irrealism, postmodernism, idealism, and constructivism are used casually and even interchangeably. Although there are some glimmers of light and more measured approaches in the book, its broad-brush categories are premised on an us-against-them view of the scholarly debate, presenting the rival anti-realistic position simplistically as detrimental, deficient, and wholly objectionable. I end my article with a plea for prudent scholarship and reviewing in the philosophy of historiography and philosophy more generally.
REVIEW ESSAYS
Stefan Berger on Towards a Realist Philosophy of History by Adam Timmins, History and Theory 65, no. 2 (2026).
Udi Greenberg on The Question of Unworthy Life: Eugenics and Germany’s Twentieth Century by Dagmar Herzog, History and Theory 65, no. 2 (2026).
