Leon J. Goldstein - Conceptual tension : essays on kinship, politics, and individualism

Conceptual Tension

LEXINGTON BOOKS

Lanham Boulder New York London

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Goldstein, Leon J.

Conceptual tension : essays on kinship, politics, and individualism / Leon J. Goldstein ; edited by David Schultz ; foreword by Vincent C. Colapietro.

pages cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-4985-0422-5 (cloth : alk. paper) -- ISBN 978-1-4985-0423-2 (electronic)

1. Concepts. 2. Social sciences--Philosophy. I. Title.

BD181.G65 2015

121'.4--dc23

2014036922

TM The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

Printed in the United States of America

Leon J. Goldstein, 19272002

Leon J. Goldstein retired from the State University of New York at
Binghamton in May 2002, after nearly four decades on the faculty. His first post-retirement project was to prepare for publication a manuscript on the subject of conceptual openness and conceptual tension. When he passed away unexpectedly weeks later, that manuscript, handwritten on yellow legal pads, rested unfinished in his briefcase. This book is the culmination of that project.

He had stated his desire that this book be dedicated to his children and their families. Instead, it serves as the final testament to an academic career that spanned nearly half a century. His family is indebted to David Schultz, his student and colleague, for seeing his project to its fruition.

Claire R. Goldstein

Adina T. Samson

Daniel I. Goldstein

Vincent M. Colapietro

Historical Knowing: A Belated Invention, Historical Achievement, and Ongoing Task

Leon J. Goldsteins contribution to the philosophy of history deserves a much wider audience than it has yet garnered. This contribution needs to be broadly envisioned, since it encompasses a reconceptualization of just what concepts are as much as an account of how we can come to know the past; a background theory of human knowledge in general almost as much as a foreground explication of historical knowledge. That is, Goldsteins is self-consciously a contribution to our understanding of concepts, knowledge, and the enterprise of philosophy itself, not just the philosophy of history narrowly conceived. What is, on occasion, somewhat missing from his other writings is a thick sense of history and (what ultimately amounts to the same thing) a detailed elaboration of the implications of his theory for dealing with concrete instances of historical phenomena. In these essays (especially the ones on the institution of parliamentary governance and the language of familial relationships), however, we are given just this sense, just these elaborations.

For this and other reasons, then, this volume, so insightfully introduced by David Schultz, promises to assist in winning a wider hearing than Goldsteins original contribution. To be sure, Goldsteins contribution has been far from ignored; indeed, it has caught the attention of such contemporary philosophers as John Passmore, Steven Lukes, and J. W. N. Watkins. The prestigious journal History and Theory has made it the focus of attention. A deeply informed scholar such as Luke OSullivan has written an exemplary overview of Goldsteins innovative behest to philosophical thought, providing a detailed sketch of an intellectual development beginning with a positivist approach to historical knowledge and ending with an original but not at all idiosyncratic account of historical knowing.

The accent here falls more on processes than results, more on knowing as an ongoing endeavor than knowledge as a definitive achievement, though for the practitioners (for those actually engaged in inquiry, in the task of making discoveries about the past) these processes are to be judged in terms of their results. Some processes are sterile, others fecund; some unproductive, others prolific of results. So the processes, procedures, and practices by which our knowledge of the past is acquired, revised, and reconfigured are, in Goldsteins account, ultimately more important than the specific results. In brief, he offers more an account of knowing than one of knowledge, though of course knowing and knowledge cannot be disjoined or separated from one another. Even so, the accent falls on the activity of the historian. In turn, Goldstein is deeply appreciative of the historical fact that this activity has itself emerged historically as nothing less than the ongoing research into the available evidence regarding past events, actions, and developments. Put otherwise, the institution of historical modes of knowing, much like that of parliamentary modes of governance or that of strictly scientific methods of inquiry, is itself an historical achievement or, more accurately, series of such achievements.

Historical knowing as a disciplined form of human endeavor was not achieved in a single stroke or at one determinate time. It is rather the dramatic result of a continuing series of distinct though related forms of human striving. It is certainly not given at the outset or, just as surely, not won once and for all at any moment in the flux of history. It is not only a precarious but also a belated achievement (or series of accomplishments) instituted in the course of history itself. While mythically Athena might have been born fully armed from the brow of Zeus, history was not full-born from the brow of Herodotus. The recounting of the past by figures such as Herodotus and Thucydides is but an inaugural stage in an ongoing process. For centuries before their formal recollection of their defining histories, the fateful drama of human history had been unfolding. History in the epistemic sense was instituted in history in a more inescapable but also more inchoate sense than the formally epistemic one. Humans are ineluctably caught up in the movements of history; but they are not necessarily conscious of this, and far less are they knowledgeable about the facts or details of the historical conditions of their actual lives.

In this sense, then, historical knowing is a belated achievement. Herodotus no more instituted historical knowing as we have come to know it than (to use one of Goldsteins own favorite examples) King John instituted parliament as it, over the course of centuries, has come to be and to be known (the two processes here being inseparable), no more than Galileo instituted the defining procedures of experimental science. But what occurred at Runnymede in the one instance and at Pisa, Padua, and other locations in Italy in the other instance are unquestionably defining moments in an ongoing history, though the significance of these moments can only be ascertained in retrospect.