Who's afraid of determinism? The ambivalence of macro-historical inquiry

Journal of the Philosophy of History

Volumn 1, Issue 3, 2007, Pages 346-364

  Adcock, Robert ^a  

^a GEORGE WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

Cause; Chance; Contingency; Determinism; Explanation; Free Will

Indexed keywords

EID: 62449126731     PISSN: 1872261X     EISSN: 18722636     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1163/187226307X229407     Document Type: Article

References (32)

1. B. Moore, Jr., Reflections on the Causes of Human Misery and upon Certain Proposals to Eliminate Them (Beacon Press: Boston, 1972), 10
2. E. H. Carr, What Is History? (New York: Knopf, 1965), 121-122
3. This formulation of determinism is especially indebted to Ted Honderich. T. Honderich, How Free Are You? The Determinism Problem, 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002)
4. T. Honderich, On Determinism and Freedom (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2005)
5. Another recent overview and defense of determinism differs from Honderich's by explicating this stance's view of causality using a possible-worlds framework, see D. Dennett, Freedom Evolves (New York: Viking, 2003)
6. For overviews of the state of recent philosophical debates and examples of philosophers elaborating the various stances reviewed here, see the recent edited volumes: R. Kane (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Free Will (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002)
7. J. K. Campbell, M. O'Rourke and D. Shier (eds.), Freedom and Determinism (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2004)
8. Marxist determinism is, for example, not discussed in either of edited collections of contemporary philosophical literature cited in fn. 5
9. B. Moore, Jr., "Strategy in Social Science" in Political Power and Social Theory (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1965), 232
10. B. Moore, Jr., Injustice: The Social Bases of Obedience and Revolt (White Plains, NY: ME Sharpe, 1978), 500
11. J. Mahoney and D. Rueschemeyer (eds.), Comparative Historical Analysis in the Social Sciences (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003)
12. On the contemporary orientation of macro-historical inquiry as summarized (and celebrated) by a philosopher of social science, see D. Little, "Explaining Large-Scale Historical Change", Philosophy of the Social Sciences, 30(1) (2000), 89-112
13. Here I am rejecting a stance I took in the initial version of this paper, where I followed Moore in treating rejection of mono-causal explanations as a step away from determinism. See R. Adcock, "'Determinism' and Comparative-Historical Analysis: Clarifying Concepts and Retrieving Past Insights", Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Boston, August 29, 2002. While that stance captures a conceptual move made by some macro-historical social scientists, it also reflects and extends conceptual confusions. As such it should be rejected when the goal of analysis is - as mine is here - a critical clarification of discussions among macro-historical scholars
14. Along these lines, the Oxford Companion to Philosophy identifies historical determinism as "a conception of human affairs according to which the historical process conforms to developmental patterns or laws that render its constitute events necessary or inevitable." s.v. "determinism, historical", Oxford Companion to Philosophy, ed. T. Honderich (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995)
15. I. Berlin, Historical Inevitability (London: Oxford University Press, 1954)
16. E. Nagel, "Determinism in History" in W. Dray (eds.), Philosophical Analysis and History (New York: Harper & Row, 1966)
17. W. Dray, Philosophy of History, 2nd ed. (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1993), Ch. 6
18. Mahoney and Rueschemeyer, Comparative Historical Analysis
19. Little, "Explaining Large-Scale Historical Change"
20. J. Mahoney, "Path Dependence in Historical Sociology", Theory and Society, 29 (2000), 507-548, 514
21. Bendix and Moore engaged this anxiety recurrently, but their most extensive reflections are found in books they wrote later in their careers. R. Bendix, Force, Fate, and Freedom: On Historical Sociology (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984)
22. Moore, Injustice
23. Their anxiety has recently been restated - but without the language of "determinism" - by Ira Katznelson. I. Katznelson, "Periodization and Preferences: Reflections on Purposive Action in Comparative Historical Social Science" in Mahoney and Rueschemeyer (eds.), Comparative Historical Analysis
24. The specific phrase is Bendix's. See R. Bendix, Nation-Building and Citizenship (New York: Wiley, 1964), 16
25. Bendix, Force, Fate, and Freedom, 55
26. B. Moore, Jr., Terror and Progress USSR: Some Sources of Change and Stability in the Soviet Dictatorship (Cambridge, MA, 1954), 221
27. The classic argument that explaining actions in terms of desires and beliefs is an exercise in causal explanation is D. Davidson, "Actions, Reasons, and Causes" in M. Brodbeck (ed.), Readings in the Philosophy of the Social Sciences (New York: Macmillan, 1968)
28. The continuing philosophical debate in this area is reviewed in connection with compatibilism and free-will indeterminism by R. Kane, A Contemporary Introduction to Free Will (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), Ch. 6
29. For reviews of these criticisms of macro-historical practices and responses to them, see J. Mahoney, "Strategies of Causal Assessment in Comparative Historical Analysis" in Mahoney and Rueschemeyer (eds.), Comparative Historical Analysis
30. D. Waldner, "Anti Anti-determinism", Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Boston, August 29, 2002
31. Honderich, How Free Are You?
32. Honderich, On Determinism