Richard Whatmore – författare

Att lära sig hantera en kris är centralt i människans tillvaro. Krig, revolutioner och pandemier är återkommande företeelser i mänsklighetens historia. I denna antologi undersöker tjugofem världsledande forskare hur olika samhällen reagerar i sådana situationer. De belyser människans unika förmåga till anpassning och omorientering. En kris medför problem men också möjligheter.

Antologin utges i en rikt illustrerad utgåva med vackert klotband. Huvudredaktörer är Mattias Hessérus och Iain Martin.

Wars, revolutions and pandemics are recurring phenomena in human history. In this anthology twenty-five world-leading scholars describe and analyse how different societies handle these situations, and highlight humanity s unprecedented capacity for adaption and reorientation. A crisis entails problems, but also opportunities. The anthology is published in a richly illustrated clothbound edition. 

Editors are Kurt Almqvist, Mattias Hessérus and Iain Martin.

The fear of living in the end times has a long history. In Decadence and Decay, a group of distinguished international scholars describe how societies over time have handled and interpreted the concept of decline. In times of unrest and transition, declinism the notion that a culture or civilisation is headed towards irreversible decline tends to capture the public imagination.  The essays in this volume address how notions of decadence and decay have been used both as opprobrium and as a form of self-definition and empowerment an instrument to protect individualism against collectivistic oppression. From ancient Rome to the present, ideas and expressions of decadence and decay have played a critical role in how we perceive the world.

Brought to you by Penguin.A landmark study of the Enlightenment from an eminent historianThe End of Enlightenment offers a radical re-evaluation of one of the most important moments in human history. Tracing around the world the changing perspectives of economists, philosophers, politicians and polemicists, historian Richard Whatmore argues that, for figures as diverse as David Hume, Edmund Burke, Adam Smith and Mary Wollstonecraft, the Enlightenment was a profound failure. They had strived to replace superstition with reason, fanaticism with toleration, but witnessed instead terror and revolution, corruption, gross commercial excess and the continued growth of violent empire.Returning us to the tumultuous events and ideas of the eighteenth century, and digging deep into the thought of the men and women who defined their age, The End of Enlightenment is a lucid exploration of disillusion and intellectual transformation, a brilliant meditation on our continued assumptions about the past, and a glimpse of the different ways our world might be structured.©2023 Richard Whatmore (P)2023 Penguin Audio

A bloody episode that epitomised the political dilemmas of the eighteenth centuryIn 1798, members of the United Irishmen were massacred by the British amid the crumbling walls of a half-built town near Waterford in Ireland. Many of the Irish were republicans inspired by the French Revolution, and the site of their demise was known as Geneva Barracks. The Barracks were the remnants of an experimental community called New Geneva, a settlement of Calvinist republican rebels who fled the continent in 1782. The British believed that the rectitude and industriousness of these imported revolutionaries would have a positive effect on the Irish populace. The experiment was abandoned, however, after the Calvinists demanded greater independence and more state money for their project. Terrorists, Anarchists, and Republicans tells the story of a utopian city inspired by a spirit of liberty and republican values being turned into a place where republicans who had fought for liberty were extinguished by the might of empire.Richard Whatmore brings to life a violent age in which powerful states like Britain and France intervened in the affairs of smaller, weaker countries, justifying their actions on the grounds that they were stopping anarchists and terrorists from destroying society, religion and government. The Genevans and the Irish rebels, in turn, saw themselves as advocates of republican virtue, willing to sacrifice themselves for liberty, rights and the public good. Terrorists, Anarchists, and Republicans shows how the massacre at Geneva Barracks marked an end to the old Europe of diverse political forms, and the ascendancy of powerful states seeking empire and markets—in many respects the end of enlightenment itself.

What is intellectual history?

Those who practice intellectual history have described themselves as eavesdroppers upon the conversations of the past, explorers of alien ideological worlds, and translators between historic societies and our own, while their critics have often derided them as narrow-mindedly studying the ideas of dead white men. Some consider the discipline to be among the most important in the humanities and social sciences because it facilitates a better understanding of contemporary ideological programmes and facilitates their rational evaluation.

In this engaging and refreshing introduction to the field, Richard Whatmore begins by examining the historical development of intellectual history, before dissecting its various methodological debates. He presents various alternative ways in which we should think about intellectual history, as well as presenting his own very clear definition of the field. Drawing on a wide range of historical examples, Whatmore shows how ideas - philosophical, political, religious, scientific, artistic - originated in their historical context and how they were both shaped by, and helped to shape, the societies in which they originated. He ends by casting a critical eye over the current state of intellectual history, and a brief discussion of how it might develop in the future.

What is Intellectual History? will become an essential textbook for scholars and students of intellectual history, philosophy, politics, and the humanities.

A Companion to Intellectual History provides an in-depth survey of the practice of intellectual history as a discipline.

Named Outstanding Academic Title of 2016 by Choice Magazine, a publication of the American Library Association