Maurice Mandelbaum Knihy

The book explores the intellectual landscape of the nineteenth century, focusing on philosophical thought while integrating insights from social sciences. It examines the common beliefs and attitudes that emerged regarding history, humanity, and reason among a diverse group of thinkers from England, France, and Germany. The author traces continuity within philosophical traditions and addresses the challenges these views present to philosophy. Critical discussions at the end of key sections delve into the implications of these beliefs on philosophical inquiry.

Focusing on the nature of historical writing, the book explores key issues such as the discipline's structure, the reliability of historical knowledge, and the concept of explanation in history. It is divided into three parts: the first analyzes various historical inquiries, the second delves into causal explanations in both everyday life and science, and the final part assesses the objectivity of historians' work, highlighting the limits of objectivity in certain historical narratives.

While each essay is independent of the others, and the argument of each must therefore be judged on its own merits, one theme is common to all: that critical realism, as Mandelbaum calls it, is a viable epistemological position, even though some schools of thought hold it in low esteem.

Mandelbaum discusses chance, choice, and necessity at length and reaches some provocative conclusions about the ways in which they are interwoven in human affairs.