The Realness of Things Past

Oxford University Press Inc

The Realness of Things PastAncient Greece and Ontological History\nAuthor(s): Greg Anderson\nFormat: Paperback\nPublisher: Oxford University Press Inc, United States\nImprint: Oxford University Press Inc\nISBN-13: 9780197576700, 978-0197576700\nSynopsis\nThe Realness of Things Past proposes a new paradigm of historical practice. It questions the way we conventionally historicize the experiences of non-modern peoples, western and non-western, and makes the case for an alternative. It shows how our standard analytical devices impose modern, dualist metaphysical conditions upon all non-modern realities, thereby authorizing us to align those realities with our own modern ontological commitments, fundamentally altering their contents in the process. The net result is a practice that homogenizes the past's many different ways of being human. To produce histories that are more ethically defensible, more philosophically robust, and more historically meaningful, we need to take an ontological.