History and Theory after the Fall: An Essay on Interpretation by Fred Weinstein

The University of Chicago Press

History and Theory after the FallAn Essay on Interpretation\nAuthor(s): Fred Weinstein\nFormat: Hardback\nPublisher: The University of Chicago Press, United States\nImprint: University of Chicago Press\nISBN-13: 9780226886060, 978-0226886060\nSynopsis\nIn this ambitious work, Fred Weinstein confronts the obstacles that have increasingly frustrated our attempts to explain social and historical reality. Traditionally, we have relied on history and social theory to describe the ways people understand the world they live in. But the ordering explanations we have always usedderived from the classical social theories originally forged by Marx, Tocqueville, Weber, Durkheim, Freudhave collapsed. \n\nIn the wake of this collapse or \""fall,\"" the rival claims of fiction, psychoanalysis, sociology, anthropology, and history have created the dilemma of radical relativism, the prospect of multiple interpretations of any complex historical event. The basic strategy of social theory and the social .