Table of Contents

List of Illustrations

Notes on Contributors

Preface

I. Two Genealogies of Historical Teleology

1. Introduction: Teleology and History: Nineteenth-Century Fortunes of an Enlightenment Project
Henning Trüper (EHESS-CRH, Paris) with Dipesh Chakrabarty (University of Chicago, USA) and Sanjay Subrahmanyam (University of California, Los Angeles, USA)

2. The Politics of Eschatology: A Short Reading of the Long View
Sanjay Subrahmanyam (University of California, Los Angeles, USA)

II. Botched Vanishing Acts: On the Difficulties of Making Teleology Disappear

3. The ‘Vocation of Man’ – ‘Die Bestimmung des Menschen’: A Teleological Concept of the German Enlightenment and its Aftermath in the Nineteenth Century
Philip Ajouri (Deutsches Literaturarchiv, Marbach am Neckar, Germany)

4. Earth History and the Order of Society: William Buckland, the French Connection, and the Conundrum of Teleology
Marianne Sommer (University of Lucerne, Switzerland)

5. After Darwin: Teleology in German Philosophical Anthropology
Angus Nicholls (Queen Mary University London, UK)

III. Befriending Teleology: Writings Histories with Ends

6. Save Their Souls: Historical Teleology Goes to Sea in Nineteenth-Century Europe
Henning Trüper (Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Centre de Recherches Historiques, Paris, France)

7. Reading History in Colonial India: Three Nineteenth-Century Narratives and their Teleologies
Siddharth Satpathy (University of Hyderabad, India)

8. A Gift of Providence: Destiny as National History in Colonial India
Dipesh Chakrabarty (University of Chicago, USA)

IV. Teleology in the Revolutionary Polis

9. The ‘Democracy of Blood’: The Colours of Racial Fusion in Nineteenth-Century Spanish America
Francisco A. Ortega (Universidad Nacional de Colombia)

10. Between Context and Telos: Reviewing the Structures of International Law
Martti Koskenniemi (University of Helsinki, Finland)

11. Marxism and the Idea of Revolution: The Messianic Moment in Marx
Etienne Balibar (Université Paris 8, France/Columbia University, USA)

V. Translating Futures: Eschatology, History and the Individual

12. Religious Teleologies and Violence in the United States: The Case of John Brown
Carola Dietze (University of Giessen, Germany)

13. ‘But Was I Really Primed?’ Gershom Scholem’s Zionist Project
Gabriel Piterberg (University of California, Los Angeles, USA)

14. Catching Up to Oneself: Islam and the Representation of Humanity
Faisal Devji (Oxford University, UK)

VI. Historical Futures without Direction?

15. Autonomy in History: Teleology in Nineteenth-Century European Social and Political Thought
Peter Wagner (Universitat de Barcelona, Spain)

16. The Faces of Modernity: Crisis, Kairos, Chronos – Koselleck versus Hegel
Bo Stråth (University of Helsinki, Finland)

Index

Promotional Information

Examines how the European idea of historical teleology was taken up and worked out in diverse disciplinary and geographical contexts within and outside of Europe.

About the Author

Henning Trüper is a member of the School of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton University, USA and the Centre de Recherches Historiques, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris, France.

Dipesh Chakrabarty is Lawrence A. Kimpton Distinguished Service Professor in History, South Asian Languages and Civilizations at the University of Chicago, USA.

Sanjay Subrahmanyam is Distinguished Professor of History at the University of California, Los Angeles, USA.

Reviews

For almost two centuries, teleological conceptions of history defined a common condition for humanity with a limited selection of futures. The rich and wide-ranging essays comprising Historical Teleologies in the Modern World excavate teleology's multiple origins, contested pasts, and uncertain future. The book goes well beyond previous studies in its geographical breadth, methodological pluralism, and intellectual rigour and makes a striking contribution to world history, intellectual history, and the history of historical thinking.
*David Armitage, Lloyd C. Blankfein Professor of History, Harvard University, USA*

With roots in antiquity, teleology is nonetheless a modern concept. This penetrating and wide-ranging volume reveals the global career of teleological patterns in historical thought and political action since the Enlightenment. Teleological thinking was not the province of any one tradition, religious or secular, but of many. Treating many parts of the world, the volume shows that a plurality of historical teleologies and their multiple temporalities provoked equally complex political tensions. Above all, if these essays give us new vantage points from which to critique the idea of historical teleology, they also demonstrate its tenacious hold upon the modern imaginary.
*Warren Breckman, University of Pennsylvania, USA*