Description
Book SynopsisCity Intelligible seeks to integrate a transcendental philosophical anthropology of commoditisation before industrialisation with a social and cultural, thus empirical anthropology of commodity production and exchange that is global, thus inter-cultural. It treats commodification as a singular and privileged evidence of the universal status of human reasoning, and one that grounds the translational character of human exchange throughout the early centuries, and yet that simultaneously founds ubiquitous cultural differentiation. The book constitutes, therefore, a refutation of the predominant tendency in the humanities to represent cultural difference as inhibiting the very possibility of effective intercultural translation. It treats the factors of economic history as forms of cultural expression, but determined, in their turn, by a continuum of complex societal formation from the very beginnings of intensive agricultural and social settlement. It seeks to derive evidence for the universal foundations of human reasoning through analysis of the culture of commoditisation in marrying a thoroughgoing Kantian analysis with the historical evidence, an approach aspiring to ground the very concept and possibility of a universal human cultural nature underlying all human differentiation.
Table of ContentsForeword by Ravi Ahuja Acknowledgements Notice to the Reader List of Illustrations More than a Preface or Introduction!: The Transcendental Constitution of the Cultural, Historical and Empirical Object: The Problem and Task of the Two Anthropologies 1Initial Notice—an Order of Reading 2The Subject Matter and the Project 3To Constitute History and Society … the Two Taxonomies 4The Three Criticisms 5A Critical and Transcendental Anthropology of Intercultural Translatability—the Question of Method 6Final Resolution of a Dilemma: The A-Priori, at Once Universal and Empirical 7The Composition of the Book Part 1: Artifice & Nature: A Kantian and Historical Anthropology of Commoditisation before Industrialisation 1 From the Closed World to the Open Continuum 1Complexity, Language & Uncertainty 2Order, Unit & Convenience in Economic History. Language-Use as Problem 3Production and Marketing as an Issue of Complexity 4Alternative Principles of Order & Method iThe Propositions iiSampling as Method iiiResources for Sampling, and a Hypothesis ATextile Market-Censuses BRaw Cottons CPre-Spun Wools & Woollen Yarns DThe Knowledge Problem ELists of Coinages Brought to Particular Markets 2 Unpacking, Disengaging and Linking 1The Production and Marketing of Type: Phases, Extensions, Disengagements and Articulations iThe « Raw Materials » of Production AEmpirical Linkage BInitial Implications iiCloth Typologies iiiSpeciation in Field & Market (Autonomy for Connection) 2Quality and Number 3A Second Object World 1The Continuum iA Problem of Method iiCommodity Nature AAn Artificial Object World, & Its Taxonomy BMarketisation as Communication aMarkets & Complexity bThe Issue of Translatability—Markets & Frontiers cMarkets & Information 2Kant’s Tower of Babel & the Cultural Universal iMetaphor & Construction iiA Kantian Approach to Commoditisation & Translatability iiiThe Universal and Cultural Difference AThe Problem of the Very Idea of a Universal Culture and Mind BFirst Invalid—the Biological A-Priori CSecond Invalid—Plurality of Societies as a Priori DAn Answer—Historical Generation of the Universal as a History of Differentiation 3Cultural and Natural Space/Times iIntroduction. for an Explanation of Difference iiNewtonian Space/Time & Practical Knowledge iiiSpecies Construction and Its Transcendental Space/Time ivExtension in Space/Time ARephrasing the Coordinates of Choice & Limit with Respect to Reason BNeither Closed nor Infinite, but Finite & Illimitable aA Unity of Formative and Constructional Principle of the Exotic bBut What Kind of Unity? cA Poesis of the Incomparable dNot an Infinity but Finitude eA Finitude Closed and Bounded? or Open and Illimitable? Our Return to Kant! fThinking the Object into Being and the Reality-Status of That Thought gAn Edifice Built Only with Matter Accessible to Human Kind CFurther Thoughts about the Meaning of a « Universal » Culture of Practice and Mind vIntersubjectivity and Non-Essentialist Construction 4Postface Part 2: Taxonomy & Commodity: In Global Transfers of Plant Forms and Plant Products into Early-modern Europe (the cultural production of nature, or the foundations of early botany) Introduction to Part 2: Plant Artifice/Plant Nature 4A General Framework 1Introduction: Artifice & Nature 2Contexts, Empirical & Intellectual 3Foundational Difficulties iProblem Domains iiSubstantive Discussion AThe Continuum of Culture, Language and Systematics, and Thus Translatability BThe Cultural Specificity of Any Grown Plant. Selection in Artificial Botanies CMarket Determination of « Artificial » Plant Variation DA Partial Explanation in Terms of Transmission of Cultural Universals, in the Kantian Sense 5Foundations of Botany in Western Europe 1Europe and the World: The Phases and Aspects of Botanical Taxonomy and Abstraction iMedical Botany, Horta Botanica, Taxonomies & Pharmacopoeia iiThe Concept of Type, Agricultural Part-Products & Market Continua 6A Postface: Narrative Style, Evolutionary Form, and the Shaping of an Early Science: Botany Appendix 1Order in Artificial and Spontaneous Natures Appendix 2« The Phenomenology Lesson ». A Commentary on the Illustrations Bibliography 1Introduction: Selection and Translation 2Kant, Hegel and Husserl 54 3General Bibliography Index
