Table of Contents
Preface
PAST/PRESENT
The distinction between past and present in psychology
The distinction between past and present in light of linguistics
The distinction between past and present in primitive thought
General reflections on the distinction between past and present in historical consciousness
The evolution of the relation between past and present in European thought from ancient Greece to the nineteenth century
The ghost of the past, the history of the present, and the fascination with the future in the twentieth century
ANTIQUE (ANCIENT)/MODERN
An ambiguous Western pairing
In this pair the modern is the main problem
The ambiguity of the antique (ancient): Greco-Roman antiquity and other antiquities
The Modern and its copetitors: Modern and New, Modern and Progress
Antique (ancient)/modern and history: Quarrels between Ancients and Moderns in preindustrial Europe from the sixth to the eighteenth centuries
Antique (ancient)/modern and history: Modernism, modernization, modernity in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries
Domains that reveal modernism
The historical conditions of the recognition of modernism
The ambiguity of the modern
MEMORY
Ethnic Memory
The Rise of Memory: From Orality to Writing, from Prehistory to Antiquity
Memory in the Middle Ages: Western Europe
The Progress of Written and Figured Memory from the Renaissance to the Present
Contemporary Revolutions in Memory
Conclusion: The Stake of Memory
HISTORY
Paradoxes and Ambiguities of History
Is History a science of the past, or is it true that "there is only contemporary history"?
Knowledge and power: Objectivity and the manipulation of the past
The singular and the universal: Generalizations and regularities in history
The Historical Mentality: Men and the Past
Philosophies of History
History as a Science: The Historian's Craft
History Today
Endnotes
Bibliography
About the Author
Index