Posted by andy bolger on December 05, 2002 at -1:14:32 from 62.7.41.60 user beardbiter.
In Reply to: Re: The evolution of language, history and all that! posted by Jonathan Labaree on December 04, 2002 at 21:29:08:
Karl Marx summed up the human agency/ structure debate quite neatly when he said “we make our own history but not under conditions of our own choosing. ( Well actually he said something more like “Man makes his own history)
And as for changing history, we may not be able to change the past but I don’t think it is possible to separate history from our knowledge of history. This, of course, we change all the time, giving it an apparent course which explains the present and justifies the future.
Collingwood dealt with this rather well which brings us into spitting distance of AR although I fear it is still a case of "reet desert, wrong tent"