Whether history or anthropology is the most fundamental social science remains still a controversial and undecided issue. For a proper understanding of this instructive controversy, the presuppositions of these two disciplines need to be critically and philosophically reviewed. Otherwise the true perspective of the controversy remains undisclosed and therefore unintelligible.
A close and comprehensive understanding of language as the basic form of the life-world provides the cues necessary to show correctly the complementary relation between anthropology and history. That synchronic or...

This collection of essays deals with some pressing social, cultural and moral concerns. It addresses problems of trans-cultural and intro-cultural understanding due to diverse perceptions of various themes. Moving beyond Cultural Otherness its aim is to evolve linkages between alternative visions of convergent character avoiding the extremes of hegemonic globalization and radical relativism. Themes included are: alternative perceptions of 1. history and historiography; 2. flux; 3. satisfactions, and obstacles in cross-cultural understanding; 4. A-self and other; 5. cultural objects; 6....

This engaging, wide-ranging study in comparative social and political philosophy gives a well-argued account of how ideological and even utopian views, such as normative communication, development and justice, are sociologically rooted. It also shows how this fact has been reflected in the social history of Asian countries like India and China, as well as some Western countries during the last two centuries.
To illustrate the underlying concepts, reference is made to influential thinkers, both from the East and West, from Hegel and James Mill to Marx and Maozedong, and from Gandhi to...