Other Martin Davies

In my 35 years at the University I became interested in the way the past naturally takes precedence so pervasive is the cognitive reflex to historicize whatever happens. I realized that any general theory of knowledge must start with a critical theory of historical knowledge. I realized too that theory here avoids anything abstract or governed by pre-emptive conceptualizations. Rather it defaults to the only premise knowledge has to what Marx calls ‘real active human beings and their real life-process ’. Suspending the idea that history is an academic activity sui generis I wanted to analyze the preoccupation with history as a social practice to discover what history actually does. I realized I wanted to produce a phenomenology of history-focussed behaviour.

My research was personally funded. My interests (e.g.) in sociology philosophy anthropology and literature cut across conventional disciplinary boundaries.

Books

• The Enlightenment and the Fate of Knowledge Essays on the Transvaluation of Values (Abingdon & New York: Routledge 2020) xii + 202pp. [ISBN 978-0-367-08689-3]
• How History Works. The reconstitution of a human science (Abingdon & New York: Routledge 2016) xiv + 179pp. [ISBN 978-1-138-93212-8]
• Imprisoned by History. Aspects of Historicized Life (New York: Routledge 2010) xiii + 259pp.
• Historics: Why History Dominates Contemporary Society (Abingdon: Routledge 2006) xii + 287pp.
• Identity or History? Marcus Herz and the End of the Enlightenment (Detroit: Wayne State University Press 1995) xiv + 344pp.

Essays

• ‘Selbstdenken oder Wissenschaft? Aufklärung als Infragestellen der Universität’ in 230 Jahre Beantwortung der Frage: Was ist Aufklärung? ed. Carina Pape and Holger Sederström (Hannover: Wehrhahn Verlag 2018) pp.21- 35 [ISBN: 978-3-86525-594-5].
• Fin de siècle: On the Psychopathology of Historicized Life New Literary Observer [Новое Литературное Обозрение] 149 1 2018 pp.353-73. [ISSN: 0869 6365] (Translated into Russian).
• ‘The proper study of mankind’: Enlightenment and tautology’ in Thinking about the Enlightenment. Modernity and its Ramifications (Abingdon & New York: Routledge) 2016 xiv + 276pp. pp.227-69. [ISBN: 978-1-138-80182-0].
• ‘Cognitive Inadequacy: History and the technocratic management of an artificial world’ Rethinking History 20.3 (July 2016) pp. 1-18. - Also in Futures for the Past ed. Kalle Pihlainen (Abingdon: Routledge 2017) pp.20-37 [ISBN: 978-1-138-09533-5].
• ‘Der Endzeitkomplex: Zur Psychopathologie des historisierten Lebens’ in Die Imaginationen des Endes ed. Aneta Jachimowicz/ Alina Kuzborska/ Dirk Steinhof (Warschauer Studien zur Kultur- und Literaturwissenschaft. Die Reihe hrsg. von Karol Sauerland) (Frankfurt a.M. et.al: Peter Lang 2015) pp.185-202.[ISBN 978-3-631-65658-7]."

Before retirement I supervised work on the philosophy of history.

Since retirement I am no longer involved in teaching.

What interests me still is the automatic social reflex of invoking history the past when anything new emerges (e.g. world records broken by athletes).