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Title: Plough, Sword, and Book: The Structure of Human History by Ernest Gellner ISBN: 0-226-28702-5 Publisher: University of Chicago Press Pub. Date: 01 October, 1990 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $19.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.67 (3 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: A Difficult but Valuable Text
Comment: Ernest Gellner's philosophy of human history as discussed in Plough, Sword, and Book offers readers a view of human history that is unique and comprehensive. The author aims to outline human history with theories and models that employ a method of deductive reasoning. Specifically, Gellner wishes to offer his readers a "clear and forceful" view of his philosophy so that it may be examined critically (page 13).
Gellner's model of human history entails a society passing through three principal stages: hunting and gathering, agrarian society, and industrial society (pages 16-17). The author enlists a number of sources from which he derives his philosophic analysis of humanity's development and evolution. Gellner's discussion of Platonism with respect to cultural intuition and adoption of an explicit theory stating what had previously been a mere practice (pages 76-77) mingles with Hegel and Marxist theories on thought and politics (pages 142-143). His variety of sources allow for a wide range of both philosophic input and debate.
Essentially, the author pushes for a philosophic historical outline that depicts hunting and gathering groups of humans who eventually initiate an agricultural community stemming from a sense of long-term obligation to their individual group (page 33). Agrarian societies-Gellner's plough-then pass into an industrial or urban society which allows for the entry of a class system in which social order must be maintained through defensive groups or order-enforcers (page 145)-Gellner's sword. The transitions between stages could not be possible without the cognitive development of mankind through the introduction of literacy (page 71) through religious scriptures-Gellner's book. In Gellner's model of human history, religion also provides legitimization of the social system (page 99) leading to modern society.
As the author discusses the shift between the three principle stages of human history, he outlines the major activities that pushed society through the industrial and agricultural revolutions, or "great leaps" of human history. These activities fall into three main groups identified by Gellner as production, coercion, and cognition (page 20-23). Agrarian societies focused mainly on the production and storage of food (page 16) while Industrial societies focused on the production of wealth and weapons, or means of coercion, and the production of food becomes a lesser focus (page 17). One of the most important elements in the evolution of human history, cognition, occurred at the point when "the genetic equipment of man became so permissive as to allow the wide range of social comportment" that we can observe in the modern society (page 67).
For the average reader, Gellner's "clear and forceful" statement (page 13) within the pages of Plough, Sword, and Book can be a bit overwhelming in that it provides a great deal of philosophic idea applied to history between the Neolithic age and the present. At times, Gellner's text may also seem overwritten which could muddle his "clear" statement to scholarly readers. Perhaps Gellner's most successful element within his text was his execution and compilation of so many philosophic thinkers' ideas into a single outline. Gellner includes ideas from Aristotle to Weber and from Kant to Kuhn making his philosophic vision of human history a scholarly work indeed. Although the future of human history cannot, according to Gellner (page 15), be predicted, Plough, Sword, and Book can help scholars understand the evolution of our past so that we may better understand the future though the greater possibility of comprehension provided by Gellner's scholarly efforts.
Rating: 5
Summary: Thugs and Legitimizers
Comment: This book is a good compliment to and a further development of "The Sacred Canopy". From here, I went on to read most of Gellner's other books, but none match this one for holding the readers' interest.
The outline is that agrarian societies ("Plow") give way to urban societies, and the subsequent accumulations of wealth create the need for lords and kings (the "thugs") to insure the social order ("Sword"), and eventually be the boss of everybody (taxes, laws, etc.). REligious institutions ("Book") buy into the process as "legitimizers" of the ruling authority, endorsing the will of deities and nature that the people should be ruled by such "thugs".
Rating: 5
Summary: the book you SHOULD have read in college
Comment: Gellner delivers on his promise of "structure of human history", also keeping his word in the introduction to write for both those new to anthropology and the specialists. This is 'what history means', when you get past the teachers' narrow minded requirements to memorize and regurgitate 'historical' dates and names.
I would even dare to add that the book addresses 'what it means to be human'. Many socities are 'modern', but definitely 'pre-industrial', and you better understand what it means! As I can personally attest, such societies have a whole different way of looking at things, a different way of interpreting 'reality'. Gellner explains this, as well as how and why it comes to be like this.
A thoroughly satisfying read. Gellner writes a tight and well-reasoned discourse, without dragging in any academic mumbo-jumbo.
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Title: Nations and Nationalism (New Perspectives on the Past) by Ernest Gellner ISBN: 0801492637 Publisher: Cornell University Press Pub. Date: 01 December, 1983 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: The Psychoanalytic Movement: The Cunning of Unreason (Rethinking Theory) by Ernest Gellner ISBN: 0810113708 Publisher: Northwestern University Press Pub. Date: 01 July, 1996 List Price(USD): $21.95 |
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Title: The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (Routledge Classics) by Max Weber, Talcott Parsons, Anthony Giddens ISBN: 041525406X Publisher: Routledge Pub. Date: 23 May, 2001 List Price(USD): $15.95 |
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Title: Ernest Gellner and Modernity by Michael Lessnoff ISBN: 0708316840 Publisher: University of Wales Press Pub. Date: 02 April, 2002 List Price(USD): $34.95 |
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