This comprehensive reader chronicles the Western engagement with the nature of knowledge during the past four centuries, including works from such philosophers as Hayden White, Rene Descartes, Emmanuel White, Theodor Adorno, Adam Smith. Acknowledgments ix Timeline xi Knowledge and Postmodernism in Historical Perspective Introduction 1(22) THE SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION AND ENLIGHTENMENT THOUGHT Introduction 23(6) Francis Bacon 29(12) The Advancement of Learning 31(10) Rene Descartes 41(9) Discourse on Method 42(8) John Locke 50(11) Essay Concerning Human Understanding 51(10) Adam Smith 61(12) The Wealth of Nations 62(11) David Hume 73(20) That Politics May Be Reduced to a Science 74(4) Of the Origin of Justice and Property 78(8) Of Scepticism with Regard to Reason 86(7) Gordon S. Wood 93(12) Conspiracy and the Paranoid Style: Causality and Deceit in the Eighteenth Century 94(11) Immanuel Kant 105(5) What Is Enlightenment? 106(4) Marquis De Condorcet 110(13) Sketch of the Progress of the Human Mind 112(11) Ernst Cassirer 123(22) Nature and Natural Science 124(13) NINETEENTH-CENTURY SOCIAL THEORY Introduction 137(8) Alexis De Tocqueville 145(19) Democracy in America 146(18) Karl Marx 164(25) Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy 165(3) The Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844 168(7) The Communist Manifesto 175(5) The German Ideology 180(9) Friedrich Nietzsche 189(24) Selected Aphorisms from The Gay Science 191(10) Selected Aphorisms from Beyond Good and Evil 201(12) Max Weber 213(32) The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism 215(26) ``Objectivity'' in Social Science and Science Policy 241(4) Norman Birnbaum 245(20) Conflicting Interpretations of the Rise of Capitalism: Marx and Weber 246(13) CHALLENGES TO NINETEENTH-CENTURY THEORY: The Emergence of the Culture Concept and the Sociology of Science Introduction 259(6) John Dewey 265(14) Common Sense and Scientific Inquiry 266(13) Ruth Benedict 279(17) Patterns of Culture 281(15) Claude Levi-Strauss 296(13) The Savage Mind 298(11) Clifford Geertz 309(15) Thick Description: Toward an Interpretive Theory of Culture 310(14) Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno 324(14) Dialectic of the Enlightenment 326(12) Thomas Kuhn 338(18) The Structure of Scientific Revolutions 340(16) Alasdair Macintyre 356(12) Epistemological Crises, Dramatic Narrative, and the Philosophy of Science 357(11) Paul Ricoeur 368(25) The Model of the Text 369(16) POSTMODERNIST THOUGHT The De[con]struction of Modernity Introduction 385(8) Hayden White 393(15) The Value of Narrativity in the Representation of Reality 395(13) Michel Foucault 408(27) What Is Enlightenment? 410(8) The History of Sexuality 418(17) Jacques Derrida 435(20) Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences 437(12) Declarations of Independence 449(6) Richard Rorty 455(20) Private Irony and Liberal Hope 456(8) Science as Solidarity 464(11) Cornel West 475(18) A Genealogy of Modern Racism 476(13) RESPONDING TO POSTMODERNISM Introduction 489(4) David Harvey 493(15) The Condition of Postmodernity 494(14) Jurgen Habermas 508(12) Philosophy as Stand-In and Interpreter 509(11) Craig Calhoun 520(19) Habermas and the Public Sphere 521(18) Seyla Benhabib 539(16) Feminism and the Question of Postmodernism 540(15) Suggestions for Further Reading 555(2) Glossary 557