Louis O. Mink Jr. (September 3, 1921 – January 19, 1983) was a philosopher of history whose works challenged early philosopher of history

R. G. Collingwood Robin George Collingwood (; 22 February 1889 – 9 January 1943) was an English philosopher, historian and archaeologist. He is best known for his philosophical works, including ''The Principles of Art'' (1938) and the posthumously published ...

and were part of a

postmodern Postmodernism is an intellectual stance or mode of discourseNuyen, A.T., 1992. The Role of Rhetorical Devices in Postmodernist Discourse. Philosophy & Rhetoric, pp.183–194. characterized by skepticism toward the " grand narratives" of moderni ...

dialogue on history and historical narrative with other philosophers of history, like

Hayden White Hayden V. White (July 12, 1928 – March 5, 2018) was an American historian in the tradition of literary criticism, perhaps most famous for his work '' Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe'' (1973/2014). Career W ...

and Georg Lukács. Mink and White were responsible for what would later be called the "linguistic turn" in philosophy of history. Mink received his bachelor's degree from

Hiram College Hiram College ( ) is a private liberal arts college in Hiram, Ohio. It was founded in 1850 as the Western Reserve Eclectic Institute by Amos Sutton Hayden and other members of the Disciples of Christ Church. The college is nonsectarian and coe ...

, then served in the United States Army during World War II. After the war he received a masters and doctorate from Yale. He became a member of the faculty at Wesleyan University in 1952 and remained in the department until he died of a heart attack on January 19, 1983. While at Wesleyan he was chair of the philosophy department from 1967 to 1976, the Kenan Professor of Humanities and director of the Center for Humanities. He had a wife named Helen Patterson, two sons and a daughter. Mink's largest contribution to history and philosophy of history was to emphasize the need for history to think of its published narratives as very similar to other narrative forms, such as fiction. Mink also asserts that thinking about history as "a true representation of the past" gives rise to a great deal of assumption amongst historians that poses serious problems for history by misrepresenting it and its subject matter. Mink was also important in studying James Joyce's fiction; most notably, his ''A Finnegans Wake Gazetteer'' (1978) documents all the place names in Joyce's '' Finnegans Wake''. The interest in Joyce was not tangential. ''Finnegans Wake'' had embedded in it a cyclical structure of time and history, influenced by Giambattista Vico's (1668–1744) '' "La Scienza Nuova" (The New Science)''. Mink also ran seminars on ''Finnegans Wake'' that drew both faculty and students in interactive examinations of Joyce's work and was known for both the range of his knowledge and his wit, which could be self-deprecating. When a student informed that he was dropping out of the seminar because he was not ready for ''Finnegans Wake'', Mink replied, "Brian, if you are ever ready for ''Finnegans Wake''", pausing to draw on his pipe, "it is a pretty good indication that you have wasted your life."Personal recollection, Brian Ford, Wesleyan Class of 1981

References

External links

A documentation of Mink's papers in philosophy journals at PhilPapersorgFull text version of Mink's ''A Finnegans Wake Gazetteer'' at the University of Wisconsin–Madison
{{DEFAULTSORT:Mink, Louis Philosophers of history Wesleyan University faculty Yale University alumni Hiram College alumni 1983 deaths 1921 births 20th-century American philosophers Linguistic turn 20th-century American historians United States Army personnel of World War II

References

Further reading

External links