Abstract

Cristina Marras, Glenn W. Most and Gaspare Polizzi discuss Rens Bod’s A New History of the Humanities and the recent Italian translation Le scienze dimenticate. Marras focuses on Bod’s conception of modelization as central for the history of the humanities and underlines the importance of the rhetoric dimension as a methodological concept in order to understand the transmission of models in the humanities. Most discusses Bod’s fundamental project by analyzing three key dimensions: Bod’s concept of the humanities, his practice of historiography, and his notion of the novelty of his enterprise. Polizzi considers Bod’s view of the method for the history of humanities and of the epistemology of rhetoric, and critically analyzes the concept of progress in the humanities.