Thursday, December 3, 2015

The Open Society and Its Frenemies: Karl Popper's Defense of Science and Liberalism for the Twenty-First Century

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In 1919 a total eclipse of the sun provided a rare opportunity to test  Einstein’s theory of general relativity. Arthur Eddington...
Monday, November 30, 2015

Carl Becker and Progressive History

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"To establish the facts is always in order, and is indeed the first duty of the historian; but to suppose that the facts, once esta...

Herbert Butterfield and the Whig Interpretation of History

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"The study of the past with one eye, so to speak, upon the present is the source of all sins and sophistries in history." Herb...

Oswald Spengler and the Decline of the West

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"One day the last portrait of Rembrandt and the last bar of Mozart will have ceased to be—though possibly a colored canvas and a sh...
Wednesday, November 4, 2015

The Collapse of Civilization in Europe: 1914 - 1945

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If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—forever. –George Orwell There may be times when we are pow...

What is Historicism?

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Historicism is a somewhat obscure term, but one does occasionally encounter it in philosophy, and especially in discussions about the the...

Friedrich Nietzsche: History as Art

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"History, in so far as it serves life, serves an unhistorical power." Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) once wrote: “I lov...

Karl Marx's Historical Materialism

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"The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point, however, is to change it." Karl Marx (18...

Jakob Burckhardt: Civilization, Art, and Power Politics

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"I know too much of history to expect anything from the despotism of the masses but a future tyranny, which will be the end of hist...

Jules Michelet: Romanticism in History

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"And I, who have sprung from them, I, who have lived, toiled, and suffered with them—who, more than any other have purchased the...

Leopold von Ranke and the Origins of the Modern Historical Profession

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"Only say how it essentially was." (wie es eigentlich gewesen) The Prussian historian Leopold von Ranke (1795–188...
Wednesday, September 9, 2015

GWF Hegel's Dialectic of History

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"Pure Reason, incapable of any limitation, is the Deity itself." Mark Twain is supposed to have said that a classic is a boo...
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Tuesday, September 1, 2015

Voltaire and History in the Age of Reason

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"History should be written as philosophy." Voltaire, in many ways the paradigmatic Enlightenment intellectual, had a lifel...
Monday, July 13, 2015

Condorcet and the Progress Model of History (c. 1790)

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“The time will come when the sun will shine only upon free men who know no other master but their reason; when tyrants and slaves, pr...
Friday, July 10, 2015

The Politics of Revolution and Enlightenment (c. 1770 - 1830)

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“Reason obeys itself, and ignorance submits to whatever is dictated to it.” – Thomas Paine “Kings will be tyrants from policy, when su...
Saturday, July 4, 2015

Thomas Jefferson (1743 - 1826) and the young Republic

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“We hold these Truths to be self-vident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unaliena...