“The study of the past with one eye, so to speak, upon the present is the source of all sins and sophistries in history.” –Herbert Butterfield
Philosophy of History Part XVII: Oswald Spengler and the Decline of the West
“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 sheet of notes will remain—because the last eye and the last ear accessible to their message will have gone.” –Oswald Spengler
Philosophy of History Part XVI: The Collapse of Civilization in Europe, 1914–1945
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 powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest. –Elie Wiesel
Philosophy of History Part XV: What Is Historicism?
Some background on historicism, an idea first advanced by Giambattista Vico and later taken up by German historians and philosophers.
Philosophy of History Part XIV: Friedrich Nietzsche: History as Art
“History, in so far as it serves life, serves an unhistorical power.” –Friedrich Nietzsche
Philosophy of History Part XIII: Karl Marx’s Historical Materialism
“The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point, however, is to change it.” –Karl Marx
Philosophy of History Part XII: Jacob Burckhardt: Civilization, Art, and Power Politics
“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 history.” –Jacob Burckhardt
Philosophy of History Part XI: Alexis de Tocqueville, Liberalism and History
“The nations of our day cannot prevent conditions of equality from spreading in their midst. But it depends upon themselves whether equality is to lead to servitude or freedom, knowledge or barbarism, prosperity or wretchedness.” –Alexis de Tocqueville
Philosophy of History Part X: Jules Michelet and Romanticism in History
“And I, who have sprung from them, I, who have lived, toiled, and suffered with them—who, more than any other have purchased the right to say that I know them—I come to establish against all mankind the personality of the people.” –Jules Michelet
Philosophy of History Part IX: Leopold von Ranke and the Origins of the Modern Historical Profession
“Only say how it essentially was.” (wie es eigentlich gewesen) –Leopold von Ranke
Philosophy of History Part VIII: Hegel’s Dialectic of History
“Pure Reason, incapable of any limitation, is the Deity itself.” –Hegel
Philosophy of History Part VII: The Politics of Modernization
“Reason obeys itself, and ignorance submits to whatever is dictated to it.” –Thomas Paine
“Kings will be tyrants from policy, when subjects are rebels from principle.” –Edmund Burke
Philosophy of History Part VI: The French Revolution
“What is the Third Estate? Nothing. What does it want to be? Something.” –Emmanuel Joseph Sieyès
Philosophy of History, Part V: Condorcet
“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, priests and their stupid or hypocritical instruments will exist only in works of history and on the stage; and when we shall think of them only to pity their victims and their dupes.” –Condorcet
Philosophy of History, Part IV: Edward Gibbon’s “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire”
“I have recorded the triumph of barbarism and religion.” -Edward Gibbon
Philosophy of History, Part III: Voltaire and the Age of Reason
“History should be written as philosophy.” –Voltaire
Philosophy of History, Part II: Giambattista Vico, Philology, and the Origins of Historicism
“The true and the made are convertible.” (Verum Factum)
Philosophy of History Part I: The Enlightenment
” ‘Have the courage to use your own understanding,’ is therefore the motto of the enlightenment.” -Immanuel Kant
Science, Technology, and Society XIV: Ian Hacking
In “The Social Construction of What?” (1999), Ian Hacking argues that constructionist accounts of scientific theories tend to lose sight of a basic question: what, exactly, is it that’s supposed to be constructed?
Science, Technology, and Society XIII: The Sokal Hoax
In 1996, physicist Alan Sokal perpetrated a hoax by submitting a nonsense article to an academic journal of postmodern studies, and subsequently deriding the journal for publishing it. The hoax was, and remains, a significant salvo in the “Science Wars.”