It is the historian who has decided for his own reasons that Caesar’s crossing of that petty stream, the Rubicon, is a fact of history, whereas the crossing of the Rubicon by millions of other people before or since interests nobody at all. –Edward Hallett Carr Edward Hallett Carr (1892–1982), “the Red Professor of Clearinghouse Square,” was a British diplomat-turned-historian Continue Reading …
Philosophy of History Part XX: Arnold Toynbee and the Challenge of Civilization
Civilization is a movement and not a condition; a voyage and not a harbor. –Arnold Toynbee Arnold J. Toynbee (1889–1975) was a British historian and philosopher who is best remembered for his monumental Study of History, released in twelve volumes between 1934 and 1961. In this work he traced the rise and fall of twenty-one civilizations, which he defined as the self-contained Continue Reading …
Philosophy of History Part XIX: Carl Becker and Progressive History
To establish the facts is always in order, and is indeed the first duty of the historian; but to suppose that the facts, once established in all their fullness, will ‘speak for themselves’ is an illusion. –Carl Becker Carl Becker (1873–1945) was an American intellectual historian and a member of the Progressive School in American historical thought. Along with his mentor Continue Reading …
Philosophy of History Part XVIII: Herbert Butterfield and the Whig Interpretation of History
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 Herbert Butterfield (1900–1979) was a British historian of science and religion who is probably best remembered for his essay The Whig Interpretation of History (1931). In it he made several important and closely related points about Continue Reading …
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 Oswald Spengler (1880–1936) was one of the last great voices of literary history. Like Gibbon and Michelet, he had no formal Continue Reading …
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 The principle aim of intellectual history is to show how ideas have developed over time, and how they both arise out of, and actively shape, Continue Reading …
Philosophy of History Part XV: What Is Historicism?
Historicism is a somewhat obscure term, but one does occasionally encounter it in philosophy, and especially in discussions about the theory and nature of history, so I thought it might be worthwhile to pause for a moment and discuss it. Historicism is the view, first advanced by Giambattista Vico, and later rediscovered (apparently independently) by German historians, that Continue Reading …
Philosophy of History Part XIV: Friedrich Nietzsche: History as Art
History, in so far as it serves life, serves an unhistorical power. –Friedrich Nietzsche Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) once wrote: “I love the great despisers, for they are the great adorers, and arrows of longing for the other shore.” He was such a despiser, and such an arrow, and he has been loved by millions for his philosophical poetry. Anyone who has stared in complete Continue Reading …
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 Karl Marx (1818–1883) was a German philosopher and sociologist whose scientific approach to history, combined with his revolutionary socialism, has made him one of the most influential, famous, and indeed infamous, intellectuals who ever lived. His major works Continue Reading …
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 Jacob Burckhardt (1818–1897) is the historian who, more than any other, is responsible for the concept of the Renaissance as a distinct historical epoch. Other historians had written about fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Continue Reading …
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 Alexis de Tocqueville (1805–1859) was a French politician and political philosopher, and a spokesman for Liberalism in the Continue Reading …
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 Leopold von Ranke famously advised his students to write impartial histories. An account of the battle of Waterloo, he said, should be Continue Reading …
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 The Prussian historian Leopold von Ranke (1795–1886) probably did more than any other individual to establish history in its modern professional form. He was descended from a long line of Lutheran ministers, lived most of his life as a bachelor and (in the best Prussian tradition) a rigidly Continue Reading …
Philosophy of History Part VIII: Hegel’s Dialectic of History
Pure Reason, incapable of any limitation, is the Deity itself. –Hegel Mark Twain is supposed to have said that a classic is a book everyone praises, and no one reads—an observation that we might apply to the works of Georg William Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831). Or perhaps we should say that many people want to read him, but few can understand him. Indeed, the obscurity of Continue Reading …
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 Now that we’ve discussed the Revolution, let’s turn to the politics of the Enlightenment for a moment. Between them, Revolution and Enlightenment defined much European history and intellectual life Continue Reading …
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 Marie-Jean-Antoine-Nicolas Caritat, Marquis de Continue Reading …
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 When Edward Gibbon (1737–1794) was 27 years old, he visited Rome and, standing in the ruins of the forum, he imagined he saw the ghosts of Scipio, Caesar, Pompey, and the other heroes of the Republic. He spent days lost in imagination, thrilled simply to walk on the same ground that they had walked. Later, Continue Reading …
Philosophy of History, Part III: Voltaire and the Age of Reason
History should be written as philosophy. –Voltaire Voltaire, in many ways the paradigmatic Enlightenment intellectual, had a lifelong interest in history. And here, as in other fields, he was a severe critic of traditional ways of thinking. He wrote in response to at least two important strains of pre-Enlightenment historical writing. The first was the Augustinian Continue Reading …
Philosophy of History, Part II: Giambattista Vico, Philology, and the Origins of Historicism
The true and the made are convertible. (Verum Factum) The inspiration for Giambattista Vico’s (1668–1744) philosophy of history was the work of Rene Descartes (1596–1650), who boldly declared that he would believe nothing that could not be demonstrated through reason alone. Descartes, like most philosophers before Newton, modeled his thought on geometry—which is to say, he Continue Reading …
Philosophy of History Part I: The Enlightenment
'Have the courage to use your own understanding,' is therefore the motto of the enlightenment. –Immanuel Kant As for so many other areas of thought, the Enlightenment marks, if not exactly the origins of philosophy of history, at any rate of a characteristically modern approach to it. It will therefore be useful to spend some time with that epoch as a whole, by way of Continue Reading …