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 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
Episode 70: Marx on the Human Condition (Citizens Only)
On Karl Marx’s The German Ideology, Part I, an early, unpublished work from 1846. What is human nature? What drives history? How can we improve our situation? Marx thought that fundamentally, you are what you do: you are your job, your means of subsistence. All the rest, this culture, this religion, this philosophy, is just a thin layer over our basic situation. Ideas are not primarily what changes the world; it’s economics.
End song: “Job” by Mark Lint and the Fake from So Whaddaya Think? (2000).
PREVIEW-Episode 70: Marx on the Human Condition
On Karl Marx’s The German Ideology, Part I, an early, unpublished work from 1846. What is human nature? What drives history? How can we improve our situation? Marx thought that fundamentally, you are what you do: you are your job, your means of subsistence. All the rest, this culture, this religion, this philosophy, is just a thin layer over our basic situation. Ideas are not primarily what changes the world; it’s economics.
Topic for #70: Karl Marx’s “German Ideology”
On 1/13 we recorded a discussion of an early work of Karl Marx, from about 20 years before the publication of his famous Das Capital, The German Ideology. Listen to the episode. We read just part 1 of the work, which was written in 1845-6 but not published until 1932 (with some portions of it coming out earlier in the Continue Reading …
Rick Roderick on Hegel on History
Just to remind you, the recent Hegel episodes are not our first: we covered Hegel on history (the later, in some ways less radical Hegel) last year, shortly before I started posting videos related to our episodes. So here’s a video addressing that aspect of him. Watch on youtube. Rick Roderick, talking in 1990, stresses Hegel’s view of freedom (as Continue Reading …
Debating Individual vs. Environmental Forces in History (or, Lord Bragg Loses his Bearing!)
Among my favorite podcasts is the BBC Radio 4 show In Our Time. IOT is usually a genteel forum dedicated to discussing “the history of ideas.” Topics and tone range from Oxbridge middlebrow to Oxbridge highbrow, but I always walk away learning something. I almost swerved the car, however, when tempers flared on last week’s episode. IOT’s host, Lord Melvyn Bragg, Continue Reading …