Friday 17 March 2023 — In last week’s newsletter I discussed defection from the central project of a civilization, analyzing the process of defection as it manifests itself among distinct social classes. A correspondent has pointed out to me that it would have been better to refer to an “underclass” instead of the poor (and…

Part of a Series on the Philosophy of History — Today is the 101st anniversary of the birth of Patrick Gardiner (17 March 1922–24 June 1997), who was born on this date in 1922. In his role as editor of Theories of History: Readings from Classical and Contemporary Sources, Gardiner needed to take a comprehensive — if not a cosmopolitan…

Schopenhauer and Kenneth Clark on Art and Architecture — Schopenhauer, like Descartes, was no friend of history. In his The Art of Literature he offered his view that, “History has always been the favorite study of those who wish to learn something, without having to face the effort demanded by any branch of real knowledge, which taxes the intelligence.”…

Part of a Series on the Philosophy of History — Today is 314th anniversary of the birthday of Gabriel Bonnot (14 March 1709–2 April 1785 in Paris), who was born at Mably, Loire and become better known as Gabriel Bonnot de Mably. In the volume The Social & Political Ideas of Some Great French Thinkers of the Age of Reason…

Friday 10 March 2023 — Back in newsletter 165 from December 2021 I discussed some failure conditions of mature civilizations. After that newsletter appeared a couple of correspondents suggested multiple ways in which civilizations fail, all more-or-less intended to analyze some of our present problems, and, in particular, these four failure conditions were noted: 1…

Part of a Series on the Philosophy of History — Today is the 121st anniversary of the birth of Ludwig Landgrebe (09 March 1902, Vienna — 14 August 1991), who was born on this date in 1902. In last year’s post on Landgrebe I noted that Landgrebe oriented himself in the philosophy of history by rejecting speculative (implicitly, Hegelian) philosophies…

Part of a Series on the Philosophy of History — Today is the 194th anniversary of the birth of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen (03 March 1829–11 March 1894), 1st Baronet, KCSI (which means “Knight Commander Star of India,” a chivalric order founded by Queen Victoria), who was born in London on this day in 1829. Almost everyone has heard of…

Part of a Series on the Philosophy of History — Today is the 165th anniversary of the birth of Georg Simmel (01 March 1858–26 September 1918), who was born in Berlin on this date in 1858. Simmel is primarily remembered as a sociologist, but he thought and wrote widely, including philosophy, and the philosophy of history in particular. While Simmel’s…

Part of a Series on the Philosophy of History — Today is the 141st anniversary of the birth of José Vasconcelos Calderón (28 February 1882–30 June 1959), who was born in Oaxaca on this date in 1882. While most of us would count (contemporary) Latin America generally and Mexico more specifically as a part of Western civilization, Vasconcelos’ conception of…