Part of a Series on the Philosophy of History — Today is the 294th anniversary of the birth of Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (22 January 1729–15 February 1781), who was born in Kamenz in Saxony on this date in 1729. Last year’s post on Lessing focused on his interest in education and the important role that education plays in the representatives…

Friday 20 January 2023 — I always firmly keep in mind the distinction between knowing something and knowing that one knows something, following more-or-less how Collingwood stated it: “Man, who desires to know everything, desires to know himself. Nor is he only one (even if, to himself, perhaps the most interesting) among the things he…

Part of a Series on the Philosophy of History — Today is the 202nd anniversary of the birth of Ferdinand Gregorovius (19 January 1821–01 May 1891), who was born in Neidenburg, East Prussia (now part of Poland) on this date in 1821. Gregorovius is mostly remembered for his Geschichte der Stadt Rom im Mittelalter (1859–1872), translated into English as The…

Part of a Series on the Philosophy of History — Today is the 334th anniversary of the birth of Charles Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu (18 January 1689–10 February 1755), who was born at the Château de la Brède on this date in 1689. David Carrithers in his paper “Montesquieu’s Philosophy of History” gives an…

Part of a Series on the Philosophy of History — Today is the 109th anniversary of the birth of Hugh Redwald Trevor-Roper (15 January 1914–26 January 2003), who was born on this date in 1914. Last year I wrote a longish birthday post on Trevor-Roper, which focused on Trevor-Roper’s criticisms of Toynbee, of universal history, and his thesis of a…

Friday 13 January 2023 — I’ve spent the past week thinking about pop culture, past and present, partly because I learned the term “kitchen sink realism,” which was applied to some mid-twentieth century drama often set in the north of England, especially the play Look Back in Anger. It was the gritty social realism of…

Part of a Series on the Philosophy of History — Today is the 116th anniversary of the birth of Jean Hyppolite (08 January 1907–26 October 1968), who was born on this date in 1907. Hyppolite is primarily remembered as a teacher and an expositor of Hegel, his most famous work being Genesis and Structure of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, although…

Friday 06 January 2023 — Nietzsche once called himself the firstborn of the twentieth century, as though he had already intimated the terror of history to come. Now we are almost a quarter of the way into the twenty-first century, and Nietzsche is as relevant as ever — as prophetic as ever, especially in regard…

Friday 30 December 2022 — Recently I was writing to a correspondent and I mentioned an idea I have worked on now and again for several years. I suggested that the only objective history of humanity could be written by an alien after humanity went extinct. Certainly a complete history of humanity could only be…