Part of a Series on the Philosophy of History — Today is the 132nd anniversary of the birth of Joseph Allan Nevins (20 May 1890–05 March 1971), who was born on this date in 1890. Nevins was a prolific American historians whose works spanned the US Civil War and works on his contemporaries, such as John D. Rockefeller and Henry…

Friday 13 May 2022 — Recently I learned about the beer-before-bread hypothesis of the origins of civilization. The idea is usually associated with Robert J. Braidwood, who formulated the question in this way: “Could the discovery that a mash of fermented grain yielded a palatable and nutritious beverage have acted as a greater stimulant toward…

Part of a Series on the Philosophy of History — Today is the 174th anniversary of the birth of Wilhelm Windelband (11 May 1848–22 October 1915), who was born on this date in 1848 (a year sometimes referred to as the “Springtime of Nations” because of the many revolutions that took place in Europe). The opening of Windelband’s A History…

Part of a Series on the Philosophy of History — Today is the 285th anniversary of the birth of Edward Gibbon (08 May 1737 to 16 January 1794), who was born on this date in 1737. Gibbon is the greatest historian who has written in English to date. Perhaps some future Anglosphere historians will surpass the work of Gibbon, but…

Part of a Series on the Philosophy of History — Today is the 311th anniversary of the birth of David Hume (07 May 1711 NS; 26 April 1711 OS to 25 August 1776), who was born on this date in 1711. Hume is remembered today as the greatest of the Anglophone philosophers; in his own time Hume’s philosophical efforts were…

Friday 06 May 2022 — In last week’s Work in Progress: Observational and Theoretical Terms, I wrote the following: “…the civilization of early medieval Europe was a very different kind of civilization from the epochs of Western civilization that preceded and that followed it, so that the substitution of manorial estates and monasteries for cities…

Part of a Series on the Philosophy of History — Today is the 204th anniversary of the birth of Karl Marx (05 May 1818–14 March 1883), who was born on this date in 1818. It would be difficult to overstate the influence of Marx on the philosophy of history, though Marx himself would not have been impressed by such a…

Part of a Series on the Philosophy of History — Today is the 553rd anniversary of the birth of Niccolò Machiavelli (03 May 1469–21 June 1527), who was born on this date in 1469. The remit of political philosophy and philosophy of history overlap significantly, as both as concerned with the action of human agents in time, thus Machiavelli, as…

Friday 29 April 2022 — A couple of weeks ago I ended Work in Progress: The Concept of Basal Civilization by suggesting a way to get from a conception of civilization based on cities in relationships of cooperation, competition, and conflict to a conception of civilization in terms of its institutional structure. Another way to…