Geopolicraticus

TODAY IN PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY: Herder’s Reflections on the Philosophy of the History of Mankind Sunday 25 August 2024 is the 280th anniversary of the birth of Johann Gottfried von Herder (25 August 1744 – 18 December 1803), who was born at Mohrungen, then part of Prussia and now part of Poland, just south of Königsberg, now Kaliningrad (where Kant was a professor), on this day in 1744. Herder was a student of Kant, a protégé of Hamann, and an independent thinker who presented a counter-Enlightenment interpretation of human history, but still saw a future of progress for humanity. Quora: https://philosophyofhistory.quora.com/ Discord: https://discord.gg/r3dudQvGxD Links: https://jnnielsen.carrd.co/ Newsletter: http://eepurl.com/dMh0_-/ Podcast: https://spotifyanchor-web.app.link/e/pYmiHZ22mMb

TODAY IN PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY: Fernand Braudel and the Structures of Historical Time Saturday 24 August 2024 is the 122nd anniversary of the birth of Fernand Braudel (24 August 1902 – 27 November 1985), who was born in Luméville-en-Ornois, a provincial village in Lorraine, on this date in 1902. Braudel is thought of as the major figure of the second generation of the Annales school of history, which was founded by Marc Bloch and Lucien Febvre. Braudel distinguished among three levels of historical time—the event, the conjuncture, and the longue durée—and focused his historical efforts on explicating how the longue durée shapes human history. Quora: https://philosophyofhistory.quora.com/ Discord: https://discord.gg/r3dudQvGxD Links: https://jnnielsen.carrd.co/ Newsletter: http://eepurl.com/dMh0_-/ Podcast: https://spotifyanchor-web.app.link/e/t8w1u4VelMb #philosophy #history #PhilosophyofHistory #FernandBraudel #Annales #LongueDurée #conjuncture #OlafStapledon #BertrandRussell #Stapledonian

TODAY IN PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY: Max Scheler on Philosophical Anthropology and History Thursday 22 August 2024 is the 150th anniversary of the birth of Max Ferdinand Scheler (22 August 1874 – 19 May 1928), who was born in Munich on this date in 1874. Scheler argued that a philosophical anthropology is a necessary preliminary for a philosophy of history because a conception of history follows from a conception of man. He outlined five conceptions of man and their associated conceptions of history, but didn’t live long enough to give a definitive statement of his own views, which were still developing at the time of his death. Quora: https://philosophyofhistory.quora.com/ Discord: https://discord.gg/r3dudQvGxD Links: https://jnnielsen.carrd.co/ Newsletter: http://eepurl.com/dMh0_-/ Podcast: https://spotifyanchor-web.app.link/e/iFSHkRXzhMb

TODAY IN PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY: Jules Michelet and the Promise of Emancipatory History Wednesday 21 August 2024 is the 226th anniversary of the birth of Jules Michelet (21 August 1798 – 09 February 1874), who was born in Paris on this date in 1798. Michelet collected in his person many influences from the period that preceded him, especially in regard to the rediscovery of Vico, his life was decisively shaped by the Napoleonic empire, and he went to influence the period that followed him. Michelet, in comprehending many contemporary influences, focused in himself many of the most prominent and important themes of historical thought of his time, and his historical thought, in turn, teeming as it was with all these influences, spread out after him in succeeding generations and shaped what history become in the twentieth century. Quora: https://philosophyofhistory.quora.com/ Discord: https://discord.gg/r3dudQvGxD Links: https://jnnielsen.carrd.co/ Newsletter: http://eepurl.com/dMh0_-/ Text post: Video: https://youtu.be/pH0PZB2MsH4 Podcast: https://spotifyanchor-web.app.link/e/exLflM0SeMb #philosophy #history #PhilosophyofHistory #JulesMichelet #progress #liberation #emancipation #HaydayWhite #Vico #romanticism #MarcBloch #LongueDurée #holism

TODAY IN PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY: Geoffrey Elton and Thesis-Dominated History Saturday 17 August 2024 is the 103rd anniversary of the birth of Geoffrey Elton (born Gottfried Rudolf Otto Ehrenberg; 17 August 1921 – 04 December 1994), who was born in Tübingen, Germany, on this day in 1921. Elton was an historian of Tudor England who also wrote on historiography and touched on philosophy of history at many points. He is remembered as one of the parties of the Carr-Elton debate on historiography, along with Ted Carr. Elton especially criticized what he called thesis-dominated history, which he compared unfavorably to thesis-free or empirical history. Quora: https://philosophyofhistory.quora.com/ Discord: https://discord.gg/r3dudQvGxD Links: https://jnnielsen.carrd.co/ Newsletter: http://eepurl.com/dMh0_-/ Podcast: https://spotifyanchor-web.app.link/e/V4L6qnnR9Lb

TODAY IN PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY: Napoleon and Revolutionary Imperialism Thursday 15 August 2024 is the 255th anniversary of the birth of Napoleon Bonaparte (born Napoleone di Buonaparte; 15 August 1769 – 05 May 1821), who was born in the city of Ajaccio on the island of Corsica on this date in 1769. Napoleon was one of the most consequential men of Western history. As such, he has served as a symbol and as an historical ideal, in Huizinga’s sense. But Napoleon meant many things to many men, so his use as a symbol is always ambiguous, and the many meanings that have been associated with the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Empire have never converged on a single vision of history. Quora: https://philosophyofhistory.quora.com/ Discord: https://discord.gg/r3dudQvGxD Links: https://jnnielsen.carrd.co/ Newsletter: http://eepurl.com/dMh0_-/ Podcast: https://spotifyanchor-web.app.link/e/R3xMDcrb6Lb

TODAY IN PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY: Carl Stephenson and the Second Urbanization of Europe Saturday 10 August 2024 is the 138th anniversary of the birth of Carl Stephenson (10 August 1886 – 03 October 1954), who was born at Fayette, Iowa, on this date in 1886 (or 1888—at least one source gives the year of his birth as 1888 rather than 1886). Stephenson was an American medievalist who wrote a classic work, Medieval Feudalism (1942), and who studied the origins of urbanization in the Middle Ages. A short, concise book on a foundational concept can go a long way toward clarification, and Stephenson’s Medieval Feudalism provided some of this clarification, illuminating medieval civilization entire in doing so. Quora: https://philosophyofhistory.quora.com/ Discord: https://discord.gg/r3dudQvGxD Links: https://jnnielsen.carrd.co/ Newsletter: http://eepurl.com/dMh0_-/ Podcast: https://spotifyanchor-web.app.link/e/m8Q7r0eKWLb #philosophy #history #PhilosophyofHistory #CarlStephenson #urbanization #MiddleAges #MedievalEurope #SecondUrbanization #TheoreticalHistory

TODAY IN PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY: The Advent of the Nuclear Age The Nuclear Age began suddenly, spectacularly, and catastrophically by the airburst of the Little Boy atomic bomb over Hiroshima, on Monday 06 August 1945, 79 years ago today. Three days later, on Thursday 09 August 1945, the Fat Man atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki. What did these bombs inaugurate, and what did we learn about ourselves and our place in history as a result? Quora: https://philosophyofhistory.quora.com/ Discord: https://discord.gg/r3dudQvGxD Links: https://jnnielsen.carrd.co/ Newsletter: http://eepurl.com/dMh0_-/ Podcast: https://spotifyanchor-web.app.link/e/nGgjNF02PLb

TODAY IN PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY: Walter Pater and an Aesthetic Conception of History Sunday 04 August 2024 is the 185th anniversary of the birth of Walter Horatio Pater (04 August 1839 – 30 July 1894), who was born in London’s East End on this date in 1839. Pater’s book on the renaissance, first published in 1873 as Studies in the History of the Renaissance, and revised in 1877 as The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry, culminated in a passionate philosophy of life based on the ideals of the renaissance, as Pater understood them from his Victorian perspective: “To burn always with this hard, gemlike flame, to maintain this ecstasy, is success in life.” But can this philosophy of life be translated into a philosophy of history? Quora: https://philosophyofhistory.quora.com/ Discord: https://discord.gg/r3dudQvGxD Links: https://jnnielsen.carrd.co/ Newsletter: http://eepurl.com/dMh0_-/

TODAY IN PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY: Karl Popper on Historicism and Determinism Sunday 28 July 2024 is the 122nd anniversary of the birth of Karl Popper (28 July 1902 - 17 September 1994), who was born in Vienna on this date in 1902. Popper’s philosophy of history, expressed his The Open Society and Its Enemies in 1945 and The Poverty of Historicisim in 1957, can be understood as an application of his conception of knowledge, worked out in his philosophy of science, to history and the social sciences, which he equates as both being illicitly involved in a project of attempting to make historical predictions. Denying the possibility of prediction in history, Popper argued again historical determinism and inevitability. Quora: https://philosophyofhistory.quora.com/ Discord: https://discord.gg/r3dudQvGxD Links: https://jnnielsen.carrd.co/ Newsletter: http://eepurl.com/dMh0_-/ Podcast: https://spotifyanchor-web.app.link/e/3zgCnoD2ALb

TODAY IN PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY: The Bolton Thesis and Hemispherical History Saturday 20 July 2024 is the 154th anniversary of the birth of Herbert Eugene Bolton (20 July 1870 – 30 January 1953), who was born on a farm in rural Wisconsin on this date in 1870. Bolton was an American historian whose engagement with Spanish colonial history in the Spanish-American borderlands led to his formulation of the Bolton Thesis, that American history needs to be hemispherical history. Bolton trained hundreds of historians who came to be known collectively as the “Bolton School.” Quora: https://philosophyofhistory.quora.com/ Discord: https://discord.gg/r3dudQvGxD Links: https://jnnielsen.carrd.co/ Newsletter: http://eepurl.com/dMh0_-/ Podcast: https://spotifyanchor-web.app.link/e/rtZ7CVjgpLb

TODAY IN PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY: Thomas Kuhn on the Structure of Scientific Revolutions Thursday 18 July 2024 is the 102nd anniversary of the birth of Thomas Kuhn (18 July 1922 – 17 June 1996), who was born in Cincinnati on this date in 1922. Kuhn wrote an extraordinarily influential book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, first published in 1962, which thereafter changed the way that history and philosophy of science were pursued. Strangely enough, this book appeared in a series of monographs, The International encyclopedia of Unified Science, which was a logical empiricist undertaking, which today seems as dated as Kuhn’s work seems timely. It is ironically appropriate that Kuhn’s work on paradigm shifts appeared within an organ intended to contribute to a paradigm that Kuhn would undermine. Quora: https://philosophyofhistory.quora.com/ Discord: https://discord.gg/r3dudQvGxD Links: https://jnnielsen.carrd.co/ Newsletter: http://eepurl.com/dMh0_-/ Podcast: https://spotifyanchor-web.app.link/e/L5I4QSdpkLb

TODAY IN PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY: Walter Benjamin on the Concept of History Monday 15 July 2024 is the 132nd anniversary of the Birth of Walter Benjamin (15 July 1892 – 26 September 1940), who was born in Berlin on this date in 1892. Benjamin is primarily known to philosophy of history through a short essay which was the last he wrote before he killed himself, “On the Concept of History,” though some of his earlier works also betray an interest in history. As a Marxist, Benjamin was explicit in his historical materialism, though he diverges from Marx on several important points. Even as he took over Bloch’s interest in messianism, his work prefigured much that was to come in literary theory. Quora: https://philosophyofhistory.quora.com/ Discord: https://discord.gg/r3dudQvGxD Links: https://jnnielsen.carrd.co/ Newsletter: http://eepurl.com/dMh0_-/ Podcast: https://spotifyanchor-web.app.link/e/RuGeilO6gLb

TODAY IN PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY: Hans Blumenberg and the Legitimacy of the Modern Age Saturday 13 July 2024 is the 104th anniversary of the birth of Hans Blumenberg (13 July 1920 – 28 March 1996), who was born in Lübeck on this date in 1920. Blumenberg’s interest in modernity touched off a debate with Karl Löwith about the legitimacy not only of philosophy of history as a discipline, but of the modern age itself. Blumenberg approached modernity by several pathways, including Petrarch’s ascent of Mount Ventoux, the origins of Copernicanism, and Löwith’s use of the idea of secularization. Quora: https://philosophyofhistory.quora.com/ Discord: https://discord.gg/r3dudQvGxD Links: https://jnnielsen.carrd.co/ Newsletter: http://eepurl.com/dMh0_-/ Podcast: https://spotifyanchor-web.app.link/e/t8BIr8eQdLb #philosophy #history #PhilosophyofHistory #HansBlumenberg #modernity #Löwith #secularization

TODAY IN PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY: Ernst Bloch and the Principle of Hope Monday 08 July 2024 is the 139th anniversary of the birth of Ernst Bloch (08 July 1885 – 04 August 1977), who was born in Ludwigshafen on this date in 1885. Bloch wrote in a prophetic and paradoxical voice that wouldn’t work well for a lot of philosophers, but it allowed Bloch to synthesize Marxism, messianism, theology, and eschatology. Bloch’s major work, The Principle of Hope, is essentially about utopias, surveying utopias in all of their forms—medical utopias, social utopias, technological utopias, architectural utopias, and geographical utopias, and the themes of his thought all cluster around the utopian ideal—hope, striving toward and into the future, possibility, and potentiality. Quora: https://philosophyofhistory.quora.com/ Discord: https://discord.gg/r3dudQvGxD Links: https://jnnielsen.carrd.co/ Newsletter: http://eepurl.com/dMh0_-/ Podcast: https://spotifyanchor-web.app.link/e/c7Vt0reR4Kb

TODAY IN PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY: Marc Bloch and the Annales School of History Saturday 06 July 2024 is the 138th anniversary of the birth of Marc Bloch (06 July 1886 – 16 June 1944), who was born on this date in Lyon in 1886. Bloch was shot by the Gestapo on 16 June 1944 because of his involvement in the French resistance. Bloch was a founder of the Annales school of history, along with Lucien Febvre and Fernand Braudel. The Annales school emphasized the longue durée as the structure of history, and Bloch adopted this perspective in his classic work Feudal Society. Quora: https://philosophyofhistory.quora.com/ Discord: https://discord.gg/r3dudQvGxD Links: https://jnnielsen.carrd.co/ Newsletter: http://eepurl.com/dMh0_-/ Podcast: https://spotifyanchor-web.app.link/e/KmatYMJ31Kb

TODAY IN PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY: The Fourth of July On Thursday 04 July 1776—248 years ago today—the Continental Congress of the not-yet-existing United States approved the Declaration of Independence, formalizing the armed struggle between American colonists and the British Empire, and precipitating the American Revolutionary War. It took years to win the war, and years more to converge on a constitution that the former colonies could accept. Today we reflect on the place of this conflict within the history of ideas. Quora: https://philosophyofhistory.quora.com/ Discord: https://discord.gg/r3dudQvGxD Links: https://jnnielsen.carrd.co/ Newsletter: http://eepurl.com/dMh0_-/

TODAY IN PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY: Haskell Fain on Transplanting the Heart of Speculative Philosophy of History into an Analytical Body Monday 01 July 2024 is the 98th anniversary of the birth of Haskell Fain (01 July 1926 — 26 July 2018), who was born in New York City on this date in 1926. Fain’s Between Philosophy and History: The Resurrection of Speculative Philosophy of History Within the Analytic Tradition sought to bring new life to speculative philosophy of history at a time when this was at a particularly low ebb in Anglo-American analytical philosophy. Quora: https://philosophyofhistory.quora.com/ Discord: https://discord.gg/r3dudQvGxD Links: https://jnnielsen.carrd.co/ Newsletter: http://eepurl.com/dMh0_-/ Podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/nick-nielsen94/episodes/Haskell-Fain-on-Transplanting-the-Heart-of-Speculative-Philosophy-of-History-into-an-Analytical-Body-e2lgsuj

TODAY IN PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY: David Carr and the Historical Reduction Friday 28 June 2024 is, to the best of my knowledge, the 84th birthday of David Carr, who was born on this date in Parkersburg, West Virginia, in 1940, and who, again to the best of my knowledge, is still alive, making him an exception among most of the figures I have covered in these episodes. Carr has written several books and papers on phenomenological philosophy of history. Carr wrote, “Rather than asking: What is history? Or: How do we know history? a phenomenology of history inquires into history as a phenomenon…” Following this phenomenological lead, Carr formulated an historical reduction drawing upon Husserl’s phenomenological reductions. Quora: https://philosophyofhistory.quora.com/ Discord: https://discord.gg/r3dudQvGxD Links: https://jnnielsen.carrd.co/ Newsletter: http://eepurl.com/dMh0_-/ Podcast: https://spotifyanchor-web.app.link/e/CKvd0wrbNKb

TODAY IN PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY: Giambattista Vico and Ideal Eternal History It is the 356th anniversary of the birth of Giambattista Vico (23 June 1668 – 23 January 1744), who was born in Naples, then part of the Kingdom of Naples, on this date in 1668. The Kingdom of Naples ruled most of the southern part of the Italian Peninsula for more than 500 years. Vico produced a distinctive conception of history and its study in The New Science (Scienza nuova), which was largely neglected in his time, but was later rediscovered by Jules Michelet and thus reentered European intellectual life through the romantic movement. Isaiah Berlin called Vico a critic of the Enlightenment, and Mark Lilla calls Vico an anti-modern, both of which epithets point to Vico’s thought being out of step with contemporary presuppositions, but Vico, since his rediscovery, has been influential despite his contravening the dominant paradigm. Quora: https://philosophyofhistory.quora.com/ Discord: https://discord.gg/r3dudQvGxD Links: https://jnnielsen.carrd.co/ Newsletter: http://eepurl.com/dMh0_-/ Podcast: https://spotifyanchor-web.app.link/e/CAzHgoboGKb

TODAY IN PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY: Wilhelm von Humboldt and the Historian’s Task It is the 257th anniversary of the birth of Wilhelm von Humboldt (22 June 1767 – 08 April 1835), who was born in Potsdam, then part of the Margraviate of Brandenburg, on this day in 1767. Wilhelm von Humboldt, like his equally famous younger brother, Alexander von Humboldt, was a man of wide learning who synthesized many forms of scholarship in his works. He was a philosopher, a linguist, and an educational reformer whose influenced rippled over Europe, often indirectly. Quora: https://philosophyofhistory.quora.com/ Discord: https://discord.gg/r3dudQvGxD Links: https://jnnielsen.carrd.co/ Newsletter: http://eepurl.com/dMh0_-/ Podcast: https://spotifyanchor-web.app.link/e/HyiSWSejDKb

TODAY IN PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY: Reinhold Niebuhr’s Post-Providential Theology of History Friday 21 June 2024 is the 132nd anniversary of the birth of Reinhold Niebuhr (21 June 1892 – 01 June 1971), who was born in Wright City, Missouri, on this date in 1892. Niebuhr formulated a theology of history that avoided the traditional claims of providential philosophies of history, and so makes his thought strikingly different from past Christian philosophies of history familiar form the work of Augustine and Bossuet. Quora: https://philosophyofhistory.quora.com/ Discord: https://discord.gg/r3dudQvGxD Links: https://jnnielsen.carrd.co/ Newsletter: http://eepurl.com/dMh0_-/ Podcast: https://spotifyanchor-web.app.link/e/0yqxhkdFBKb

TODAY IN PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY: Paul Veyne and the Gap between Trans-Historical Ideas and Verifiable Facts Thursday 13 June 2024 is the 94th anniversary of the birth of Paul Veyne (13 June 1930 – 29 September 2022), who was born in Aix-en-Provence on this date in 1930. Veyne brought the divergent influences of Raymond Aron and Michel Foucault together in his enigmatic vision of the past in which the constitutive imagination changes over time. Veyne formulates his own distinctive linguistic transcendentalism of the kind that Frank Ankersmit critiqued. Quora: https://philosophyofhistory.quora.com/ Discord: https://discord.gg/r3dudQvGxD Links: https://jnnielsen.carrd.co/ Newsletter: http://eepurl.com/dMh0_-/

PHILOSOPHICAL SIDE QUEST: Al-Ghazali’s Spiritual Crisis Abū Ḥāmid Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad al-Ṭūsiyy al-Ghazali, better known to posterity of Al-Ghazali, fits neatly between Avicenna, who died before he was born, and Averroes, who was born after he died, but al-Ghazali made a point of criticizing the use that Avicenna (and later Averroes) made of Greek philosophy. Al-Ghazali experienced a spiritual crisis as a result of being appointed to an influential position, and his response became a a touchstone of renewal in the Islamic world. His philosophical writings became a major influence in both Christian and Islamic civilization. Quora: https://philosophyofhistory.quora.com/ Discord: https://discord.gg/r3dudQvGxD Links: https://jnnielsen.carrd.co/ Newsletter: http://eepurl.com/dMh0_-/ #philosophy #history #PhilosophyofHistory #Al-Ghazali #IslamicGoldenAge #GreatTradition #RobertRedfield #Spengler

TODAY IN PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY: Isaiah Berlin’s Enlightenment Apologetics Thursday 06 June 2024 is the 115th anniversary of the birth of Isaiah Berlin (06 June 1909 - 5 November 1997), who was born in Riga, then part of the Russian Empire, the only son of a timber baron of the Baltic, on this date in 1909. Berlin began as an Oxford linguistic philosopher but abandoned this for history of ideas, which, as he pursued it, was frequently mixed with philosophy of history. He was an erudite scholar of the Enlightenment and the counter-Enlightenment, which looms large in his work and his conception of history. Insofar as we can discern a philosophy of history in Berlin’s work, it is surprisingly conventional in terms of Anglo-American analytical philosophy. Quora: https://philosophyofhistory.quora.com/ Discord: https://discord.gg/r3dudQvGxD Links: https://jnnielsen.carrd.co/ Newsletter: http://eepurl.com/dMh0_-/ Podcast: https://spotifyanchor-web.app.link/e/C7jk57cMcKb