The Tyranny of History
It has become customary for moderns to hear the phrase “the right side of History” or the “Judgement of History” or “History is watching us.” What is…
Searching for History: A Review of “Wherefrom Does History Emerge? Inquiries in Political Cosmology”
Tilo Schabert and John von Heyking, eds., Wherefrom Does History Emerge? Inquiries in Political Cosmology. Berlin: De Gruyter Press, 2020. Introduction In this edited volume, Tilo…
Situated in History
This might be an unusual trait, but I am someone who has trouble knowing who she is, and what life asks of her, until she gets some…
Secular Iconoclasm and the Peasants’ Indignation
Those who defend revolutions cite speeches; those who accuse them cite facts. — Nicolás Gómez Dávila The moments of vandalism that we have been witnessing these…
Was It A Past Life?
By now there are many cases on record of individuals recalling previous lifetimes. A person under hypnosis will seem to remember incidents that occurred under conditions quite…
Oblivion and History
"A slow awakening after so many metempsychoses: things will never be the same as they once were" -Verlain Human thought has been torn apart for millennia,…
History: Forgotten and Remembered
History: Forgotten and Remembered. Andrew J. Zwerneman. Falls Church, VA: Cana Academy, 2020. History: Forgotten and Remembered is a small and delightful book about how to…
Do We Learn From History?
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. This line will most likely sound familiar to every reader. It has been paraphrased countless times…
In Search of the American Myth
American history needs to be seen in the context of a larger drama. But there is sharp disagreement over the way we choose to represent that relationship.…
Recovering Our Legacy: The Many Uses of the American Past
We Americans need to know our history. And we need to know it far better than we have in the past. We are not a people bound…
Hannah Arendt: Philosopher of Politics, History, and Faith
Hannah Arendt’s immigration to the United States in the early 1940s reminds me of a comment made by a professor of a post-WW2 American history course that…
Kant on History and Culture as a Means to Ethical Evolution
The “Conjectural Beginning of Human History”[1] is Kant’s attempt to recast the creation story of Genesis. The procreative act of Yahweh is cooperative in the sense heaven and…
A People Without History: T.S. Eliot’s Critique of Evolutionary History
While T.S. Eliot never made any comments critical of Charles Darwin or his theory of the evolution of species, he was quite critical of various popularized versions…
The Mystery of History and Place: Radical Preservation Revisited
"We forget . . . that there is a natural history of souls, nay, even of man himself, which can be learned only from the symbolism inherent…
Huntington, Kuhn, and Toynbee: Analyzing and Critiquing the Relativism Underpinning the Clash of Civilizations Thesis
Abstract The release of Samuel P. Huntington's The Clash of Civilizations was the occasion for quite the stir in academic circles. Perhaps more importantly, his ideas of…