image: IG Farben headquarters A number of posts have confronted the historical realities of atrocities, genocide, and cruelty on a massive scale. The general question tying these discussions together has to do with individual human beings: "How could a normal human being with normal social emotions commit these atrocious acts?" And the individual question can …
The Antikythera mechanism
image: reconstructed device as created by UCL team When we think about scientific and technological knowledge in the ancient world, one generally thinks of philosophy and a little bit of pre-scientific musing about the nature of reality. Water? Fire? Flux? The ancient Greeks had knowledge of mathematics and geometry, of course, and a certain level …
Evil and the history of philosophy (Neiman)
As recent posts suggest, I am interested in finding appropriate ways of rethinking the philosophy of history so as to provide us with greater ability to confront the evils of the twentieth century. This involves some concrete questions about how we as human beings define ourselves in the world, in light of the histories our …
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Wickham on “feudalism”
Chris Wickham is perhaps Britain’s leading historian of European history between the end of the Roman Empire and the Renaissance. His two books, The Inheritance of Rome: Illuminating the Dark Ages 400-1000 (2009) and Medieval Europe (2016), are rich and intriguing accounts of the heterogeneous and diverse histories that the period encompasses. One topic in particular that is of …
Thinking about evil in history (Kekes)
I am currently grappling with how to bring the horrendous events of the twentieth century into the philosophy of history. After doing a lot of reading about recent thinking about the Holocaust (link), it seems clear that we still have failed to fully comprehend the atrocities of the Nazi period, Stalinist rule before and after …
Epicurean advertising?
image: Epicurus inscription at Oenoanda (credit Jack A. Waldron (link)) In The Consolations of Philosophy Alain de Botton offers an interesting observation concerning one of the sequels to Epicureanism -- a massive public wall carving commissioned by Diogenes of Oenoanda (a small city in what is now Turkey). Diogenes of Oenoanda (not to be confused with the more famous …
Making sense of atrocities
Reading Wickham’s The Inheritance of Rome: Illuminating the Dark Ages 400-1000 has made me aware of something outside his storyline: the normal, routine, and unremarked willingness of medieval peasant-soldiers, leaders, bands, and armies to slaughter one another, to kill the disarmed, to enslave prisoners, and to do all these things with apparently no compunction. Vikings, Franks, Bulgars, …
Frankish kings and Mynyddog’s gold …
Chris Wickham's The Inheritance of Rome: Illuminating the Dark Ages 400-1000 is a fascinating book to read, if you are interested in how various strands of culture, politics, and economy developed in Europe between the fifth century and the beginning of the eleventh century -- that is, between the end of the Roman Empire and the high …
Does philosophy offer consolation?
image: Martin Buber Alain de Botton's Consolations of Philosophy poses a bit of a puzzle. Why "consolations"? And why philosophy? How does philosophy come into the picture? For many professional philosophers from the past seventy-five years, the answer would be: not at all. Philosophy, in the analytic tradition anyway, is not concerned with the individual person's subjective …
The late Roman Empire and what came next …
There is a great deal of drama in the fairly limited ideas we have today about the passing of the Roman Empire, the consolidation of "barbarian" kingdoms, and the rise of the Islamic presence in Europe. In particular, there is the drama of the sacking of Rome and the end of Roman civilization; an extended …
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Understanding Society 