The Journal of the History of Ideas Blog

Category Think Piece

Anthropologia

By guest contributor Trish Ross For the full companion article, see this Winter’s edition of the Journal of the History of Ideas. “Human nature is the only science of man; and yet has been hitherto the most neglected.” Thus David Hume simultaneously… Continue Reading →

One Thousand Gophers: Information and Emigration in the Early U.S.

By guest contributor JT Jamieson A braggadocio writing in The New-England Magazine in 1832 asked his Northern audience, “Is it possible that no one in these parts has seen a Gopher? I have seen a thousand; and some other animals,… Continue Reading →

A Book of Battle: Marcelino Menéndez y Pelayo and La ciencia española

By Editor Spencer J. Weinreich Marcelino Menéndez y Pelayo’s La ciencia española (first ed. 1876) is a battlefield long after the guns have fallen silent: the soldiers dead, the armies disbanded, even the names of the belligerent nations changed beyond… Continue Reading →

The challenge of contingency and Leibniz’s cybernetic thinking

By guest contributor Audrey Borowski According to the philosopher of science Alexandre Koyré, the early modern period marked the passage ‘from the world of more-or-less to the universe of precision’. Not all thinkers greeted the mathematization of epistemology with the… Continue Reading →

The Historical Origins of Human Rights: A Conversation with Samuel Moyn

By guest contributor Pranav Kumar Jain Since the publication of The Last Utopia: Human Rights in History, Professor Samuel Moyn has emerged as one of the most prominent voices in the field of human rights studies and modern intellectual history…. Continue Reading →

Nazi Punching, or, Simone Weil on Resistance and the Organized Left

by contributing writer Agatha A. Slupek Simone Weil (1909-1943) occupies a liminal position in the history of ideas. While Weil’s thought is an established concern for scholars of religion and mysticism, she is neglected in the Anglophone study of the… Continue Reading →

Arndt vs. Mortimer: Clash of the Dominant Strands of Australian Developmental Thought

by Contributing Writer Nicholas Ferns Throughout 1972, a series of seminars were held at Monash University in Melbourne to examine “Indonesian society and politics” under the Suharto regime. Organized by the Monash University Association of Students, these seminars resulted in… Continue Reading →

Alexander and Wilhelm von Humboldt, Brothers of Continuity

By guest contributor Audrey Borowski At the beginning of the nineteenth century, a young German polymath ventured into the heart of the South American jungle, climbed the Chimborazo volcano, crawled through the Andes, conducted experiments on animal electricity, and delineated… Continue Reading →

Ultimate Evil: Cultural Sociology and the Birth of the Supervillain

By guest contributor Albert Hawks, Jr. In June 1938, editor Jack Leibowitz found himself in a time crunch. Needing to get something to the presses, Leibowitz approved a recent submission for a one-off round of prints. The next morning, Action… Continue Reading →

The Emotional Life of Laissez-Faire: Emulation in Eighteenth-Century Economic Thought

By guest contributor Blake Smith Capitalism is often understood by both critics and defenders as an economic system that gives self-interested individuals free reign to acquire, consume, and compete. There are debates about the extent to which self-interest can be… Continue Reading →

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