The Journal of the History of Ideas Blog

Category Think Piece

Histories We Repeat

by guest contributor Timothy Scott Johnson  You know, I’ve always been suspicious of analogies. But now I find myself at a great feast of analogies, a Coney Island, a Moscow May Day, a Jubilee Year of analogies, and I’m beginning… Continue Reading →

“Good men are God in the flesh” : Frederick Douglass, Virtue Philosopher

by guest contributor Daniel Joslyn In his most famous speech, “Self-Made Men,” written in 1854, and performed for the rest of his life, Frederick Douglass contends that: “from the various dregs of society, there come men who may well be… Continue Reading →

90 Years of Intellectual Cooperation: the Forgotten History of UNESCO’s Predecessor

By Jan Stöckmann On 16 January 1926, a group of statesmen, diplomats, and civil servants gathered in Paris to celebrate the inauguration of the International Institute of Intellectual Cooperation at its grand premises in the Palais Royal. Wine was served,… Continue Reading →

Prophetic Medicine in the Indian Yūnānī Tradition

by guest contributor Deborah Schlein When Greek medical texts were transmitted and translated in the ʿAbbasid capital of Baghdad in the ninth and tenth centuries, they paved the way for original Arabic medical sources which built off Greek humoral theory… Continue Reading →

(Prison) Note(book)s Toward a History of Boredom

by guest contributor Spencer J. Weinreich Act III, scene iii of William Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice (c.1596) sees the imprisoned Antonio following his creditor, Shylock, through the streets, in hopes of mercy. Unmoved, Shylock expostulates, “I do wonder, /… Continue Reading →

Anti-Imperialist Publications and Suspended Disbelief: Reading the Public Materials of the League Against Imperialism, 1927-1937

by guest contributor Disha Karnad Jani “Why We Appear”: so begins the September-October 1931 issue of the Anti-Imperialist Review, the official journal of the League Against Imperialism and for National Independence (LAI). This organization was founded in 1927 and brought… Continue Reading →

Leibniz and Deleuze on Paradox

by guest contributor Audrey Borowski Paradox features prominently in Leibniz’s thought process, and yet has failed to receive much attention within mainstream scholarship. The French philosopher Gilles Deleuze, however, devoted his book The Logic of Sense to the analysis of… Continue Reading →

Cheek Rending, Bodies, and Rape in Medieval Castile, c. 1050-1300

by guest contributor Rachel Q. Welsh In medieval Castile, between about 1050 and 1300, local municipal lawcodes, or fueros, looked to the body for proof of rape. These fueros provided detailed and practical sets of laws and privileges to newly… Continue Reading →

Paris’s New Musée de l’Homme: Then, Now, Tomorrow

by guest contributor Anna Toledano Autobiography is an art form that only few have mastered. The newly reopened permanent exhibition at the Musée de l’Homme (Museum of Mankind) in Paris does a remarkable job of writing the book on our… Continue Reading →

Threatened by Prejudices: French Revolutionary Textbooks

by guest contributor Hannah Malcolm During the French Revolution, statesmen faced the task of altering society in order to preserve the new Republic, which entailed developing a politics of virtue and culture. In response to demands for public involvement in… Continue Reading →

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