#intellectual history

[newhistorybooks]

If there was ever a body of early modern Hispanic Black Atlantic thought, as the archive of ideas on freedom, rights, and livelihood, Ireton provides its fullest account through the examination of the lives and thoughts of myriads of Black people born in Africa, Europe, and the Americas. Behind the letters, trials, and petitions examined in this book, readers can piece together the lives of these Black men and women both in metropolitan Spain and the colonies, in tandem, as never before.

[racefortheironthrone]

Was Catharism an actual theological position or just a catchall for inquisitors?

Paging @apocrypals...

Catharism was a gnostic tradition from the south of France that posited the existence of two gods - an evil god (identified with the God of the Old Testament) who had created the fallen material world of sin and death and had trapped humanity into an endless cycle of suffering caused by our angelic natures stuffed into material bodies; and a good god (identified with Jesus Christ of the New Testament) who had created all things of the spirit and the soul, and who had sacrificed Himself to remind us of our true natures.

As you might imagine, this is already wildly heretical in the eyes of the Catholic Church. But it gets worse, because the Cathars basically invented a new sacrament of consolamentum - a deathbed baptism that would spiritually purify the dying soul and allow them to transcend the cycle of rebirth and suffering and unify with the Godhead, which rather trumps the need for the Catholic Church's traditional structure of confession and absolution.

[ethicopoliticolit]

Almost all the media coverage of AIDS has been aimed at the heterosexual groups now minimally at risk, as if the high-risk groups were not part of the audience. And in a sense, as Watney suggests, they’re not. The media targets “an imaginary national family unit which is both white and heterosexual” (p. 43). This doesn’t mean that most TV viewers in Europe and America are *not* white and heterosexual and part of a family. It does, however, mean, as Stuart Hall argues, that representation is very different from reflection: “It implies the active work of selecting and presenting, of structuring and shaping: not merely the transmitting of already-existing meaning, but the more active labour of *making things mean*” (quoted p. 124). TV doesn't make the family, but it makes the family *mean* in a certain way. That is, it makes an exceptionally sharp distinction between the family as a biological unit and as a cultural identity, and it does this by teaching us the attributes and attitudes by which people who thought they were already in a family actually only *begin to qualify* as belonging to a family. The great power of the media, and especially of television, is, as Watney writes, “its capacity to manufacture subjectivity itself” (p. 125), and in so doing to dictate the shape of an identity. The “general public” is at once an ideological construct and a moral prescription. Furthermore, the definition of the family *as an identity* is, inherently, an exclusionary process, and the cultural product has no obligation whatsoever to coincide exactly with its natural referent. Thus the family identity produced on American television is much more likely to include your dog than your homosexual brother or sister.

—Leo Bersani, “Is the Rectum a Grave?” (1987)

[mswyrr]

This is really excellent. It is basically a cultural and intellectual history of the concept where the author emphasizes the diversity of ways people have understood and used it.

The book was published as a historical work, though the author is a philosopher- but that speaks to how beautifully she's traced the historical change over time in how the concept has been articulated and used.

[warm-fuzzies-and-hot-anxiety]

Being in intellectual history and trying to get anything published is like, this is great but it’s too philosophical! Or, this is interesting but what about [insert random topic that is Not Relevant in any discernible way]

[persianatpenn]

"Hoist with His Own Petard": a Tragic Irony of Seyyed Nasr's Life

In 1974 Seyyed Hossein Nasr, a 41 years old scholar and thinker, a descendant of the Prophet, and a representative of the highest echelon of Iranian intellectual elite, established the Imperial Iranian Academy of Philosophy in Tehran: (انجمن شاهنشاهی فلسفه ایران).

In the first issue of the academy’s journal “جاویدان خرد”, (literally “Eternal Wisdom” or relying on context “Sophia Perennis”) he announced that the goal of the Academy is the revival of the traditional intellectual life of Islamic Persia.

Indeed, in highly westernized intellectual climate during Pahlavi’s regime where even the Western name فلسفه (philosophy) instead of Persian Arabic حكمة (wisdom) was offered for Academy, Nasr’s academic interests in Islamic philosophy and Islamic Science was very timely. When he was appointed to Tehran University at the Faculty of Letters and Humanities (دانشكده ادبيات و علوم انساني) it was completely dominated by western understanding of humanities.

His teaching of Islamic Philosophy and Islamic Sciences within the Tehran university in addition to his translations of Western Traditionalists (who admired Islam for preserving the “Tradition”) like Guenon in "Crise du monde moderne" (“Crisis of the modern world”) multiplied by publishing of classical texts of Islamic Philosophy through the academy plus holding meetings and conferences inviting people, like Ayatollah Mortada Mottahari and Ayatollah Jalal al-Din Ashtiyani with similar thoughts on the necessity of revival the classical Islamic intellectual traditions due to the danger of Pahlavi’s galloping Westernization lead to an obviously expected result – the growth of interest in Islamic philosophy contributed to the growth of interest in Islam in general among Iranian students.

Nasr's contributions to the revival of Islamic traditional intellectual life in Iran eventually played a cruel joke on him. While he spoke out against modernity in his lectures, he also undermined the Pahlavi regime's agenda. However, the most intricate and thorny matter was Nasr's personal association with the Shah's family, which eventually became his biggest liability. As more of his followers and students began to agree with him, the more they started scrutinizing his personal connections, which led to accusations of hypocrisy and treachery. These criticisms and accusations of hypocrisy ultimately caused Nasr to stay abroad during the Islamic Revolution and eventually never return…

(A table of contents from the first issue of Nasr's journal, containing predominantly articles about philosophy and science of Islamic Persia) سرگیٔی

[wafasoukoun]

نقد ميشال فوكو لدور المُثقّف: من الشّموليّة إلى الخصوصيّة

يُعيد ميشال فوكو تعريف العلاقة بين الحقيقة والسلطة، مُحطِّمًا الفكرة التقليدية التي ترى الحقيقة كيانا مجرّدا وخارجا عن نطاق الهيمنة. وفقًا لفوكو، الحقيقة ليست "اكتشافًا" محايدًا، بل هي نظامٌ مُنتَجٌ داخل شبكات السلطة عبر آليات تاريخية ومؤسسية. هذه الرؤية تُغيِّر جذريًّا دور المثقف، من ناطقٍ باسم قيمٍ شمولية إلى فاعلٍ في صراعاتٍ محلية تُعيد تشكيل نظام الحقيقة ذاته.

ينطلق فوكو من تفكيك الأسس التاريخية والفلسفية التي كوَّنت صورة المثقف التقليدي (الشّمولي)، ليكشف كيف أن السلطة والمعرفة تتشابكان في إنتاج أدوارٍ جديدةٍ للمثقفين(الخُصوصيّين) تستجيب لتعقيدات المجتمع الحديث.

⚖️. المثقّف الشّمولي:

- ارتبط المثقف الشمولي (كفولتير، زولا) بخطابٍ✏️ يدَّعي تمثيل "العدالة الكونية" ولذلك كانت الصفة الأولى في هذا الخطاب عموميته وتحدّيه للسلطة باسم القيم الإنسانيّة، وقد تأثّر بالتراث الماركسي الذي يُجسِّد البروليتاريا باعتبارها حاملة للمشروع التاريخي.

🔬. المثقّف الخصوصي:

-ينتمي إلى مجالاتٍ تقنية-علمية محددة (الفيزياء،👨‍🔬 الطب،👨‍⚕️ الهندسة👷‍♂️)، ويُمارس نضالًا سياسيًّا عبر معرفته المتخصصة. ولذلك لا يدَّعي تمثيل "الكل"، بل يتدخل في نقاطٍ استراتيجيةٍ حيث تتقاطع معرفته مع آليات السلطة (مثال: روبرت أوبنهايمر في مشروع مانهاتن النووي).

⬅️ حسب الأساس الفُوكوي: السلطة لا تُمارَس من "أعلى" فحسب، بل تتغلغل في التفاصيل التقنية للحياة اليومية، مما يجعل المثقف الخصوصي فاعلًا في تشكيلها.

🔴 يعكس هذا تحوُّل مراكز النفوذ من "الخطاب العام" إلى التفاصيل التقنية للحياة (كالتكنولوجيا الحيوية، التحليل الإحصائي).

📍 يرى فوكو أن زمن المثقف الشمولي، كمنشدٍ للخلود ومُصلحٍ كوني، قد ولى. في المقابل، يكتسب المثقف الخصوصي أهميةً متزايدةً لسببين:

1.الطبيعة التقنية للسلطة الحديثة: التي تعتمد على إدارة الحياة عبر معارفَ دقيقةٍ (الطب، الإحصاء، التكنولوجيا).

2.فاعلية المقاومة المحدودة: التي تنبثق من نقاط الالتقاء بين المعرفة والسلطة في سياقاتٍ ملموسة.

🤔. الدور السياسي للمثقف الخصوصيّ:

-المشكل الأساسي ليس تغيير "الوعي الزائف"، بل تغيير النظام المؤسسي المُنتج للحقيقة. (يضرب فوكو مثلا لذلك من خلال إشارته للنقاشات بين الاشتراكيين وعلماء الفيزياء في القرن العشرين التي كشفت كيف تُستخدم المعرفة العلمية لتعزيز الهيمنة.)

- دوره: الكشف عن التقاطعات بين المعرفة والسلطة في تخصصه {التركيز على تأثيرات الخطابات "الصحيحة" (مثل الخطاب الطبي أو الإعلامي) في إنتاج الواقع، ككيفية استخدام الطب النفسي لوصم "المنحرفين"}، و تحويل المواقع المهنية (المستشفى، المختبر، الجامعة) إلى ساحات صراع سياسي، وبناء تحالفاتٍ بين خبراء من تخصصات مختلفة (القضاة، الأطباء، المهندسين) لمواجهة شبكات السلطة المتعددة (الشركات عابرة القومية، الأجهزة الأمنية).

⚠️. المخاطر التي يواجهها:

-الاستقطاب القطاعي: انحصار نضاله في مطالب ضيقة (مطالب فئوية) دون ربطها باستراتيجيةٍ شمولية.

-التوظيف السياسي: استغلال أحزاب السلطة أو النقابات لمعرفته التقنية دون تغيير جذري في بنى الهيمنة.

-الاغتراب عن الجماهير: افتراض أن قضاياه التقنية لا تهمُّ "العموم"، رغم تأثيرها المباشر في حياتهم (مثل سياسات الصحة العامة أو التلوث البيئي).

🚫 غير أن هذه الأهمية التي أولاها فوكو للمثقّف الخصوصي لا تعني من جانبه التخلي عن الرؤية النقدية الشمولية، بل إعادة بناء وظيفة المثقف عبر:

🔺ربط الصراعات المحلية بشبكاتٍ أوسع دون اختزالها في أيديولوجيا شمولية.

🔺توظيف الموقع الاستراتيجي للمعرفة المتخصصة في فضح آليات الهيمنة.

🔺 تفادي الوقوع في فخ "العلموية" (تقديس العلم) مع الاعتراف بتأثير الخطابات "الصحيحة" سياسيًّا.

🛡 في عصرنا، حيث تُدار الصراعاتُ عبر البيانات والخوارزميات، يصبح المثقف الخصوصي محللًا استراتيجيًّا للسلطة، يع��ل من داخل تشابكاتها لتفكيكها. هكذا، يُذكِّرنا فوكو بأن الحقيقةَ ليست مُقدَّسة، بل ساحةُ صراعٍ دائمة نتحمل مسؤولية المشاركة فيها.

[wall-of-knowledge]

Isac Newton: The Most Extra Ordinary Scientific mind

Table of Contents Key PointsIntroductionIsaac Newton, the Most Extraordinary Scientific MindBackground and Early LifeScientific ContributionsPublic Roles and Personal ChallengesLegacy and Cultural ImpactComparative Analysis and ControversiesTables for ClarityConclusionKey Citations Key Points Research suggests Isaac Newton is the most extraordinary scientific mind, known for laws of motion,…

[tragictaleofshikyou]

from the wikipedia page of Guarino Guarini. I like how in that era, their culture was about being a polymath and intellectuals were expected to speculate on so many different topics. It would be interesting if it were like that today. Athanasius Kircher must be the ultimate example of this.

Maybe 'living life as art' is a reincarnation of this ideal.

[newhistorybooks]

"Daut brings alive Haiti's fascinating intellectual history and shows brilliantly how Haitian thinkers shaped the culture and politics of their own country even as they transformed broader understandings of race, revolution, and the writing of history. This powerful and necessary book challenges us to think differently about the global history of thought."

[vespertinatriangle]

There are many myths about why aging is particularly fraught in this country, each of which Chappel dismantles in turn. The first to fall is the prelapsarian vision of a once-harmonious aging process that industrialization disrupted: that “once upon a time” intergenerational homes were the norm, and those who made it to old age were cared for with respect by family. But intergenerational households were actually a minority in the United States in the nineteenth century. Farmers, Chappel acknowledges, typically had a grown child or two “stick around in the hope of inheritance.” But that means many older people—who were still doing some farm labor—had a child living with them, not that most children had a parent living with them. Given the high birth rates of the era, there were “fewer older relatives to go around, and more grown children to choose from.” And families today do more care for their elders than families used to, he writes, because modern medicine has enabled people to live longer with age-related disability than they used to.

—"The True Threat to American Retirement" from New Republic

[ccuniculusmolestus]

Bunny Corcoran be like “I know a spot” and then scams you with a 300$ bill in an expensive restaurant

[newhistorybooks]

In this triumph of intellectual history, Ramachandra Guha gives us a bracing new genealogy of environmental thought—one that offers a critical reminder that care for the earth and human justice need not be at odds.

[racefortheironthrone]

My class had to learn the song "Sacré Charlemagne" for recital so I really believed for a longtime the song was way more prevalent and common knowledge on par with Frère Jacques or Alouette. Anyhow wondering if you concur with the main refrain about Charlemagne inviting school?

So the Carolingian Renaissance and the educational reforms instituted by Alcuin of York were quite real. Now, I wouldn't describe Charlesmagne as the "inventor" of school (i wouldn't even call Alcuin the inventor either, but rather the popularizer of ideas that had come to York via Theodore of Tarsus and the monastic traditions of Ireland), but he was Alcuin's patron.

While Alcuin provided the ideas, Charlesmagne used his political power as King and Emperor to make the Seven Liberal Arts mandatory in the "palatial schools" of the Holy Roman Empire, and then to require the Church to establish free schools in every cathedral and monestary in the Empire.

This wasn't the same thing as universal education (these schools only ever taught a small percent of the population), but it did lead to the emergence of a network of church schools who produced enough literate people to power the Carolingian Renaissance and staff the Carolingian bureaucracy, found the first medieval universities, and (a few hundred years later) found the intellectual movement of scholasticism, by which Western Europe rediscovered neo-Platonic and Aristotelian philosophy by way of Greek, Jewish, and Muslim scholars.

[marvey-sideblog]

"Can we chat about – I don't know if Gabriel's gonna be somewhere mad at me for this, but I gotta point it out. Harvey's got a very, sort of, coquettish, pillow-hugging thing going on on the bed. [Sarah laughs.] Do you know in this scene, where he's putting it all together? Like, it's such an interesting take. Like, you'd – I don't know why, you'd think he'd kind of . . . be reclined, but instead he's on his . . . stomach, like holding a pillow. It's very . . . different. And I love it. But I definitely, I was like, "Huh! Harvey?""

– Patrick J Adams on Sidebar: A Suits Watch Podcast episode "Play the Man"

Scottie pegg‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎/d him.

[unsolicited-opinions]

On recent far-left attacks on the Anti-Defamation League

Before we start:

- I think the ADL is wrong about Musk's salutes.

- I think the ADL's Israel advocacy sometimes comes into conflict with their mission in the diaspora. I think their methodologies for data collection and reporting need improvement.

- I think that the ADL is flawed, imperfect and does much more good than harm.

---

Christopher Hitchens put into words what academics used to live by:

"What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence".

The burden of proof is on those making the claim, and the claims of droptheadl.org aren't supported with primary sources or evidence.

For example:

To support its claims about the ADL and SNCC, droptheadl.org offers a link, presenting it as a citation.

This is a link to a Google Books entry. There's no actual text, no citation, no chapter, no page, just the claim that somewhere in this 300-page book exists proof of the ADL denouncing SNCC as racist.

However, that's not in the book. Chapter two talks about this incident in detail, so I read it.

In reaponse to a SNCC newsletter (this is what a primary source looks like!) containing many factual errors about Israel,

...Morris Abram, president of the American Jewish Committee (AJC), summed up their outrage: “Anti-Semitism is anti-Semitism whether it comes from the Ku Klux Klan or from extremist Negro groups

[For those who haven't studied the era: at this point, "Negro" was still the word which the black community preferred. The transition to widespread identification as 'black' got going in the 60s and finished in the 70s. The use of the word 'Negro' here is not a slur. I state this in advance because I know how the illiberal left weilds its willful ignorance]

...

Abram was also careful to echo what the ADL had said: that SNCC’s article put it in the same anti-Israeli trench as the Arab world and the Soviet Union.

That's verifiably, unquestionably true. That's the position SNCC took, because that's where they got their information.

Droptheadl.org lied. This book doesn't say what they claim it says, which is why they didn't quote it or offer a specific citation. Why let facts get in the way of the narrative which makes them feel good about themselves?

The book, which I recommend reading, isn't about the ADL. It's a scholarly examination of the relationships between the wars the Arab world launched on Israel and the US Civil Rights Movement. This requires much discussion of the impact on the complex relationships between black communities and Jewish communities in the US in the context of their views on Israel and Palestine.

It's fascinating. Here's another excerpt illustrating why many Jews saw SNCC as taking an antisemitic turn:

One day in May of 1967, [Stokely] Carmichael and [H. Rap] Brown were in Alabama chatting with Donald Jelinek, a lawyer who worked with SNCC.

Jelinek, who was Jewish, expressed his positive feelings about Israel and his concerns about the Jewish state’s situation in that tension-filled month as war clouds were on the horizon in the Middle East.

“So it was a shock to me,” Jelinek later recounted, “when my SNCC friends mildly indicated support for the Arabs.” Mildly stated or not, their sentiments prompted Jelinek to reply, “But they may wipe out and destroy Israel.”

Carmichael adroitly changed the subject with some humor, and the men began laughing.

Jelinek thereafter overheard Brown quietly singing to himself, “arms for the Arabs, sneakers for the Jews.” When Jelinek asked him what that song meant, an embarrassed Brown explained that he had learned the song as a student in Louisiana. It implied that the Israelis would need sneakers (tennis shoes) to run from the Arabs, who were armed with weapons from abroad.

My qualms with this, my disappointment in and disagreement with both Carmichael and Brown doesn't make me a racist. It doesn't make the AJC or the ADL racist and it doesn't make Jelinek, the Jewish lawyer working with SNCC, a racist or a poor ally.

Zionism is the belief that Jews should have self-determination in their homeland.

Nazism was the belief that racially superior Aryans own the world, should be organized through fascist methods, and that the genocide of the Jewish people was explicitly required because they were the source of all evil and the obstacle to progress.

These are not the same. Suggesting they are the same, as Carmichael did, is morally and intellectually bankrupt. Pointing this out doesn't make me a racist. It makes me literate.

I still own a copy of Carmichael's book, Black Power. Carmichael (who later changed his name to Kwame Ture) was a complex person. Like every other historical figure, he was neither a saint nor a demon.

I can admire a lot about the Black Panthers without falsely claiming that nothing they ever did or said was troubling, poorly reasoned, or bigoted. The world is more complex than that.

There are no saints. Learn this important truth and use it to guide your understanding of the world around you. There are no saints.

Gandhi, for instance, was a great leader for Indian self-rule and a visionary of nonviolent protest. He was also a racist as a young man who said black people "...are troublesome, very dirty and live like animals." Read about his work in South Africa. He was also really weird about sex and slept naked with his grand niece, which we rightly recognize today as sexual abuse. He wasn't a saint or a demon, he was a person.

People are complex and flawed. If you want to understand people, history, and movements, wrap your head around this as keep it with you: People and their movements are complex and flawed.

But the depth of reasoning I see from the illiberal left is "ADL criticized SNCC, so they're Nazis."

No, child. The world is much, much more complex than that. Why did you go to college if you weren't going to learn anything there?

My 14yo is right. US leftists (not liberals, leftists) are allergic to nuance and discard the facts contradicting any narrative which makes them feel good about themselves.

Selah

Deep breath in, slow breath out.

The book is really delves into some of the factors contributing to the deteriorating relationship at the time between Jewish Americans and Black Americans. It points to this essay by James Baldwin, titled "Negroes Are Anti-Semitic Because They're Anti-White." I urge you to read it, it is a fascinating artifact of its time and place.

And this:

Jews had long advocated for black liberation by, for example, playing a role in the foundation of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1909. Jewish support for blacks was well known; as early as February of 1942, the American Jewish Committee published a study titled “Jewish Contribution to Negro Welfare.” Having experienced the sting of anti-Semitism, many Jews believed they were fighting in the same trench against discrimination alongside African Americans. When the civil rights struggle grew to become a mass movement in the 1950s and early 1960s, Jewish moral and financial support was crucial, and Jews were disproportionately well-represented among those whites who lent their support to the cause. Jewish financial contributions to civil rights groups were also significant. Jews even were the subject of criticism from some southern whites for the high-profile role they played in helping blacks win their freedom. All this compounded a sense of betrayal by SNCC that was felt by many Jewish Americans.

It should not be surprising or taken as racist that Jews objected to SNCC's advocacy against Israel's existence and I maintain that any call for Israel to be destroyed is innately, inarguably antisemitic. No other nation endures calls for its destruction. Just the Jewish one.

There was unquestionably tension between SNCC and the entire spectrum of non-black Americans who supported SNCC when SNCC ejected non-black members. From our perspective, decades removed, I can understand both why SNCC members narrowly voted for this AND why non-black members of SNCC were hurt and disillusioned. All of those perspectives were (and are) valid.

When I was an undergrad studying African American Political Thought, we discussed these tensions head-on, using primary sources, and evaluated them dispassionately.

We concluded that there are no villains in this story. SNCC got a bunch of facts wrong about Israel, their staunch Jewish allies were profoundly disappointed, saw hypocrisy in SNCC's position, and said so.

I think that far left Americans overlaid their feelings about a domestic struggle on a foreign one where they don't fit...and then discarded the facts and the complexity which got in the way of a satisfying narrative which made them feel like the good guys instead of forcing them to grapple with an uncomfortably complex reality.

I think that's what the illiberal left still does. It doesn't like complexity, it doesn't like academic rigor, it likes stories it can tell itself about its moral purity and discards facts, complexity, or rigor which threaten their view of themselves as saviors.

The world is complex. People are complex. Movements are complex. Organizations are complex. History is complex. Justice is complex.

The ADL isn't perfect, its leaders haven't been and are not saints or tzadikim, but the good they do for all Americans radically outweighs their failings and I'm going to keep supporting them while yelling at them to do better.

If you're an ADL hater and have any actual evidence and primary sources on racism from the ADL, I really want to see it, because this weak sauce from droptheadl.org doesn't make the case the illiberal left thinks it makes. And they'd know that if they had learned anything in college about how scholarship works and how arguments are constructed.

The illiberal left perhaps forgets how the ADL responded when Trump called for requiring American Muslims to register.

“If one day Muslim Americans will be forced to register their identities, then that is the day that this proud Jew will register as a Muslim. ”

- ADL chief executive Jonathan Greenblatt