The Discovery of America is not merely the name of an event; it is a historical abstraction.
Like all historical abstractions it has unique characteristics that make it a particular type of cognitive tool, akin to concepts, but distinct.
Historical abstractions–like the Renaissance, the American Revolution, the Civil War–are mental integrations of historical information into a mental [...]
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Kant’s philosophical assault on man’s faculty of reason paved the way for the historical assault on Columbus by preventing a key avenue of development from ever occuring in Western historiography. By aborting the general study of abstractions as cognitive tools, Kant prevented historians from adopting the epistemological stance necessary to define and defend the most [...]
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In the nineteenth century, historians were desparately in need of a champion to clarify the nature of reason, and to guide them in the challenge of making sense of man’s complex past. Newton’s genius had shown the power of man’s mind to penetrate nature’s inner workings, but no one had been able to articulate [...]
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To my knowledge Immanuel Kant never expressed any interest in Christopher Columbus. Certainly he is not known for having done so or considered influential regarding the debate over the question of Columbus’s place in history or the discovery of America. (There was, of course, no debate on this question until the twentieth century.) Nonetheless, it is Kant [...]
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The following excerpt is from the Columbiad, an epic poem by Joel Barlow, a member of the Connecticut Militia in 1776, and later diplomat and poet. It is the closest thing I have ever found to an objective assessment of Columbus’s place in history, and it is beautifully written:
I sing the Mariner who first unfurl’d
An eastern [...]
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I can’t say I’m a huge fan of the Ridley Scott film “The Conquest of Paradise.” The movie falls prey to the modern fixation with realism, and thereby loses sight of the power of art to dramatize the abstract meaning of history rather than relate its purely concrete chronology.
That said, I am a big fan of the Vangelis [...]
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The young man sits perched on a mooring post, looking out to sea, with a thoughtful gaze that suggests it isn’t the objects before him that truly have his attention, but rather a vision of something that others, if they were present, would not perceive.
This young man is not, however, merely day-dreaming. His is not [...]
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