Jamal ad-Din Al-Afghani, Is That Your Final Answer?

In my historical research on the Islamist Entanglement, I have been examining the intellectual undercurrent that runs through Middle Eastern history during the Western Ascendancy of 1683-1839 and subsequent Western Supremacy over the region. It has been a fascinating project, with far greater rewards that I had suspected. Among the most interesting characters I [...]

Read Full Post »

Powell History Quote of the Week

“A man does not attain to the universal by abandoning the particular, nor to the everlasting by an endeavour to overleap the limitations of time and place.  The abiding reality exists not somewhere apart in the air, but under certain temporary and local forms of thought, feeling, and endeavour.  We come most deeply into communion [...]

Read Full Post »

Kant vs. Columbus, Part 4

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 [...]

Read Full Post »

Kant vs. Columbus (Part 3)

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 [...]

Read Full Post »

Kant vs. Columbus (Part 2)

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 [...]

Read Full Post »

Kant vs. Columbus (Part 1)

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 [...]

Read Full Post »