TODAY IN PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY: Montaigne on Historical Anecdotes and Archetypes

Saturday 28 February 2026 is the 493rd anniversary of the birth of Michel Eyquem, Seigneur de Montaigne (28 February 1533 – 13 September 1592), who was born at the family estate, Château de Montaigne, on this date in 1533.

Michel de Montaigne loved anecdotes and constructed many of his essays around memorable anecdotes. His contemporary, Jean Bodin, wasn’t as enthusiastic, criticizing Plutarch for passing along stories Bodin believed to be “incredible and entirely fabulous.” Montaigne came to Plutarch’s defense, and in so doing revealed a different sensibility about history than that of Bodin.

Quora: https://philosophyofhistory.quora.com/

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#philosophy #history #PhilosophyofHistory #MicheldeMontaigne #JeanBodin #anecdote #archetype #skepticism #pyrrhonism

TODAY IN PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY: L. E. J. Brouwer’s Unconventional Methodologies

Friday 27 February 2026 is the 145th anniversary of the birth of Luitzen Egbertus Jan Brouwer (27 February 1881 – 02 December 1966), known to his friends as Bertus and better known to posterity as L. E. J. Brouwer, who was born in Overschie, a neighborhood of Rotterdam, in the Netherlands, on this date in 1881.

Brouwer’s unconventional thinking is valuable to us in several ways. His research in the foundations of mathematics brought to light methodological differences that earlier formal thought hadn’t even noticed. His philosophy of time is proposed as a distinctive source of mathematical thought, and his pessimistic philosophy of life gives us a point of reference as distinctive as his methodology and his metaphysics.

Quora: https://philosophyofhistory.quora.com/

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#philosophy #history #PhilosophyofHistory #LEJBrouwer #intuitionism #constructivism #ExcludedMiddle #TertiumNonDatur #time #impredicativity #predicativism #finitism #pessimism

TODAY IN PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY: Collingwood on Reflexive Epistemology

Sunday 22 February 2026 is the 137th anniversary of the birth of Robin George Collingwood (22 February 1889 - 09 January 1943), better known to posterity as R. G. Collingwood, who was born in Cartmel, just south of the Lake District, on this date in 1889.

As one of the most prominent English language philosophers of history, Collingwood had distinctive views on philosophy and history and how the two come together in philosophy of history. His formulations are characterized by a high degree of reflexivity, and in this episode I consider the epistemic reflexivity of knowing that one knows, and the relation of this kind of reflexive knowledge to history.

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#philosophy #history #PhilosophyofHistory #RGCollingwood #knowledge #epistemology #RobertAckermann #reflexivity #self-knowledge

TODAY IN PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY: The Cosmic Evolutionism of E. E. Harris

Thursday 19 February 2026 is the 118th anniversary of the birth of Errol Eustace Harris (19 February 1908 – 21 June 2009), who was born in Kimberly, then Cape Colony just a couple of years before the Union of South Africa formed, on this date in 1908.

In his book The Reality of Time, Errol Harris developed a view of historical time deeply indebted to both Hegel and Collingwood, but going beyond both to define a position that I would call cosmic evolutionism, in which the many manifestations of time are woven together into what Harris called “…an evolving hierarchical scale of physical, biological, psychological, intelligent, moral, and spiritual forms.”

Quora: https://philosophyofhistory.quora.com/

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#philosophy #history #PhilosophyofHistory #ErrolHarris #PhilosophyofTime #Hegelianism #HistoricalTime #Hegelianism #Collingwood

TODAY IN PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY: Tom Paine and the Rights of Man

Monday 09 February 2026 is the 289th anniversary of the birth of Thomas Paine (born Thomas Pain; 09 February 1737 [O.S. 29 January 1736 – 08 June 1809), who was born Thetford, a town in Norfolk, on this date 1737.

Paine was centrally involved in the great historical events of his time, playing a prominent role in both the American and French revolutions. He wrote in a letter to George Washington, “A share in two revolutions is living to some purpose.” Paine did indeed live to some purpose, and his thought can’t be meaningfully distinguished from the purposes for which he lived. To discuss one is to discuss the other.

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#philosophy #history #PhilosophyofHistory #ThomasPaine #CommonSense #RightsofMan #NaturalRights #EdmundBurke #FrenchRevolution #deism #HumanRights #AmericanRevolution

TODAY IN PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY: Proclus and the Axiomatic Conception of Knowledge

Sunday 08 February 2026 is the 1,614th anniversary of the birth of Proclus Lycius (08 February 412 – 17 April 485), who was born in Constantinople, then the capital of the eastern Roman Empire, now Istanbul and the largest city in Turkey, on this date in AD 412. Proclus was among the last of the philosophers who made up the Golden Chain of the succession of scholarchs of the Platonic Academy in Athens.

In writing A Commentary on the First Book of Euclid’s Elements Proclus brought together axiomatics and Greek philosophy, making himself the first philosopher of mathematics. I argue that this was a crucial and formative moment in the history of Western civilization, and I consider the theses of the Great Divergence and the High-Level Equilibrium Trap from this perspective.

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#philosophy #history #PhilosophyofHistory #Proclus #ProclusLycius #axiomatics #Euclid #GreatDivergence #HighLevelEquilibriumTrap #PhilosophyofMathematics #neoplatonism

TODAY IN PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY: Ingarden on Time and Modes of Being

Thursday 05 February 2026 is the 133rd anniversary of the birth of Roman Witold Ingarden (05 February 1893 – 14 June 1970), who was born in Kraków, then the Grand Duchy of Cracow, which was then part of Austria-Hungary, on this date in 1893.

Ingarden’s major work was The Controversy over the Existence of the World (1947-1948), an excerpt of which was translated as Time and Modes of Being (1964), with the whole work being translated only relatively recently. Ingarden uses time to focus his discussion of the divide between realism and idealism, and I use Ingarden’s discussion of time to focus on the nature of history.

Quora: https://philosophyofhistory.quora.com/

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#philosophy #history #PhilosophyofHistory #RomanIngarden #phenomenology #idealism #realism #ModesofBeing #time #PhilosophyofTime

TODAY IN PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY: Thomas Cole and the Course of Empire

Sunday 01 February 2026 is the 225th anniversary of the birth of Thomas Cole (01 February 1801 – 11 February 1848), who was born at Bolton-le-Moors in Lancashire on this date in 1801. His family moved to the United States in 1818, making their home in Steubenville, Ohio

As one of the founding painters of the Hudson River School, Thomas Cole had a large and lasting impact on American art. His five paintings of the series The Course of Empire, executed for his patron Luman Reed, illustrate the rise and fall of a great city, suggesting much more than they show.

Quora: https://philosophyofhistory.quora.com/

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#philosophy #history #PhilosophyofHistory #ThomasCole #HudsonRiverSchool #TheCourseofEmpire #LumanReed #CyclicalHistory #Virgil #Rousseau #Spengler