2,196 words
There are probably few political theorists who have been as systematically misread as Carl Schmitt. Perhaps this is the destiny of any thinker whose influence extends well beyond his academic field, but Schmitt’s revival among the online right in recent years has produced especially crude appropriations. (more…)
Justus of Ghent, Saint Augustine, c. 1475
Justus of Ghent, Saint Augustine, c. 1475
4,344 words
Part 2 of 7 (Part 1 here, Part 3 here)
The Emerging of a Christian Historical Consciousness
For all we have said about Greek and Roman historiography (and there were other historians, such as Suetonius, Appian, and Casius Dios), contemporary scholars invariably agree that the ancients remained a “non-historical” people. Herbert Butterfield is convinced “the Greeks did not achieve historical mindedness, and never could have achieved it, because they had the wrong view of time and the time process.” The Greeks “only knew of a comparatively short history behind them — they thought that the historical past extended back for only a very few hundred years.” (more…)