[lit-ideas] Re: One Damn Thing After Another
- From: "Lawrence Helm" <lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 24 Apr 2014 10:49:54 -0700
Christopher Dawson on page 16 of The Making of Europe, writes,
". . . it is not the 'easy' periods of history that are the most worth
studying. One of the great merits of history is that it takes us out of
ourselves -- away from obvious and accepted facts -- and discovers a reality
that would otherwise be unknown to us. There is a real value in steeping
our minds in an age entirely different to that which we know: a world
different, but no less real -- indeed more real, for what we call 'the
modern world' is the world of a generation, while a culture like that of the
Byzantine or the Carolingian world has a life of centuries."
Lawrence
-----Original Message-----
From: lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]
On Behalf Of Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
Sent: Thursday, April 24, 2014 10:02 AM
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [lit-ideas] One Damn Thing After Another
Carr laughed at the idea of Cleopatra's nose in "What is History?".
The implicature, or I would say, après Moore, 'entailment', seems to be
"after another damn thing", but, in Greek and Latin this may not be the case
-- and the need to "EXPLICATE" may arise.
Anyhow (as Joan Rivers says, it's NEVER 'anyway' with _her_), we were
discussing various philosophies of history and The New York Times was
playing recently -- in the weekend book supplement -- with the quote
attributed to Toynbee.
History is "one damn thing after another": A. J. Toynbee, A Study of History
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1961).
It may be argued that, as used by Toynbee, 'damned' is colloquial, and a
_filler_, but it MAY relate, ultimately, to the idea of damnation, which
would
lead us to the philosophy of history of Vico -- since his view of human
history was oddly (rather than evenly) _theocentric_.
Cheers,
Speranza
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