Portrays the dominion of the Florentine Medici over the 15th to early 18th centuries, emphasizing the family’s contribution to the arts and latterly its dissolute lifestyle. Rising to power under the republican constitution as wool traders and then bankers with the papal accounts, the foremost Medici figures were Cosimo and Lorenzo; a subsequent Cosimo was Florence’s first duke. Hibbert seems most interested in the provenance of culture and architecture. Though he sketches civic matters, one cannot tell whether the decline of agriculture and trade results from poor leadership, the changing economics of (for example) Atlantic trade, or the Italian city-states’ inferiority to emerging nation-states north of the Alps. Undoubtedly learned but not particularly helpful for understanding society and statesmanship.
Book abstracts
10. Berlin, The Hedgehog and the Fox (2 Jun 2016)
The fox knows many things but cannot produce a unified theory of being; the hedgehog searches for a core certainty that explains all. Isaiah Berlin’s essay studies the extraordinary instance of Leo Tolstoy, who brilliantly portrayed quotidian life but sought for a holistic view. In this history of ideas, the author contends the Russian drew heavily on the French conservative Joseph de Maistre.
11. Wedgwood, The Thirty Years War (3 Jul 2016)
Narrates the central event in 17th-century German lands, masterfully weaving military and political events; religious, regional, and class attitudes; and individual leadership and failure. The political dysfunction of German lands, including but not limited to the supra-‘national’ role of Hapsburg Austria, was the cause not the consequence of the internecine fighting. Sweden and France merely took advantage, and sectarian conflict was simply an activating force. German leaders (princes) several times missed their chance to coalesce, to set aside religion and dynastic interests. Broad in its sweep yet finely detailed. Perhaps the professional historians will have revised some of Wedgwood’s findings, both with the passage of time and because she was not a member of the guild, yet this is how history should be done.
12. Taylor, The Course of German History (21 Jul 2016)
A heavily (overly?) synthesized summary of German-speaking, central European lands from the French Revolutionary era to the start of World War II. ‘Germany’ failed to coalesce around liberal, popular leadership in 1848, ushering in fealty to indebted Prussian Junkers who were able to claim a national mandate but lost control of events. The conflict between greater and little Germany (e.g., with or without Habsburg Austria, or Polish and Bohemian Slovak peoples), the successes and failures of individuals (even Bismarck) is generally subjected to a clever but somewhat pat trajectory of inexorably class-driven events. Better read as a complementary work than a standalone monograph.
13. Arnold, Culture and Anarchy (18 Aug 2016)
Studies mid-Victorian society and politics, contending that education and culture (‘sweetness and light’) is a surer path toward human perfection than religion or government. Culture promotes considering social issues from many angles, whereas religion (especially Dissent, preoccupied as it is with disestablishment) trends toward a single, inflexible approach. Hebraism is obedience to authority, Hellenism is independence of thought. Arnold also treats of class (aristocrats, bourgeois, and working) views of political order and governance, which are inevitably self-interested and so again want the leavening of culture. Libertine individualism is the greatest of all ills.
14. Smith, Political Philosophy (5 Sep 2016)
The core problems of political philosophy are largely the same as those considered in the Classical age: our contemporary issues are most intelligible when viewed through the lens of democratic-minded masters from Socrates to Tocqueville. That is, the field is not progressive (additive) and certainly not historicist. The main issues deal with law and justice; authority and order; who should rule (what is the statesman)?; what is the best regime, and what is its relationship to the actual (current) regime?; what is a good citizen, and what is the relationship to the ideal (virtuous or perfect) person? The primary subject of political judgement is decision making. The conclusion departs from its study of towering figures to assert the national and the cosmopolitan (i.e., the ideal) each have a role to play is shaping the patriot. The answer depends mightily on the ethos of the people.
15. Cassirer, The Philosophy of the Enlightenment (10 Oct 2016)
Evaluates the conceptual novelty and disciplinary trajectory of 18th-century thought, emphasizing the pervasiveness of reason. In contrast to the Renaissance concern for maths-based systems, the Enlightenment sought for approaches to accommodate continuous, scientific progress. Descartes and Newton exemplified the former, while the French philosophes represented the latter, as they were responsible for introducing systemic analysis to philosophic thinking. Leibniz bridges this gap, due to his theory of entities (monads) in an ever-becoming status. Lessing, the poet, emerges the author’s final hero for adding to rationalism’s perfunctory analysis an endemic creative power. Deeply exploring concepts across many fields — science, religion, statecraft, psychology, aesthetics — this is a first-rate history of ideas.
16. Himmelfarb, Roads to Modernity (23 Oct 2016)
British thinkers following in the footsteps of Locke and Hume — Berkeley, Hutcheson, Gibbon, Smith joined by Burke and Wesley — were the Enlightenment’s first and foremost cohort, seeking to elaborate social compassion, benevolence, and sympathy. Where the French philosophes concentrated on the ‘ideology of reason’, born of universally applying the systems of Newton and Descartes to society’s structure and pursuits, and the American Founding Fathers on equitable political liberty, the British sought new precepts for a gentler, more virtuous society. These moral philosophers ‘posited a moral sentiment in man as the basis of the social virtues’. Himmelfarb places a major emphasis on Methodism (as an offshoot of the Anglican Church) and Dissent. Burke’s role was to take the British approach further, ‘by making the “sentiments, manners, and moral opinions” of men the basis of society itself, and, ultimately, of the polity as well’.
17. Himmelfarb, The New History and the Old (6 Nov 2016)
Essays criticizing the theoretical basis and methodology of ‘new history’, including social history, psychohistory, quantification, and work driven by socialist theory. Each violates the principle of deriving explanations of the past from its base of evidence. The social sciences, whatever their merits, are often unsuitable for considering the ‘things that really matter’ to a given topic. The opening chapters on social history (e.g., Annalisme) and socialist history are most persuasive, as there are several decades of output to evaluate. Interesting but inconclusive discussion of the idea of progress, which takes the reader toward the territory of philosophy of history.
18. Elton, The Practice of History (17 Nov 2016)
History exists distinct of the social sciences because it treats of particular people and events as they have changed over periods of time. The purpose of assessing dynamics is unlike disciplines which seeks to draw conclusions, even laws, from a static, measurable state of affairs. Further, the study of history is its own end, toward the understanding of what happened, rather than any analog or determinant of future events. History is rarely settled because new evidence appears and new ways of conceiving problems are formulated. But history is never relative: the past is dead. It is not the problems studied nor lessons learned but intellectual rigor of assessing evidence and explication that distinguishes the practitioner and the output. Evidence itself can never fulfill the job; while one must gather all he can, one must also criticize (evaluate) its contents and use imagination (investigative thinking) to assess the gaps and the misdirection. While there is a place for description and analysis, narrative is the highest form of the craft; the format will often be suggested by the problem.