Oren Cahanovitc: The Ethnic Cleansing of Jews within Muslim Countries
Burckhardt on the uncertainty of events
One great advantage of studying cultural history is the certainty if its more important facts, compared with those of history in the ordinary sense of narrated events: these are frequently uncertain, controversial, colored, or, given the Greek talent for lying, entirely the invention of imagination or self-interest. Cultural history by contrast possesses a primary degree of certainty, as it consists for the most part of material conveyed in an unintentional, disinterested or even involuntary way by sources and monuments; they betray their secrets unconsciously and even, paradoxically, through fictitious elaborations, quite apart from the material details they may set out to record and glorify, and are thus doubly instructive for the cultural historian. —Jacob Burckhardt, *The Greeks and Greek Civilization, ed. Oswyn Murray, trans. Sheila Stern (1998), p. 5
Burckhardt: a personal possession of the past – in whatever shape or form
I have done everything I possibly could to lead them on to acquire personal possession of the past – in whatever shap or form. I wanted then to be capable of picking the fruits for themselves… I wanted to make every member of the audience feel and know that everyone may and must appropriate those aspects of the past that appeal to him personally, and that there can be happiness in so doing. —Burckhardt to Nietzsche
Martin Mosebach and Navid Kermani: “Of course religion is first and foremost a duty."
In religion, doubt is overrated.
Charles Scribner III, Scribners: Five Generations in Publishing
Going for a walk before Mass.
It seems that Hamas has more support in the West than in the Middle East.
Jorge H. Aigla, New definitions of worn-out words for the new age
Oren Cahanovitc: The Palestinian Refugee Problem Explained
Filipe Rafaeli, Chronicles of an Unvaccinated Leftist
To continue an injustice is to commit injustice. —Mommsen, quoted by Joseph Epstein, “Hail, Mommsen”
The bench, as well as the floor, is heated.
One ought to stress especially those historical realities from which threads run to our own period and culture. There are more of them than one would think. The continuum is magnificent. The peoples around the Mediterranean and over to the Gulf of Persia are really one animate being, active humanity par excellence. —Burckhardt, Judgments on History and Historians, I, 1. Ancient History and Its Scope
The Christian Bible includes the Old Testament and not the Koran.
Behind the Albany, NY, City Hall, Nov. 1, 2023. Haven’t been here in a while.
NYS Capitol, All Saints Day, 2023. A peace gathering occurs here on the 1st Wednesday of every month.
