tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post3132520957519909466..comments2024-03-27T16:48:21.039-05:00Comments on Wuthering <br>Expectations: Witcraft in 1801 and 1851, starring William Hazlitt and Marian Evans - she came to suspect him of ‘excès de raison’, and began to lose interestAmateur Reader (Tom)http://www.blogger.com/profile/13675275555757408496noreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-87456179898239599222020-08-07T13:39:54.003-05:002020-08-07T13:39:54.003-05:00Okay, that last piece is up. Thanks for the good ...Okay, that last piece is up. Thanks for the good wishes, and thanks for writing the book. It gave me a lot to think about. I hope this week of posts has not been <i>unbearably</i> shallow.<br /><br />Robert, I was not familiar with the term "integral history," but Rée's use of it in <i>Philosophical Tales</i> is pretty Whiggish. They are stories that "all lead[] up to the present... with a little flag stuck in saying 'we are here'". He gives the <i>Aeneid</i> as an example, "or the genealogies which trace a family's descent from King David, the Norman Conquest, or the Pilgrim Fathers" (all from p. 31)<br /><br />I think you are using "integral history" in some other way, maybe a history that "integrates" many disparate pieces. <i>Witcraft</i> is a superb example of that.<br /><br />You would enjoy <i>Philosophical Tales</i>, if you have not read it. Philosophy as literature, Hegel and so on as fiction. And lots of nice touches in Rée's prose.Amateur Reader (Tom)https://www.blogger.com/profile/13675275555757408496noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-35335895306932196072020-08-07T05:47:16.193-05:002020-08-07T05:47:16.193-05:00I'm so touched by your kindness, Tom, and also...I'm so touched by your kindness, Tom, and also Robert Minto; and you're quite right about 'integral histories' which I must admit had completely slipped my mind.<br /><br />good wishes from darkest Brexitania<br /><br /><br />Jonathan RéeAnonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04851262580932335665noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-69707455716038457912020-08-06T22:08:08.360-05:002020-08-06T22:08:08.360-05:00[having trouble getting my comment to post — apolo...[having trouble getting my comment to post — apologies if this shows up like three times in a row.]<br /><br />This was my favorite chapter! Among other reasons, because it started me on the trajectory of discovering a very different Hazlitt than the dilettante essayist I thought I knew. Now I have his biography of Napoleon on my shelf and am interested in the whole arc of his career and thinking.<br /><br />I find "integral history" uniquely helpful in trying to grasp the inner coherence of the past. I think I'm always in search of something like integral history, which is why, when I really want to illuminate some gray landscape of time that I know from zoomed out historical monographs, nothing helps to give it color and a sense of reality or immanence like a good biography. Maybe integral history is just biography?<br /><br />I think I disagree that integral history is necessarily a succession of whig histories — it's only whig history when the point of view being inhabited sees itself as a culmination of what came before it. Some people don't; even some writers and thinkers don't. Of course major philosophers are not generally among that humble segment of the population, so in Ree's book integral history does indeed end up looking a lot like a succession of whig histories...Robert Mintohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18054300455796074988noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-3951213083060299992020-08-06T20:00:42.529-05:002020-08-06T20:00:42.529-05:00A comet! That is a good conceit. Just in Germany -...A comet! That is a good conceit. Just in Germany - Goethe, Gauss - wild and unlikely that geniuses like this are alive at the same time.<br /><br />Kant is too hard for me, too. Hazlitt, though, some of it is dense, but he also wrote a superb piece on a boxing match that is arguably the beginning of sports writing. Super writer.Amateur Reader (Tom)https://www.blogger.com/profile/13675275555757408496noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-11981183612906655052020-08-06T18:36:09.211-05:002020-08-06T18:36:09.211-05:00Phillip Jose Farmer wrote a history of Tarzan in w...Phillip Jose Farmer wrote a history of Tarzan in which he stated that a large comet fell in central England in the year 1800 and sprayed the countryside with gene altering radiation that created a generation of geniuses. i never knew whether he was a tongue in cheek author, or just an inventive one... <br />i've enjoyed quite a few of Hazlitt's essays even tho he was pretty opinionated... i tried Kant once but my head was too thick...mudpuddlehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16647084124715892324noreply@blogger.com