A collaborative search for wisdom, at Middle Tennessee State University and beyond...
"The pluralistic form takes for me a stronger hold on reality than any other philosophy I know of, being essentially a social philosophy, a philosophy of 'co'"-William James
Hegel actually thought history should teach us everything: the meaning of history wass for him the meaning of life, the progressive emergence of rationality and freedom as the universe comes to self-awareness and enlightenment through us.
George Santayana, the Spanish-American philosopher, probably had the more useful insight: those who don't learn from history's mistakes are doomed to repeat them.
I agree with both Hegel and Santayana here, essentially saying that the value of history is substantial yet as a species never seem to ultimately learn from it. Although I do remain hopefully for what the future holds for the world
I agree with George Santayana, if we don't learn we will repeat. I was trying to go in deeper, for example, how we had a recession in the 1980's and the early 2000's. Also how fashion then was new like hip hop in the 80's was new then and faded off. Now it comes back but in the category of "vintage". You can even take a closer look into the stock market, where it is now compare it to do the stats before the recession in the early 2000's.
I feel as if it is also based on the constant cycle of human evolution. There is a constant push and pull of high peaks and low peaks in humanity. ie: the graph for stocks. Humanity has a constant up and down, some years are slightly more prosperous than others. there are points of extreme lows and extreme highs and i feel as if we are finally coming out of a very extreme lows, ie: ww1-2- genoside of the indians, salvery ect. of the last few decades and are on the brink of a forward step in human evolution. so its not that we do not learn from our mistakes, it takes people born of a certain time (like us) to realize the problems of that current time and then take the actions no one else has.
It's beautiful and haunting to consider Santayana's words that history is doomed to repeat if we don't learn from our mistakes. Human's like to pretend that the advancement of technology has somehow allowed us to grow into a more moral species, but I see no shortage of bigotry, xenophobia, and ignorance from humankind nonetheless. We solemnly denounced Nazi concentration camps at the end of WWII but the United States—of all places— has detained migrant children in cages separated from their parents, and the Chinese have placed their Muslim minority in "political re-education camps." In the anthropocene era, it's our fundamental duty as human beings to rise above the base urges and mistakes that have driven our species for so long and learn to grow from those past transgressions.
This is exactly what I thought of when I read this quote. It's terrifying to me when I read articles that compare the state of America to early nazi Germany. I think sometimes people forget that a lot of the Germans at that time weren't really aware of the atrocities happening in concentration camps, but Americans today are aware of the imprisoned children and still nothing is being done.
I agree with this quote because how can we have learned anything if we keep making the same mistakes. For a lot of the adversity we face on the daily someone in our past has made those same mistakes, so we should learn from him or her. Instead we go off and ignorantly repeat history...
I totally I agree with the quote because people tend to repeat history without even knowing that they did. Or also repeating it on purpose and expecting a different result.
I believe that repeating history could possibly be ingrained into our basic human DNA, and it becomes a conscious thing for humans to do. After all, history does repeat itself.
Frank Viola the old pitcher?!
ReplyDeleteHegel actually thought history should teach us everything: the meaning of history wass for him the meaning of life, the progressive emergence of rationality and freedom as the universe comes to self-awareness and enlightenment through us.
George Santayana, the Spanish-American philosopher, probably had the more useful insight: those who don't learn from history's mistakes are doomed to repeat them.
I agree with both Hegel and Santayana here, essentially saying that the value of history is substantial yet as a species never seem to ultimately learn from it. Although I do remain hopefully for what the future holds for the world
DeleteI agree with George Santayana, if we don't learn we will repeat. I was trying to go in deeper, for example, how we had a recession in the 1980's and the early 2000's. Also how fashion then was new like hip hop in the 80's was new then and faded off. Now it comes back but in the category of "vintage". You can even take a closer look into the stock market, where it is now compare it to do the stats before the recession in the early 2000's.
ReplyDeleteI feel as if it is also based on the constant cycle of human evolution. There is a constant push and pull of high peaks and low peaks in humanity. ie: the graph for stocks. Humanity has a constant up and down, some years are slightly more prosperous than others. there are points of extreme lows and extreme highs and i feel as if we are finally coming out of a very extreme lows, ie: ww1-2- genoside of the indians, salvery ect. of the last few decades and are on the brink of a forward step in human evolution. so its not that we do not learn from our mistakes, it takes people born of a certain time (like us) to realize the problems of that current time and then take the actions no one else has.
ReplyDeleteIt's beautiful and haunting to consider Santayana's words that history is doomed to repeat if we don't learn from our mistakes. Human's like to pretend that the advancement of technology has somehow allowed us to grow into a more moral species, but I see no shortage of bigotry, xenophobia, and ignorance from humankind nonetheless. We solemnly denounced Nazi concentration camps at the end of WWII but the United States—of all places— has detained migrant children in cages separated from their parents, and the Chinese have placed their Muslim minority in "political re-education camps." In the anthropocene era, it's our fundamental duty as human beings to rise above the base urges and mistakes that have driven our species for so long and learn to grow from those past transgressions.
ReplyDeleteThis is exactly what I thought of when I read this quote. It's terrifying to me when I read articles that compare the state of America to early nazi Germany. I think sometimes people forget that a lot of the Germans at that time weren't really aware of the atrocities happening in concentration camps, but Americans today are aware of the imprisoned children and still nothing is being done.
DeleteI agree with this quote because how can we have learned anything if we keep making the same mistakes. For a lot of the adversity we face on the daily someone in our past has made those same mistakes, so we should learn from him or her. Instead we go off and ignorantly repeat history...
ReplyDeleteI totally I agree with the quote because people tend to repeat history without even knowing that they did. Or also repeating it on purpose and expecting a different result.
ReplyDeleteI believe that repeating history could possibly be ingrained into our basic human DNA, and it becomes a conscious thing for humans to do. After all, history does repeat itself.
Delete