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jhideas.bsky.social
Journal of the History of Ideas
@jhideas.bsky.social
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Official account of the JHI Blog. Zac Endter, Tomi Onabanjo, and @jacobsaliba.bsky.social.
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The October issue of the journal includes an article by Ian Merkel: "Laurette Séjourné and Leonora Carrington, Ethnography and Surrealism in Mexico." Read it here on Project Muse: muse.jhu.edu/pub/56/artic...
A quote from the article: "The critical force of much of interwar ethnography has dulled with the passage of time, but Séjourné and Carrington's engagement with Indigenous Mexico, past and present, continues to shine brightly."
October 30, 2025 at 3:24 PM
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The recent issue of the journal includes an article by Wojciech Engelking: "Schmitt's Reinterpretation of Hegel During His Nazi Period." Read it here: muse.jhu.edu/pub/56/artic...
A quote from the article: "Schmitt's essays . . . in which he presents a vision of the Third Reich as a post-state political organism . . . were for him an attempt to adapt Hegel's ethical state to the conditions of the 1930s and to identify the Third Reich as the political community that most fully realized the march of the spirit."
October 28, 2025 at 2:45 PM
jhideas.bsky.social
The recent issue of the journal includes an article by Hugo Bonin: "'True Liberal Democracy . . . Belongs to Napoléon III': The Rise and Fall of Démocratie Libérale in the French Second Empire" muse.jhu.edu/pub/56/artic...
A quote from the article: "In sum, démocratie libérale was not merely a theoretical project but a practical compromise—a balancing act between the demands of popular sovereignty and the fear of democratic excess. It reveals the ambivalence of both liberals and Bonapartists toward democracy, foreshadowing the uneasy cohabitation of democratic and authoritarian tendencies that continues to shape political systems today."
October 23, 2025 at 2:31 PM
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The new issue of the JHI includes an article by Craig Martin: "Averroes Among the Paduan Physicians, 1540 to 1600": muse.jhu.edu/pub/56/artic...
A quote from the article: "Openness toward Averroes signaled a turn away from the anti-Arabic polemics that roiled medical humanism in the first decades of the sixteenth century and reveal a lack of concern about philosophical controversies surrounding his views about the human soul and the eternity of the world."
October 21, 2025 at 2:43 PM
jhideas.bsky.social
In the new issue of the JHI, Daniel Sutton explores how ancient Greek theorists struggled to find the terminology to distinguish good and bad forms of popular government:
muse.jhu.edu/pub/56/artic...
A quote from the article: "We do not have an appropriate word for bad democracy in our constitutional discourse; and that is because we never had one."
October 14, 2025 at 1:57 PM
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The new issue of the JHI includes a discussion of the lexicon project, “The Twentieth Century in Basic Concepts: A Dictionary of Historical Semantics in Germany,” by Ernst Müller, Barbara Picht, and Falko Schmieder. Access is free for the next few weeks on Project Muse: muse.jhu.edu/pub/56/artic...
A quote from the article: "After the disciplinary differentiation of the individual sciences, which has replaced philosophy as a universal discourse from the nineteenth century onward, and with the emergence of plural public spheres based on new media, knowledge has become splintered and fragmented, so that the forms and contexts of the production of meaning can only be explored in an interdisciplinary and historical-epistemologicai perspective."
October 9, 2025 at 4:03 PM
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Nayeli L. Riano's article in the new JHI, "The Pueblo and the Politics of History and Historiography in the Writings of Andrés Bello and Francisco Bilbao," is now available for free. Read it here on Project Muse: muse.jhu.edu/pub/56/artic...
October 7, 2025 at 6:19 PM
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A new issue of the journal is now available, with articles by Daniel Sutton, Craig Martin, Nayeli L. Riano, Hugo Bonin, Wojciech Engelking, Ian Merkel, and Ernst Müller, Barbara Picht, and Falko Schmieder.

Have a look, here on Project Muse: muse.jhu.edu/issue/55549

@pennpress.bsky.social
What Should We Call a Bad Democracy? DANIEL SUTTON Averroes Among the Paduan Physicians, 1540 to 1600 CRAIG MARTIN The Pueblo and the Politics of History and Historiography in the Writings NAYELI L. RIANO “True Liberal Democracy . . . Belongs to Napoléon III”: The Rise and Fall of Démocratie Libérale in the French Second Empire HUGO BONIN Schmitt’s Reinterpretation of Hegel During His Nazi Period WOJCIECH ENGELKING Laurette Séjourné and Leonora Carrington, Ethnography and Surrealism in Mexico IAN MERKEL The Twentieth Century in Basic Concepts: A Dictionary of Historical Semantics in Germany ERNST MÜLLER, BARBARA PICHT, AND FALKO SCHMIEDER
September 30, 2025 at 4:37 PM
jhideas.bsky.social
In the journal, Victoria Smolkin and Daniel Peris examine how the interactions between two secularist organizations shaped the meaning, direction, and fate, of secularism in interwar Europe. Read the article here: muse.jhu.edu/pub/56/artic...
A quote from the article: "While Soviet atheists were too distant, too politically weak, and too institutionally disorganized to justify the fears of religious conservatives, the anxieties of liberal freethinkers, or the hopes of radical secularists, Soviet atheism nevertheless cast a long shadow and left a lasting legacy."
September 3, 2025 at 3:17 PM
jhideas.bsky.social
Rolf Strøm-Olsen explores how patterns of musical consumption were shaped by the authority of music-critical journalism in "Applied Aesthetics and the Musical Public on the Threshold of Romanticism." Read it here in the latest issue of the JHI: muse.jhu.edu/pub/56/artic...
@rstromolsen.bsky.social
A quote from the article: "The music-critical discourse of the early nineteenth century sought to become, in effect, a market-making system, with the aesthetic stakes of music hanging in the balance. It also sought thereby to shape, through the market, the musical public in such a way that the public’s own cultural aspirations could be redeemed in aesthetic terms."
August 28, 2025 at 1:36 PM
jhideas.bsky.social
The recent issue of the JHI includes an article by Ingrid Schreiber: "Egoism and Sociability in the Kantian Public Sphere" muse.jhu.edu/pub/56/artic...
A quote from the article: "We may never truly be alone in Kantianism, but we are also never really together—perhaps to our ultimate advantage."
August 21, 2025 at 3:17 PM
jhideas.bsky.social
The recent issue of the JHI includes an article by Kaarlo Havu: "Rhetoric, Ambivalence, and Dissension in Renaissance Catholic Europe During the Sixteenth Century": muse.jhu.edu/pub/56/artic...
A quote from the article: "Jesuit discussions on the avoidance of public antagonism in the spirit of decorum or accommodation could be seen, at least in part, as a reaction to the ambivalent powers of rhetoric to address the senses and emotions of the people. They wanted to incorporate the powers of eloquence but preferably within genres that did not nurture open confrontation."
August 19, 2025 at 5:04 PM
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The new issue of the JHI includes an article by Luuk de Boer: "The Abstract King: Hellenistic Royal Wills and the Immortal State": muse.jhu.edu/pub/56/artic...
A quote from the article: "In the domain of public law, the last will and testament laces the holders of power into what may, by analogy, be called an undying office or perhaps an abstraction—the office of the scholarch or, indeed, the abstract king."
August 14, 2025 at 2:04 PM
jhideas.bsky.social
The latest issue of the JHI includes an article by Sophie Scott-Brown: "'A Real WEA Tutor': G. D. H. Cole, Socialist Democracy, and the Politics of Persona"—free for the next few weeks: muse.jhu.edu/pub/56/artic...
A quote from the article: "To Cole, democracy was an ongoing social inquiry made on ever-shifting grounds. This inquiry required many forms of knowledge as well as complete emotional and intellectual agility from its participants, a comprehensiveness that no single curriculum, learning theory, or pedagogical method alone could capture, let alone ensure."
August 12, 2025 at 2:05 PM
jhideas.bsky.social
Kirsten Macfarlane's article in the summer issue of the JHI, "Written in the Stars? Alphabets and Angels in Early Modern Europe," is free to read and download for the next few weeks: muse.jhu.edu/pub/56/artic...
A quote from the article: "This is a story about how easily erudition could upset the more fragile areas of the post- Reformation theological consensus, and yet it is also a story about how rapidly erudition could become as inflated and speculative as the most cynical early modern caricature of medieval scholasticism."
August 4, 2025 at 1:14 PM
jhideas.bsky.social
In the latest issue of the JHI, Mikołaj Ratajczak delineates the genealogy of “biopolitics” in the discourse on the “biology of the state": muse.jhu.edu/pub/56/artic...
A quote from the article: "The biology of the state might be the most radical theoretical example of what we would like to call here a 'biopolitical tendency to naturalize the social.'"
June 5, 2025 at 2:05 PM
jhideas.bsky.social
The latest JHI includes an article by Myriam Bienenstock, "Assessing Ethical Culture in Germany: Friedrich Albert Lange, Felix Adler—and Hermann Cohen": muse.jhu.edu/pub/56/artic...
A quote from the article: "Felix Adler had defined the program of his New York Society for Ethical Culture as that of a 'practical religion,' and even if [Hermann] Cohen did agree with Adler’s fight against particularism, a fight he himself defined as a fight for 'all' human beings, he believed that such a fight cannot be led by means of a religion, whichever it is. It should be furthered politically."
May 30, 2025 at 3:05 PM
jhideas.bsky.social
The recent issue of the JHI includes an article by Olga Lenczewska: "Kant on Moral Education and the Origins of Humanity"

muse.jhu.edu/pub/56/artic...
May 29, 2025 at 1:09 PM
jhideas.bsky.social
Sam Kennerley contributes the final article on the Greek Fathers in the latest JHI: "A 'Lost Renaissance' of Patristic Scholarship? Unpublished Latin Translations of John Chrysostom Created in Italy Between 1575 and 1585": muse.jhu.edu/pub/56/artic...
A quote from the article: "The loss of these translations paints another picture of censorship in early modern Italy to be hung beside those of earlier studies. Here we find not eagle-eyed censors imperiously rooting out any trace of heresy, nor men of letters happily collaborating on the dismemberment and reassembly of their works. We instead find overworked scholars leaving their manuscripts on the desks of equally overworked censors, until these manuscripts were forgotten or rendered obsolete by rival publications."
May 23, 2025 at 1:39 PM
jhideas.bsky.social
In the latest issue of the journal, Maria Fallica considers the patristic anthologies curated by Herman Hamelmann to understand the early modern reception of the Greek Fathers during the inception of Lutheran confessionalization: muse.jhu.edu/pub/56/artic...
A quote from the article: "Obscure and challenging authors, such as Clement of Alexandria, were rescued from library shelves and thrust into the intellectual fray, gaining newfound but ambiguous fame."
May 22, 2025 at 2:07 PM
jhideas.bsky.social
In the latest issue of the JHI, Marta Quatrale explores Melanchthon's editions of the Greek Fathers.

muse.jhu.edu/pub/56/artic...
A quote from the article: "In Melanchthon’s view, the study of Nazianzus and the other eloquent Greek Fathers he had been promoting in Wittenberg through his courses and editions was instrumental for forming the future generation of Reformed leaders and scholars and ensuring they would not suffer defeats such as the one experienced in Leipzig by Karlsdatdt and, less manifestly, by Luther."
May 15, 2025 at 2:03 PM
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The cluster on the Greek Fathers in the new JHI includes an article by Christa Lundberg: "Humanist Translation and the Parisian Tradition: Jacques Lefèvre d’Étaples’s ps.-Dionysius the Areopagite"

muse.jhu.edu/article/959039
A quote from the article: "Against the recent Platonizing interpretations of ps.-Dionysius, Lefèvre introduced his edition as an antidote brewed from the scholarly and religious resources of Paris."
May 13, 2025 at 1:56 PM
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The cluster on Greek patristics in the new JHI includes an article by Francisco Bastitta Harriet: "Studying, Translating, and Editing the Greek Fathers in Lorenzo’s Florence: Pico, Poliziano, and Ficino" muse.jhu.edu/pub/56/artic...
A quote from the article: "While Ficino primarily viewed the Fathers through the lens of their alignment with the Platonic tradition and Poliziano approached their works as a repository of classical references and eloquence, Pico pursued a more comprehensive engagement with the Greek Fathers, valuing their philosophical insights beyond the confines of Platonism and integrating their perspectives into his broader intellectual endeavors."
May 8, 2025 at 3:33 PM
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In the new JHI, a cluster on the Greek Fathers opens with Annet den Haan's article, "Patristic Translations and the Patronage of Pope Nicholas V."
muse.jhu.edu/pub/56/artic...
A quote from the article: "While a more systematic translation program for patristics would have fit well in Nicholas’s patronage, in practice, it appears that his support for patristic translations was mostly incidental."
May 7, 2025 at 1:37 PM
jhideas.bsky.social
The new issue of the JHI includes a cluster of articles, "Context and Paratext: New Insights into the Early Modern Reception of the Greek Fathers." The introduction by organizer Paolo Sachet is now available open access:
muse.jhu.edu/pub/56/artic...
A quote from the article: "What can we learn about early modern patristic reception by conceiving of publishers, editors, translators, patrons, correctors, censors, and compositors as creators of patristic books? Looking at editions in their making, rather than just the final product, reveals failures, compromises, and second thoughts that are crucial to a complete understanding of the works and their reception."
May 6, 2025 at 2:32 PM