Collingwood's Idea of History & Speculum Mentis

Re: Extraordinary, Important Book for those Doing The Work

Thanks for the recommendation...got it.
 
Re: Extraordinary, Important Book for those Doing The Work

Laura said:
maiko said:
Thank you for sharing this. It sounds realls interesting. And I like what you said about his style of writing :read:
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You need to be awake when you read this one, and may have to re-read a paragraph now and then to follow the close arguments, but none of it is too complex or fancy to finally grasp.
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I actually realized that this morning... woke up and picked it up and then found myself having to read a paragraph and stop for a few minutes. It might be in part due to the writing style but the concepts themselves require some clearer attention.

Thanks for the recommendation Laura
 
Re: Extraordinary, Important Book for those Doing The Work

Alejo said:
I actually realized that this morning... woke up and picked it up and then found myself having to read a paragraph and stop for a few minutes. It might be in part due to the writing style but the concepts themselves require some clearer attention.
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Bought the Spanish version for the time being. Hopefully the translation is a good one.
 
Re: Extraordinary, Important Book for those Doing The Work



Thanks for the recommendation. Nice to find it at a good price too.
 
Re: Extraordinary, Important Book for those Doing The Work

Thanks for the recommendation. I ordered it right away.

At the moment I am reading "The secret origins of the first World war" by Gerry Docherty and Jim Macgregor.
What they call 'the secret elite', used then and (now?) the same strategy : control the press and do not write (too) much on paper what has been decided amongst the group. In the book that is : (re)creating the British empire and going to war with Germany.

What a difficult job for historians ! If they don't have the thruthfull and correct information about things that happened in the past and how they came to be.

Thanks to you Laura I have learned how important and fun it is to read about history and religion and all the things you wrote about in your own books .
Another big thanks for all the books you recommended throughout all these years. Knowledge brings more light to see better I realized.

What I found really difficult to read was "Purity and danger" by Mary Douglas. (As a non-speaking english person) I started her second book "Natural Symbols" but could not finish it.
On the other hand "Cosmos, chaos and the world to come" by Norman Cohn was a great read.
"The dawn and twilight of Zoroastrism" by Zaehner is on the list.
 
Re: Extraordinary, Important Book for those Doing The Work

maxtree said:
Thanks for the recommendation. I ordered it right away.

At the moment I am reading "The secret origins of the first World war" by Gerry Docherty and Jim Macgregor.
What they call 'the secret elite', used then and (now?) the same strategy : control the press and do not write (too) much on paper what has been decided amongst the group. In the book that is : (re)creating the British empire and going to war with Germany.

What a difficult job for historians ! If they don't have the thruthfull and correct information about things that happened in the past and how they came to be.

Thanks to you Laura I have learned how important and fun it is to read about history and religion and all the things you wrote about in your own books .
Another big thanks for all the books you recommended throughout all these years. Knowledge brings more light to see better I realized.

What I found really difficult to read was "Purity and danger" by Mary Douglas. (As a non-speaking english person) I started her second book "Natural Symbols" but could not finish it.
On the other hand "Cosmos, chaos and the world to come" by Norman Cohn was a great read.
"The dawn and twilight of Zoroastrism" by Zaehner is on the list.
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Yes, Mary Douglas is very difficult because she's all over the place picking up this piece and the next and the next and then wanders all over the place before weaving it all back to her point. I'm obviously going to have to extract and clarify if I use her.

Norman Cohn is great, isn't he?
 
Re: Extraordinary, Important Book for those Doing The Work

Norman Cohn is great indeed.
It is like he talks to you over a coffee and explains how the different civilizations of Ancient Near East and beyond
looked at good and evil and/or/no/ apocalypse .
I liked it when he , like you Laura, got to Zoroastrism because I always wondered: and what before that?
And then you mentioned M Douglas. Although difficult to read she made me stand still and ponder.
 
Re: Extraordinary, Important Book for those Doing The Work

Thanks for the recommendation Laura ;)
I started reading it a few days ago and I think it's like "history for dummies doing the work".
I like the way he explains history about history
 
Re: Extraordinary, Important Book for those Doing The Work

jhonny said:
Thanks for the recommendation Laura ;)
I started reading it a few days ago and I think it's like "history for dummies doing the work".
I like the way he explains history about history
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Yup.

And reading this will give you an all-new perspective on what is going on currently with the ANTIFA gangs and their drive to erase history.
 
Re: Extraordinary, Important Book for those Doing The Work

I've now read ca 10% of the book, and it's really interesting. It seems to get more interesting as you proceed.

There was a couple of passages that were very "timely" and good reminders, and I'm gonna quote them below:

Polybius does not think that the study of history will enable men to avoid the mistakes of their predecessors and surpass them in worldly success; the success to which the study of history can lead is for him an inner success, a victory not over circumstance but over self. What we learn from the tragedies of its heroes is not to avoid such tragedies in our own lives, but to bear them bravely when fortune brings them.

[...] As the canvas on which the historian paints his picture grows larger, the power attributed to the individual will grow less. Man finds himself no longer master of his fate in the sense that what he tries to do succeeds or fails in proportion to his own intelligence or lack of it; his fate is master of him, and the freedom of his will is shown not in controlling the outward events of his life but in controlling the inward temper in which he faces these events. Here Polybius is applying tho history the same Hellenistic conceptions which the Stoics and Epicureans applied to ethics.

Both these schools agreed in thinking that the problem of moral life was not how to control events in the world around us, as the classical Greek moralists had thought, but how to preserve a purely inward integrity and balance of mind when the attempt to control outward events had been abandoned. For Hellenistic thought, self-consciousness is no longer, as it was for Hellenic thought, a power to conquer the world; it is a citadel providing a safe retreat from a world both hostile and intractable.
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Very much like Gurdjieff and Castaneda, for sure.
 
Re: Extraordinary, Important Book for those Doing The Work

It is possible to find this book in your local library, in case if you're saving :)
 
Re: Extraordinary, Important Book for those Doing The Work


I bought it on amazon and converted it to open format that doesn't need kindle.

It's also available for free on https://openlibrary.org/ but you have to read it through the browser there.
 
Re: Extraordinary, Important Book for those Doing The Work

Yes, the copyright on this one has run out. I have an ebook version but it is too big to attach.
 
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