Schopenhauer on Herodotus and Historical Categoricity

TODAY IN PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY: Schopenhauer on Herodotus and Historical Categoricity

It is the 237th anniversary of the birth of Arthur Schopenhauer (22 February 1788 – 21 September 1860), who was born in Dantzig, then just as now part of Poland, although Danzig is the German name for the city, and Gdansk is the Polish name for the city that’s used today.

Schopenhauer wrote little about history, but he held distinctive views about history that can’t be assimilated to familiar views on the philosophy of history. I characterize Schopenhauer’s view as a form of historical categoricity, employing the idea from model theory of a formal system that has one and only one model. For Schopenhauer, the one model of history is Herodotus, and I suggest that, given Schopenhauer’s view, all other histories could be show to be equivalent to Herodotus.

Quora: https://philosophyofhistory.quora.com/
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Links: https://jnnielsen.carrd.co/
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Podcast: https://open.spotify.com/episode/2fg3QrXS2ycWieO5ioAsN3?si=T9GkMOJsRLS3pju4f7iGVA
Episode: S02EP13

#philosophy #history #PhilosophyofHistory #ArthurSchopenhauer #categoricity #metalogic #Herodotus #ahistorical #idealism #Kantianism