Amazing essay by Koselleck (transl. @adamtooze.bsky.social) on war experience as a "glowing mass of lava hardened" into the body and on how the end of war is never the end of it. Incredible writing

In 1842, an optimistic George H. Lewes imagined a future (two millennia ahead) where a New Zealand historian would document the decline and fall of the British Empire ("should that empire be fated to decline and fall").

As Borges anticipated, the world will be Tlön

Cicero on personified laws handing over swords for self-defense (via Hugh Blair's Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres)

Kantorowicz in 1932 wondering how long universities would continue to exist

Kantorowicz responds to the critics accusing him of "methodologically flawed" history: it's like "those Austrian generals" defeated by Napoleon in Italy. They too argued that the enemy won, but "through methodologically incorrect means".

Our interview with Elad Carmel (@eladcarmel.bsky.social) about his new book, Anticlerical Legacies, is now out on the European Hobbes Society website. A fascinating read for early modernists!👇 europeanhobbessociety.squarespace.com/articles/int...

Almost simultaneously, against the backdrop of WW2, Marc Bloch (The Historian's Craft) and Carl Schmitt (Land and Sea) both reflected on history being prompted by their children. I don't know what that means, but it must mean something.

Starting tomorrow! Hobbes in Dialogue(s) - The fifth conference of the European Hobbes Society. More details on the program: hobbesparis.hypotheses.org/files/2024/1...

Graphic design in the Renaissance: 1. Arion riding a dolphin and playing a lyre, trademark of the publisher Johannes Oporinus. 2. Paris edition of the works of St. Hilary of Poitiers featuring the city emblem.

L'abbé Raynal roasting Sorbière (Hobbes's pen-friend): "Hobbes wrote to Sorbière about matters of philosophy. Sorbière sent his letters to Gassendi, and what Gassendi replied served as Sorbière's responses to Hobbes’ letters, who believed Sorbière to be a great philosopher."

Thought it was a coronavirus reference at first

The scanned copy of the volume "Hobbes et son vocabulaire" available for download out there belongs/belonged to Quentin Skinner?! Check out the signature at the beginning.

Marat's two deaths at the Carnavalet Museum

Really interesting piece by Macarena Marey on the geopolitics of academia. I can relate to much of what is discussed, particularly regarding the perception of never being heard. It also reminded me of this article on the "silence" of Latam researchers: journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

Re new immigration law in France, relocation costs are becoming a service industry in itself (influx of money from poorer economies to richer ones). Profitable effects of asylum seeking have been highlighted in a recent Tooze/Abadi podcast. foreignpolicy.com/podcasts/one...

Demain/Tomorrow Hobbes (+Pufendorf)@Paris! More info: hobbesparis.hypotheses.org

Exceptional 1878 caricature in Kladderadatsch: Otto von Bismarck stuffing emergency laws into the mouth of a goose embodying the Parliament. “Eat or die, bird,” says the Chancellor. What's the origin of this goose-Parliament identification? Check it out here👇: stateperson.hypotheses.org/559

I see Leviathan all over the place: The Adoration of the Lamb (1498) by Dürer, part of his Apocalypse series, spotted at the BNF.