As Kathleen Raine put it: ‘the imagination does not see different things, it sees things differently.’
"We study history in order to see more clearly the situation in which we are called on to act. Hence the plane on which, ultimately, all problems arise is the plane of ‘real’ life: that to which they are referred for their solution is history." ---R.G. Collingwood
First, we must look at Collingwood’s claim that what is re-enacted is past thought. Why thought? Collingwood writes that ‘to know another’s act of thought involves repeating it for oneself’ (IH 288). For Collingwood the act of thought is not solely the thought as it actually happens.
Re-enactment, in other words, includes counter-factual discussion as well as the delineation of what actually occurred.
“Good tests kill flawed theories; we remain alive to guess again.”
— Karl Popper, one of the most influential philosophers of science of the twentieth century
%Tim Ferris
People are all for freedom until it provokes insecurity and disorder. Then they begin to long for security and order at all costs, and this is exactly what the would-be tyrant(s) seem to offer, often accompanied by promises to restore past greatness or crush ancient enemies.
EASTER 2013 IN BUCHAREST also illuminated the work of Patrick Leigh Fermor, that craftsman of irreducible godlike essences whose every sentence belongs in a time capsule—to call him a mere travel writer is to diminish him.
In sum, this would be systems-style leverage: avoid direct conflict, use the forces already at play, manipulate so quietly as to be unnoticed, know that no effort truly ends. Treat Middle East (2 words) peace not as something to be hammered together but — to use Hayek’s idea for economies — as a garden to be tended.
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