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  • nagaramnagaram@gts.thinkstoomuch.net
    Aug 4, 2026, 12:28 PM

    One of my favorite goals of studying history is to discover, as best we can, what historical figures believed based on the evidence we have.

    @adapalmer  does a wonderful job of this in "Inventing the Renaissance" with Machiavelli and his different motivations in life. She does a beautiful job illustrating in evidence and prose that Machiavelli is complicated. He may have had an altruistic yet impossible task that influenced his interpretation as a monster.

    And I'm not going to talk about her ideas more because its been about 6 months since I finished the book and I don't have it on me.

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Replies

  • nagaramnagaram@gts.thinkstoomuch.net
    Aug 4, 2026, 12:28 PM

    Anyways! I love history because its an attempt to humanize someone who is long dead through their thoughts and actions. Why did this person do what they did? Is their reasoning sound? Could there be another interpretation?

    All questions that may never be "correctly" answered but to me the journey of trying is the interesting part.

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  • nagaramnagaram@gts.thinkstoomuch.net
    Aug 4, 2026, 12:28 PM

    And I thinks its interesting we seem to do that all the time with people who are actively alive through psychoanalysis type questioning.

    Which I think is interesting because psychoanalysis is considered quack science. We're beyond Freud and the gang in terms of what's useful psychology, but there's still this weird common use of it in both normal modern life and academic history.

    This isn't a jab either. Its just interesting that this is kind of the only tool to answer the question "why were they like that?" Since we rarely get a proper confession (and we wouldn't fully trust it if we did!)

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  • Ada Palmeradapalmer@wandering.shop
    Aug 5, 2026, 4:47 PM

    @nagaram Yes, this sums up a lot of what excites me about history. Encountering minds that are both alien and human at the same time.

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  • So(len)solen@eldritch.cafe
    Aug 5, 2026, 8:34 PM

    @adapalmer @nagaram That's so fascinating (they said, not working in history at all).
    That's why i'm more interested in the Middle Ages that the 19th and 20th centuries: there is more distance.

    Btw, would any of you have interesting recs for someone who wants to learn more about how people were thinking before?
    No history studies in the background, but several years with such an interest :)

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  • nagaramnagaram@gts.thinkstoomuch.net
    Aug 5, 2026, 9:00 PM

    @solen
    @adapalmer

    What periods are you interested in?

    Right now I'm fairly invested in Plato and Platonism so I'm reading a lot of how that philosophy specifically changed over the years. Platonism is important because so much of western thought is a footnote to Plato that knowing how his work was used and changed over the years gives a great overview for everything else.

    "Platonism: A concise history" by Mauro Bonazzi is really accessible while being decently academic in that its just filled with high quality sources to follow into more specific ideas.

    It is my opinion that Esotericism, magic/occultism is important for studying the history of ideas because it was very influential in the development in ideas and it changes with major changes in the larger cultural zeitgeist so I like "Esotericism in Western Culture" by Wouter Hanegraff

    If you're just interested in the Renaissance, obviously Ada Palmers "Inventing the Renaissance " is basically everything anyone needs to know about the Renaissance, but I recommend "The Swerve" by Steven Greenblatt for being a bit more approachable in terms of size if you're easing yourself into reading history books. If you like it you will love "Inventing the Renaissance" though!

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