Journal of the History of Ideas
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Official account of the JHI Blog. Zac Endter, @jacobsaliba.bsky.social, & Rajosmita Roy. Listen to In Theory: http://soundcloud.com/jhi-blog JHIBlog.org
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Today on the blog, Jacob Saliba interviews Brandon Bloch on his recent book, "Reinventing Protestant Germany: Religious Nationalists and the Contest for Post-Nazi Democracy."
@harvardpress.bsky.social
When Theology Became Political: An Interview with Brandon Bloch
by Jacob Saliba
web.sas.upenn.edu
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Nayeli L. Riano's article in the new JHI, "The Pueblo and the Politics of History and Historiography in the Writings of Andrés Bello and Francisco Bilbao," is now available for free. Read it here on Project Muse: muse.jhu.edu/pub/56/artic...
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In a new think piece for the JHI Forum on Political Economy, Oscar Hughff-Coates discusses Chicago School economist Thomas Sowell and how his work contributed to key discourses on race, post-war economics, and the state in the wake of the neoliberal order.
Freedom and the State in Thomas Sowell’s America
by Oscar Hughff-Coates This think piece is part of the forum “The Return of Political Economy in Intellectual History.”
web.sas.upenn.edu
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Today on the blog, Jon Catlin interviews Kathryn Brackney on her latest, award-winning book, "Surreal Geographies: A New History of Holocaust Consciousness"
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Surreal Geographies of Holocaust Memory: An Interview with Kathryn L. Brackney
by Jonathon Catlin
web.sas.upenn.edu
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A new issue of the journal is now available, with articles by Daniel Sutton, Craig Martin, Nayeli L. Riano, Hugo Bonin, Wojciech Engelking, Ian Merkel, and Ernst Müller, Barbara Picht, and Falko Schmieder.

Have a look, here on Project Muse: muse.jhu.edu/issue/55549

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What Should We Call a Bad Democracy?
DANIEL SUTTON

Averroes Among the Paduan Physicians, 1540 to 1600
CRAIG MARTIN

The Pueblo and the Politics of History and Historiography in the Writings 
NAYELI L. RIANO

“True Liberal Democracy . . . Belongs to Napoléon III”: The Rise and Fall of Démocratie Libérale in the French Second Empire
HUGO BONIN

Schmitt’s Reinterpretation of Hegel During His Nazi Period
WOJCIECH ENGELKING

Laurette Séjourné and Leonora Carrington, Ethnography and Surrealism in Mexico
IAN MERKEL

The Twentieth Century in Basic Concepts: A Dictionary of Historical Semantics in Germany
ERNST MÜLLER, BARBARA PICHT, AND FALKO SCHMIEDER
jhideas.bsky.social
In a new think piece for the JHI Blog’s forum on political economy, Marek Maj discusses how, before the Soviet Union's détente with the West, Polish scientists attempted to render intellectual labor more efficient by adapting and revising the Western managerial turn to motivation.
The Brain as Economy: Intellectual Labor and Mental Efficiency in Twentieth-Century Poland
by Marek Maj This think piece is part of the forum “The Return of Political Economy in Intellectual History”
www.jhiblog.org
jhideas.bsky.social
Today’s think piece explores how life insurance—often seen as a dry, technical instrument—became a surprising site for negotiating modernity in the colonial world.
Cashing Lives: A History of Indian Life Insurance
by Mayukh Chakrabarty
web.sas.upenn.edu
Reposted by Journal of the History of Ideas
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Are you dying to know if Hegel hated ersatz coffee? Then boy do I have the piece for you. Very happy to be part of the JHI blog forum on political economy in intellectual history!
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As part of the JHI Blog forum on political economy, Marie Louise Krogh examines Hegel's rare reflections on the 19th century international coffee industry as an entry point into the theoretical stakes of political economy in the midst of European imperialism.
Hegel’s “Brown Rivulet of Coffee”: Colonies, Commodities, and Context
by Marie Louise Krogh This think piece is part of the forum “The Return of Political Economy in Intellectual History”
web.sas.upenn.edu
jhideas.bsky.social
As part of the JHI Blog forum on political economy, Marie Louise Krogh examines Hegel's rare reflections on the 19th century international coffee industry as an entry point into the theoretical stakes of political economy in the midst of European imperialism.
Hegel’s “Brown Rivulet of Coffee”: Colonies, Commodities, and Context
by Marie Louise Krogh This think piece is part of the forum “The Return of Political Economy in Intellectual History”
web.sas.upenn.edu
jhideas.bsky.social
Benjamín Gaillard-Garrido interviews Beverley Best about her book, The Automatic Fetish: The Law of Value in Marx's Capital (Verso, 2024), which dissects the third volume of Marx's Capital to reveal capital's means of appearance.
web.sas.upenn.edu/jhiblog/2025...
Capital’s Singular Dynamic: An Interview with Beverley Best
by Benjamín Gaillard-Garrido
web.sas.upenn.edu
jhideas.bsky.social
On today's episode of In Theory, the JHI Blog podcast, Disha Karnad Jani interviews Quentin Skinner on his new book, "Liberty as Independence: The Making and Unmaking of a Political Ideal." @universitypress.cambridge.org
Liberty as Independence: Disha Karnad Jani Interviews Quentin Skinner
by Disha Karnad Jani
web.sas.upenn.edu
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For the blog, Lilia Endter interviews Mikko Immanen about his most recent book, Adorno's Gamble (
@cornellupress.bsky.social ), which reconstructs and analyzes Adorno's integration and overcoming of the ideas of Weimar-era “conservative revolutionaries” like Klages and Spengler.
Why Adorno Read His Enemies: An Interview with Mikko Immanen
by Lilia Endter
web.sas.upenn.edu
jhideas.bsky.social
In the journal, Victoria Smolkin and Daniel Peris examine how the interactions between two secularist organizations shaped the meaning, direction, and fate, of secularism in interwar Europe. Read the article here: muse.jhu.edu/pub/56/artic...
A quote from the article: "While Soviet atheists were too distant, too politically weak, and too institutionally disorganized to justify the fears of religious conservatives, the anxieties of liberal freethinkers, or the hopes of radical secularists, Soviet atheism nevertheless cast a long shadow and left a lasting legacy."
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In today’s think piece, Mrinalini Sisodia Wadhwa analyzes how historian Sylvia Murr’s discovery of plagiarism in “the most celebrated work of nineteenth-century Indology” led her to develop an approach to historical discourse that challenges received genealogies of the ‘global’ turn.
The Franco-Indian Enlightenment of Sylvia Murr
by Mrinalini Sisodia Wadhwa
web.sas.upenn.edu
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Rolf Strøm-Olsen explores how patterns of musical consumption were shaped by the authority of music-critical journalism in "Applied Aesthetics and the Musical Public on the Threshold of Romanticism." Read it here in the latest issue of the JHI: muse.jhu.edu/pub/56/artic...
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A quote from the article: "The music-critical discourse of the early nineteenth century  sought to become, in effect, a market-making system, with the aesthetic stakes of music hanging in the balance. It also sought thereby to shape, through the market, the musical public in such a way that the public’s own cultural aspirations could be redeemed in aesthetic terms."
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Alyssa Battistoni discusses her book, Free Gifts, a value-theoretical study of capitalism's appropriation of nature, with Jochen Schmon. They cover the "new materialism," reproductive labor, existentialism, and activism.
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The Production of Nature: An Interview with Alyssa Battistoni
by Jochen Schmon
www.jhiblog.org
jhideas.bsky.social
The JHI newsletter is full of announcements and updates about the journal and blog. Have a quick scroll through the latest here, and subscribe to receive these quarterly newsletters via email: mailchi.mp/115a72d9d762...
JHI Blog Newsletter: Summer 2025
Catch up on new scholarship from the Blog & the Journal
mailchi.mp
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In today's think-piece, Sam Chian discusses Immanuel Wallerstein alongside W.E.B. Du Bois as a theorist of decolonization and Pan-Africanism.
After the Year of Africa: W. E. B. Du Bois, Immanuel Wallerstein, and the Sociology of Decolonization
by Sam Chian
web.sas.upenn.edu
jhideas.bsky.social
The recent issue of the JHI includes an article by Ingrid Schreiber: "Egoism and Sociability in the Kantian Public Sphere" muse.jhu.edu/pub/56/artic...
A quote from the article: "We may never truly be alone in Kantianism, but we are also never really together—perhaps to our ultimate advantage."
jhideas.bsky.social
The recent issue of the JHI includes an article by Kaarlo Havu: "Rhetoric, Ambivalence, and Dissension in Renaissance Catholic Europe During the Sixteenth Century": muse.jhu.edu/pub/56/artic...
A quote from the article: "Jesuit discussions on the avoidance of public antagonism in the spirit of decorum or accommodation could be seen, at least in part, as a reaction to the ambivalent powers of rhetoric to address the senses and emotions of the people. They wanted to incorporate the powers of eloquence but preferably within genres that did not nurture open confrontation."
jhideas.bsky.social
In today's think piece, Niels Lee analyzes the deeper complexities of Japanese nationalism and settler colonialism within the Pan-Asianist movement at the turn of the century.
Meiji Japan and the “Korean Question”: Settler Colonialism and Pan-Asianism at the Turn of the Twentieth Century
by Niels Lee
web.sas.upenn.edu