Education

“What could history have been?” The question asks how events might have turned out otherwise, if only X had happened instead of Y. What if JFK hadn’t been assassinated? What if Hitler had? The official term for this kind of what-if thinking is “counterfactual history,” and it covers anything from an academic’s earnest attempt to imagine the US economy without railroads to Quentin Tarantino’s WWII redux Jewish revenge fantasy, Inglourious Basterds — anything, that is, which imagines history as it did not happen.

But the same question can be the spur to a different kind of speculation.“History,” after all, has two meanings. It’s not just the sum of past events, but the discipline that studies them. …

Jerome Bruner, the George Herbert Meade Professor of Psychology at the New School for Social Research from 1981 until 1991, died June 5^th at the age of 100. Jerry spent his century engaged in life fully. Not only was he one of the most influential figures in psychology, he was a sailor, a raconteur, and an intellectual, who easily traversed the humanities, the social sciences, and the natural sciences without taking a breath. His passion for the sea was well known. When moving to England, he did not take the conventional route and fly or even sail on the QE II. Rather he sailed his own boat across the Atlantic. And, in his mid-80’s, when asked about whether he still sailed, he frowned, said “Alas, no,” but then smiled: “I have taken up kayaking.”

Besides the New School, Jerry spent his academic life at Harvard, Oxford, and, after his retirement, NYU Law School. Chiefly a developmental psychologist,  …

Gianni Vattimo is considered to be among the most important living European philosophers, alongside Charles Taylor, and Jürgen Habermas.  Known for his interpretation of Nietzsche’s and Heidegger’s philosophies, he also developed a postmodern theory he calls “weak thought,” meant to question the hard objectivity of claims in religion, politics, and culture. Over several decades he maintained a dialogue and correspondence with Jacques Derrida, Richard Rorty, and René Girard. In this interview, he reflects on his life and work, on the occasion of a new Vattimo archive opening in Barcelona.

Claudio Gallo is currently culture editor at La Stampa, a major Italian newspaper. He has also worked as a foreign desk editor and London correspondent, and has written for AsiaTimes, Enduring America, RT.com and the Los Angeles Review of Books. His main interests include Middle East politics and Western philosophy. He interviewed Gianni Vattimo for Public Seminar. …