History of Philosophy II

Today we briefly discussed Isaiah Berlin, Charles Taylor, Michael Ignatieff, and Frances Fukuyama. This much was on the syllabus. We had a few minutes to look ahead at next class and I mentioned Martha Nussbaum with regard to her filling in gaps in the political philosophy of John Rawls in her work - Political Emotions. The quiz question was do you find a detailed examination of history as exemplified by the work of all of these authors an interesting study? Do you agree that the better the detail of historical analysis the better the predictability we will have for future events?