CROSSPOST: BRET DEVEREAUX: Once You Imagine Aleksander the Great’s Victims as People…
Deep Dives
Explore related topics with these Wikipedia articles, rewritten for enjoyable reading:
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Arrian
11 min read
The article extensively discusses Arrian's biography of Alexander and his position in Hadrian's court, making understanding this ancient historian's context and biases essential for following the scholarly debate
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Wars of Alexander the Great
13 min read
The article's central argument concerns whether Alexander's military campaigns were 'unprovoked wars' launched 'for glory and fun' - understanding the actual wars provides necessary context for this moral evaluation
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Ernst Badian
11 min read
Devereaux specifically cites Badian as representing the scholarly shift toward viewing Alexander through his victims' perspective - understanding this historian's influence illuminates the historiographical debate at the article's core
A pushback from two-and-a-half years ago about one of the weirdest emanations of neofascism I have seen in this past truly weird decade: no, Aleksander III Argeados of Makedon was not “Great” in any senes carrying strong connotations of being in some way worthy of admiration; superbly skilled at the deeply unfortunate and disturbing human social practice of war yes, with very large amounts of the virtues useful in that social practice, yes; but a murderous psychopath too, as a very large part of the package…
Why am I cross-posting this today? Because I was whipsawed by first seeing:
James W. Hankins: <https://x.com/g_shullenberger/status/2005644591060656193> <https://www.compactmag.com/article/why-im-leaving-harvard/>: ‘Whether through hostility or neglect, Western history is being phased out or allowed to die on the vine at Harvard...
Followed by a, “no, my colleagues are just teaching it differently” backpedal:
James W. Hankins: ‘People teaching in Western fields… almost all of these people regard the language of “western civilization” as minimally outmoded and maximally “white supremacist”. I am an outlier because I think that the civilizations of the West should be taught as a tradition, and preferentially at the undergrad level. Most of my colleagues disagree and make some sort of obeisance to global history and assume the equality of all “cultures”…
And then by what I can only read as a frantic attempt at full clawback, as his colleagues are all of a sudden not deluded fools making “obeisance to global history and… the equality of all ‘cultures’”, but are rather truly outstanding learned scholars:
James W. Hankins: ‘I keep reading people who say that no one is teaching Western civilization any more at Harvard, citing my Compact article. It’s not what I said. Harvard (where I’m still on the faculty till 30 June) has 17 outstanding people teaching in Western fields, ancient, medieval and modern…
So I began chasing links. And got to:
CROSSPOST: BRET DEVEREAUX: Once You Imagine Alexander’s Victims as People…
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