The Philosophy of History: With Reflections and Aphorisms

A classic volume by a noted philosopher, available again. John William Miller (1895-1978) taught at Williams College, where from 1945 to 1960 he was Mark Hopkins Professor of Intellectual and Moral Philosophy. His extraordinary teaching is described in <em>Masters: Portraits of Great Teachers</em>, edited by Joseph Epstein. While deeply indebted to Plato, Kant, and Hegel, Miller arrived at a strikingly original reinterpretation of the history of philosophy, which, he believed, resolved long-standing epistemological and moral problems generated by that history. <em>The Philosophy of History</em> criticizes all attempts to interpret history on premises not themselves historical. Miller holds that "to view history philosophically is to consider it as a constitutional mode of experience, a way of organization no less fundamental than physics or logic."