I
In a letter to a historian friend, the French philosophe Voltaire said, “A plague on details! Posterity neglects them all; it is a pest that destroys many great works.” It is in this spirit that we here at Comment magazine offer the following whirlwind tour of some of the great theorists of history, from ancient Greece to the present day. Rather than bore our readers with pages of tedious exposition, we have expertly distilled the complexity and richness of hundreds—nay, thousands—of years of thought to a series of four-line biographical poems, known as clerihews, a form championed by W.H. Auden. Enjoy.
Poor old Thucydides
believed in Fates and Necessities.
Fortune determines history
so it’s all a big mystery.
The good bishop Augustine
put all of his trust in
the descent of God’s city
not the libido dominandi.
In Fiore Joachim
had an eschatological dream:
The ages of the world, to hear it,
correspond to Father, Son, and (soon) Spirit.
Our lady Julian
was certainly not foolin’.
God revealed, she could tell,
that all would be well.
John Nelson Darby,
the premillennial barbie:
When he looked in God’s pages
he saw dispensational ages.
In his manifesto Karl Marx
composed all his larks;
into Western thought he did smuggle
that history is class struggle.
Oswald Spengler
could have been gentler.
He’s made us depressed
by writing Decline of the West.
Eeyore that ass
never had to touch grass.
To interpret the world rightly
just assume bad things will be likely.
Isaiah Berlin
did not give in
to determinist critics
or anti-free-will philippics.
Dr. MLK Jr.
said whether in a long time or soon you’re
gonna see an arc that bends
toward justice’s ends.
The future for Les Knight
ain’t terribly bright.
To achieve humans’ best state
just don’t copulate.
Francis Fukuyama
created mass trauma
by daring to contend
we’re at history’s end.
