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The Terror Of History: On the Uncertainties of Life in Western Civilization
This book reflects on Western humanity's efforts to escape from history and its terrors--from the existential condition and natural disasters to the endless succession of wars and other man-made catastrophes. Drawing on historical episodes ranging from antiquity to the recent past, and combining them with literary examples and personal reflections, Teofilo Ruiz explores the embrace of religious experiences, the pursuit of worldly success and pleasures, and the quest for beauty and knowledge as three primary responses to the individual and collective nightmares of history. The result is a profound meditation on how men and women in Western society sought (and still seek) to make meaning of the world and its disturbing history.
In chapters that range widely across Western history and culture, "The Terror of History" takes up religion, the material world, and the world of art and knowledge. "Religion and the World to Come" examines orthodox and heterodox forms of spirituality, apocalyptic movements, mysticism, supernatural beliefs, and many forms of esotericism, including magic, alchemy, astrology, and witchcraft. "The World of Matter and the Senses" considers material riches, festivals and carnivals, sports, sex, and utopian communities. Finally, "The Lure of Beauty and Knowledge" looks at cultural productions of all sorts, from art to scholarship.
Combining astonishing historical breadth with a personal and accessible narrative style, "The Terror of History" is a moving testimony to the incredibly diverse ways humans have sought to cope with their frightening history.
In chapters that range widely across Western history and culture, "The Terror of History" takes up religion, the material world, and the world of art and knowledge. "Religion and the World to Come" examines orthodox and heterodox forms of spirituality, apocalyptic movements, mysticism, supernatural beliefs, and many forms of esotericism, including magic, alchemy, astrology, and witchcraft. "The World of Matter and the Senses" considers material riches, festivals and carnivals, sports, sex, and utopian communities. Finally, "The Lure of Beauty and Knowledge" looks at cultural productions of all sorts, from art to scholarship.
Combining astonishing historical breadth with a personal and accessible narrative style, "The Terror of History" is a moving testimony to the incredibly diverse ways humans have sought to cope with their frightening history.
200 pages, Hardcover
First published August 30, 2011
21 people are currently reading
191 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
July 31, 2020
Human beings are divided in all types of ways that require no restatement here. But among the few things that all of us have in common are the certainty of death and the uncertain the trajectory of our own lives. In a very intimate way, all of human history can be boiled down to a grappling with these basic facts. To the extent such things can even be parsed from one another culture, religion and politics are battlefields for our inner conflict over these existential crises. This book charts out the ways in which humans have responded to their condition: spiritual transcendence, the pursuit of material pleasure and artistic or intellectual endeavor. In all cases the ultimate goal has been more or less the same. Faced with the all-devouring existence of time, people have sought an oblivion outside of it.
Most people respond to the predicament of existence with a mix of the three responses described above. A few have memorably gone all-in on one or the other, which others tend to see as a form of extremism. As the title suggests "history" is one long record of human beings failure to avoid fate. Where it is recorded it tends to be a record of suffering, whether large or small, that serves as a warning to the rest of us.
As Sophocles once memorably wrote:
Not to be born is, beyond all estimation, best; but when a man has seen the light of day, this is next best by far, that with utmost speed he should go back from where he came. Frees us of all the weight and pain of life: That word is love.
This can be interpreted as a morbid statement depending on your perspective but in many ways it should be a reassuring one that happens to be echoed by most religious and spiritual traditions in human history. In this book Ruiz talks about his own efforts to grapple with fate. His perspective is that of an atheist, but a curious and intellectually humble one. He is genuinely seeking truth and aware of the limits of his own knowledge, a perspective that everyone should share. I appreciated his vulnerability and his honesty in grappling with the ultimate questions. It is a refreshing change from those who either robotically ignore them or consider them all somehow settled, even though every generation confronts them afresh.
Throughout the past people sought an end to the painful nature of history by establishing new religious orders, seeking extremes of sensual pleasure or material achievement, or by creating new political orders that supposedly exist outside of time and its inevitable cycles of growth, suffering and decay. The most prominent person to raise the prospect of history ending in recent years was Francis Fukuyama. Following the Cold War, Fukuyama argued that we could be at "The End of History." His argument suggested that liberalism might finally represent the eternal kingdom of man on earth that we had long sought, though his full position was more nuanced than most people give him credit for.
The political pursuit of eternity has led to numerous disasters, including the French Revolutionary terror, Soviet Communism, the U.S. invasion of Iraq and quite recently the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. Rather than politics, physical sensuality and material pursuit seem to be the default mode of transcendence and forgetting for most people in post-modernity. Significant but dwindling numbers look to religion and spirituality to find truth and a place outside of time, while a few great writers and artists seek immortality through their creations.
I was expecting more of an academic account of these weighty philosophical problems. Instead I found an honest and surprisingly personal grappling with the basic predicament of the human condition. The books seems to be the distillation of the wisdom of one persons long life, which he also teaches as a course on spirituality and history at Princeton. His students are quite lucky to take such a course.
Most people respond to the predicament of existence with a mix of the three responses described above. A few have memorably gone all-in on one or the other, which others tend to see as a form of extremism. As the title suggests "history" is one long record of human beings failure to avoid fate. Where it is recorded it tends to be a record of suffering, whether large or small, that serves as a warning to the rest of us.
As Sophocles once memorably wrote:
Not to be born is, beyond all estimation, best; but when a man has seen the light of day, this is next best by far, that with utmost speed he should go back from where he came. Frees us of all the weight and pain of life: That word is love.
This can be interpreted as a morbid statement depending on your perspective but in many ways it should be a reassuring one that happens to be echoed by most religious and spiritual traditions in human history. In this book Ruiz talks about his own efforts to grapple with fate. His perspective is that of an atheist, but a curious and intellectually humble one. He is genuinely seeking truth and aware of the limits of his own knowledge, a perspective that everyone should share. I appreciated his vulnerability and his honesty in grappling with the ultimate questions. It is a refreshing change from those who either robotically ignore them or consider them all somehow settled, even though every generation confronts them afresh.
Throughout the past people sought an end to the painful nature of history by establishing new religious orders, seeking extremes of sensual pleasure or material achievement, or by creating new political orders that supposedly exist outside of time and its inevitable cycles of growth, suffering and decay. The most prominent person to raise the prospect of history ending in recent years was Francis Fukuyama. Following the Cold War, Fukuyama argued that we could be at "The End of History." His argument suggested that liberalism might finally represent the eternal kingdom of man on earth that we had long sought, though his full position was more nuanced than most people give him credit for.
The political pursuit of eternity has led to numerous disasters, including the French Revolutionary terror, Soviet Communism, the U.S. invasion of Iraq and quite recently the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. Rather than politics, physical sensuality and material pursuit seem to be the default mode of transcendence and forgetting for most people in post-modernity. Significant but dwindling numbers look to religion and spirituality to find truth and a place outside of time, while a few great writers and artists seek immortality through their creations.
I was expecting more of an academic account of these weighty philosophical problems. Instead I found an honest and surprisingly personal grappling with the basic predicament of the human condition. The books seems to be the distillation of the wisdom of one persons long life, which he also teaches as a course on spirituality and history at Princeton. His students are quite lucky to take such a course.
March 31, 2012
Part synthesis of class lectures, part personal therapy, "The Terror of History" speaks to a great understanding of why people try to escape from the seemingly crushing inevitability of real life and the wheel of time. Some of it I agree with mightily (almost as if Ruiz has read my thoughts), and other parts I wryly take exception with...but overall, this is an extraordinary & passionate little text. I'm very glad to have run across it; it's given me much to think about, especially for the benefit of my own history students...
July 21, 2018
I expected a book more steeped in theory and philosophy, rather than one filled with personal anecdotes. Still, there is a good balance between the two, and while intimate, the book doesn't read as unscholarly.
I've found it a deeply pessimistic piece of writing, one which doesn't allow for the meaning of human existence. And yet, oddly enough, the book can be seen as an essay on the subject of importance of memory and history writing in order to create meaning.
It's an intriguing book with some interesting and unexpected insights.
I've found it a deeply pessimistic piece of writing, one which doesn't allow for the meaning of human existence. And yet, oddly enough, the book can be seen as an essay on the subject of importance of memory and history writing in order to create meaning.
It's an intriguing book with some interesting and unexpected insights.
November 13, 2022
Another book I read for my history class but this is one is by my professor. It's genuinely interesting, and personal. I'll definitely reread at a different point in my life especially bc I bought it lol
January 9, 2023
The main point is pretty simple: history is terrible, and when the terror gets too hard to deal with, as during wars, famines, plagues, or great social changes, people try very hard to "escape history".
There are three main methods to escape history: religious, material, and aesthetic.
Religious escape is usually by imagining an apocalypse that would finally stop this world for good. No more history, just heaven forever. Alternatively, a mystic becomes one with god by mystical insight, and since god is outside of history, the mystic also escapes history.
Material escape from history is pretty simple: orgy, drink, party, carnival, music.
Rave parties are one example. When people are drunk or high, they don't think about history.
Aesthetic escape is what I do the most, it seems. Making art and mathematics and scientific breakthroughs (hoping, not succeeding) that would somehow become eternally meaningful, to see timeless truths.
"Aesthetic" means "about beautiful things". Aesthetic escape, in general, means to make some great piece of art (that includes good science and math as well as music and painting and sculptures and games and other things), which allows an escape from history in three ways:
1. It is like a touch of something outside of time. Great beauty seems timeless, ahistorical. The notes of Chopin's Nocturne are inscribed on the slab of eternity, and prime numbers exist even if the universe has never existed. They are not born, not killed, not grown, not changed.
2. The achievement of having found such great timeless truth makes you, a timed creature, a little timeless as well. In an alternative universe, where Einstein died before he could publish his theory of relativity, he is still a little timeless, even if nobody else knows about it.
3. It could also keep you for long after you die (a crude form of immortality), leaving a legacy that will remain, even as history churns and grinds on.
The ancient Pythagoreans who believed everything is literally made of integers, they spent their time contemplating the mysteries of numbers, so that they could somehow become one with the numbers, outside of history, always (even the word "always" presupposes time, a horror which the blessed numbers do not know) harmonious.
There are three main methods to escape history: religious, material, and aesthetic.
Religious escape is usually by imagining an apocalypse that would finally stop this world for good. No more history, just heaven forever. Alternatively, a mystic becomes one with god by mystical insight, and since god is outside of history, the mystic also escapes history.
Material escape from history is pretty simple: orgy, drink, party, carnival, music.
Rave parties are one example. When people are drunk or high, they don't think about history.
Aesthetic escape is what I do the most, it seems. Making art and mathematics and scientific breakthroughs (hoping, not succeeding) that would somehow become eternally meaningful, to see timeless truths.
"Aesthetic" means "about beautiful things". Aesthetic escape, in general, means to make some great piece of art (that includes good science and math as well as music and painting and sculptures and games and other things), which allows an escape from history in three ways:
1. It is like a touch of something outside of time. Great beauty seems timeless, ahistorical. The notes of Chopin's Nocturne are inscribed on the slab of eternity, and prime numbers exist even if the universe has never existed. They are not born, not killed, not grown, not changed.
2. The achievement of having found such great timeless truth makes you, a timed creature, a little timeless as well. In an alternative universe, where Einstein died before he could publish his theory of relativity, he is still a little timeless, even if nobody else knows about it.
3. It could also keep you for long after you die (a crude form of immortality), leaving a legacy that will remain, even as history churns and grinds on.
The ancient Pythagoreans who believed everything is literally made of integers, they spent their time contemplating the mysteries of numbers, so that they could somehow become one with the numbers, outside of history, always (even the word "always" presupposes time, a horror which the blessed numbers do not know) harmonious.
March 23, 2023
I picked this up right after finishing Ruiz's great courses with the same title. My views on life align with him and he talks about a lot of my favorite thinkers in the book. So it was an easy win for me. I just adored this book. Such a personal and reflective view on what history is and how it affects our day to day.
November 2, 2022
best GE ever
October 8, 2024
This was the book of all time
August 18, 2023
A great read. The writing is enjoyable and erudite without being obtuse and overly academic. But then again he's Cuban (-American) so I'm biased. ;)
July 24, 2015
**Biased because I was Ruiz's student for a quarter in college last year.**
Great book, great man. He truly gave this book his most candid thoughts of humanity and our struggle to exist, as he has observed during his life-long education of humanity--from reading an incredible amount of literary and cultural masterpieces, learning from people in classrooms and on his travels, and teaching the history of humanity to bright, young minds. His refreshing prose is intriguing and comes from a deep place within his soul that has endured the many experiences of life that has shaped what he learned about history. Insightful, inspirational, and humorous. Definitely worth a read.
Great book, great man. He truly gave this book his most candid thoughts of humanity and our struggle to exist, as he has observed during his life-long education of humanity--from reading an incredible amount of literary and cultural masterpieces, learning from people in classrooms and on his travels, and teaching the history of humanity to bright, young minds. His refreshing prose is intriguing and comes from a deep place within his soul that has endured the many experiences of life that has shaped what he learned about history. Insightful, inspirational, and humorous. Definitely worth a read.
August 12, 2016
Mr Ruiz is possibly the greatest teacher/author of Western history in the past 50 years.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews