released 7/19/2024

Professor Dermot Quinn discusses historian Christopher Dawson (1889-1970) and how he defined the job of the historian. Quinn is editor of the third edition of Dawson’s Dynamics of World History. A remarkable historian and scholar, Dawson expected historians to be wise and morally serious when looking for the deeper, spiritual, meanings of everyday events. He believed that everyday events are spiritually significant because he accepted Saint Augustine’s idea of the City of God and the City of Man: these two cities compete for man’s allegiance, and the events of history manifest that competition. Quinn attends to why Dawson has fallen out of favor with historians presently, and why it is important to recover his work. He also explains why Dawson would view the modern West as having lost its spiritual vitality and historical sense.

54 minutes

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