Scott Powell Concludes Kant vs. Columbus

Don't miss Scott Powell's exciting conclusion to his previously mentioned series of articles. Here's an excerpt:

A proper assessment and celebration of Columbus’s work, however, cannot be validated by more research or the uncovering of a still more detailed picture of the past. It can only be defended by grasping on an abstract level that “the Discovery of America” is the objective term necessitated by the full context of the Story of World up to that point and–of equal importance–by the context of developments beyond it.

Around the Blogosphere

Columbus vs. Kant
That's the name of a fascinating series of posts on Scott Powell's Power History Recommends blog. There are three parts so far and I can't wait for the fourth. Here's a brief excerpt. Check it out:

Kant’s philosophical assault on man’s faculty of reason paved the way for the historical assault on Columbus by preventing a key avenue of development from ever occuring in Western historiography. By aborting the general study of abstractions as cognitive tools, Kant prevented historians from adopting the epistemological stance necessary to define and defend the most crucial instrument in the systematization of history: historical abstractions.

Consciousness and Medicines
Leitmotif has a couple of interesting posts on Daniel Dennett's view of consciousness (no such thing), as well as a leftist view on medicines (who needs them).