Forgetting the big ideas

How to collect ideas that have changed the world. Nick Jones reviews A History of Ideas.

Nick Jones

Nick is the senior editor of Seen & Unseen.

A painting of an 18th Century servant bent over a washing tub.

Jean-Siméon Chardin's The Scullery Maid.

National Gallery of Art, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons.

I devour new ideas. One way to sate the appetite is dining out on Radio 4’s In Our Time archive. The show’s host Melvyn Bragg politely and firmly guides academic experts as they share their wisdom and insights with the listener. Among these great teachers, one had a title that stood out for me - Professor of the History of Early Modern Ideas. It was held by the late Justin Champion of Royal Holloway University. While I may never aspire to don his mantle, I do love the idea of, well, a professor of ideas. So much to discover and explain – to educate upon.

As well as formal academics in universities, other types of educators share that teaching load. Among them is the School of Life. A purveyor of therapy, courses and books, it has published A History of Ideas. The book is a collection of what the School calls humanity’s most inspiring ideas throughout time, ideas ‘best suited to healing, enchanting and revising us.’ Its stated goal is to answer the biggest puzzles we may have: about the direction of our lives, the issues of relationships, the meaning of existence. 

Given the School of Life was started by authors, therapists and educators, A History of Ideas could be considered its textbook, but it is no academic textbook. Instead, every idea it addresses hangs off a full-page image accompanied by essay, often based on articles the School has published.

Arranging ideas is always challenging. The book documents the history of the world’s ideas in 12 chapters. Good news for Julian Barnes, whose A History of the World in 10½ Chapters remains on top of the concise world history league by one and a half chapters. Prehistory and The Ancients, and Modernity bookend chapters on the great religions, Europe, The Americas, Industrialisation and Africa.

Within chapters, fine art, architecture and objects illustrate the ideas. Grand masters can be expected on the pages but they are joined by lesser works. Such selections serve their purpose well. The Scullery Maid, by Jean-Baptiste-Simeon Chardin, depicts the drudgery of washer work yet brings to visual life the accompanying first essay on Christianity. This is no art history exposition of some baroque high altar piece – rather:

‘Central to Christianity has been the argument about the value of ordinary people… this was a religion that never stopped stressing that God's mercy was offered to all irrespective of social status.’

Nor does it shy away from tackling what today may be seen as problematic ideas. On original sin, it asks:

‘why would it be helpful to keep this in mind? Because once we accept the bleak verdict, we are spared the risks of misplaced expectations. To know that everyone we encounter will, at some level, be flawed reduces our fury and our disappointment with this or that problematic aspect of their character.’

Wise words in an age where few can disagree agreeably.

The ideas of industrialisation are, perhaps, foreshadowed by the 18th century scullery maid’s crude washing tub. From today’s perspective, it seems that some of the big ideas haves been vigorously scrubbed away by the industrial revolution and allied revolutionary trades. However, the commentary on The Scullery Maid concludes:

‘an ideology can be said to have achieved true victory when we forget it even exists. We can tell that Christianity has been one of the most powerful movements of ideas there has ever been, in part because of how seldom we notice that it has ever had the slightest influence on us.’

Living in a ‘decade of disruption’, to quote Rory Stewart, there are many big questions being asked. Among them, “will it all be OK?" The History of Ideas is a carefully curated gallery that illustrate the big ideas helping answer those questions. Given the authors set out to curate ideas that could enchant, it may also re-enchant those asking - with that which they have forgotten exists.

A History of Ideas is published by The School of Life.

ISBN: 9781912891962

Review

Books

Culture

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11 December 2024

1 min read

All this can be yours: the momentum that drives mafia states

Once abhorred opinions gain traction among the distracted nursing grievances.

Simon Burton-Jones

Simon is Bishop of Tonbridge in the Diocese of Rochester. He writes regularly round social, cultural and political issues.

Preisdent Putin stands behind a lectern with a gold door and Russian flag behind him.

What is Putin thinking?

Is there a new Cold War today? This assumption, spurred by the war in Ukraine, is challenged by Anne Applebaum in Autocracy, Inc. (Penguin Random House, 2024). Instead, she argues, there is a growing group of autocratic nations where ruling elites exercise staggering levels of corruption, accumulating wealth, eviscerating the common good and suppressing any meaningful dissent. There is rule by law rather than rule of law, where the courts become the means by which brutal, cynical state power is employed to destroy and imprison opponents.

The Cold War was underpinned by ideology, but autocratic states today support one another through logistics, resources and propaganda despite big differences in outlook. Iran, North Korea, Venezuela, China, Russia and Zimbabwe, to name a handful of autocratic nations, share little by way of common ideology, except the desire of their dictators to stay in power, both to ensure their wealth and to protect themselves from legal action. The fig leaves of religious beliefs and nationalism are often used in different combinations but fool few.

If there is a common denominator for these autocracies, it is the wish to scrap the post-war settlements – the institutions and laws that have marked global affairs since. The body of existing international law is a particular target, as its dismantling immunises dictators against judgment.

Framing the present global picture in clear, criminal terms like this is helpful. Mafia states exist, and they are growing in influence. But it is too easy for others to place themselves on the side of the angels. These kleptocracies have been enabled by corporate bodies elsewhere. In the UK, London is host to lawyers, accountants, bankers and PR experts who have helped to launder money for corrupt elites. They argue their support is legal, but it is also amoral; such is the professional framework of some of the biggest names in law and finance. London’s property market, like several other global capitals, has been grossly distorted by the laundering of foreign money, to the detriment of working people trying to afford their own homes.

At the end of the Cold War, there was a widespread sense that liberal, democratic values had prevailed and it only remained for this dye to leak into the fabric of remaining nations. Not only is this not true today, if anything the momentum is with autocratic values infecting democracies with their ways. The global technology revolution has assisted this, as once abhorred opinions and positions gain traction in the minds of distracted people with grievances, real or imagined.

There is a special hypocrisy when criminals who have stolen billions and murdered thousands claim to speak for God.

The late Chief Rabbi, Jonathan Sacks, said the key question for the new century was: who speaks for God? If the suggestion was that this is a question different religious traditions need to answer in ways that support our common humanity, we now have no shortage of dictators who say they speak for God. Their claims that other regions of the world are godless and degenerate are made time and again. Like Goebbels, they know that the endless repetition eventually wears people down until phrases become believable. No-one who cares about God’s character would claim their society reflects his character well; there is injustice, hatred and violence everywhere. But there is a special hypocrisy when criminals who have stolen billions and murdered thousands claim to speak for God.

When Jesus faced his life-defining temptation in the wilderness, the devil showed him the kingdoms of the world and promised they would be his if he ‘turned’. He also tempted Jesus to turn stones into bread. Power and wealth, the very trappings coveted by the world’s dictators. And his final temptation: to throw himself from the roof of the Temple, only to be saved by the angels. To surround himself with a loyal cadre of officers sure to protect his interests at all times.

Instead of the highway to autocracy, Jesus took the uneven and winding path of service to others. One of self-denial, deprived of the material wealth made available by his elevated position. This is the human standard we have been set and it compels self-reflection, not boasting and threats.