Why Study History?

We exist in an understandable universe.

Across the expanse of human history, Good Fortune and Calamity have resulted because people have chosen to act as they did, whether in ignorance or with conscious forethought.

To study the past brings to us a vast palette of human events, by which we can connect our own lives to those who have come before us, and better understand our own Good Fortune and Calamity.

Esse quam videri -- "to be, rather than to seem" -- is a guide not only to understanding what has been, but also to what we are, and should be.
 

Leading a Seminar, Tel Aviv University, June 2, 2008

John David Lewis, Ph.D.
Visiting Associate Professor
Philosophy, Politics, and Economics Program
Duke University

Website: JohnDavidLewis.com 

Images from the Classical World--and Elsewhere

Images of Israel

Graduation, May, 2005

Links to Issues of import:

Comments to the EPA's Request for Public Comment: CO2 as a Pollutant: June, 2009

Comments to the EPA's Request for Public Comment: CO2 as a Pollutant: September, 2008

Chronology of Islamist Attacks on the United States in the Twentieth Century