Albert Jay Nock — Isaiah’s Job — The Remnant — Video
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Albert Jay Nock
“You do not know, and will never know, who the Remnant are, nor what they are doing or will do. Two things you do know, and no more: First, that they exist; second, that they will find you.” |
from — Isaiah’s Job by Albert Jay Nock |
You are lied to, propagandized, and manipulated largely through fear, even more than you have thought! To continue awakening SPEND AN HOUR OR MORE HERE
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Albert Jay Nock
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Albert Jay Nock | |
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Born | October 13, 1870 Scranton, Pennsylvania |
Died | August 19, 1945 (aged 74) Wakefield, Rhode Island |
Resting place | Riverside Cemetery South Kingstown, Rhode Island |
Occupation | Writer and social theorist |
Nationality | American |
Alma mater | St. Stephen’s College (now known as Bard College) |
Subject | Libertarianism |
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Libertarianism in the United States |
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Albert Jay Nock (October 13, 1870 – August 19, 1945) was an American libertarian author, editor first of The Freeman and then The Nation, educational theorist, Georgist, and social critic of the early and middle 20th century. He was an outspoken opponent of the New Deal, and served as a fundamental inspiration for the modern libertarian and Conservative movements, cited as an influence by William F. Buckley, Jr.[1] He was one of the first Americans to self-identify as “libertarian”. His best-known books are Memoirs of a Superfluous Man and Our Enemy, the State.
Life and work
Throughout his life, Nock was a deeply private man who shared few of the details of his personal life with his working partners. He was born in Scranton, Pennsylvania (U.S.), the son of Emma Sheldon (Jay) and Joseph Albert Nock, who was both a steelworker and an Episcopal priest. He was raised in Brooklyn, New York.[2] Nock attended St. Stephen’s College (now known as Bard College) from 1884 to 1888,[3] where he joined Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity.
After graduation he had a brief career playing minor league baseball, and then attended a theological seminary and was ordained as an Episcopal priest in 1897. Nock married Agnes Grumbine in 1900 and the couple had two children, Francis and Samuel (both of whom became college professors). In 1909, Nock left the ministry as well as his wife and children, and became a journalist.[4][5]
In 1914, Nock joined the staff of The Nation magazine, which was at the time supportive of liberal capitalism. Nock was an acquaintance of the influential politician and orator William Jennings Bryan, and in 1915 traveled to Europe on a special assignment for Bryan, who was then Secretary of State. Nock also maintained friendships with many of the leading proponents of the Georgist movement, one of whom had been his bishop in the Episcopal Church.
However, while Nock was a lifelong admirer of Henry George, he was frequently at odds with other Georgists in the left-leaning movement. Further, Nock was influenced by the anti-collectivist writings of the Germansociologist Franz Oppenheimer,[6] whose most famous work, Der Staat, was published in English translation in 1915. In his own writings, Nock would later build on Oppenheimer’s claim that the pursuit of human ends can be divided into two forms: the productive or economic means, and the parasitic, political means.
Between 1920 and 1924, Nock was the co-editor of The Freeman. The Freeman was initially conceived as a vehicle for the single tax movement. It was financed by the wealthy wife of the magazine’s other editor, Francis Neilson,[7] although neither Nock nor Neilson was a dedicated single taxer. Contributors to The Freeman included: Charles A. Beard, William Henry Chamberlin, Thomas Mann, Lewis Mumford, Bertrand Russell, Lincoln Steffens, Louis Untermeyer, Thorstein Veblen and Suzanne La Follette, the more libertarian[8] cousin of Senator Robert La Follette. Critic H.L. Mencken wrote:
His editorials during the three brief years of the Freeman set a mark that no other man of his trade has ever quite managed to reach. They were well-informed and sometimes even learned, but there was never the slightest trace of pedantry in them.[9]
When the unprofitable The Freeman ceased publication in 1924, Nock became a freelance journalist in New York City and Brussels, Belgium.
“The Myth of a Guilty Nation,”[10] which came out in 1922, was Albert Jay Nock’s first anti-war book, a cause he backed his entire life as an essential component of a libertarian outlook. The burden of the book is to prove American war propaganda to be false. The purpose of World War I, according to Nock, was not to liberate Europe and the world from German imperialism and threats. If there was a conspiracy, it was by the allied powers to broadcast a public message that was completely contradicted by its own diplomatic cables. Along with that came war propaganda designed to make Germany into a devil nation.
In the mid-1920s, a small group of wealthy American admirers funded Nock’s literary and historical work to enable him to follow his own interests. Shortly thereafter, he published his biography of Thomas Jefferson. When Jefferson was published in 1928, Mencken praised it as “the work of a subtle and highly dexterous craftsman” which cleared “off the vast mountain of doctrinaire rubbish that has risen above Jefferson’s bones and also provides a clear and comprehensive account of the Jeffersonian system,” and the “essence of it is that Jefferson divided all mankind into two classes, the producers and the exploiters, and he was for the former first, last and all the time.” Mencken also thought the book to be accurate, shrewd, well-ordered and charming.[9]
In his two 1932 books, On the Disadvantages of Being Educated and Other Essays and Theory of Education in the United States, Nock launched a scathing critique of modern government-run education.
In his 1936 article “Isaiah’s Job”,[11] which appeared in The Atlantic Monthly and was reprinted in pamphlet form in July 1962 by The Foundation for Economic Education, Nock expressed his complete disillusionment with the idea of reforming the current system. Believing that it would be impossible to persuade any large portion of the general population of the correct course and opposing any suggestion of a violent revolution, Nock instead argued that libertarians should focus on nurturing what he called “the Remnant“.
The Remnant, according to Nock, consisted of a small minority who understood the nature of the state and society, and who would become influential only after the current dangerous course had become thoroughly and obviously untenable, a situation which might not occur until far into the future.[12] Nock’s philosophy of the Remnant was influenced by the deep pessimism and elitism that social critic Ralph Adams Cram expressed in a 1932 essay, “Why We Do Not Behave Like Human Beings”.[13] In his Memoirs of a Superfluous Man, Nock makes no secret that his educators:
did not pretend to believe that everyone is educable, for they knew, on the contrary, that very few are educable, very few indeed. They saw this as a fact of nature, like the fact that few are six feet tall. […] They accepted the fact that there are practicable ranges of intellectual and spiritual experience which nature has opened to some and closed to others.
In 1941, Nock published a two-part essay in The Atlantic Monthly titled “The Jewish Problem in America”.[14] The article was part of a multi-author series, assembled by the editors in response to recent anti-Semitic unrest in Brooklyn and elsewhere “in the hope that a free and forthright debate will reduce the pressure, now dangerously high, and leave us with a healthier understanding of the human elements involved.”
Nock’s argument was that the Jews were an Oriental people, acceptable to the “intelligent Occidental” yet forever strangers to “the Occidental mass-man.”[15] Furthermore, the mass-man “is inclined to be more resentful of the Oriental as a competitor than of another Occidental;” the American masses are “the great rope and lamppost artists of the world;” and in studying Jewish history, “one is struck with the fact that persecutions never have originated in an upper class movement”. This innate hostility of the masses, he concluded, might be exploited by a scapegoating state to distract from “any shocks of an economic dislocation that may occur in the years ahead.” He concluded, “If I keep up my family’s record of longevity, I think it is not impossible that I shall live to see the Nuremberg lawsreenacted in this country and enforced with vigor” and affirmed that the consequences of such a pogrom “would be as appalling in their extent and magnitude as anything seen since the Middle Ages.”
The article was itself declared by some to be anti-Semitic, and Nock was never asked to write another article, effectively ending his career as a social critic. Against charges of anti-Semitism, Nock answered, “Someone asked me years ago if it were true that I disliked Jews, and I replied that it was certainly true, not at all because they are Jews but because they are folks, and I don’t like folks.”[16]
In 1943, two years before his death, Nock published his autobiography, Memoirs of a Superfluous Man, the title of which expressed the degree of Nock’s disillusionment and alienation from current social trends. After the publication of this autobiography, Nock became the sometime guest of oilman William F. Buckley, Sr.,[17] whose son, William F. Buckley, Jr., would later become an influential author and speaker.
Nock died of leukemia in 1945, at the Wakefield, Rhode Island home of his longtime friend, Ruth Robinson, the illustrator of his 1934 book, “A Journey into Rabelais’ France”. He is buried in Riverside Cemetery, in Wakefield.
Thought
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Describing himself as a philosophical anarchist,[18] Nock called for a radical vision of society free from the influence of the political state. He described the state as that which “claims and exercises the monopoly of crime”. He opposed centralization, regulation, the income tax, and mandatory education, along with what he saw as the degradation of society. He denounced in equal terms all forms of totalitarianism, including “Bolshevism… Fascism, Hitlerism, Marxism, [and] Communism” but also harshly criticized democracy. Instead, Nock argued, “The practical reason for freedom is that freedom seems to be the only condition under which any kind of substantial moral fiber can be developed. Everything else has been tried, world without end. Going dead against reason and experience, we have tried law, compulsion and authoritarianism of various kinds, and the result is nothing to be proud of.”[19]
During the 1930s, Nock was one of the most consistent critics of Franklin Roosevelt‘s New Deal programs. In Our Enemy, the State, Nock argued that the New Deal was merely a pretext for the federal government to increase its control over society. He was dismayed that the president had gathered unprecedented power in his own hands and called this development an out-and-out coup d’état. Nock criticized those who believed that the new regimentation of the economy was temporary, arguing that it would prove a permanent shift. He believed that the inflationary monetary policy of the Republican administrations of the 1920s was responsible for the onset of the Great Depression and that the New Deal was responsible for perpetuating it.
Nock was also a passionate opponent of war, and what he considered the US government’s aggressive foreign policy. He believed that war could bring out only the worst in society and argued that it led inevitably to collectivization and militarization and “fortified a universal faith in violence; it set in motion endless adventures in imperialism, endless nationalist ambitions,” while, at the same time, costing countless human lives. During the First World War, Nock wrote for The Nation, which was censored by the Wilsonadministration for opposing the war.
Despite his distaste for communism, Nock harshly criticized the Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War following the parliamentary revolution and Bolshevik coup in that country. Before the Second World War, Nock wrote a series of articles deploring what he saw as Roosevelt’s gamesmanship and interventionism leading inevitably to US involvement. Nock was one of the few who maintained a principled opposition to the war throughout its course.
Despite becoming considerably more obscure in death than he had been in life, Nock was an important influence on the next generation of laissez-faire capitalist American thinkers, including libertarians such as Murray Rothbard, Frank Chodorov,[20] and Leonard Read, and conservatives such as William F. Buckley, Jr.. Nock’s conservative view of society would help inspire the paleoconservative movement in response to the development of neoconservatism during the Cold War. In insisting on the state itself as the root problem, Nock’s thought was one of the main precursors to anarcho-capitalism.
Anti-Semitism and disillusionment with democracy
When Albert Jay Nock started The Freeman magazine in 1920, The Nation offered its congratulations to a new voice in liberal journalism. Nock rebuffed the gesture in a letter to the magazine’s owner, Oswald Villard, in which he wrote, “I hate to seem ungrateful, but we haint liberal. We loathes liberalism and loathes it hard.”[21][22] Nock professed allegiance to a detached philosophical objectivity, expressed in his Platonist credo of “seeing things as they are”.[23][24] He had decried anti-Semitism in his earlier writings, but in his sixties he began giving vent to increasingly anti-Semitic and anti-democratic sentiments,[25] leading Robert Sherrill, writing years later in The Nation, to call him “virulently anti-Semitic” and “anti-democratic”.[26]
The historian and biographer, Michael Wreszin,[27] compared Nock’s disillusionment with democracy and his attacks on the Jewish people to similar feelings held by Henry Adams.[28] Before he died, Nock destroyed all his notes and papers, except a few letters and an autobiographical manuscript published posthumously as Journal of Forgotten Days (Nock was so secretive about the details of his personal life that Who’s Who could not find out his birthdate).[29]
In Journal of Forgotten Days, Nock wrote these passages about the Jews of New York City:
31 August—Leaving for New York today, in great dissatisfaction, to be tied to the public libraries, which are infested with Jews, Turks, infidels, and heretics, such as orthodox members of the Church of England are supposed to pray for in the Good Friday collect.[30]
20 September—The Jewish holiday Yom Kippur yesterday closed New York up as tight as a white-oak knot. One would say there was not a hundred dollars’ worth of business done in all the town. It sets one’s mind back on Hitler’s policy. The question is not what one thinks of it as an American, but what one would think of it if one were a German in Germany, where the control of cultural agencies is so largely in the hands of Jews—the press, drama, music, education, etc.—and where there is, or was, a superb native culture essentially antithetical. Is one’s own culture worth fighting for? I think so. I think I would fight for it.[31]
Nock took a jaundiced view of American politics and American democracy itself,[32] and asserted that in all his life he voted in only one presidential election, in which he cast a write-in vote for Jefferson Davis. [33][34][35] In an article he wrote for the American Mercury Magazine in 1933, What the American Votes For, Nock claimed, “My first and only presidential vote was cast many, many years ago. It was dictated by pure instinct.”[36]
In Memoirs of a Superfluous Man (1943), Nock had this to say about mass democracy in America:
I could see how “democracy” might do very well in a society of saints and sages led by an Alfred or an Antoninus Pius. Short of that, I was unable to see how it could come to anything but an ochlocracy of mass-men led by a sagacious knave. The collective capacity for bringing forth any other outcome seemed simply not there.”[37]
The author Clifton Fadiman, reviewing Memoirs of a Superfluous Man, wrote: “I have not since the days of the early Mencken read a more eloquently written blast against democracy or enjoyed more fully a display of crusted prejudice. Mr. Nock is a highly civilized man who does not like our civilization and will have no part of it.”[38] Nock’s biographer Michael Wreszin wrote concerning Nock’s reaction to the election of Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1932: “Sailing to Brussels in February 1933, before Roosevelt’s inauguration in March, he repeated in a journal his appreciation of Catherine Wilson’s observation that the skyline of New York was the finest sight in America when viewed from the deck of an outbound steamer.”[39]
In popular culture
In the fictional The Probability Broach by L. Neil Smith, as part of the North American Confederacy Series, in which the United States becomes a Libertarian state after a successful Whiskey Rebellion and the overthrow and execution of George Washington by firing squad for treason in 1794, Albert Jay Nock serves as the 18th President of the North American Confederacy from 1912 to 1928.
Works
- The Myth of a Guilty Nation.[1] New York: B.W. Huebsch, 1922. [2]
- The Freeman Book.[3] B.W. Huebsch, 1924.
- Jefferson.[4] New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1926 (also known as Mr. Jefferson).
- On Doing the Right Thing, and Other Essays.[5] New York: Harper and Brothers, 1928.
- Francis Rabelais: The Man and His Work. Harper and Brothers, 1929.
- The Book of Journeyman: Essays from the New Freeman.[6] New Freeman, 1930.
- The Theory of Education in the United States.[7] New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1932.
- A Journey Into Rabelais’s France. [8] William Morrow & Company, 1934.
- A Journal of These Days: June 1932–December 1933. William Morrow & Company, 1934.
- Our Enemy, the State.[9] ePub MP3 HTML William Morrow & Company, 1935.
- Free Speech and Plain Language. William Morrow & Company, 1937.
- Henry George: An Essay. William Morrow & Company, 1939.
- Memoirs of a Superfluous Man.[10] New York: Harper and Brothers, 1943.
Miscellany
- World Scouts,[11] World Peace Foundation, 1912.
- “Officialism and Lawlessness.” [12] In College Readings on Today and its Problems, Oxford University Press, 1933.
- Meditations in Wall Street, with an introduction by Albert Jay Nock,[13] W. Morrow & Company, 1940.
Published posthumously:
- A Journal of Forgotten Days: May 1934–October 1935. [14] Henry Regnery Company, 1948.
- Letters from Albert Jay Nock, 1924–1945, to Edmund C. Evans, Mrs. Edmund C. Evans, and Ellen Winsor. The Caxton Printers, 1949.
- Snoring as a Fine Art and Twelve Other Essays.[15] Richard R. Smith, 1958.
- Selected Letters of Albert Jay Nock. The Caxton Printers, 1962.
- Cogitations from Albert Jay Nock.[16] The Nockian Society, 1970, revised edition, 1985.
- The State of the Union: Essays in Social Criticism. Liberty Press, 1991.
- The Disadvantages of Being Educated and Other Essays. Hallberg Publishing Corporation, 1996.
Notes
- Jump up^ Carl T. Bogus, Buckley: William F. Buckley Jr. and the Rise of American Conservatism, Bloomsbury Publishing USA, 2011.
- Jump up^http://www.libertarianism.org/publications/essays/stylish-elegance-biography-albert-jay-nock
- Jump up^ Wreszin, Michael (1972). The Superfluous Anarchist: Albert Jay Nock, Brown University Press, p. 11.
- Jump up^ Jim Powell (March 1, 1997). “Albert Jay Nock: A Gifted Pen for Radical Individualism”. The Freeman. Foundation for Economic Education. Retrieved 12 July 2017.
- Jump up^ Mark C. Carnes (September 2003). Invisible Giants: Fifty Americans Who Shaped the Nation But Missed the History Books. Oxford University Press. p. 221. ISBN 978-0-19-516883-9.
This early, quiet career as a minister ended abruptly in 1909, when Nock left the ministry, his wife, and his children to take up journalism.
- Jump up^ Albert Jay Nock, Our Enemy, the State, The Caxton Printers, 1950, p. 59.
- Jump up^ Neilson, Francis (1946). “The Story of ‘The Freeman'”. The American Journal of Economics and Sociology. 6(1): 3–53.
- Jump up^ Presley, Sharon (1981). “Suzanne La Follette: The Freewoman,” Libertarian Review (Cato Institute).
- ^ Jump up to:a b Mencken, H.L. (1926). “The Immortal Democrat”. American Mercury. 9 (33): 123.
- Jump up^ Originally published in 1922 by B. W. Huebsch, Inc. Published in 2011 by the Ludwig von Mises Institute.
- Jump up^ Nock, Albert Jay (1956). “Isaiah’s Job”. The Freeman. 6 (12): 31–37.
- Jump up^ Harris, Michael R. (1970). Five Counterrevolutionists in Higher Education: Irving Babbitt, Albert Jay Nock, Abraham Flexner, Robert Maynard Hutchins, Alexander Meiklejohn, Oregon State University Press, p. 97.
- Jump up^ Cram, Ralph Adams (1932). “Why We Do Not Behave Like Human Beings”. The American Mercury. 27(105): 41–48.
- Jump up^ Nock, Albert Jay (1941). “The Jewish Problem in America,” The Atlantic Monthly, June 1, pp. 699–705.
- Jump up^ Crunden, Robert Morse (1964). The Mind and Art of Albert Jay Nock, Henry Regnery Company, pp. 183–84.
- Jump up^ Albert Jay Nock (May 16, 1998). “Autobiographical Sketch (unpublished piece written for Paul Palmer, editor of the American Mercury Magazine, c. 1936)”. alumnus.caltech.edu. California Institute of Technology. Archived from the original on June 29, 2017. Retrieved 12 July 2017.
- Jump up^ Buckley, Jr., William F. (2008). Let Us Talk of Many Things: The Collected Speeches, Basic Books, p. 430.
- Jump up^ Wreszin, Michael (1969). “Albert Jay Nock and the Anarchist Elitist Tradition in America,” American Quarterly, Vol. 21, No. 2, Part 1, pp. 165–89.
- Jump up^ Nock, Albert Jay (1924). “On Doing the Right Thing”. American Mercury. 3 (11): 257–62.
- Jump up^ Nitsche, Charles G. (1981). Albert Jay Nock and Frank Chodorov: Case Studies in Recent American Individualist and Anti-statist Thought, (Ph.D. Dissertation), University of Maryland.
- Jump up^ Christopher Lasch (1972). The American Liberals and the Russian Revolution. McGraw-Hill. p. 143.
- Jump up^ Douglas Charles Rossinow (2008). Visions of Progress: The Left-liberal Tradition in America. University of Pennsylvania Press. p. 98. ISBN 0-8122-4049-9.
- Jump up^ Francis Neilson, Albert Jay Nock, eds. (1921). The Freeman. 3. Freeman Incorporated. p. 391.
- Jump up^ The Thomist. Thomist Press. 1951. p. 302.
- Jump up^ Louis Filler (1 January 1993). American Anxieties: A Collective Portrait of The 1930s. Transaction Publishers. pp. 49–. ISBN 978-1-4128-1687-8.
- Jump up^ Robert Sherrill (June 11, 1988). “William F. Buckley Lived Off Evil As Mold Lives Off Garbage”. The Nation. The Nation Company. Archived from the original on February 20, 2017. Retrieved 23 July 2017.
One of Will Sr.’s favorite authors, Albert Jay Nock, became a personal friend and was often in the Buckley household when Bill was growing up. Along with being anti-democratic, Nock was, at least in his later years, “virulently anti-Semitic.” Young Buckley fell under Nock’s spell and never quit quoting him. Another of Will Sr.’s friends, Merwin K. Hart, was one of America’s most notorious anti-Semites for three decades.
- Jump up^ Paul Vitello (15 September 2012). “Michael Wreszin, Biographer of American Radicals, Dies at 85”. The New York Times. The New York Times Company. Archived from the originalon March 1, 2017. Retrieved 23 July2017.
- Jump up^ Michael Wreszin (1972). The Superfluous Anarchist: Albert Jay Nock. Brown University Press. p. 143.
Jewish had been for [Henry] Adams what Finkman became for Nock, a synonym for avarice and materialism. When Nock lamented the presence of Jews and other undesirables in what he seemed to consider his private study, the New York Public Library, he echoed the fierce resentment of the elderly Adams against the presence of Jews in places that he loved, and on boats and trains.
- Jump up^ Stanley Kunitz (1955). Twentieth Century Authors: A Biographical Dictionary of Modern Literature. Supplement. H. W. Wilson. p. 721.
- Jump up^ Albert Jay Nock. Journal of Forgotten Days, May 1934–October 1935. Hinsdale, Illinois: H. Gegnery Company. p. 47.
- Jump up^ Albert Jay Nock. Journal of Forgotten Days, May 1934–October 1935. Hinsdale, Illinois: H. Gegnery Company. p. 56.
- Jump up^ William F. Buckley Jr. (28 October 2008). Let Us Talk of Many Things: The Collected Speeches. Basic Books. p. 467. ISBN 978-0-465-00334-1.
A year later, in conversation with Mr. Nock, my father disclosed that he had voted for Willkie, thus departing from a near-lifelong resolution, beginning in his thirties, never to vote for any political candidate. He now affirmed, with Mr. Nock’s hearty approval, his determination to renew his vows of abstinence, Willkie having been revealed—I remember the term he used—as a “mountebank.” “They are all mountebanks,” Mr. Nock said.
- Jump up^ Michael Wreszin (1972). The Superfluous Anarchist: Albert Jay Nock. Brown University Press. p. 128.
Nock didn’t vote in 1932; in fact, he couldn’t remember when he had last voted. He couldn’t even remember the candidates, but he had, he claimed, weighed the issues carefully before casting a write-in vote for Jefferson Davis.
- Jump up^ Gregory L. Schneider (1999). Cadres for Conservatism: Young Americans for Freedom and the Rise of the Contemporary Right. NYU Press. p. 8. ISBN 978-0-8147-8108-1.
- Jump up^ Garry Wills (28 May 2013). A Necessary Evil: A History of American Distrust of Government. Simon and Schuster. p. 272. ISBN 978-1-4391-2879-4.
His attitude toward voting (and toward Jefferson Davis) is given in this passage: I once voted at a presidential election. There being no real issue at stake, and neither candidate commanding any respect whatever, I cast my vote for Jefferson Davis of Mississippi. I knew Jeff was dead, but I voted on Artemus Ward’s principle that if we can’t have a live man who amounts to anything, by all means let’s have a first-rate corpse.
- Jump up^ Albert Jay Nock (1933). “What the American Votes For“. In Henry Louis Mencken, George Jean Nathan. The American Mercury. 28. Knopf. p. 176.
- Jump up^ Albert Jay Nock (1964). Memoirs of a Superfluous Man. Ludwig von Mises Institute. p. 131. ISBN 978-1-61016-392-7.
- Jump up^ Claude Moore Fuess, Emory Shelvy Basford, eds. (1947). Unseen Harvests: A Treasury of Teaching. Macmillan. p. 610.
- Jump up^ Michael Wreszin (1972). The Superfluous Anarchist: Albert Jay Nock. Brown University Press. p. 143.
Further reading
- Cline, Edward (January 8, 2009). “Albert Jay Nock: How to Throw the Fight for Freedom”. Capitalism Magazine. Archived from the original on October 3, 2013.
- Hamilton, Charles (2008). “Nock, Albert J. (1870–1945)”. In Hamowy, Ronald. The Encyclopedia of Libertarianism. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE; Cato Institute. pp. 356–57. doi:10.4135/9781412965811.n218. ISBN 978-1-4129-6580-4. LCCN 2008009151. OCLC 750831024.
- Opitz, Edmund A (1975). “The Durable Mr. Nock” (PDF). The Intercollegiate Review. X (1): 25–31.
- Riggenbach, Jeff (September 10, 2010). “Albert Jay Nock and the Libertarian Tradition”. Mises Daily. Ludwig von Mises Institute.
- Tucker, Jeffrey A. (October 12, 2007). “Albert Jay Nock: Forgotten Man of the Old Right”. Mises Daily. Ludwig von Mises Institute.
External links
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Wikiquote has quotations related to: Albert Jay Nock |
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Wikisource has original works written by or about: Albert Jay Nock |
- Works by Albert Jay Nock at Project Gutenberg
- Works by or about Albert Jay Nock at Internet Archive
- The Nockian Society Books available through one of the original founders and Honorable Secretary, Robert M. Thornton.
- Works by Albert Jay Nock, at Unz.org
- Works by Albert Jay Nock, at JSTOR
- The Dangers of Literacy (Nock, 1934), reprinted in The American Conservative
- Literature Library: Albert Jay Nock works published by Ludwig von Mises Institute
- Nock on Education by Wendy McElroy
- Will Lissner remembers Nock
- Fulton’s Lair’s Nockian Page : A collection of Nock’s essays
- Yale Library : Correspondence, photographs, and related drawings annotated and donated to Yale University by Ruth Robinson
- Rev. Mark D. Isaacs (May 10, 2000). “Albert Jay Nock”. Libertarian. Find a Grave. Retrieved November 18, 2013.
- Albert Jay Nock, Writings
- Albert Jay Nock at Goodreads
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[History] The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Volume 1, Part 1, Audiobook
[History] The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Volume 1, Part 2, Audiobook
[History Audiobook] The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Volume 2, Part 1
[History Audiobook] The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Volume 2, Part 2
The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
Author | Edward Gibbon |
---|---|
Country | England |
Language | English |
Subject | History of the Roman Empire |
Publisher | Strahan & Cadell, London |
Publication date
|
1776–89 |
Media type | |
LC Class | DG311 |
The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire[1] is a book of history written by the English historian Edward Gibbon, which traces the trajectory of Western civilization (as well as the Islamic and Mongolian conquests) from the height of the Roman Empire to the fall of Byzantium. It was published in six volumes. Volume I was published in 1776 and went through six printings.[2] Volumes II and III were published in 1781;[3][4] volumes IV, V, and VI in 1788–89.[5][6][7] The original volumes were published in quarto sections, a common publishing practice of the time. The work covers the history, from 98 to 1590, of the Roman Empire, the history of early Christianity and then of the Roman State Church, and the history of Europe, and discusses the decline of the Roman Empire in the East and West. Because of its relative objectivity and heavy use of primary sources, unusual at the time, its methodology became a model for later historians. This led to Gibbon being called the first “modern historian of ancient Rome”.[8]
Contents
Thesis
Gibbon offers an explanation for the fall of the Roman Empire, a task made difficult by a lack of comprehensive written sources, though he was not the only historian to attempt the task.[9]
According to Gibbon, the Roman Empire succumbed to barbarian invasions in large part due to the gradual loss of civic virtue among its citizens.[10] They had become weak, outsourcing their duty to defend their empire to barbarian mercenaries, who then became so numerous and ingrained that they were able to take over the Empire. Romans, he believed, were unwilling to live a tougher, military lifestyle. In addition, Gibbon argued that Christianity created a belief that a better life existed after death, which fostered an indifference to the present among Roman citizens, thus sapping their desire to sacrifice for a larger purpose. He also believed that Christianity’s comparative pacifism tended to hamper the traditional Roman martial spirit. Finally, like other Enlightenment thinkers and British citizens of the age steeped in institutional anti-Catholicism, Gibbon held in contempt the Middle Ages as a priest-ridden, superstitious Dark Age. It was not until his own era, the “Age of Reason,” with its emphasis on rational thought, it was believed, that human history could resume its progress.[11]
Gibbon saw the Praetorian Guard as the primary catalyst of the empire’s initial decay and eventual collapse, a seed planted by Augustus when the empire was established. His writings cite repeated examples of the Praetorian Guard abusing their power with calamitous results, including numerous instances of imperial assassination and incessant demands for increased pay.
He compared the reigns of Diocletian (284–305) and Charles V (1519–1556), noting superficial similarities. Both were plagued by continual war and compelled to excessive taxation to fund wars, both chose to abdicate as Emperors at roughly the same age, and both chose to lead a quiet life upon their retirement. However, Gibbon argues that these similarities are only superficial and that the underlying context and character of the two rulers is markedly different.
Style
Gibbon’s style is frequently distinguished by an ironically detached and somewhat dispassionate yet critical tone. He occasionally lapsed into moralization and aphorism:
[A]s long as mankind shall continue to bestow more liberal applause on their destroyers than on their benefactors, the thirst of military glory will ever be the vice of the most exalted characters.
The influence of the clergy, in an age of superstition, might be usefully employed to assert the rights of mankind; but so intimate is the connection between the throne and the altar, that the banner of the church has very seldom been seen on the side of the people (Chapter Three p. 52).
History…is, indeed, little more than the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortune of mankind (ibid. p. 69).
If we contrast the rapid progress of this mischievous discovery [of gunpowder] with the slow and laborious advances of reason, science, and the arts of peace, a philosopher, according to his temper, will laugh or weep at the folly of mankind (Chapter 65, p. 68).[Page numbers in which edition? clarification needed]
Citations and footnotesen humorous style, and have been called “Gibbon’s table talk.”[12] They provide an entertaining moral commentary on both ancient Rome and 18th-century Great Britain. This technique enabled Gibbon to compare ancient Rome to his own contemporary world. Gibbon’s work advocates a rationalist and progressive view of history.
Gibbon’s citations provide in-depth detail regarding his use of sources for his work, which included documents dating back to ancient Rome. The detail within his asides and his care in noting the importance of each document is a precursor to modern-day historical footnoting methodology.
The work is notable for its erratic but exhaustively documented notes and research. John Bury, following him 113 years later with his own History of the Later Roman Empire, commended the depth and accuracy of Gibbon’s work. Unusually for 18th century historians, Gibbon was not content with second-hand accounts when the primary sources were accessible. “I have always endeavoured”, Gibbon wrote, “to draw from the fountain-head; that my curiosity, as well as a sense of duty, has always urged me to study the originals; and that, if they have sometimes eluded my search, I have carefully marked the secondary evidence, on whose faith a passage or a fact were reduced to depend.”[13] The Decline and Fall is a literary monument and a massive step forward in historical method.[14]
Criticism
Numerous tracts were published criticizing his work. In response, Gibbon defended his work with the 1779 publication of, A Vindication … of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.[15] His remarks on Christianity aroused particularly vigorous attacks, but in the mid-twentieth century, at least one author claimed that “church historians allow the substantial justness of [Gibbon’s] main positions.”[16]
Number of Christian martyrs
Gibbon challenged Church history by estimating far smaller numbers of Christian martyrs than had been traditionally accepted. The Church’s version of its early history had rarely been questioned before. Gibbon, however, knew Church writings were secondary sources, and he shunned them in favor of primary sources.
Christianity as a contributor to the fall and to stability: chapters XV, XVI
Volume I was originally published in sections, as was common for large works at the time. The first two were well received and widely praised. The last quarto in Volume I, especially Chapters XV and XVI, was highly controversial, and Gibbon was attacked as a “paganist“. Voltaire was deemed to have influenced Gibbon’s claiming that Christianity was a contributor to the fall of the Roman Empire. As one pro-Christian commenter put it in 1840:
As Christianity advances, disasters befall the [Roman] empire—arts, science, literature, decay—barbarism and all its revolting concomitants are made to seem the consequences of its decisive triumph—and the unwary reader is conducted, with matchless dexterity, to the desired conclusion—the abominable Manicheism of Candide, and, in fact, of all the productions of Voltaire’s historic school—viz., “that instead of being a merciful, ameliorating, and benignant visitation, the religion of Christians would rather seem to be a scourge sent on man by the author of all evil.”[17]
Gibbon thought that Christianity had hastened the Fall, but also ameliorated the results:
As the happiness of a future life is the great object of religion, we may hear without surprise or scandal that the introduction, or at least the abuse of Christianity, had some influence on the decline and fall of the Roman empire. The clergy successfully preached the doctrines of patience and pusillanimity; the active virtues of society were discouraged; and the last remains of military spirit were buried in the cloister: a large portion of public and private wealth was consecrated to the specious demands of charity and devotion; and the soldiers’ pay was lavished on the useless multitudes of both sexes who could only plead the merits of abstinence and chastity. Faith, zeal, curiosity, and more earthly passions of malice and ambition, kindled the flame of theological discord; the church, and even the state, were distracted by religious factions, whose conflicts were sometimes bloody and always implacable; the attention of the emperors was diverted from camps to synods; the Roman world was oppressed by a new species of tyranny; and the persecuted sects became the secret enemies of their country. Yet party-spirit, however pernicious or absurd, is a principle of union as well as of dissension. The bishops, from eighteen hundred pulpits, inculcated the duty of passive obedience to a lawful and orthodox sovereign; their frequent assemblies and perpetual correspondence maintained the communion of distant churches; and the benevolent temper of the Gospel was strengthened, though confirmed, by the spiritual alliance of the Catholics. The sacred indolence of the monks was devoutly embraced by a servile and effeminate age; but if superstition had not afforded a decent retreat, the same vices would have tempted the unworthy Romans to desert, from baser motives, the standard of the republic. Religious precepts are easily obeyed which indulge and sanctify the natural inclinations of their votaries; but the pure and genuine influence of Christianity may be traced in its beneficial, though imperfect, effects on the barbarian proselytes of the North. If the decline of the Roman empire was hastened by the conversion of Constantine, his victorious religion broke the violence of the fall, and mollified the ferocious temper of the conquerors (chap. 38).[18]
Tolerant paganismast 200 years, and whose most eminent representative is Gibbon. Gibbon had written:
The various modes of worship which prevailed in the Roman world were all considered by the people as equally true; by the philosophers as equally false; and by the magistrate as equally useful.
Drake counters:
With such deft strokes, Gibbon enters into a conspiracy with his readers: unlike the credulous masses, he and we are cosmopolitans who know the uses of religion as an instrument of social control. So doing, Gibbon skirts a serious problem: for three centuries prior to Constantine, the tolerant pagans who people the Decline and Fall were the authors of several major persecutions, in which Christians were the victims. …Gibbon covered this embarrassing hole in his argument with an elegant demur. Rather than deny the obvious, he adroitly masked the question by transforming his Roman magistrates into models of Enlightenment rulers — reluctant persecutors, too sophisticated to be themselves religious zealots.
Misinterpretation of Byzantium
Others such as John Julius Norwich, despite their admiration for his furthering of historical methodology, consider Gibbon’s hostile views on the Byzantine Empire flawed and blame him somewhat for the lack of interest shown in the subject throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries.[19] This view might well be admitted by Gibbon himself: “But it is not my intention to expatiate with the same minuteness on the whole series of the Byzantine history.”[20] However the Russian historian George Ostrogorsky writes, “Gibbon and Lebeau were genuine historians — and Gibbon a very great one — and their works, in spite of factual inadequacy, rank high for their presentation of their material.”[21]
Gibbon’s reflections
Gibbon’s initial plan was to write a history “of the decline and fall of the city of Rome”, and only later expanded his scope to the whole Roman Empire.[22]
Although he published other books, Gibbon devoted much of his life to this one work (1772–89). His autobiography Memoirs of My Life and Writings is devoted largely to his reflections on how the book virtually became his life. He compared the publication of each succeeding volume to a newborn child.[23]
Editions
Gibbon continued to revise and change his work even after publication. The complexities of the problem are addressed in Womersley’s introduction and appendices to his complete edition.
- In-print complete editions
- J.B. Bury, ed., 7 volumes (London: Methuen, 1909–1914), currently reprinted (New York: AMS Press, 1974). ISBN 0-404-02820-9.
- Hugh Trevor-Roper, ed., 6 volumes (New York: Everyman’s Library, 1993–1994). The text, including Gibbon’s notes, is from Bury but without his notes. ISBN 0-679-42308-7 (vols. 1–3); ISBN 0-679-43593-X (vols. 4–6).
- David Womersley, ed., 3 volumes. hardback-(London: Allen Lane, 1994); paperback-(New York: Penguin Books, 2005;1994). Includes the original index, and the Vindication (1779), which Gibbon wrote in response to attacks on his caustic portrayal of Christianity. The 2005 print includes minor revisions and a new chronology. ISBN 0-7139-9124-0 (3360 p.); ISBN 0-14-043393-7 (v.1, 1232 p.); ISBN 0-14-043394-5 (v.2, 1024 pages); ISBN 0-14-043395-3 (v.3, 1360 pages)
- In-print abridgements
- David Womersley, ed., 1 volume (New York: Penguin Books, 2000). Includes all footnotes and seventeen of the original seventy-one chapters. ISBN 0-14-043764-9, 848 pages
- Hans-Friedrich Mueller, ed., one volume abridgment (New York: Random House, 2003). Includes excerpts from all seventy-one chapters. It eliminates footnotes, geographic surveys, details of battle formations, long narratives of military campaigns, ethnographies and genealogies. Based on the Rev. H.H. [Dean] Milman edition of 1845 (see also Gutenberg etext edition). ISBN 0-375-75811-9, (trade paper, 1312 pages); ISBN 0-345-47884-3 (mass market paper, 1536 pages)
Legacy
Many writers have used variations on the series title (including using “Rise and Fall” in place of “Decline and Fall”), especially when dealing with large nations or empires. Piers Brendon notes that Gibbon’s work, “became the essential guide for Britons anxious to plot their own imperial trajectory. They found the key to understanding the British Empire in the ruins of Rome.”[24]
- An Inquiry into the Permanent Causes of the Decline and Fall of Powerful and Wealthy Nations. Designed To Shew How The Prosperity Of The British Empire May Be Prolonged (1805), William Playfair
- The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government (1868), Jefferson Davis
- The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody (1950), by the satirist Will Cuppy
- The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (1959), William Shirer
- The Rising Sun: The Decline and Fall of the Japanese Empire (1970), John Toland (author)
- The Decline and Fall of Science (1976), Celia Green
- The Ottoman Centuries: The Rise and Fall of the Turkish Empire (1977), Lord Kinross
- The Decline and Fall of the Roman Church (1983), Malachi Martin
- Decline and Fall of the Freudian Empire (1986), Hans Eysenck
- The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers (1987), Paul Kennedy
- The Decline and Fall of the British Aristocracy (1990), David Cannadine
- The Rise and Fall of the British Empire (1998), Lawrence James
- The Decline and Fall of Roman Britain (2000), Neil Faulkner
- Empire: The Rise and Demise of the British World Order and the Lessons for Global Power (2002), Niall Ferguson
- The Decline and Fall of the Catholic Church in America (2003), David Carlin
- The Decline and Fall of the British Empire (2007), Piers Brendon
- Three victories and a defeat: the rise and fall of the first British Empire (2008), Brendan Simms
- Decline and Fall of the Sasanian Empire (2008), Parvaneh Pourshariati
- Decline and Fall of the American Republic (2010), Bruce Ackerman
- Triumph and Tragedy: The Rise and Fall of Rome’s Immortal Emperors (2010), Alexander Canduci
- The Rise and Fall of the British Empire: Mercantilism, Diplomacy and the Colonies (2015), Phillip J. Smith
and in film:
- The Fall of the Roman Empire (1964)
- The Decline of Western Civilization (1981), Penelope Spheeris
- The Decline of the American Empire (1986), Denys Arcand
and in television:
The title and author are also cited in Noël Coward‘s comedic poem “I Went to a Marvellous Party“.[25] And in the poem “The Foundation of Science Fiction Success“, Isaac Asimov acknowledged that his Foundation series—an epic tale of the fall and rebuilding of a galactic empire—was written “with a tiny bit of cribbin’ / from the works of Edward Gibbon”.[26]
In 1995, an established journal of classical scholarship, Classics Ireland, published punk musician’s Iggy Pop‘s reflections on the applicability of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire to the modern world in a short article, Caesar Lives, (Vol. 2, 1995) in which he noted “America is Rome. Of course, why shouldn’t it be? We are all Roman children, for better or worse… I learn much about the way our society really works, because the system-origins – military, religious, political, colonial, agricultural, financial – are all there to be scrutinized in their infancy. I have gained perspective.” [27]
See also
- Decline of the Roman Empire
- Outline of The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
- Decline and Fall, a novel by Evelyn Waugh
Notes
- Jump up^ sometimes shortened to Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
- Jump up^ Edward Gibbon (1776). The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. I. W. Strahan and T. Cadell.
- Jump up^ Edward Gibbon (1781). The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. II.
- Jump up^ Edward Gibbon (1781). The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. III.
- Jump up^ Edward Gibbon (1788). The History Of The Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire. IV. Strahan and Cadell.
- Jump up^ Edward Gibbon (1788). The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. V. W. Strahan and T. Cadell.
- Jump up^ Edward Gibbon (1788). The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. VI.
- Jump up^ David S. Potter (2006-05-22). A Companion to the Roman Empire. Wiley. p. 100. ISBN 978-0-631-22644-4.
- Jump up^ see for example Henri Pirenne’s (1862–1935) famous thesis published in the early 20th century. As for sources more recent than the ancients, Gibbon certainly drew on Montesquieu‘s short essay, Considérations sur les causes de la grandeur des Romains et de leur décadence, and on previous work published by Bossuet (1627-1704) in his Histoire universelle à Monseigneur le dauphin (1763). see Pocock, EEG. for Bousset, pp. 65, 145; for Montesquieu, pp. 85–88, 114, 223.
- Jump up^ J.G.A. Pocock, “Between Machiavelli and Hume: Gibbon as Civic Humanist and Philosophical Historian,” Daedalus 105,3(1976), 153–169; and in Further reading: Pocock, EEG, 303–304; FDF, 304–306.
- Jump up^ J.G.A. Pocock, “Between Machiavelli and Hume: Gibbon as Civic Humanist and Philosophical Historian,” Daedulus 105,3(1976), 153–169; and in Further reading: Pocock, EEG, 303–304; FDF, 304–306.
- Jump up^ Saunders, Dero A., ed. (1952). Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. New York: Penguin. p. 23 (Introduction).
- Jump up^ Preface to Gibbon’s Volume the Fourth in David Womersley ed., Edward Gibbon – The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, vol. 2 (New York: Penguin Books, 1994), p. 520.
- Jump up^ In the early 20th century, biographer Sir Leslie Stephen [“Gibbon, Edward (1737–1794),” Dictionary of National Biography, vol. 7, (Oxford, 1921), p. 1134.] summarized The History‘s reputation as a work of unmatched erudition, a degree of professional esteem which remains as strong today as it was then:
The criticisms upon his book…are nearly unanimous. In accuracy, thoroughness, lucidity, and comprehensive grasp of a vast subject, the History is unsurpassable. It is the one English history which may be regarded as definitive. …Whatever its shortcomings, the book is artistically imposing as well as historically unimpeachable as a vast panorama of a great period.
- Jump up^ Edward Gibbon (1779). A vindication of some passages in the fifteenth and sixteenth chapters of The history of the decline and fall of the Roman Empire: By the author..Printed for W. Strahan; and T. Cadell, in the Strand.
- Jump up^ The New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge, vol. IV, eds. S.M. Jackson, et al. (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Book House, 1952), 483–484. online.
- Jump up^ Dublin review: a quarterly and critical journal. Burns, Oates and Washbourne. 1840. pp. 208–. JItKAAAAcAAJ.
p. 208 image at Google Books
- Jump up^ General Observations On The Fall Of The Roman Empire In The West. Fall In The West — The Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon. At Christian Classics Ethereal Library, Calvin College Computer Science. http://www.ccel.org/g/gibbon/decline/volume1/chap39.htm
- Jump up^ John Julius Norwich, Byzantium (New York: Knopf, 1989); Byzantium: the apogee (London and New York: Viking Press, 1991).
- Jump up^ Preface of 1782 online.
- Jump up^ Georgije Ostrogorski History of the Byzantine State(1986) p. 5 online
- Jump up^ Gibbon, Edward (1781). The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. 3. chapter 36, footnote 43.
If I prosecute this History, I shall not be unmindful of the decline and fall of the city of Rome; an interesting object, to which my plan was originally confined.
- Jump up^ Patricia B. Craddock, Edward Gibbon, Luminous Historian. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1989), 249–266.
- Jump up^ Piers Brendon, The Decline and Fall of the British Empire, 1781-1997 (2008) p. xv
- Jump up^ Link to notes on the poem here [1]. Excerpt: “If you have any mind at all, Gibbon’s divine Decline and Fall, Seems pretty flimsy, No more than a whimsy… .”
- Jump up^ Asimov, Isaac (October 1954). “The Foundation of S. F. Success”. The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. p. 69.
- Jump up^ “Classics Ireland”. Ucd.ie. Retrieved September 8, 2010.
Further readingnd Intertextuality in Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (Newark: Associated University Presses, 1999); ISBN 0-87413-658-X.
- Craddock, Patricia. “Historical Discovery and Literary Invention in Gibbon’s ‘Decline and Fall’,” Modern Philology 85,4(May 1988), 569–587.
- Drake, H.A., “Lambs into Lions: explaining early Christian intolerance,” Past and Present 153(1996), 3–36. Oxford Journals
- Furet, Francois. “Civilization and Barbarism in Gibbon’s History,” Daedalus 105,3(1976), 209–216.
- Gay, Peter. Style in History (New York: Basic Books, 1974); ISBN 0-465-08304-8.
- Ghosh, Peter R. “Gibbon’s Dark Ages: Some Remarks on the Genesis of the Decline and Fall,” Journal of Roman Studies 73(1983), 1–23.
- Homer-Dixon, Thomas “The Upside of Down: Catastrophe, Creativity and the Renewal of Civilization”, 2007 ISBN 978-0-676-97723-3, Chapter 3 pp. 57–60
- Kelly, Christopher. “A Grand Tour: Reading Gibbon’s ‘Decline and Fall’,” Greece & Rome 2nd ser., 44,1 (Apr. 1997), 39–58.
- Momigliano, Arnaldo. “Eighteenth-Century Prelude to Mr. Gibbon,” in Pierre Ducrey et al., eds., Gibbon et Rome à la lumière de l’historiographie moderne (Geneva: Librairie Droz, 1977).
- Momigliano, Arnaldo. “Gibbon from an Italian Point of View,” in G.W. Bowersock et al., eds., Edward Gibbon and the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1977).
- Momigliano, Arnaldo. “Declines and Falls,” American Scholar 49(Winter 1979), 37–51.
- Momigliano, Arnaldo. “After Gibbon’s Decline and Fall,” in Kurt Weitzmann, ed. Age of Spirituality : a symposium (Princeton: 1980); ISBN 0-89142-039-8.
- Pocock, J.G.A. Barbarism and Religion, 4 vols. all Cambridge Univ. Press.
- vol. 1, The Enlightenments of Edward Gibbon, 1737–1764, 1999 [hb: ISBN 0-521-63345-1]. cited as “Pocock, EEG“;
- vol. 2, Narratives of Civil Government, 1999 [hb: ISBN 0-521-64002-4];
- vol. 3, The First Decline and Fall, 2003 [pb: ISBN 0-521-82445-1]. cited as “Pocock, FDF.”
- vol. 4, Barbarians, Savages and Empires, 2005 [hb: ISBN 0-521-85625-6].
- The Work of J.G.A. Pocock: Edward Gibbon section.
- Roberts, Charlotte Edward Gibbon and the Shape of History. 2014 Oxford University Press 9780198704836
- Trevor-Roper, H.R. “Gibbon and the Publication of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, 1776–1976,” Journal of Law and Economics 19,3 (Oct. 1976), 489–505.
- Womersley, David. The Transformation of ‘The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire’ (Cambridge: 1988).
- Womersley, David, ed. Religious Scepticism: Contemporary Responses to Gibbon (Bristol, England: Thoemmes Press, 1997).
- Wootton, David. “Narrative, Irony, and Faith in Gibbon’s Decline and Fall,” History and Theory 33,4 (Dec., 1994), 77–105.
External links
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- The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire author record at Project Gutenberg. Based on the Rev. H.H. Milman edition of 1845.
- The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire from the Online Library of Liberty. The J. B. Bury edition, in 12 volumes.
- Memoirs of My Life and Writings at Project Gutenberg
- The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Google Book Search (pdf version)
- Full text at Christian Classics Ethereal Library
- DeclineandFallResources.com: Maps, Translations, Illustrations
- Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Audiobook from the Internet Archive.
- The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, vol. 1 vol. 2[2] vol. 3 vol. 4 vol. 5 vol. 6: audio recordings at Librivox.org
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_History_of_the_Decline_and_Fall_of_the_Roman_Empire
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