kissinger the meaning of history thesis pdf

The Meaning of History

December 13, 2022

Dr. Kissinger's Undergraduate Thesis

The Henry A. Kissinger Center for Global Affairs at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) is privileged to have distributed the first print edition of Dr. Henry A. Kissinger’s renowned undergraduate thesis, The Meaning of History: Reflections on Spengler, Toynbee, and Kant, completed at Harvard College in 1950, to the world’s leading research university libraries. Read more about this exciting undertaking.

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"The Meaning of History"-copy of final submitted version [1 of 3]

Manuscripts and Archives > Henry A. Kissinger papers, part III (MS 2004) > Series V: Writing and Research Materials > Undergraduate thesis > "The Meaning of History"-copy of final submitted version [1 of 3]

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Madness and Civilization, Cosmos and History: An Anthology

• Table of Contents: by Author

'The Meaning of History: Reflections on Spengler, Toynbee and Kant' by Henry Kissinger (1950)

Is history an open book... that contains in itself all the asperations of mankind as well as the key to the world's purpose? Or does history reveal a series of meaningless incidents, a challenge to our normative concepts, only through conformity to which it can obtain significance? Is meaning, in short, an attribute of reality or a metaphysical construction attendant on our recognition of significance?

Thus meaning represents the emanation of a metaphysical context. Just as every man in a certain sense creates his picture of the world, just as the scientist can find in nature only what he puts in it in the formulation of his hypothesis, just as every question determines at least the range of answers, so history does not exhibit the same portent to everybody but yields only the meanings inherent in the nature of the our query. Therefore, too, the philosophy of history is inseparable from metaphysics, and involves a deep awareness of the mysteries and possibilities not only of nature but of human nature.

Purely analytical criticism of Spengler will, however, never discover the profounder levels of his philosophy. These reside in his evocation of those elements of life that will ever be the subject of an inner experience, in his intuition of a mystic relationship to the infinite... . Spengler's vision encompassed an approach to history which-- whatever our opinion of his conclusions-- transcended the mere causal analysis of data and the shallow dogmatism of many progress theories. [...] After all has been said, the conviction remains that Spengler has found a poetry in life which rises above the barren systematization of its manifestations.

In the life of every person there comes a point when he realizes that out of all the seemingly limitless possibilities of his youth he has in fact become one actuality. No longer is life a broad plain with forests and mountains beckoning all-around, but it becomes apparent that one's journey across the meadows has indeed followed a regular path. [...] We have come up against the problem of Necessity and Freedom, of the irrevocability of our actions, of the directedness of our life. [...] The desire to reconcile our experience of freedom with a determined environment is the lament of poetry and the dilemma of philosophy. [...] What is the meaning of a causality that accomplishes itself under the mode of freedom?

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The Meaning of History: Reflections on Spengler, Toynbee, and Kant Hardcover – January 3, 2023

Exploring the dialectic between historical determinism and the exercise of free will, from the Enlightenment to WWII, by the former Secretary of State

This volume presents Henry Kissinger's (born 1923) senior thesis from Harvard University, written in 1950 when he was 27 years old and published here in full for the first time over 70 years later. The text explores the thought of three distinct but important thinkers in the canon of Western philosophical and historical thought: Oswald Spengler, a German historian and philosopher; Arnold Toynbee, a British historian and philosopher; and Immanuel Kant, a Prussian of the European Enlightenment era and one of the most important philosophers to emerge from his time. At nearly 400 pages, it wrestles with some of the first-order dilemmas of Western political and moral thought, ranging in scope from the Enlightenment through to the midpoint of the 20th century―an era scourged by two world wars and the advent of the nuclear age.

• Print length 279 pages
• Language English
• Publisher Bokförlaget Stolpe
• Publication date January 3, 2023
• Dimensions 7.25 x 1 x 10 inches
• ISBN-10 9189425863
• ISBN-13 978-9189425866
• See all details

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Product details

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Bokförlaget Stolpe (January 3, 2023)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 279 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 9189425863
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-9189425866
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.31 pounds
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 7.25 x 1 x 10 inches
• #335 in Historical Essays (Books)
• #2,221 in Political Conservatism & Liberalism
• #2,853 in Political Philosophy (Books)

About the author

Henry kissinger.

Henry Kissinger served in the US Army during the Second World War and subsequently held teaching posts in history and government at Harvard University for twenty years. He served as national security advisor and secretary of state under Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, and has advised many other American presidents on foreign policy. He received the 1973 Nobel Peace Prize, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and the Medal of Liberty, among other awards. He is the author of numerous books and articles on foreign policy and diplomacy, including most recently On China and World Order. He is currently chairman of Kissinger Associates, Inc., an international consulting firm.

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The Meaning of Kissinger

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The Philosophical Beliefs of Henry Kissinger

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• Gerry Argyris Andrianopoulos  

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There is substantial agreement that the intellectual capital political leaders bring to their office has an impact on their actions. Indeed, Kissinger, declared:

It is an illusion to believe that leaders gain in profundity while they gain experience. As I have said, the convictions that leaders have formed before reaching high office are the intellectual capital they will consume as long as they continue in office. There is little time for leaders to reflect… When I entered office, I brought with me a philosophy formed by two decades of the study of history… 1

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Henry A. Kissinger, White House Years (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1979), p. 54.

Google Scholar  

Kissinger, “The Meaning of History” (Unpublished Undergraduate Thesis, Harvard University, 1950), pp. 347–48.

Kissinger, A World Restored: Europe After Napoleon (Glouster, Mass: Peter Smith, 1973). Kissinger used the terms “stable order” and “legitimate order” interchangeably.

Ibid,. p. 1; Kissinger, “The White Revolutionary: Reflections on Bismarck,” Daedalus 97 (Summer 1968):899–900; Dickson, Kissinger and the Meaning of History , p. 20.

Kissinger, A World Restored , pp. 1–2; Henry A. Kissinger, Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1957), pp. 141–42, 317; abridged edn (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1969), pp. 44, 122.

Kissinger, American Foreign Policy (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1969), pp. 53–55; Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy , pp. 5–6; abridged edn, pp. 2–3; The Necessity for Choice (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1961), pp. 2, 6. Falk, What’s Wrong with Henry Kissinger’s Foreign Policy , p. 14. Falk recognized the shift in emphasis in Kissinger’s writings but stated that it became evident in The Necessity for Choice.

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© 1991 Gerry Argyris Andrianopoulos

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Andrianopoulos, G.A. (1991). The Philosophical Beliefs of Henry Kissinger. In: Kissinger and Brzezinski. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-21741-0_2

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peter w. dickson . Kissinger and the Meaning of History . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1978. Pp. x, 197. $14.95

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Thomas C. Kennedy, peter w. dickson . Kissinger and the Meaning of History . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1978. Pp. x, 197. $14.95, The American Historical Review , Volume 84, Issue 5, December 1979, Pages 1501–1502, https://doi.org/10.1086/ahr/84.5.1501-a

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