Anti-Climacus

Co-sign. Perhaps it's the academic positions I've held or the people I am friends with, but I don't know anyone who believes the general neglect given to history, philosophy, and political thought between Aristotle and Machiavelli is a good thing. Not all of it is useful, of course--my scholarly interests begin around 1100. Nor is all of it interesting: pity the soul who has to make their way through William of Ockham, Duns Scotus or Aquinas (the last in some ways the worst because so frequently quoted). But it is all important, in the sense that one can't understand late-medieval humanism without understanding what it's a reaction to; fail to understand that, and Luther or Erasmus look sui generis rather than instantiations in a much older line of thought (brilliant instantiations, but not new).