I appreciate Timothy's warning for why historians should be sensitive to the use of telic political exposition. That is, he shows why defining telos in terms of finality or pre-determination is both useful and important. In the lecture, Timothy describes a well-known tyrant's *love letter* to a nation, which I find strangely reminiscent of Frank Booth's threat to Jeffrey Beaumont in Blue Velvet. The telos expressed is one of inevitability. Timothy warns:
"When a tyrant makes an argument for how history *has to be*, then some of the forces that are actually resonant in history get classified as being ahistorical or nonhistorical or exotic or alien." He then elaborates on how this Tyrant's premise and derived predicates lead to a logic of ethnic cleansing, a foundation or a rationale for war. I have just started the lecture series. I hope it remains this rich. For those interested, the lecture is queued to where this post is intended to be a reference. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJczLlwp-d8&list=PLh9mgdi4rNewfxO7LhBoz_1Mx1MaO6sw_&index=1&t=720s While I am personally appalled at what is happening in Ukraine, I am not intending to post here on politics. I am interested in Timothy's modelling of the argument, how important it is to his argument that one does not erase human agency when describing human history. His perspective reminds me of why it is important to know *for what use* a person fixes the meaning of a word like telos.
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