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What happened today? Dates from the history of philosophy.
Mahatma Gandhi was born on 2 October 1869 and Gilbert Simondon on 2 October 1924: one made non-violence a political method, the other rethought what a machine is. The same day gives the birth of Swami Abhedananda and of Wallace Stevens, and the death of Marcel Duchamp.
Mahatma Gandhi, Gilbert Simondon
Two calendar days gather thinkers who each moved a boundary of knowledge: Condillac, born 30 September 1714, who built a mind out of sensation; Rumi, traditionally born the same day in 1207; Claudia Card on atrocity; and, on 1 October, the death of Dilthey and the birth of Alvin Goldman, with Istvan Meszaros.
Étienne Bonnot de Condillac, Wilhelm Dilthey, Jalal al-Din Rumi
Miguel de Unamuno was born in Bilbao on 29 September 1864. The sentence he is remembered for, 'you will win but you will not convince', was probably never said in that form; the truer version is better. Cervantes was born, by inference from his name, on the day in 1547; Ludwig von Mises in 1881. Zola and Auden died today.
East Asia keeps 28 September as Confucius's birthday, a date fixed by a recalculation in Taipei in 1952. David Lewis, born on the day in 1941, wrote the book that explains why a date nobody can document is kept anyway. Immanuel Wallerstein, born in 1930, spent a career refusing a convention of his discipline. Melville and Pasteur died today.
Immanuel Wallerstein
Paul III approved the Society of Jesus on 27 September 1540. Bossuet, educated by Jesuits and the last great theologian of history as God's design, was born at Dijon on 27 September 1627. Vincent de Paul, whose Tuesday conferences the young Bossuet attended, died on the date in 1660. Three institutions of providence, and the philosophers they trained.
Martin Heidegger was born at Messkirch on 26 September 1889; Walter Benjamin died at Portbou on 26 September 1940, a day after crossing the Pyrenees on foot. T. S. Eliot was born on the date in 1888, Hans Reichenbach in 1891. Four accounts of time: a philosopher who joined the party, a critic who fled it, a poet, a physicist.
Martin Heidegger, Walter Benjamin
Francisco Suárez died in Lisbon on 25 September 1617, having written the first metaphysics arranged in its own order rather than Aristotle's. William Faulkner was born on the day in 1897 and Glenn Gould in 1932: one took chronology apart in the novel, the other left the concert hall for the splicing block. Three refusals of the given order.
Gerolamo Cardano was born in Pavia on 24 September 1501; Paracelsus died in Salzburg on 24 September 1541. Two physicians who quarrelled with every authority they met, and who between them put a number where a quality had been: how much of a substance makes it poison, and how likely a throw of the dice is.
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Sigmund Freud died in Hampstead on 23 September 1939, after his physician Max Schur kept a promise made eleven years earlier. Augustus was born in Rome on 23 September 63 BC and died, Suetonius says, the easy death he had prayed for. Two lives that ended on their own terms, and two accounts of those endings argued over ever since.
Sigmund Freud
