I was thinking about historical contingency the other day, actually. I mean everything is contingent from the Big Bang to this moment, but I think contingency is particularly salient when discussing WW1. I mean as things like the Palestinian Mandate and Balfour Declaration demonstrate, WW1 was really an inflection point, a rift in time to Thomas Mann, that shifted the world into another track of causality. I think the only other event in modern history that shifted human affairs onto another track was the French Revolution of 1789.
I was thinking about historical contingency the other day, actually. I mean everything is contingent from the Big Bang to this moment, but I think contingency is particularly salient when discussing WW1. I mean as things like the Palestinian Mandate and Balfour Declaration demonstrate, WW1 was really an inflection point, a rift in time to Thomas Mann, that shifted the world into another track of causality. I think the only other event in modern history that shifted human affairs onto another track was the French Revolution of 1789.