A day after [NBA star] Jason Kidd claimed in divorce papers to be a victim of spousal abuse, his wife's lawyer said the New Jersey Nets point guard had no reason to fear the diminutive woman.

"He says he's threatened by her?  He's a star athlete.  She's five-foot-two, I think, and 105 pounds," said celebrity New York divorce lawyer Raoul Felder, one of the lawyers representing Joumana Kidd.

In response, the plaintiff ballhandler could cite a great English philosopher.  As Gabriella Slomp writes in her Thomas Hobbes and the Political Philosophy of Glory (2000, pp. 25-26, emphasis hers):

Throughout his writings Hobbes often concedes that strength is unevenly distributed among people, but stresses that even the strongest of persons is vulnerable to otherwise weaker individuals.  He grounds his claim of natural equality on the observation of the complete fragility of the human body.  For example, in Elements of Law he points out that

the weaker in strength or in wit, or in both, may utterly destroy the power of the stronger, since there needeth but little force to the taking away of a man's life (Elements of Law, 70).

I have been reading about Hobbes for my work on theory of government, and Slomp's book has been most helpful.  The following item (p. 61) is particularly illuminating with regard to the emergence of democracy:

In De Cive and Leviathan Hobbes suggests that it is not because of idealistic trust in popular wisdom, but because of their personal ambition that individuals tend to prefer democracy to monarchy (Leviathan, 172) in so far as they believe to have more chances to succeed and to have their views accepted and implemented.  Hobbes argues that frustrated ambition and desire to excel one upon the other make this form of government more vulnerable and more prone to dissolution than monarchy:

That men see not the reason to be alike in a Monarchy, and in a Popular Government, proceedeth from the ambition of some, that are kinder to the government of an Assembly, whereof they may hope to participate, than of Monarchy, which they despair to enjoy (Leviathan, 123).

Unless they had an undergraduate course in the history of economic thought or enough of an interest in the subject to pursue their studies independently, newly minted Ph.D.'s in economics today increasingly have no knowledge of the history of their discipline. They know the major names -- Smith and Marx and Keynes -- but their knowledge of these figures' ideas does not go much beyond the sound bite. Their exposure to less prominent figures, like Ricardo, is far more restricted ("Did he invent the Ricardian equivalence theorem?"). They certainly do not recognize names like Menger or Wieser, or Lerner or Lange, and have, of course, read none of them, not even the most famous. The only history they know might be dubbed theorist's history, in which the great name is invoked to set up a problem ("Hayek was concerned about information . . ."), the rest of the time being spent building a model that examines the problem.

The long term consequences of this downward spiral are equally daunting. Economists with no knowledge or appreciation of history are making decisions about its importance in the curriculum. If current trends continue, there will be no more history of thought taught by economists trained in the field, not even at the undergraduate level. (If none are trained in graduate school, there will eventually be no one to teach it at any level.) We will gradually but inevitably lose our touch with history. A science ignorant of its history is a science more likely to be arrogant as well as ignorant -- ignorant of both its arrogance and ignorance. It is also a science more likely to be led astray, more prone to divigations that a knowledge of history might have prevented. It is a sad fate.

With the current games in Germany and with my personal interest in the culture, I thought this book was very helpful in understanding the large debt that the American people owe to the German University.  The American System certainly had influences from the British and the French systems, but Thwing offers three challenging characteristics which the German system introduced to the American: 

•  “Think for himself and to develop an independent and critical mastery of whatever subject he may take in hand.”
•  “Know all that has been learned up to his day in respect to this subject,”
•  “He is expected to learn something not yet known , and thus to add to the sum of human knowledge.” 

 The specialization Thwing notes was one of the eventual weaknesses, but has clearly left its imprint on the history of the university system.  One must think about their certain field today and decide what particular area will be explored fully, that niche is becoming ever smaller. 

Black's life (Wikipedia entry) can also be inspirational to anyone contemplating the life of ideas.  Some of my fellow students will know why I choose and particularly appreciate this quote (from Mehrling's epilogue) as an example of said inspiration:

It is certainly true...that the economics of today is in some kind of intellectual equilibrium with the economic experience of yesterday, but there are forces at work changing both.  When he proposes one of his outrageous ideas, [Black] does not expect the current intellectual equilibrium suddenly to shift over to his position.  He is planting a seed for the future, and meanwhile trying to shift the current equilibrium of ideas marginally in his own direction.  The way you change business practice, Fischer learned through experience, is by proposing something rather close to existing practice that people can actually implement.  The way you change ideas, Fischer also discovered through experience, was very different.  When he tried to frame his ideas in terms close to existing academic practice, he was ignored.  He had more success in shifting the equilibrium when he staked out a position far away from it, and defended that position consistently and tenaciously.