Mustafa Banister

My last read of 2025 - a book about my favourite philosopher, Ibn Khaldun. This 14th century thinker explains the world and its affairs through two sets of causes - objective (derived from Nature) and subjective (derived from culture). The interplay of these two types of causes creates the right royal mess that is human history. But, through reason and reflection, it is possible to discern patterns in how empires rise and fall, in how economies move from growth to decay, in how new vitalising ideologies turn into brain dead official orthodoxies, and into how different types of societies emerge, interface, and collapse. Collapse for Ibn Khaldun is inevitable- empires rarely endure beyond a few hundred years, civilisations maybe a few thousand, but this is all part of the gigantic recycling machine of history - a machine that defies control since its momentum arises from fundamental defects in human nature. Ibn Khaldun is arguably the first ‘modern’ philosopher of history, sociologist, economist, psychologist, and political philosopher. It is a shame that many writers freely borrow from him without acknowledgment or are genuinely ignorant of his contributions.