John J. Reynolds III ’05 (left)
Reynolds majored in political science and history and plans to attend Suffolk University Law School this fall.
Philosophy of Exclusion: The Nation, the State, and the Race in German High Culture
Devin Pendas, assistant professor, history department
“John’s thesis on the intellectual history of German nationalism is an extremely well written and lucid piece of historical analysis. John traces the development of German nationalist thought from the 18th through the early 20th centuries, focusing on a number of key intellectual figures: Herder, Fichte, Hegel, Nietzsche, H. S. Chamberlain, and Richard Wagner. He argues, quite convincingly, that there was a development in the understanding of what the German nation was and should be—from one that focused on the nation as a unit of cultural identity, through one oriented towards the state, to one based on biological notions of race. John makes this argument without ever falling into the trap of tracing a direct, inevitable line from early German nationalism to Auschwitz.”