Many historians have commented
that the way we look at history is the way we look at ourselves. What they mean (we
suppose) is that history presents the human drama to us, and the way historians present
that drama determines whether we see it as a comedy or a tragedy, as meaningful or
meaningless, as a development or a descent. How we see things is, of course, a
philosophical matter. So we as philosophers want to know just what history is up
to—or more to the point, what historians are up to, given the spin they give history.
History itself hasn’t always
fared well among philosophers, even among historians. While Voltaire called history
“no more than the portrayal of crimes and misfortunes” and Carlyle referred to
it as “a distillation of rumor,” even the brilliant historian Will Durant
commented in the first volume of his masterwork, The Story of Civilization, that
“most history is guessing, and the rest is prejudice” (Our Oriental Heritage,
p. 12). History as an academic discipline has come under attack from the postmodern crowd,
which views all history as propaganda for whoever happens to be in power, provoking
Cambridge historian Richard Evans to pen his much-touted 1999 book, In Defense of
History.
But history won’t go away.
And philosophers—whether we’re professional or forming our own
philosophies—need to be clear about how it impacts our worldviews and our world. And
we need to be clear for three reasons:
First, history suggests what
humanity is like. A history full of wars and cruelty—with little to help us see the
reasons—gives us a picture of ourselves as brutal and destructive, scarcely fit to
live, much less occupy such a nice planet. A history that excludes meaning determines that
we’ll be nihilists about ourselves as well: we’ll think there’s no point to
our lives. A history that doesn’t put art, music, literature, or philosophy on its
“front page” diminishes our sense of ourselves as creative, artistic, or
contemplative. A history that takes the opposite stance of all of these presents us with a
humanity that has meaning, that struggles to find higher expressions of creativity, and
that contemplates higher ideals and dimensions of reality. In short, the way history is
reported shapes what we think about human nature—and thus about our nature.
Second, history suggests the
factors that shape our world, the forces with which we have to deal. Are we the result of
some plan, or are we here by chance? Do we deal with mindless forces (of history,
economics, politics—take your pick), or are there designs behind how history has
unfolded? Is “nature” for us or against us? Is “human nature” for us
or against us? Are there other natures involved here that we don’t know about? Are we
among friends or enemies?
Third and finally, history
proposes images that form our impression what’s going on here. Does history present
life as a game? a battle? an invasion? a schoolroom? an experiment (good or bad)? a cave
or a moving ship (see Plato’s cave allegory under “Things We’d Like to
Share with You”)?
The contemporary
“liberal” position is that history is a struggle of human beings to rise above
their Freudian drives (though many psychologists deny that such drives exist) and to
progress toward some higher state of society, mostly defined by humane values—which
are resisted by “reactionaries” who aren’t intelligent enough to grasp
progressive values and who aren’t humane enough to be humanitarian.
The contemporary
“conservative” position is that history is a struggle to retain traditional
values in the face of their degradation at the hands of “barbarians,” those less
civilized in some way (those “others,” who are of a lesser religion, a lesser
political system or party, a lesser culture, or even—in its most obnoxious form, a
lesser race or sex).
What we’d like to do
whenever we refer to history is to take a sometimes deeper, sometimes broader look at
history’s events, outside of either the “liberal” or
“conservative” position. As philosophers should do when confronted with history,
we’d like to question some assumptions and challenge some dogmas. We hope to shed
some light and let in some fresh air.
Because history is so crucial to
who we think we are and what we think we’re doing on this planet, we’d like to
think about history in paradigm-changing ways.
We invite you to join us. And we
hope you discover, as we’re discovering, that history is full of surprises. It
isn’t what we thought it was.
