Thoughts on History

* I know I promised a series of essays on marriage (which are still coming in a few weeks), but I’ve been distracted recently thinking about the nature of history. Before you begin reading this essay, stop and ask yourself this simple question: what is history? Think about it for a bit before you start reading. I may do one more essay on history, and then I’ll get to the question of marriage. Hope you enjoy!

I’m making the audio recording to this essay available to all readers with the hope that you’ll think my work worthy of a paid subscription.

This essay is concerned with the nature, meaning, methods, purposes, and possibilities of history. To that end, it is an exercise in the philosophy of history, which begins by addressing three fundamental questions: what is the past, how do we know it, and why does knowledge of the past matter?

Framed in this way, history mirrors the branches of philosophy. It has a metaphysics, an epistemology, and an ethics. The metaphysics of history (i.e., the “what” of history) is concerned with the nature of past reality. The epistemology of history (i.e., the “how” of history) is concerned with the means by which we know or acquire knowledge of the past. The ethics of history (i.e., the “why” of history) is concerned with the meaning of history for the present.

The Metaphysics of History

I begin with a few general observations on the “what” or what I have called the metaphysics of history. Simply defined, history is the past, or that which occurred in the past through linear time. The past is that which occurred one second, minute, hour, day, week, month, year, decade, century, and millennium ago, and so on for every human who has ever lived. Metaphysically, there is never really a “present” in history, only a past. For the living, the present is a nanosecond half-way house between past and future. In the broadest sense, history is whatever existed and/or happened somewhere in the past from the beginning of time to the always evaporating present.

What are the metaphysical qualities and characteristics that define the past?

First, the past no longer exists; it cannot be observed or experienced firsthand. The past is dead. History is what once was, but now it is gone. There is no eternal return, and no one can relive the past. At best, it exists in memory. Second, the past is unalterable; it cannot be changed. To put a twist on Aristotle’s Law of Identity applied to history, we might say “A was A,” or whatever was, was. As such, the past is metaphysically absolute. There are no re-dos in history. Third, the past—or at least most of the past—is lost to us forever, and our knowledge of the parts which are recoverable is incomplete and imperfect. The full history human existence includes an incalculable number of events for which there is no record, which means that most of human history is inaccessible to us. Finally, the past is and shall always remain a foreign place to us, and its visitors from the present are always strangers in a strange land without the means to fully know and understand the people they study. Their distance from us can never be entirely bridged. We can never fully understand the past.

History has a second and more common definition, which is the study and recording of what happened in the past. The ancient Greek word historia means “inquiry” or “investigation.” Noah Webster’s 1828 dictionary defined history as “An account of facts, particularly of facts respecting nations or states; a narration of events in the order in which they happened, with their causes and effects.” In this sense, history is the pursuit of knowledge about what happened in the past, how it happened, and why it happened. In this sense, history is the creation of a social memory of things thought, said, and done. As such, history is a bridge between past and present. Events—human events—are a consequence of human action, and human action is the result of human thought. In a sense, then, as R. G. Collingwood once put it, “All history is the history of thought”—but that does not make history the same as philosophy. History is related to philosophy, but it is not the same thing. History is the study of what, how, and why humans thought in the past and the relationship of that thought to the what, how, and why of their actions. Thought and action are mediated by choice.

Ever since Herodotus, history has become a form of knowledge and a recognized field of study. History is the study of past human affairs, but those affairs are not static; they are always moving forward in time. Those who study the past are historians. Historians enter the portal of history, transport themselves in their imaginations to a particular time in the past, and then follow their subjects as they move forward in time to an end point. We might say that the “doing” of history is the study of change over time, which begins and ends at a point or time in past. As such, history requires a forward-moving narrative that takes readers from point A to Z. It studies the cause-and-effect relationships between human thought and action in time and across space and between actors in the past.

History comes in many shapes and forms. It is the most comprehensive form of knowledge because it studies what people think and do, which means that its potential topics are virtually endless. As such, the study or field of history can be as broad as the full panoply of human thought and action. Amongst the most common or prominent forms of history are social, demographic, cultural, political, constitutional, administrative, legal, diplomatic, military, economic, literary, medical, and intellectual history to name the most prominent.

The first challenge of history writing is a recognition the object of one’s study no longer exists. The historian’s job is to bring back to life, at least figuratively and artistically, that which is dead. The doing of history is the re-creation of a remembered or discovered past. Initially, the doing of history was concerned with recollection and retelling. This is what Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey do. Later, the doing of history—certainly modern history—became an act of discovery and re-enactment, that is, the act of discovering something unknown, lost, or forgotten, and the re-enactment of it for the sake of others. Most often, this knowledge is captured in the form of a book, essay, film, or documentary.

The Epistemology of History

Let us turn now to the “how” or what I have called the epistemology of history. The question we must now ask is, how can we know the past? How can we in the present know the what, how, and why of past thought and action?

The study of history, like philosophy, begins with a sense of wonder and curiosity. A good historian, as with Socrates, begins with the recognition of his or her own ignorance about a past event and then pursues some kind of explanatory knowledge about it by doing historical research. The doing or making of history is a mode of thinking that requires the discovery and re-enactment (usually in the form of a written narrative) of past events. Put differently, the study of history is a search for the truth—the objective truth or something approximating it—as it relates to events that happened in the past. As such, history is a form of knowledge. The “doing” of history—by which I mean the researching, studying, and writing of history—is the work of a historian. Historians want to know what happened relative to some event in the past, when and where it happened, how it happened, why it happened, what its consequences were, and what its meaning was for the people who experienced the event and for future generations. Knowing the truth about the past, however, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, is difficult.

We enter and arrive at some point in the past as though pilgrims on a journey to a foreign land. The historian’s goal is to recover what once was and as it was. But the question is, how do we get from the present to a past that is dead to us? How do we get to a time that no longer exists? What is our portal to the past? In other words, how do historians discover and re-create the past for the present and future?

Our entry point to the past typically begins by reading the histories of historians already written, but our question is how did those historians discover and recreate the past? One thing is certain: we cannot know the past beyond our own lives through direct, empirical perception. We cannot be eyewitnesses to the events we wish to know. Those in the present can only know the past if those who lived it left behind some kind of record of their lives. The historian’s knowledge of the past is therefore always second-hand and is mediated by the nature and availability of the historical evidence, most often in the form of written documents (e.g., books, pamphlets, essays, speeches, newspapers, resolutions, petitions, declarations, laws, decrees, diaries, autobiographies, correspondence, court records, wills, deeds, notes of transaction, contracts, etc.), oral traditions, or various other relics from the time.

The historian’s business is to discover and reconstruct the events that brought the evidence into being, as well as the causes of those events and the consequences that issued from them. There is no history if there is no extant evidence. Historians must not make claims about the past that are not supported by the evidence or historical record. For these reasons and more, the historian must therefore begin with a degree epistemological modesty.

Doing history requires thinking historically, which means the recovery of past thought and action, not as a static snapshot, but as a moving picture that involves cause-and-effect relationships between many actors. The historian’s craft involves discovery, collection, selection, distillation, synthesis, organization, interpretation, and narrative. The process is inductive. It means drawing generalizations based on countless particulars. History is a mode of thinking that requires separating the wheat from the chaff. Historians typically examine large numbers of documents in their research, often numbering in the hundreds or more, which might not necessarily have obvious connections to one another. The historian must choose, select, and rank by causal importance the evidence that he or she has collected. Much historical research and writing involves a process of elimination. This means that the historian’s craft is concerned, first and foremost, with choice, selection, and recreation, which means ranking hierarchically what is and is not important for the subject and story. The historian must also make sense of contradictions in the historical record and chart a causal explanation for what happened.

Historians investigating the past typically begin by examining external events (i.e., the effects, by which I mean the actions of individuals doing things), and then seek to discover the internal events (i.e., the causes, by which I mean the thinking, ideas, and choices of individuals). Let’s consider two examples. We know for instance, that John Adams delivered a speech in the Continental Congress on July 1, 1776, and we know that George Washington crossed the Delaware River on December 25, 1776. Knowing that they did these things is not enough. The historian seeks to discover the context, motivations, ideas and thinking processes that led Adams and Washington to do what they did. We want to know, for instance, what Adams said, how he said it, and why he said it. Likewise, we want to know Washington’s strategic thinking and decision-making that led him to lead his troops across an icy river at night in the middle of the winter. Why did he and his troops cross the Delaware when and where he did? What were the causes and consequences of both events, and how are both events related?

Historians, as opposed to annalists or philosophers, are never concerned with just external actions or internal thoughts to exclusion of the other because thought and action are inextricably connected for the historian in a dynamic relationship. The goal of the historian is not simply to re-present an event, but rather to explain its causes and consequences as well as its character and meaning. The “what” must be explained by the “how” and the “why.” We know about Adams’s speech and Washington’s journey, for instance, primarily through the private correspondence of those who participated in or were witnesses to them. Historians also know about these events via diaries, newspaper articles, and the records of the Continental Congress. Historians and students of history want to know what caused these events and what their consequences were.

Historians reconstruct the past according to an explanatory generalization, narrative, and a theme that are the result of piecing together many parts into a whole. After collecting, sorting, collating, organizing, and trying to make sense of a vast array of evidence, the historian then re-enacts the past in his own mind, which means to forge a narrative and explanation about what happened and the meaning of what happened. The historian’s task is to examine how the parts fit together to create a narrative of the past. At this point, the historian’s craft becomes an art. Thinking historically means dealing in generalizations, which requires seeing connections and bringing them together in a coherent whole.

The Ethics of History

We turn now to the “why” of history, or what I have called the ethics of history. The first task and primary purpose of those who “do” history (i.e., the work of historians) is to pursue the truth about the past, and the primary purpose of those who study and teach history is, at least in part, to help make sense of the world in which we live by studying the movement from the past to the present. The past only has meaning in the present. Our concern in this third section is with the latter—with those who study and teach history.

Having come this far, we are compelled to ask, why do we study history? What is its value to us? What do we hope to get from it? Specifically, why do we in the present want to know the “what,” “how,” and “why” of the past if life always moves forward? To paraphrase Hillary Clinton, what difference does it make? Viewed critically, isn’t the past an anchor on our lives? Do we need history to live in the present? Alternatively, what happens to us if we’re liberated from our past? Why have all civilizations recorded their pasts in one way or another? Do we become unwitting slaves to it, or is knowledge of the past liberating? Not to be trite, but George Santayana’s now hackneyed line, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it” should be offset by Gordon S. Wood’s riposte, “Those who remember the past are condemned to repeat it!”

Before I go further, I should say that I am not concerned here to examine if there is purpose—particularly moral purpose—in history, or if there are purposes in the historical process. It is not my goal to determine whether some kind of internal necessity is built into the metaphysics of history, or whether history is deterministically cyclical, moves in a straight line of progress, or is dialectical. That would require us to discover and reveal largely unseen meta-forces impelling and directing the past into the present and future. This is a large and difficult topic beyond the purview of this paper. Nor am I here to say that history is simply one damn thing after another. Instead, my aim focuses on a narrower question: what public purpose is to be served by the study of history? Of this much, I am certain: history is not and should not be an exercise in dilettantish antiquarianism or idle curiosity. The study, writing, and teaching of history serves a practical moral purpose for individuals and society, which is captured in this question: why do we want our children to be taught history? In fact, why do we engage in culture wars over the history that is taught to our children? The answer is simple: history matters, and it has always mattered.

History often begins as an exercise in self-knowledge both for individuals and for communities. It grows out a deep and abiding longing in the human soul to know where we came from. All of us are the products of our past, and history helps us to understand who and what we are. We are all curious about our origin story. Our cultural manners and mores and the forms and formalities of our political institutions are imprinted with the historical DNA of our national origins. Historical self-knowledge is therefore the first step to self-improvement both as individuals and as communities. From our study of the past, we can try to figure out how to be better in the present and future. We use the lamp of experience and history to illuminate the present and to guide us on our journey forward.

History can also teach us many other things about the human condition. For instance, it can teach us about: 1) human nature, particularly the role that reason and the passions play in our lives; 2) the role of perspective and time in human life (including death); 3) the role of cause and effect in human action; 4) the role of intended and unintended consequences in our lives; 5) the limitations and possibilities of life; 6) right and wrong, just and unjust, and good and bad; 7) heroism and villainy; and 7) what it means to love and honor the best or highest things.

History thus serves us as a kind of moral laboratory, not the kind where we do live experiments, but the kind where we can observe the nature of man under certain conditions, and the causes and consequences of human thought and action. Through the laboratory of history, we can test our theories about how to live in the present through the observation of how people lived in the past. The past is a testing ground where we can exercise and practice our moral reasoning and judgment. Through a study of history, we can observe virtue and vice, heroism and villainy, and success and failure. The pedagogic value of history is that we can there see the good, the bad, and the ugly and learn from them. We can see what ideas and actions did and did not work.

In these ways and more, I would like to suggest that a knowledge of history is a precondition for wisdom, and wisdom is a cardinal virtue, if not the architectonic virtue. To know where we have been helps us to know where we are, and both guide us in knowing where to go. In this way, history is a necessary partner of moral philosophy. They go hand in hand. Most of us are familiar with Henry St. John, Viscount Bolingbroke’s 1735 statement in his Letters on the Study and Use of History, where he famously wrote, “History is philosophy teaching by examples.” By philosophy, Bolingbroke clearly meant moral philosophy.

Originally, the teaching of history to children was conceived as a form of moral instruction by which we teach children the what, how, and why of living free, just, and honorable lives. History and philosophy complement one another: history grounds abstract thought in lived reality, while philosophy draws upon and elevates experiences into timeless wisdom. They are two sides of the same coin: one moves from the general to the particular (i.e., philosophy teaching by examples), and the other from the particular to the general (i.e., history teaching by principles).

Lastly, I’d like to note that history as self-knowledge includes not only our lives as individuals but is most often defined as the self-knowledge of political communities. The goal is to create social memories of who we are and where we came from, and we typically do this to define who and what we are as a people or community. Conceived in this way, history is a social adhesive or a moral glue holding society together, and it is a source of wisdom from which we can draw to help solve the challenges of the present.

History also serves to induce patriotism, rightly understood. This is how history has been taught in virtually every human culture or nation from the beginning of time. If, as Americans, we believe that the United States is a good if not a remarkable country that has given us unique freedoms and opportunities to live and pursue our highest aspirations, then it behooves us to understand and show our appreciation for previous generations who built this nation. All that we have—our Constitution, our Bill of Rights, our political institutions, our unique and diverse manners and mores, our cities, our manufacturing plants, our hospitals, our universities, our libraries, our rockets, our music and literature, and, most of all, our freedoms—was created for us by someone else. To those who dedicated their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor to building and defending a free society we surely owe something in the form of gratitude. This is why we celebrate July 4^th or Memorial Day, and this is one important reason why we study our national past. There is nothing wrong with love of country, particularly if that country is uniquely good. Taught in this way, history is the principal vehicle by which to promote principled patriotism and enlightened citizenship. “If a nation expects to be ignorant and free,” Thomas Jefferson wrote in 1816, “it expects what never was and never will be.”

Alternatively, we can teach the history of our past, as we mostly do now, by focusing not on the good but on the bad and ugly of American history. Those who believe that the United States of America is an inherently wicked nation will no doubt tell a different kind of story about America’s past. And of course, the question is: what story of America’s past will be told to the children? Given a choice, would you want America’s children to be taught the good, the bad, or the ugly of American history, particularly if the goal—and I can’t imagine anyone objecting to this goal—is to encourage them to be virtuous citizens of a free society and the very best that they can be as individuals? Do we want to teach our children to love or hate their history and ultimately themselves. Is it wise or nihilistic to teach children to hate their past and their ancestors’ past? These are serious questions in the year of America’s semiquincentennial.

In my view, there is a time and place for everything including the bad and the ugly, but when we’re talking about children, we must consider their psychological and moral needs. To teach children to resent and hate the past of their forefathers is, in my view, a form of cognitive child abuse. It creates crooked souls. The best kind of history for children is one that fires their imaginations and their ambitions with the hope of possibilities yet attained. Young people have a deep and abiding need to see and experience adventure, greatness and heroes. This is what they want and need. If given a choice, I’m willing to bet that the kids want to learn about the best and not the worst of which men and women are capable.