Is it true, those words spoken by Napoleon on St. Helena, that history is the only true
philosophy and the only true psychology?
If so then it would be imprudent for a philosopher to write it off as but the dreary succession
of dates and names.
All that our race has become is due to its occurrence, it would not be outside the realm
of reason to say that each individual event, each person however insignificant, has played
some role in molding the humanity which walks the earth today.
If we would like to understand the endless flow of daily events, determine their significance,
and come to feel “the basic currents underlying surface movements and changes” then we must
have our history ever present before our eyes.
There are many reasons for the philosopher to study history, these are just 5.
Reason 1 Because the best preparation for understanding
the problems of the present is to study and learn the past – for it is there where you
will discover what the nature of humankind truly is”
It was the great English politician and political philosopher Lord Bolingbroke, to who even
the great Voltaire was indebted, that said “history is philosophy teaching by examples.”
And how right he was for it is history that explains to us how humanity, through the actions
of thousands of years, has behaved and how it is likely to continue behaving if faced
with similar circumstances.
Would it not be convenient to know, beforehand, what the likely reaction would be to any given
social experiment; to know if the outcome intended was the outcome received?
Well, as it happens, most of our modern social theories have been proposed in one garb or
another.
We need not start from scratch and fool ourselves into believing that what was less than successful
yesterday will transform with our magic touch and theories today.
This is not to say that improvements cannot be made upon past failures, but that in order
to achieve progress we must first know the underlying causes of such failures.
We have all heard this lesson, usually in the form of that ever present quote from the
late George Santayana which usually ends up in some comment section, it reads “Those
who don’t know history are destined to repeat it.”
Reason 2 To gain immunity from the disillusionments
of our own time.
There is, in truth, no complete immunity to the anxiety of impending, or perceived catastrophe,
for it has been developed for good reason, but perhaps with enough understanding we can
learn to bear it with an increased level of equanimity and repose.
I understand that when one witnesses humanity, despite a thousand reforms, remain essentially
what it has always been, their heads may wander into the pessimistic abyss which often consumes
our young.
But through the study and analysis of history I believe the philosopher may come to accept
the limitations placed upon his species by biology and take strength by witnessing those
gilded men and great women stand triumphant at their life’s end, pleased that they could
aid their neighbor and make their society just one person better.
After all I would say that it is better to fight and lose, than to never have fought
at all.
Reason 3 To learn that we have but a partial perspective
on any given subject or event.
This lesson, I believe, is particularly important in the age of information of which we are
a part.
We are choked with news, if one could call it even that; political campaigning would
be more akin to most “news” we consume.
We must remember the lesson first taught to us some 2,500 years ago by The Weeping Philosopher
of Ephesus, Heraclitus, that life is strife, meaning competition.
And what better tactic is there to increase your chances of victory in a competition than
to deceive your opponent?
I state this example to emphasize the proclivity of some to embellish what is written for the
purpose of painting a particular picture to achieve a desired result and the partial perspective
it delivers to those who consume it.
This has been done since the days of antiquity and has more often divided than united.
We must take reported events for what they in all likelihood are; partial viewpoints
of the total situation.
Reason 4 To build gratitude by understanding the hardship
and sacrifice endured by those who came before us.
There is in every generation an untold level of hardship suffered by its people, though
by in large we today enjoy a level of comfort unimaginable to most people’s born prior
to 1850.
While we may have plenty of chaos to contend with it is, in my opinion, preferable to the
mass superstition, disease, and ignorance which plagued our species in bygone eras.
The critic will inform us that many still suffer with such calamities, to which I acknowledge
its truth, but it would be amiss to say that conditions for the vast majority of humanity
have not improved considerably, both mentally and materially.
Do these progressions make us happier, who can say, though I do believe gratitude for
what has been painstakingly developed throughout a thousand generations can.
We likely feel envy and maybe even anger when we see those who have what we do not, but
envy is easy when all we do is look above and ahead of ourselves, however take the time
to look beneath and behind you for it is there you will find gratitude.
I find it helpful to remember that we have reached the heights that we enjoy today because
we are standing on the shoulders of those who came before us.
Reason 5 To discover those individuals that, through
their thoughts and their actions, inspire us to be a little greater than we were before.
In “The Greatest Minds and Ideas of All Time,” a work by Durant published posthumously
in 2002, he posed this question; “why should we stand reverent before waterfalls and mountaintops,
or a summer moon on a quiet sea, and not before the highest miracle of all: a man who is both
great and good?”
What we are searching for is not that person without flaw, for your search would never
end, but one who brings light to the problems of their day and our own; an individual who,
though flawed, holds out their hand for the benefit of the next generation.
We may find those who garner our intellectual respect, but of even more importance is to
find those who may help to shape our character, let Seneca speak, “Happy is he who can so
revere a man as to calm and regulate himself by calling him to mind.
. . . for we must indeed have someone according to whom we may regulate our characters; you
can never straighten that which is crooked unless you use a ruler.”
Our species’ history is vast enough for an entire lifetime of study to be directed
toward a single country in a single century.
And whether you chose to light your candle at every torch or to huddle around a singular
flame is ultimately up to you, what’s important is that you take the time to bring the past
into the present, because I firmly believe that it will be of great aid to your understanding
of the events which seem otherwise novel and confusing in our own day.
If you have in mind other reasons that the philosopher should take to studying history
put them in the comments below, and as always, thank you for talking philosophy with me,
until next time.