About History

An Academic Discipline

What is the use of studying the past? What actual rewards can historical investigation offer the student? In what ways can it improve a person’s life, render it more pleasant, more comprehensible? Many have spoken vaguely about historical perspective and knowing the present through the past. The following discussion will focus on the utility of historical inquiry and knowledge.

History is a teacher of what can be. Experience defines the possible and history recounts the centuries of experience unknowable from personal observation. It broadens each person’s realm of knowledge beyond the few short years of their own lifetime and discloses the breadth and variety of humankind’s endeavors. By emphasizing this wide range of cultural alternatives, it teaches that what now exists need not continue to exist in future years. In other words, study of the past enables humanity to view the status quo not as an immutable reality but as a transient condition. And this realization in turn stimulates thought of what might be and what should be. Thus, history reveals the possibility that the future can be different from the present and challenges humanity perpetually to mold the plastic form of culture in search of an ever more perfect shape.

Study of history can likewise make humanity aware of the multiplicity of possible political viewpoints. If a person living today knew nothing of the centuries previous to their own lifetime, they probably would not be able to imagine a political universe radically different from that existing in the present. Certain attitudes prevalent today might appear as immutable attributes of all political behavior. Thus, they could not conceive of a world lacking in nationalist fervor or free from yearnings for political egalitarianism. Yet the student of history knows that a multitude of peoples lived peaceably within the Roman Empire, untroubled for the most part by dreams of national self-determination. They also realize that Whiggish desires for political rights have not been common to all ages but have been subordinate to sentiments of social deference. In other words, they recognize that the world has not always been what it is. They grasp the possibility of radical change, the potential for creating a far different society from that existing. Relying not simply on narrow personal experience but on the experience of the centuries, they can escape the fetters of present dogma and convention and embark on a quest for new approaches and new solutions.

Exposure to the experience of five thousand years of history can dispel the type of ignorance so common in people who understand only current cultural values and dogmas. It will disclose worlds unimaginable to one unversed in history, extending their vision of human capabilities and future potentialities. It will induce in humanity a humility about established beliefs and institutions and a tolerance for new approaches and untested ideas. For when the present is seen in the perspective of the past, it appears not as the best of all possible worlds but as a transient scene in a long-playing drama of movement and change.

History, however, not only reveals the possibilities of human culture, but more importantly, it discloses the reasons for that culture being as it is. It aids one in understanding why certain institutions exist as they do, why certain attitudes and assumptions currently prevail, and why some policies gain favor over others. It recounts the beliefs and events, which have shaped the present, and by so doing, it renders the existing world comprehensible. Moreover, the more one understands of the present, the clearer the required course for the future becomes. For if people know why the present is as it is, they also understand how and why current conditions deviate from their conception of the ideal. And by understanding this deviation, they are better able to rectify the perceived wrong. Thus, history helps humanity to know the nature of the present and enables us to strive intelligently toward a better world in the future.

But history is not simply an instrument for comprehending the possible or the present; it is also a means for transmitting traditional role expectations and reinforcing group consciousness. Histories of nations, races, and professions serve to initiate the novice into the traditions, symbols, and aspirations of their national, ethnic, or occupational group. Through studying one’s group heritage, the individual acquires a growing sense of role identity, an emerging awareness of their position in society. They learn their role and act according to the expectations appropriate to their status.

Thus by recounting the distinctive antecedents of various cultural segments, history strengthens humanity’s sense of group membership as well as their consciousness of the behavioral requirements accompanying this membership. The student of human history will not see themselves as individuals in an undifferentiated world. Instead, they will recognize the various associational strands, which combine to form the fabric of their character. In other words, they will realize more clearly, who they are.

In conclusion, a world without history would be a world of narrow-minded intolerance and stifled imagination. It would be a world without knowledge of itself, a world of ignorance.

Prepared by Howard Bodner, History Discipline Chair 2002-2003