I ended my last column with a question: For what is the study of history if we do not intend to learn from it? Countless of times we have heard the saying that the relevance of history is that people will learn not to repeat the same mistakes of the past. However, it seems that people have not really learned from history at all.
As German philosopher Georg Hegel pointed out: “But what experience and history teach is this – that peoples and governments never have learned anything from history, or acted on principles deduced from it.”
Among historians, the subject of historiography – which is the process of writing history, or the history of historical writing – might seem the easier path as we talk about how other historians have written the past; focusing on historians’ methods, their biases, ideological proclivities, moralistic tendencies, and so on. Writing historiography, therefore, means looking into how the historian writes his work of history, and whether it follows a rigorous method in order to reach if not the absolute truth, but somewhere near to it.
The study of history, it must be emphasized, is not a science but more so a craft. The debate whether it’s a science or a craft is still on-going at present among historians, as some would invariably believe that history is indeed a science, while most consider it a craft. In a sense, it becomes a craft – as French historian Marc Bloch explained: “its practitioners learn on the job how to handle their materials and wield the tools of their trade.”
British historian Richard J. Evans – leaning towards history more so as a craft, than a science – also suggested that history is not necessarily a science because we can never gain objectivity in studying human societies, especially when the ones writing it are humans themselves; as he said: “In history… humanity was studying itself, while in the natural sciences the object of study in most cases was not human but something else.” Furthermore, he said that “historical knowledge does not accumulate in the way that scientific does; historians are usually more concerned to dispute the findings of their predecessors than to build on them.” History, therefore, is not a science because it is not, in a sense, cumulative.
Going back to the question, however, what is history for? If one looks into the history of historians, in the many periods of historiography, one can observe that there are several ways in which these historians wrote history.
For instance, the Greek historians – the likes of Herodotus and Thucydides – pioneered the writing of history in a critical manner; matter-of-factly, they were the ones who started to develop a sense of historical consciousness, with their intent of writing history in efforts to determine the truth.
The Roman historians also valued truth-telling in history; they tended to focus on great deeds of people, looking into the causes as to why these great men are often venerated – mostly because of their character and achievements. By and large, one important characteristic of Roman historiography is their use of rhetoric – the art of writing persuasively, choosing positive things to write about for entertainment purposes. Sometimes, however, as a result, they tend to stray away from their original goal of truth-telling as they persuade people to believe in the things that they write.
The Medieval historians, on the other hand, were highly influenced by the work of St. Augustine entitled The City of God. Their main belief, or final aim, was for the “transcendence of believers beyond history in the realm of the eternal.” Their concept of time differs from the Greeks since they saw time as not cyclical but linear, with a beginning, middle, and an end – which is salvation. The history that they wrote, therefore, focused more on ecclesiastical or church history, looking into the accomplishments of the church and as one historian puts it, these were “histories designed to delineate the progress of God’s work in this world.”
The only problem with the medieval historians was they had a penchant to be moralistic, so they tended to veer away from objectivity and truthfulness as they “rendered verdicts and judgments.”
These medieval historians were anathema to both reformist and enlightenment historians. The reformist historians primarily wrote history as a form of rhetoric, if not an instrument, to show the corruption of the Roman Catholic church; meanwhile, the enlightenment historians wrote secular histories based on their present experiences, oft-times animadverting religion with written polemics against the catholic church.
For instance, the enlightenment historian, Edward Gibbon, author of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire – put the blame on religion as the reason for the Roman empire’s collapse. His main argument was that Roman emperors and officials started to lose grip of their power and influence as a result of the Christian teaching of “life after death”; as historian Mark Gilderhus averred, this teaching led to “the neglect of imperial interests and the need to maintain proper military defenses.”
The problem with the enlightenment historians was they judged the past based on the present situation, otherwise known as presentism. As one historian asseverated, they have “an incapacity to comprehend the behavior of historical actors on their own terms.” To localize this, Jose Rizal – our national hero – was deeply influenced by these enlightenment historians as he wrote history from the “viewpoint of the Filipinos”, not to mention to his anti-clerical predilections or tone of his writings, especially on his annotations of the Morga [his second book].
Going back, however, to the question: what is history for? As a practicing historian, I believe it is not necessarily used to predict the future. There will never be general laws in history like those in natural sciences. Historians write history to let readers avoid the mistakes of the past, and to gain important lessons that they may apply, albeit not consistently, in the future; the readers then will always be the judge, as historians are expected not to be moralistic in writing history – we simply present the facts and interpret them as objectively and impartially as we can.
Unlike propagandists, historians do not write history to persuade readers to believe in certain ideas or moralistic beliefs. Generalizations can be done, as they are different from general laws, but they can never be used as a precedent in saying that history will repeat itself; it is not – and never should be – the concern of historians to prophesy the future. That is not what history is for.
Studying history, therefore, has a “utilitarian purpose” – that is to say, it can always be used by people to anticipate – not predict – the ramifications of their actions in the future. More importantly, history provides us with an identity. This is what Rizal tried to express when he wrote his annotations to Morga’s Events in the Philippines Islands [a previously written history book in the early 1600s by Lt. Gov. Antonio de Morga]. Our national hero tried to write history in order to instill in us a sense of pride and national identity in being Filipinos; one of his arguments was that we would have still developed on our own even without the coming of the Spaniards.
Suffice it to say, and let this be a reminder to everyone, we should not remain stuck in the past or as one historian explained, we should not “be imprisoned by the past” as we will lose a part of our humanity if we do. In other words, constantly dwelling on – instead of studying or understanding – history will not lead to any progress in human society.
Yes, there are things that must be remembered in history, but constantly dwelling on it will do us no good. Dwelling on the past is different from remembering and understanding it; oft-times, those who tend to get “imprisoned by the past” are the ones who use history in moralistic terms, which, as previously discussed, should not be the business of historians.
Without a doubt, history is not merely an accumulation of knowledge – memorizing dates, names, places, and so on; instead, it fosters critical thinking and encourages a person who studies it to seek for the truth – though not the absolute truth, but at least something close to it – through rigorous argumentation, critical questioning, and plausible inferences.
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