The value of history

There would seem to be at least three possible viewpoints of the value of history. Clearly such a statement calls for the qualification that the positions represented by these viewpoints are unlikely to be sharply demarcated, but will generally merge into one another.

The first is the view that history is bunk, often positively harmful, and that we should have as little to do with it as we can manage. Such an opinion would fit a strong belief that all that matters is the future, that preoccupation with the past can only hold us back, and indeed that lessons learned from the past are highly likely to be wrong and to lead us on to worse mistakes in the future.

A different position on the subject,is the belief that there are certain utilitarian uses to which history can be put. There is much support to be found for this view, and a great deal of evidence. Take for example the role of history as a social lubricant. `An acquaintance with history is agreeable to us as sociable and conversable creatures" wrote Joseph Priestley, and John Locke believed not only that history was a great moral and political teacher, but was a proper study for a man of business in the world" and "a gentleman".

E H Carr wrote, "the function of the historian is to master and understand, and the past as the key to the understanding of the present`. We can learn from the past. Very recently there were those who, perhaps with Vietnam or Afghanistan in mind, warned that going into the Balkans militarily would be a great deal easier than coming out. No, no said our leaders, six months should do it. Less obvious are the cases where we just may have learned something. There were for example many who felt that Saddam should have been toppled after the Gulf War. Failure to do so may not have left an ideal situation, but neither is the West tied to the appalling task of trying to govern Iraq, as it is Kosovo.

There are others who make use of historical events to pursue their own aims. A small sample of these could include Labour Party stalwarts keeping their flame alive by reference to Tolpuddle Martyrs and Jarrow Marchers; the Victorian Samuel Smiles using the lives of such great past figures as Newton and Watt to convince his own age of the virtues in which he believed; feminism, constructed at least in part out of a particular interpretation of the history of women down the centuries; and Ulster Unionism maintaining its strength by annual appeals to history represented by the Orange Marches.

On an even more mundane level, we may care to note in passing the highly practical values placed on history by those whose livelihoods depend on having some understanding of past trends in share prices or the past performance of race horses and their blood lines. Indeed the very existence of the phrase "track record" is an indication of the extent to which awareness of the value of history permeates mankind's consciousness.

That is no bad cue to start to move away from the second, or utilitarian position towards the final view, which takes a far deeper view of what history means to us as human beings. Arguably this is the area in which philosophy should primarily interest itself.

A simple, if uncompromising expression of this viewpoint is that history is simply representative of our whole culture. That need not be seen as an extreme position, but even among those who do find it so, many will agree that history is an inescapable part of what it is to be human. Awareness of our place in time is part of what we call consciousness. We are creatures who Plan the future and who remember and assess the past. We do it as individuals and we do it collectively, and we have done so since folk tales were told and sung around the campfires of our distant past. Those who are cut off from the past, by loss of memory or other conditions of the brain, are regarded as ill, unable to function as normal people, lacking human identity; without knowledge of our past we are incomplete. The purpose of history, says Tolstoy, is to teach nations and humanity to know themselves. One of the first things many people do when they retire is to lay siege to the Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages, in order to discover, and perhaps to write their own history.



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