Thinking Historically

 Reading Francis Gavin's The Lost Art Of Thinking Historically (Noema) I found myself. Not that I would think myself as thinking historically, but I do - even if unevenly. This comes from my family, as much - if not more - than my education. Only my father had no interest in the past (excluding the Civil War). My mother's mother tied us to Versailles - where she had not lived since 1919.  

What is this historical thinking?

What we have lost, and what we desperately need to reclaim, is a different mode of cognition, a historical sensibility. This is not about memorizing dates and facts. It is, as the historian Gordon S. Wood describes it, a “different consciousness,” a way of understanding that profoundly influences how we see the world. It is a temperament that is comfortable with uncertainty, sensitive to context and aware of the powerful, often unpredictable rhythms of the past. To cultivate this sensibility is to acquire the intellectual virtues of modesty, curiosity and empathy — an antidote to the hubris of rigid, monocausal thinking.

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This process is fundamentally different from that of many other disciplines. Where social sciences often seek to create generalizable, predictive and parsimonious theories — the simplest explanation for the largest number of things — history revels in complexity. A historical sensibility is skeptical of master ideas or unitary historical motors. It recognizes that different things happen for different reasons, that direct causal connections can be elusive, and that the world is rife with unintended consequences. It makes no claim to predict the future; rather, it seeks to deepen our understanding of how the past unfolded into our present, reminding us, as British historian Sir Llewellyn Woodward said, that “our ignorance is very deep.”

This sensibility compels us to reconsider concepts we take for granted. We use terms such as “capitalism” and “human rights” as if they are timeless and universal, when in fact they are concepts that emerged and evolved at particular historical moments, often identified and defined by historians. A historical consciousness demands that we seek the origins of things we thought we understood and empathize with the past in its own context. This is to imagine ourselves in the shoes of those who came before, wrestling with their dilemmas in their world. It doesn’t mean suspending moral judgment, but rather being less confident that we — here today — have a monopoly on timeless insight.

I recognize all of that in me. It explains much of why I have this jaundiced attitude towards those who think they have eluded the complexities of history and humanity. The ahistorical makes changes based on their ideologies without asking if there was a reason for the status quo.

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