Was it Henry Ford who observed that “History is bunk”? Henry, of course, has long since laid down in his own bunk, but perhaps his idea is worth considering.
He certainly wouldn’t have agreed with the axioms that have been taught to generations of schoolboy historians: “History helps you avoid past mistakes” and “History repeats itself”. (“Education is bunk”, no doubt would have been his response.)
But does history have any role in shaping our future? Should the past have a soapbox in the present? Does ‘remembered’ life serve any purpose in ‘real’ life?
Teachers of history have always answered yes to these questions, and asserted that the proper study of history is essential for the progress of mankind. It is interesting, however, that even in university humanities faculties–those hotbeds of historical study–the traditional notion of the moral value of history is being questioned. Pamela McCorduck writes:
…the fundamental tenet of humanism…is that somehow, by rummaging through the follies and triumphs of our ancestors, we will learn something, and go and sin no more. It seems logical that we should learn lessons from history; we keep wishing it were so. I shared that belief for a long time, and I still wish it were the case. But it isn’t; it never was; and much blood has been shed as proof of that…
There’s no harm in looking at what our species has done in the past; indeed, it’s very entertaining and often appalling; but we must stop pretending that we really learn anything from such examinations, or even that we can reform ourselves by such study. We reform ourselves in the present, not the past, adapting ourselves to present needs. Of course we have a sense of history, but what overwhelms us at the moment are the differences, not the similarities. If the past has something to say to us, we seldom pay attention. That may be wicked, wasteful, and wayward, but it is demonstrably the case. Why do we keep kidding ourselves?1
Real life is about living and acting and experiencing and doing and relating. History is only of any use to us if it tells us how to live NOW–in other words, if it gives us some ethical principles or guidelines. McCorduck suggests that history has never performed this function.
We could go further, however, and say that history is incapable of ever teaching us ethics. It is a well-established ethical principle that what is the case (at any given time) carries with it no obligation to be the case in the future. What is need not be what ought.
History just isn’t robust enough to carry an ‘ought’. Even if we could determine, through historical study, why someone in the past took a certain action (and this is very difficult to do with any certainty) what basis is there for saying that we should do likewise today?
Perhaps Henry was right. Perhaps, ethically speaking, history is bunk.
There is an exception, however. There is one bit of history that cannot be so easily laid to rest. Our history tells the tale of the Divine-man before whom every knee must bow and every tongue confess, the One who upholds all things with his powerful word, the One who will speak and the dead will rise…
There is an ‘ought’ to history after all, one that is not attached to history in general, but to a specific person of whom history speaks. This is a very specific history–a history which is not about how to avoid past mistakes, but how those mistakes were paid for in full; a history that doesn’t doom us to constant repetition, but that occurred once for all time; a history that tells of a certain future; a history that invades our present lives.
Perhaps even Henry ought to have listened that history. You can’t afford not to.
- From an article by Pamela McCorduck in The Chronicle of Higher Education quoted in James Sire’s book, The Joy of Reading. (Multnomah Press, 1978)↩
