"History is Philosophy teaching by examples"

ColoradoGuy

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It being the New Year and all, I've been pondering that epigram, attributed to Thucydides. It does bring to mind what exactly we think history is -- just one damn thing after another or something with a measure of underlying structure and meaning? Here's how he elaborated on the notion:

". . . he who desires to have before his eyes a true picture of the events which have happened, and of the like events which may be expected to happen hereafter in the order of human things shall pronounce what I have written to be useful, then I shall be satisfied. My history is an everlasting possession, not a prize composition which is heard and forgotten."

One presumes that Thucydides believed we could learn from all that historical teaching and thereby become better. But perhaps he only meant we will only understand things better, powerless to improve. After all, Hobbes really liked Thucydides, being his first translator into English.

The Western tradition views history as linear; events unfold in the fullness of time and are moving toward a predictable end. Christianity has a lot to do with this viewpoint. Hegel gave us more of the same, although not so explicitly Christian. What we call "Whiggish" historical interpretations have a long tradition, and they also maintain history advances from a less-better place to a better place.

How does this fundamentally optimistic view of history play these days? Things look pretty grim on CNN and such, but at least we don't burn witches and we have banned slavery and public flogging. Are we getting anywhere? Or is the human mind essentially still that of Paleolithic hunter-gathers squabbling over a dead mastodon?
 

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It does bring to mind what exactly we think history is -- just one damn thing after another or something with a measure of underlying structure and meaning?

Are we getting anywhere? Or is the human mind essentially still that of Paleolithic hunter-gathers squabbling over a dead mastodon?

We certainly no longer have triremes or mastodons. Here's what Herodotus has to say (and note that he assumes we know that triremes are the ships he means and that one doesn't always need to count penteconters)

The Greeks engaged in the sea-service were the following. The Athenians furnished a hundred and twenty-seven vessels to the fleet, which were manned in part by the Plataeans, who, though unskilled in such matters, were led by their active and daring spirit to undertake this duty; the Corinthians furnished a contingent of forty vessels; the Megarians sent twenty; the Chalcideans also manned twenty, which had been furnished to them by the Athenians; the Eginetans came with eighteen; the Sicyonians with twelve; the Lacedaemonians with ten; the Epidaurians with eight; the Eretrians with seven; the Troezenians with five; the Styreans with two; and the Ceans with two triremes and two penteconters. Last of all, the Locrians of Opus came in aid with a squadron of seven penteconters.

Such were the nations which furnished vessels to the fleet now at Artemisium; and in mentioning them I have given the number of ships furnished by each. The total number of the ships thus brought together, without counting the penteconters, was two hundred and seventy-one; and the captain, who had the chief command over the whole fleet, was Eurybiades the son of Eurycleides. He was furnished by Sparta, since the allies had said that "if a Lacedaemonian did not take the command, they would break up the fleet, for never would they serve under the Athenians."

From the first, even earlier than the time when the embassy went to Sicily to solicit alliance, there had been a talk of intrusting the Athenians with the command at sea; but the allies were averse to the plan, wherefore the Athenians did not press it; for there was nothing they had so much at heart as the salvation of Greece, and they knew that, if they quarrelled among themselves about the command, Greece would be brought to ruin. Herein they judged rightly; for internal strife is a thing as much worse than war carried on by a united people, as war itself is worse than peace. The Athenians therefore, being so persuaded, did not push their claims, but waived them, so long as they were in such great need of aid from the other Greeks. And they afterwards showed their motive; for at the time when the Persians had been driven from Greece, and were now threatened by the Greeks in their own country, they took occasion of the insolence of Pausanias to deprive the Lacedaemonians of their leadership. This, however, happened afterwards.

At the present time the Greeks, on their arrival at Artemisium, when they saw the number of the ships which lay at anchor near Aphetae, and the abundance of troops everywhere, feeling disappointed that matters had gone with the barbarians so far otherwise than they had expected, and full of alarm at what they saw, began to speak of drawing back from Artemisium towards the inner parts of their country. So when the Euboeans heard what was in debate, they went to Eurybiades, and besought him to wait a few days, while they removed their children and their slaves to a place of safety. But, as they found that they prevailed nothing, they left him and went to Themistocles, the Athenian commander, to whom they gave a bribe of thirty talents, on his promise that the fleet should remain and risk a battle in defence of Euboea.

And Themistocles succeeded in detaining the fleet in the way which I will now relate. He made over to Eurybiades five talents out of the thirty paid him, which he gave as if they came from himself; and having in this way gained over the admiral, he addressed himself to Adeimantus, the son of Ocytus, the Corinthian leader, who was the only remonstrant now, and who still threatened to sail away from Artemisium and not wait for the other captains. Addressing himself to this man, Themistocles said with an oath- "Thou forsake us? By no means! I will pay thee better for remaining than the Mede would for leaving thy friends"- and straightway he sent on board the ship of Adeimantus a present of three talents of silver. So these two captains were won by gifts, and came over to the views of Themistocles, who was thereby enabled to gratify the wishes of the Euboeans. He likewise made his own gain on the occasion; for he kept the rest of the money, and no one knew of it. The commanders who took the gifts thought that the sums were furnished by Athens, and had been sent to be used in this way.

Thus it came to pass that the Greeks stayed at Euboea and there gave battle to the enemy.

(from: http://classics.mit.edu/Herodotus/history.8.viii.html )

Now one might think that philosophically or narratologically one could learn a lot from this:
1) the difficulty of assembling an alliance and keeping it together
2) the importance of bribery if properly done
3) the Plateaens could sort of do anything (some where also at Thermopylae)
4) this chapter is the one in which the Spartan stand at Thermopylae gets about 2 paragraphs versus 40 for the delaying actions of the combined fleet

Anyway, there is a great deal of structure and meaning in historical documents and in the arrival and disappearance of social orders. One might even say that for the last 5000 years state-backed ideologies and religions have grown into overblown burdens on language and consciousness and that it will take the next 5000 years to dismantle them and restore that purity of discourse that must have graced Paleolithic squabbles over mastodons.
 

robeiae

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Well, if we're gonna go all quote-happy, I'll give you these two, as I have on other occasions:

The Roman People had a saying (Most Honoured Lord) which came from the mouth of Marcus Cato, the Censor, and expressed the prejudice against Kings which they had conceived from the memory of the Tarquins and the principles of their commonwealth; the saying was that Kings should be classed as predatory animals. But what sort of animal was the Roman People? By the agency of citizens who took the names Africanus, Asiaticus, Macedonicus, Achaicus and so on from the nations they had robbed, that people plundered nearly all the world. So the words of Pontius Telesinus are no less wise than Cato's. As he reviewed the ranks of his army in the battle against Sulla at the Colline Gate, he cried that Rome itself must be demolished and destroyed, remarking that there would never be an end to Wolves preying upon the liberty of Italy, unless the forest in which they took refuge was cut down. There are two maxims which are surely both true: Man is a God to Man, and Man is a Wolf to Man. The former is true of the relations of citizens with each other, the latter of relations between commonwealths. In justice and charity, the virtues of peace, citizens show some likeness to God. But between commonwealths, the wickedness of bad men compels the good too to have recourse, for their own protection, to the virtues of war, which are violence and fraud, i.e. to the predatory nature of beasts.--Thomas Hobbes, from "On the Citizen"

You do not know the unfathomable cowardice of humanity...servile in the face of force, pitiless in the face of weakness, implacable before blunders, indulgent before crimes...and patient to the point of martyrdom before all the violence of bold despotism--Niccolo Machiavelli, attributed

In other words, we're not really getting anywhere.

As to philosphy and history, I prefer Whitehead's words:

The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato.

And also, from the same:

Philosophy is the product of wonder.

I would say history is the consequence of action.

Wonder can lead to action, or it can lead to nothing. History can be driven by wonder, but it can just as easily be driven by need. Or hate.
 

ColoradoGuy

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. . .
As to philosphy and history, I prefer Whitehead's words:

The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato.
I know Whitehead said that, and I know Whitehead was a great thinker and all, but that quip of his never made sense to me. Why does it to you? It always seemed to me that Plato didn't care squat about history, what with the perceived world being nothing but shadows on the cave wall and all.
 

robeiae

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I know Whitehead said that, and I know Whitehead was a great thinker and all, but that quip of his never made sense to me. Why does it to you? It always seemed to me that Plato didn't care squat about history, what with the perceived world being nothing but shadows on the cave wall and all.
What I get from it is that much of philosophy is merely wrestling with the same issues for thousands of years that were a concern to ancient thinkers: the human condition. That's its history. So, what driving power could philosophy really have, with regard to history, in general? And when I say "philosophy," I mean the academic pursuit, the investigations into being, time, etc. Not ideas, in general. The history of philosophy is not identical with the history of ideas, despite some overlap.

ETA: And btw, the proof--as it were--of Whitehead's quote was given by Arendt...

Nietzsche reversed Plato, forgetting that a reversed Plato is still Plato...Marx turned Hegel upside down, producing a very Hegelian system of History on the process.
 
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Corpus Thomisticum

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I would hope that in some 2,500 years, we could cough up more than one philosopher to lay the groundwork for the Western or European historical tradition. Plato is important, but the European (re-)discovery of Aristotle in the Renaissance eclipsed a lot of the shine from Plato, and so have many since. Generalizations are a bit dangerous, but they are admittedly fun. I liked Edith Hamilton's statement that Western man lives in a Jewish house furnished with Greco-Roman furniture, or Anthony Pagden's statement that "An abducted Asian woman (i.e., the Phoenician Europa) gave Europe her name, a vagrant Asian exile (i.e., Aeneas, founder of Rome, from Troy, modern Turkey) gave Europe its political and finally its cultural identity, and an Asian prophet (i.e., Jesus) gave Europe its religion." (Talbott, 2008: pg.67)

The Western tradition of history is based on the concept of progress, though I would look more towards modern philosophers like DesCartes and Rousseau for this notion. Our measure of History (as a study) is indeed linear; we see a logical story of events that line up in procession and which lead towards conclusions. There are low periods, stagnation, and even the occasional dramatic civilizational collapse, but we see those times as mere bumps in the road of a larger human (civilizational) progress. Some extremists have taken this progressive view of history to, well, extremes -- I guess extremists do that -- so both Marx and Hitler came to view History as mechanical and therefore, like all machines, goal-oriented. We have our fruitcakes too.

Contrast this History-as-progress view with the traditional Buddhist view, which essentially sees every day as merely a repitition of the day before, with any differences being merely time-bound illusions. Progress is itself an illusion; this world is not real, and not to be strived for. As pointed out, one side-effect of our (Western) view is social activism, and the belief that positive change in this world is a form of progress. While there is much wisdom in the religions of the sub-continent, both Hinduism and Buddhism have been criticized by Westerners for their lack of interest in alleviating the plight of the poor or under-privilaged in their societies, charities notwithstanding. This, by some observations, is why India today is still so rigidly divided by the caste system which imposes poverty on the vast majority of Indians. However, this is obviously a Western way of seeing things.

I would argue that:

1. We have indeed progressed, that today's civilizations, while not having achieved any ideal yet (which is to say, we still have lots of faults), have nonetheless improved the lot of a larger proportion of humanity than any before. More people today live better than ever before in History, not just in material terms but in legal and social terms as well. Now again, this is not to imply perfection or that there isn't still plenty to strive for, but being an average person in the 21st century world is a hell of a lot better than the same position in the 19th, 17th, 12th, 9th and etc. worlds.

2. That History (as a study) has contributed to this modern reality by creating measures for context, and providing important apples-to-apples comparisons for maximum contrast. Furthermore, History has matured as a discipline, so that, for instance, Thucydides may have thought that he would be the last word on many of the subjects he wrote on, but lo! the modern historian has a much wider -- a global! -- array of texts and historical references to research than Thucydides could have imagined, and add in the fruits of other disciplines like archaeology, linguistics, geology, (forensic) chemistry, dendrochronology, etc. etc. etc., and it turns out that Thucydides isn't our sole source anymore for at least some of the subjects he covers.
 

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How does this fundamentally optimistic view of history play these days? Things look pretty grim on CNN and such, but at least we don't burn witches and we have banned slavery and public flogging. Are we getting anywhere? Or is the human mind essentially still that of Paleolithic hunter-gathers squabbling over a dead mastodon?
Everyone writes histories, but empires decide which histories get published -- or used to. Supremacism is just history mythologised by self-interest. It's bigotry more than optimism and it's not only the round-eyes who indulge in it. I don't know of a colonial power that didn't rub its own belly when recounting history. But things are changing: victims now have camcorders too. It's not just the victors who get to publish nowadays, and morally, that can only be a good thing.

The architecture of mind is changing too, as the economy does. Where once accountants worked for farmers, farmers now work for accountants. Our kids are certainly getting smarter.

Our moral architecture though, is shaped by economy and mythology together. If you want to see moral facade crumble to reveal its rotting lathes of supremacism, you need only dig into a culture's action and adventure stories. For example, in 1990 I watched the screening of The Hunt for Red October, and saw Sean Connery single-handledly recast Russians from a US bugaboo to honourable foes. Three generations of moral outrage evaporated overnight. But if the outrage evaporated, then what happened to the moral arguments underpinning forty-five years of Cold War? The toppling of governments, war in third party lands, corruption of social justice, assassinations, pogroms, witch-hunts, torture and political imprisonments. If Russians aren't evil then those would be... wrong, wouldn't they? Nope -- move on folks, nothing to see here. We're progressing, doncha know.

If you want to gague the moral depth of a culture's soul, take a sounding on its supremacist myths. Study who always gets to win, who always loses. Tally who's asked to sacrifice, who has sacrifice forced on them and who skates. Check out who goes to heaven, who's consigned to hell and who's forgotten in limbo.

Life is certainly one damn thing after another: births, meals, squabbles over mastodons, wars, climate change, supervolcanoes and interments. Mythology is the meaning we give to it. Philosophy is our understanding of cause, consequence and capability. History seems a bit of each to me: mythology drives the questions; philosophy finds the answers. As for moral and social development -- I'd say that's about learning not to sit too comfortably anywhere for long.
 
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ColoradoGuy

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. . .

ETA: And btw, the proof--as it were--of Whitehead's quote was given by Arendt...

Nietzsche reversed Plato, forgetting that a reversed Plato is still Plato...Marx turned Hegel upside down, producing a very Hegelian system of History on the process.
I'm confused over what you mean. Why is this proof of anything? What I read here is that Arendt makes a gnomic comment about Nietzche, and of course Marx built upon Hegal, even if he got the Zeitgeist wrong. Perhaps I'm dense, but why is this a proof of Whitehead's statement about all of philosophy being a footnote to Plato? I don't think all, of even most of philosophy is that. My philosophical knowledge consists mostly of the leftovers from a liberal education 35 years ago, but what about Hume? What about Bentham and the utilitarian tradition? Come to think of it, what about Aristotle?

Anyway, I'm not talking about Philosophy as a formal subject. I'm interested in the term as Thucydides meant it: can history, the examples of human behavior we see acted out in it, represent philosophical principles in action? If it is, have we learned anything from it that makes us better. Thus, on the grand scale of the centuries, is a Whiggish view of History the correct one?
 

robeiae

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I'm confused over what you mean. Why is this proof of anything? What I read here is that Arendt makes a gnomic comment about Nietzche, and of course Marx built upon Hegal, even if he got the Zeitgeist wrong. Perhaps I'm dense, but why is this a proof of Whitehead's statement about all of philosophy being a footnote to Plato? I don't think all, of even most of philosophy is that. My philosophical knowledge consists mostly of the leftovers from a liberal education 35 years ago, but what about Hume? What about Bentham and the utilitarian tradition? Come to think of it, what about Aristotle?
You're being too literal. The point is that the same things are being gone over, again and again and again. It's not that Plato was just so special, so brilliant; it's just that he was the starting point for the Western philosophical tradition--which is not all of philosophy, by any means. Still, I think any tradition--East, West, whatever--can be so characterized, as can all of it, as a whole.

This is not to say their are no insights and the like after Plato. There are, of course. But what we see in the Arendt quote is the recognition that there are no novel attempts at the application of these philosophies. It's all been done. To death.
Anyway, I'm not talking about Philosophy as a formal subject. I'm interested in the term as Thucydides meant it: can history, the examples of human behavior we see acted out in it, represent philosophical principles in action? If it is, have we learned anything from it that makes us better. Thus, on the grand scale of the centuries, is a Whiggish view of History the correct one?
We seem to be quite capable--as is so often demonstrated--of any and all behaviors of those in the distant past. I see nothing that makes us "better." Nothing at all.
 

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[snip][C]an history, the examples of human behavior we see acted out in it, represent philosophical principles in action? (bolding mine)

I think this question needs reworking, because it can too easily, to my mind, be pushed to an empty extreme: "Can anything represent anything?" And the answer to that might set very loose boundaries. Are you wondering if the spread of principles influenced action? If observation of behavior led to principles? Can you be more specific? Is "represent" the best word for what you're trying to get at?

~

I remember (my reading of) Plato for three things: the idea of perfection, the parable of the cave, and his knack for dissecting questions. And Aristotle for his penchant for extrapolation from observation, despite his failure to count real teeth. (Do I remember that right? He posited a certain standard number of human teeth but didn't actually count any?)

Meanwhile, here's the way I like to play with the idea of history: Imagine a tree with future branches above and historical roots below. Draw a bazillion of each, and put a big X at ground level, marked "You Are Here." All those roots can represent every verbal act ever committed, every stone thrown and invention tested. Etc., ad infinitum. All those branches and leaves have the same complexity as the roots, but of possibility rather than actuality. Just as the future is provably indeterminate, the current outcome of the past I think is therefore provably coincidental. At least, we cannot ever prove otherwise simply because of computational limits.

So, I see any linear view as questionable. And I expect that as complexity science leaks into various disciplines, including history, the linear view will fade in importance.

The question this discussion brings up for me is, How does one effectively live within the particular historical moment, with limited views backwards and forwards in time? And yes, the fuzzy meaning of "effectively" is an invitation to ruminate.
 

ColoradoGuy

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.. .Are you wondering if the spread of principles influenced action?
Yes
[or] If observation of behavior led to principles?
That's what Thucydides thought he was doing.
I remember (my reading of) Plato for three things: the idea of perfection, the parable of the cave, and his knack for dissecting questions. And Aristotle for his penchant for extrapolation from observation, despite his failure to count real teeth. (Do I remember that right? He posited a certain standard number of human teeth but didn't actually count any?)
I once read Aristotole's Animalia, the whole thing, and you're right -- his use of actual observation was spotty. He seemed more interested in what ought to be, rather than what was.
Meanwhile, here's the way I like to play with the idea of history: Imagine a tree with future branches above and historical roots below. Draw a bazillion of each, and put a big X at ground level, marked "You Are Here." All those roots can represent every verbal act ever committed, every stone thrown and invention tested. Etc., ad infinitum. All those branches and leaves have the same complexity as the roots, but of possibility rather than actuality. Just as the future is provably indeterminate, the current outcome of the past I think is therefore provably coincidental. At least, we cannot ever prove otherwise simply because of computational limits.

So, I see any linear view as questionable. And I expect that as complexity science leaks into various disciplines, including history, the linear view will fade in importance.
What you say is perceptive, but why is it that we no longer flog people, burn witches, or enslave people? Were those random or considered events?
The question this discussion brings up for me is, How does one effectively live within the particular historical moment, with limited views backwards and forwards in time? And yes, the fuzzy meaning of "effectively" is an invitation to ruminate.
I'd amend that to say limited views backwards and no views forward. But you're correct, that is the question, and does what history we know help us do that? I think it does.
 

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Okay, I think I'm on track, sort of.

Short supposition: the principles (1) survive in lieu of the uncountable historical details and (2) act as a lens when viewing the present. We still have the social impulse to flog, burn and enslave; we just sublimate those physical acts with more "civilized" alternatives. Flogging = public berating? burning witches = ostracism? enslavement = employment and citizenship?

I'm thinking of those principles in the role of ritual, song, creed, motto. I'm thinking meme.

I'm little schooled in history's details. All I've got are a smattering of memes from current day western civ to compare with things going on in the Congo, for instance.

why is it that we no longer flog people, burn witches, or enslave people? Were those random or considered events?

Were flogging, burning and enslavement random or considered -- how about a little of each, or something in between? (Three-valued logic: yes, no, maybe; this or that, and/or something else.)

Of all the personal lessons learned by the billions of people who have lived and died, only some have been passed down. I tend to think the lessons most useful to the greatest number are those that survived. Then, I consider how no one of us has time in our own lives to consider every possible question, much less every possible answer. Civilization's "progress" is forwarded by providing Cliff Notes (principles) for the next generation, so that they can go on to newer, bigger questions in the limited time they have.

(put scare quotes all over civilization, progress, forward and the like. I only mean something like an attempt that we have made and continue to make, the success of which may never be known.)
 

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I know Whitehead said that, and I know Whitehead was a great thinker and all, but that quip of his never made sense to me. Why does it to you? It always seemed to me that Plato didn't care squat about history, what with the perceived world being nothing but shadows on the cave wall and all.

It may be that all answers to the question of whether we have learned ("philosophically") anything from history as events and/or narrative explanations of events (ie "scientifically") are equally appropriate and/or rational.
One could take the Heideggerian-Freudian no learning position (ie "Aren't we there where we are?" da and da again over and over: dasein to the fort-da game) or the inevitable progress idea concealed in the Derridaean-Gertrude Steinian not-there: "there is no there there"...ie one has to progress because there is no way to get back to an original locus of non-progression.
There is an impossible Lacanian middle road: "Sometimes you are there (in the non-progressive primordial oozy there) and sometimes you are not (I can be exiled to nostalgia for an impossible otherness of the there of all beginnings)"....
 
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GirlWithPoisonPen

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I think it's dangerous to reduce history to a series of lessons or to shove it into a template like progress. Doing so doesn't allow for complexity or for things being messy.

Ideas about how people should be treated have evolved over time in keeping with a society's priorities and values. We don't burn people for being witches any more because witchcraft is no longer a rational explanation for why things happen. Instead, there are now scientific and medical explanations for natural phenomenon and disease.
 

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I think it's dangerous to reduce history to a series of lessons or to shove it into a template like progress. Doing so doesn't allow for complexity or for things being messy.

Ideas about how people should be treated have evolved over time in keeping with a society's priorities and values. We don't burn people for being witches any more because witchcraft is no longer a rational explanation for why things happen. Instead, there are now scientific and medical explanations for natural phenomenon and disease.

There's no doubt things are messy. Many an explanation comes under the heading of "things are messy"...But:

Are they really messy if they are explicable?
Why is it dangerous to propose a non-messy mechanism such as "progress"?
How have we learned the value of reserving the messiness as a reservoir of potentially valuable things and explanations? Is that the same as not knowing or learning the limitations of some forms of narrative/knowledge? Is messy a useful epistemological evaluation? Is that something we have learned after all?
 
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AMCrenshaw

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If Russians aren't evil then those would be... wrong, wouldn't they? Nope -- move on folks, nothing to see here. We're progressing, doncha know.

If you want to gague the moral depth of a culture's soul, take a sounding on its supremacist myths. Study who always gets to win, who always loses. Tally who's asked to sacrifice, who has sacrifice forced on them and who skates. Check out who goes to heaven, who's consigned to hell and who's forgotten in limbo.

Yeah, it just changes. It doesn't need to be Russians (which it's starting again to be Russians, btw). It will be some group.


Why is it dangerous to propose a non-messy mechanism such as "progress"?


To impose "progress" would be dangerous. To propose is a fundamental part of safe science, if I recall correctly.

I'm not convinced there is progress. It would take one hell of a comprehensive historical argument to do so. I am quite skeptical of people who claim moral progress. I don't see it, especially anywhere a system of power is in place.

For example, someone asks: "But why is it that we no longer flog people, burn witches, or enslave people?"

Physical acts with more "civilized" alternatives.

How true! Instead we tap target people's phone lines, set up hidden cameras on thier every street corner and in every "convenience" store, and check their luggage more thoroughly at the airport.

How many people in the American prison system are black? A high percentage, I'd be willing to bet. I'm sure we are all aware, also, about certain work release programs: Dress up in bright orange clothing, shackled, and clean up the highway for twenty-five cents an hour. I call that a new, more devious form of enslavement. And I think, then, I can be easily skeptical of moral progress.

One thing I have to admit is that I am hopeful of it. I like to think on the individual level, people can learn to explain the past and, if they are not happy (to say the least) with it, find ways of making the present and future different-- they hope better.

Why not on a collective level?

AMC
 

Higgins

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To impose "progress" would be dangerous. To propose is a fundamental part of safe science, if I recall correctly.

I'm not convinced there is progress. It would take one hell of a comprehensive historical argument to do so.

You could have dangerous scientific proposals. And if you are so sure there is some "fundamental part of safe science" then you are assuming there is some kind of progress. For example, there are scientific modes of explanation and data collection and these have been a recent development. The assumption of progress is in some ways unavoidable. For example the social orders where people are more or less forced to undertake intensive cultivation can support denser populations of people and the seemingly progressive divisions of labor that come with dense, immobilized populations and the need to enforce the social order that perpetuates those modes of production that allow for greater population densities. Periods where these greater densities occur are assumed to be more "advanced" than periods when populations disperse or decline or (in archaeology) simply become less observable.
 

ColoradoGuy

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I think it's dangerous to reduce history to a series of lessons or to shove it into a template like progress. Doing so doesn't allow for complexity or for things being messy.
I'm not suggesting we shove anything into a template, and history's plenty messy. But that doesn't mean, on balance, humans can't evolve morally as well as physically. And the substrate of moral evolution could be those messy, random historical events, leavened with just enough of a pinch of conscious observation to push the results of the mess along in a good way.

ETA: I'm well aware of efforts, from Suetonius to Santayana, to reduce history to a series of lessons. That's a cartoon. I'm thinking about something with much more nuance.
 
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robeiae

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I'm not suggesting we shove anything into a template, and history's plenty messy. But that doesn't mean, on balance, humans can't evolve morally as well as physically.
No, it doesn't.

But think on this: we're 2500 years out from Greek civilization, 3500+ years out from Chinese civilization, 5500+ years out from Sumerian civilization, etc.

Yet, the horrors of WWI and WWII, Pol Pot, and the Russian Revolution occurred in the last one hundred years.

And just yesterday, I saw a news story wherein a man murdered his two-year-old son to avoid child support payments.
 

Higgins

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I'm thinking about something with much more nuance.

Since every person comes into the world equally unversed in lessons of any kind, one area where one can always make some kind of progress is in the area of
socialization. Even in the face of not very functional
early environments and even after a person is an incipient criminal it is possible to functionally socialize a person. The area of socialization is an area where some progress has been made, though again probably the kids who watched a squabble over a mastodon got a better education in how their social world worked and how to fit into it.
 

ColoradoGuy

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No, it doesn't.

But think on this: we're 2500 years out from Greek civilization, 3500+ years out from Chinese civilization, 5500+ years out from Sumerian civilization, etc.

Yet, the horrors of WWI and WWII, Pol Pot, and the Russian Revolution occurred in the last one hundred years.

And just yesterday, I saw a news story wherein a man murdered his two-year-old son to avoid child support payments.
(You left out Rwanda.) Anecdotes, says the optimist. Of course history is really an aggregation of anecdotes, I suppose. Me, I still think we're driving somewhere better and awareness of what happened in the past is a major cog of the engine. What originally intrigued me about the Thucydides quotation is that this is a very old notion -- can evolutionary paradigms be applied to ideas. Maybe historical events can be seen as random mutations with susequent events a test of their fitness.
 

robeiae

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(You left out Rwanda.) Anecdotes, says the optimist. Of course history is really an aggregation of anecdotes, I suppose. Me, I still think we're driving somewhere better and awareness of what happened in the past is a major cog of the engine. What originally intrigued me about the Thucydides quotation is that this is a very old notion -- can evolutionary paradigms be applied to ideas. Maybe historical events can be seen as random mutations with susequent events a test of their fitness.
I think there's no doubt that an evolutionary-type algorithm is at play. Technological, social, economic, and political change alter the course of choices--and affect the range of such choices--everyone makes, and that is played out on a grand scale of historical change.

But I think it's a mistake to view it as "progress" in the realm of morality. It could be that the nature of a moment is such that many immoralities are less likely, but it doesn't make people--in general--any less capable of such immoralities.

And as we have seen, things can do an about face in nothing, flat.
 

gorgias of leontini

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In the words of my father,

There is movement backwards, forwards, sideways; there is change, evolution, revolution. These are the movements of human-generated systems. If morality is one such system (and we must admit at some point that it is), it too must move, especially if moral progress, for example, is dependent on other systems -- our discoveries in the physical, economic, sociological fields, to name a few. We must admit that moral progress is dependent upon the progress of these systems. That is, moral judgments are really rooted in our understanding of these systems and carried through by our empathetic links to the rest of the universe.

The movements my father would describe are necessary movements of individuated consciousness; as historians or philosophers it is necessary to evaluate the reasoning of the past, to recognize its triumphs and its flaws and shortcomings; it is necessary to recognize how the past flows and emerges into the present; to see the past clearly is a progression in its own right. Thus to see history more clearly is a progress we, beyond the year 2000, have unique rights to. Who can really argue that we do not see history more clearly than those one thousand years ago? As individuals, we cannot see our history clearly let alone see the history of an entire people, but we must admit that the histories are more available now than they ever have been, and that is a moral progress so long as they are written or recorded by a multiplicity of voices from differing ideologies.

* * *

It is folly (to my simple mind) to say that our discoveries in philosophy and in science are reduced to insignificance by the imprecision of language and by the arbitrariness of meaning. Rather that this narratological discovery should enlighten us about how to create histories that reflect a wider range of truths, so that, indeed, the many culminate into a blurry totality. That is, it is more truthful that each of us live as records and testaments to our own lives; we cannot rely on another to speak for us, or to leave behind traces of who we are. That is, perhaps, our sole individual responsibility.

* * *

Human beings will commit atrocities another ten thousand years from now. What they should consider atrocity is beyond my imagination.

* * *

Nothing written is irrevocable.
 

Ruv Draba

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(Of course history is really an aggregation of anecdotes, I suppose.
By itself, more historical documentation wouldn't make us a lick wiser. We need to do work to turn records into benefit. What we learn from them derives either from philosophy (i.e. what else we know), or mythology (i.e. what such stuff means to us).

Me, I still think we're driving somewhere better and awareness of what happened in the past is a major cog of the engine.
We certainly can't get better without knowing where we've been. But morality is some sort of compromise between empathy and economics, moderated by our cleverness (philosophy) and mythology. Combustion engines gave us a more latitude to tut-tut about slavery, for instance; there's less infanticide in countries with birth-control.

Our empathy grows only slowly, (and it's questionable whether our innate capacity for empathy has grown much at all). But our economics have grown abundantly, and so our morality has been able to develop too.
 
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