Thursday, January 26, 2017

The unforeseen

7 comments:

  1. ...is what the science of history *reveals*, I would say.

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  2. History is written, "the science of history" is something larger. If that science would be in the business of hiding terrors to come, oh dear...

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    1. The quote is from Roth's alternate history book The Plot Against America. His point is that historians (typically) make developments seem inevitable in retrospect, but to a certain extent that falsifies the experience of living through the events, and perhaps makes the contingent seem necessary. Kierkegaard said it more concisely: Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards.

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  3. I'm with Kierkegaard here — we are oarsmen that can only look backwards. The suggestion of inevitability is indeed a problem for historians. Over here there has been a book that presented history in the form of newspaper front pages, which was a refreshing approach. Harry Mulisch has suggested that history lessons in school should not start with the Ancient Greeks but with yesterday's newspaper.

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