the uses and abuses of history...

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Peter Kropotkin
Posts: 1455
Joined: Wed Jun 22, 2022 5:11 am

the uses and abuses of history...

Post by Peter Kropotkin »

Certain disciplines I find fascinating, among them is philosophy,
political philosophy, geography, astronomy and history...

I could stare at a picture of another galaxy for hours...
and those deep space pictures of hundreds of galaxies, man,
I am in amazed by those...

but the topic today is history and philosophy....

History would be writing about Napoleon and his impact on history..
philosophy would be writing about the values brought about by
Napoleon..

we can start with certain understandings... that Napoleon was an
"enlightened" dictator...with a firm understanding of his times..
bringing back the Roman Catholic church was such an understanding...
(the Concordat of 1801 is proof of his awareness of Franch sentiment)
in fact, Napoleon moderated some of the more radical impulses of the
French revolution...

but history said Napoleon did this, this and this... but what
would philosophy say about Napoleon?

In roughly 20 years, Napoleon turned Europe from a feudal society
into our modern world...Philosophy would ask, is this overthrow
of the ancient world worth it? Are the values Napoleon brought about,
worth the effort? In some respects, many of the modern ills were
brought about by Napoleon.. the rise of the modern military, the
rise of the bureaucracies, the centralization of the state, the secularization of
the state...all of these trends come from Napoleon and his handling of France
for 20 years.. but as I have noted, philosophy would ask, is this a good thing?

History gives us the facts, philosophy gives us the values of those facts...
History doesn't make judgements on whether an action is
"good" or "bad".. history just tells us what those actions are...
whereas philosophy makes a judgement on those actions...

but as I have grown older, I can now see that there is a close
connection between history and philosophy...in fact, I might
guess that history and philosophy are two sides of the same coin...

in writing history, historians would often write from a particular
standpoint.. In England for example, history was often written in
terms of Whig history and tory history.. History was written in
terms of either being from a Whig standpoint or a Tory standpoint...
and Historians understood that.. Whig history was written in terms of
going from an oppressive and benighted past to a "glorious present"...
and the Tories wrote from the belief that there has been a long
and coordinated attempt to undermine church and state...
today, Whig would be called liberal and Tory would be conservative...

and today, we would frown on a historian that would be so blatant as
to write from a strict political standpoint such as conservative writing
history from a conservative standpoint.. and yet, we see this all the time..

Using one political standpoint as a guide to history isn't being impartial
in writing about history... and we expect history to be written
without bias or within preconceived notions... and therein lies one
of the abuses of history... to write history with preconceived notions
and already held biases... for that isn't history, that is propaganda...
and much of what passes for history today, is really nothing more
than propaganda and disinformation.. is this done on the left? Yes,
it is and it doesn't make it any better...

and what about philosophy? Can we approach philosophy with a bias,
a preconceived notion? No, for philosophy isn't about parroting some
bias, but philosophy is about overcoming bias and propaganda and
disinformation... overcoming the childhood indoctrinations of
god, state and guns...overcoming those childhood beliefs with
an adult understanding of reality... coming ever closer to the
reality we see on the ground... and approach that reality/truth,
by not viewing those realities/truths with bias or disinformation,
or seeing those truths/reality as it is, not as we want it to be...

Thus history and philosophy attempt to hold the same ground,
by seeing reality and the truth without any resort to a preconceived
notions or already present bias or propaganda..

To see reality/truth without any rosed color glasses is the goal of
both history and philosophy...

Kropotkin
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