Hoping for lightning

Perceptive philosopher of history, Louis Mink, on the way historians think about the past…

The inaccessibility of the past is not epistemological (though it is that, too) but ontological.  But people believe this in more or less deeply entrenched ways.  It is an occupational habit of historians to believe it but simultaneously to believe that it is not logically or conceptually connected with any other beliefs.  The historian’s response is typically ‘Of course, but so what?’  On the other hand, the realization comes for some people – including myself … – like a bolt of lightning which illuminates an entire landscape.  And in the darkness following the lightning, and until it strikes again, we try to reconstruct bit by bit the complex picture which was illuminated briefly but powerfully.  ‘My God!’ we say ‘It’s really true, the past isn’t there at all.  There’s no there for it to be. Whatever history signifies, it’s not anything that we can even conceive being placed side by side with the history to observe the degree of resemblance.’  Meanwhile, the historian gets on with his work, humming Ranke under his breath.  My point is not that the historian’s response is wrong.  He has or hopes for his lightning bolts of illumination too; it is just that they are not ontological, but something more like configurations of data.  Still, the logic of the situation is independent of how deeply embedded one’s belief is.  The significant part of the historian’s response is not the ‘So what?’ but the ‘Of course!’  This acknowledgement is a metaphysical assertion – by someone who happens not to be very interested in metaphysical assertions, but that does not change its character.”*

It illustrates nicely perhaps one of the things I am exploring.  I’m not trying to write a history; rather, I’m trying to reach some of understanding of why we desire history, and how it functions when we pursue it, construct it, use it. 

*Louis O. Mink, Is Speculative Philosophy of History Possible? in Historical Understanding, p. 153

Filed under: Historiography, Philosophy, experiences, history, quotations, research , Louis Mink, metaphysics, ontology, philosophy of history