On Having a Historical Sense

The primary function of the study of history is to allow for one to develop a historical sense, which is to say: a sense which informs one that (1) the present timeline in which one exists is but a raindrop in an ocean of timelines, that (2) to view the raindrop in which one exists as a standard for making absolute judgements regarding human affairs is myopic because in doing so one would (3) miss the ocean for the raindrop.

E.g., in our contemporary American timeline, many Americans take the Liberal Enlightened ideals which are entrenched in popular consciousness for granted in that they assume that these ideals are universal to all people or as though these ideals ought to be universal to all people ipso facto — that fact being: the ideals are entrenched in popular consciousness — whereas one with a properly historical sense might say that these ideals ought to be universal to all people but with the knowledge of the historical events leading to that conclusion or, e.g., with the knowledge that a Mohammedan might prefer paternalism to the free market of ideas and that there may exist a logically valid or even factually sound argument for that preference.

To conclude: In the book, Human, All Too Human: A Book for Free Spirits, by Friedrich Nietzsche, Nietzsche provides an explication of the historical sense in saying that, “All philosophers make the common mistake of taking contemporary man as their starting point and of trying, through an analysis of him, to reach a conclusion. “Man” involuntarily presents himself to them as an aeterna veritas as a passive element in every hurly-burly, as a fixed standard of things. Yet everything uttered by the philosopher on the subject of man is, in the last resort, nothing more than a piece of testimony concerning man during a very limited period of time. Lack of the historical sense is the traditional defect in all philosophers. Many innocently take man in his most childish state as fashioned through the influence of certain religious and even of certain political developments, as the permanent form under which man must be viewed.”