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本帖最后由 周九 于 2011-1-21 21:41 编辑
作者是John Arnold,方便大家issue的时候quotation
So if history is so complex, so difficult, and not totally secure, why do it? Why does history matter? It is sometimes suggested that we should study history to learn lessons for the present. This strikes me as problematic. If we mean by this that history (or History) presents us with lessons to be learnt, I have yet to see any example of anyone paying attention in class. Apart from anything else, were these lessons (patterns, structures, necessary outcomes) to exist, they would allow us to predict the future. But they do not; the future remains as opaque and exciting as ever it did. If, however, we mean that the past presents us with an opportunity to draw lessons for consideration, I am more persuaded. Thinking about what human beings have done in the past– the bad and the good – provides us with examples through which we might contemplate our future actions, just as does the study of novels, films, and television. But to imagine that there are concrete patterns to past events, which can provide templates for our lives and decisions, is to project onto history a hope for certainty which it cannot fulfil.
Another suggestion, mentioned at the beginning of this book, is that history provides us with an identity, just as memory does for an individual. This is certainly true as a phenomenon: various groups, from Protestant Ulstermen to Inuit Indians, lay claim to past events as a basis for their collective identities. But it is also a danger, as the bloody conflicts between different ethnic groups across Europe surely attest. We can lay claim to the past for part of our identity, but to become imprisoned by the past is to lose something of our humanity, our capacity for making different choices and choosing different ways of seeing ourselves.
It is also sometimes thought that history can show us some deep, fundamental insights into the human condition; that sifting through the past we may discover some intrinsic thread to our lives. Ranke’s ‘only to say, how it really was’ can also be translated as ‘only to say how it essentially was’. Historians have long been charged with the job of divining ‘essences’, to human nature, God, situations, laws, and so on. But are ‘essences’ of any use to us now? Do we believe in any ‘essential’ links between different peoples and times? If we do, it is because we wish to present universal human rights, we wish to hang on to decency and hope. And as well we should. But the historian is not, and should not be, of much use here: the historian can remind us that ‘human rights’ are a historical invention (no less ‘real’ for all that) just as are ‘natural law’, ‘property’, ‘family’, and so on. ‘Essences’ can get us into trouble, as when we come to believe that the term ‘man’ can always stand in for ‘woman’ also; or when we think that different ‘races’ have intrinsic characteristics; or when we imagine that our mode of politics and government is the only proper pattern of behaviour. So the historian might take on another job: as reminder to those who seek ‘essences’ of the price that might be exacted.
opaque n.
Pronunciation: | ō-'pāk | Function: | adjective | Etymology: | Latin opacus | Date: | 1641 |
1 : exhibiting opacity : blocking the passage of radiant energy and especially light
2 a : hard to understand or explain <opaque prose> b : OBTUSE THICKHEADED
–opaque noun
–opaque·ly adverb
–opaque·ness noun
con·tem·plate v.
Pronunciation: | 'kän-təm-ˌplāt, -ˌtem- | Function: | verb | Inflected Form: | -plat·ed ; -plat·ing | Etymology: | Latin contemplatus, past participle of contemplari, from com- + templum space marked out for observation of auguries ― more at TEMPLE | Date: | circa 1533 |
transitive verb
1 : to view or consider with continued attention : meditate on <contemplate the vastness of the universe>
2 : to view as contingent or probable or as an end or intention <contemplate marriage>
intransitive verb : PONDER MEDITATE
synonyms see CONSIDER
–con·tem·pla·tor \-ˌplā-tər\ noun
de·cen·cy n.
Pronunciation: | 'dē-sən-sē | Function: | noun | Inflected Form: | plural -cies | Date: | 1567 |
1 archaic a : FITNESS b : ORDERLINESS
2 a : the quality or state of being decent : PROPRIETY b : conformity to standards of taste, propriety, or quality
3 : standard of propriety ― usually used in plural
4 plural : conditions or services considered essential for a proper standard of living
5 : literary decorum |
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