Why study ancient history?

By Haines Brown, 15 September 2000

The following material has been edited for the sake of clarity.

> From: ChUnSa802@aol.com
> Date: Thu, 14 Sep 2000 23:06:02 EDT
>
> HI I AM A JUNIOR AT A HIGH SCHOOL IN AUSTIN TEXAS.
> WE ARE DOING A DEBATE ON WHY WE NEED
> TO STUDY ANCIENT HISTORY AND I ONLY CAN
> THINK OF ONE REASON. THAT BY STUDYING
> ANCIENT HISTORY WE CAN PREVENT
> ACCIDENTS IN THE FUTURE. IF YOU CAN THINK
> OF ANY OTHER REASON PLEASE E-MAIL
> ME BACK ASAP. THANK YOU

Dear Anonymous,

I take it you are defending the study of ancient history, and I’d agree that it does help us “prevent accidents in the future,” but not for your reason. Briefly:

a) History is an emergent process, which means that basically it always generates novelties. Every new situation is related to its immediate past only to a degree. So the view that “there’s nothing new under the sun” is not particularly true, and the longer the time span, the less is it true. If this be so, then we cannot learn much from the distant past, for our situation is different in important ways.

b) Having said this, the opposite side of the coin is that the closer the past is to us today, in terms of time and place, the more what we are will derive from it. To understand me, it helps to understand my parents, the situation and environment in which I grew up. The idea that our identity is inherited from the past, and so self-awareness arises from the study of history is perhaps the “roots” argument.

However, I find this argument unpersuasive. The further something is from us in time and place, the less relevant it will be to our identity. One reason is that, standing between my own character today and a situation some distance in past is the continual transformation of culture, which not only makes the past difficult to grasp, but different in a potentially fundamental way from what I am. I am not a passive recipient of culture, but live in a society and world profoundly different than one not too long ago, and I respond to these realities. I seek, consciously or not, to redefine myself in the course of life. I may strive not to emulate my father, for example.

There is one way, however, in which the past may define us, and that is our use of it as part of our self-definition. For example, while Alex Haley may not have established a simple causal link between life in Africa centuries ago and his own personality, he was certainly able to flesh out an ideal with which he could legitimately identify. To the extent that such ideal or image shapes the course of our lives and affects our being, it does represent the influence of our understanding of the past upon the present. Unfortunately, this ideal is often rather fictional and, even if accurate, represents just one small element in one’s personality, and is not simply a mirror of one’s entire identity.

In short, the argument we can learn from history seems true only to the extent the past is very close in time and place. Clearly, ancient history is neither, and so we can’t learn from it because its agenda, values, and problems, even psyche, were radically different from our own.

c) However, I’ll admit that historical study, like travel, probably helps develop the wisdom or maturity of the individual. I’m not sure just why this is true, and I’m not sure it is peculiar to historical study. In any case, it is too vague to be of much help. I have known people who draw upon their experiences to further isolate themselves from the world and reinforce their prejudices, and there seems no assurance that exposure to history will necessarily contribute to one’ development.

d) And yet I’m nevertheless convinced that study of ancient history is worth while. If we can represent history as an emergent process by seeing how the ancients shaped their future, then we can see ourselves as part of an open ended process as well, which means we see ourselves as free and capable of changing our circumstances. If history is reduced to dry facts, however, it ceases being a process, and thus the present will also seem static and immutable, discouraging any effort to change things for the better. So the study of ancient history can be liberating if understood properly.

In any evolutionary science, knowledge gained from one instance contributes to the study of others, for different phenomena are often causally interrelated. This, unfortunatelyh, applies very little to the relationship of ancient history and our situation today. That we in the West have inherited aesthetic or philosophical notions from Mediterranean antiquity is less because those notions are transcendent or compelling and more because they seemed ideologically useful at critical junctures in European history.

Another advantage of an evolutionary science, beyond explaining how a particular situation came into being, is to expose the enormous range of possibilities latent in any situation. That is, it is heuristic, and this can act as a powerful stimulus for action today and enrich historical investigation.

Sorry for this abstract/abstruse response, but it’s how I feel about it.

Haines Brown