http://www.columbia.edu/acis/ets/CCREAD/etscc/kant.html What Is Enlightenment? Immanuel Kant 1 Enlightenment is man's emergence from his self-imposed nonage.

Nonage is the inability to use one's own understanding without another's guidance. This nonage is self-imposed if its cause lies not in lack of understanding but in indecision and lack of courage to use one's own mind without another's guidance. Dare to know!(Sapere aude.) "Have the courage to use your own understanding," is therefore the motto of the enlightenment. Laziness and cowardice are the reasons why such a large part of mankind gladly remain minors all their lives, long after nature has freed them from external guidance. They are the reasons why it is so easy for others to set themselves up as guardians. It is so comfortable to be a minor. If I have a book that thinks for me, a pastor who acts as my conscience, a physician who prescribes my diet, and so on--then I have no need to exert myself. I have no need to think, if only I can pay; others will take care of that disagreeable business for me. Those guardians who have kindly taken supervision upon themselves see to it that the overwhelming majority of mankind--among them the entire fair sex--should consider the step to maturity, not only as hard, but as extremely dangerous. First, these guardians make their domestic cattle stupid and carefully prevent the docile creatures from taking a single step without the leading-strings to which they have fastened them. Then they show them the danger that would threaten them if they should try to walk by themselves. Now this danger is really not very great; after stumbling a few times they would, at last, learn to walk. However, examples of such failures intimidate and generally discourage all further attempts. Thus it is very difficult for the individual to work himself out of the nonage which has become almost second nature to him. He has even grown to like it, and is at first really incapable of using his own understanding because he has never been permitted to try it. Dogmas and formulas, these mechanical tools designed for reasonable use--or rather abuse--of his natural gifts, are the fetters of an everlasting nonage. The man who casts them off would make an uncertain leap over the narrowest ditch, because he is not used to such free movement. That is why there are only a few men who walk firmly, and who have emerged from nonage by cultivating their own minds. It is more nearly possible, however, for the public to enlighten itself; indeed, if it is only given freedom, enlightenment is almost inevitable. There will always be a few independent thinkers, even among the self-appointed guardians of the multitude. Once such men have thrown off the yoke of nonage, they will spread about them the spirit of a reasonable appreciation of man's value and of his duty to think for himself. It is especially to be noted that the public which was earlier brought under the yoke by these men afterwards forces these very guardians to remain in submission, if it is so incited by some of its guardians who are themselves incapable of any enlightenment. That shows how pernicious it is to implant prejudices: they will eventually revenge themselves upon their authors or their authors' descendants. Therefore, a public can achieve enlightenment only slowly. A revolution may bring about the end of a personal despotism or of avaricious tyrannical oppression, but never a true reform of modes of thought. New prejudices will serve, in place of the old, as guide lines for the unthinking multitude. This enlightenment requires nothing but freedom--and the most innocent of all that may be called "freedom": freedom to make public use of one's reason in all matters. Now I hear the cry from all

sides: "Do not argue!" The officer says: "Do not argue--drill!" The tax collector: "Do not argue-pay!" The pastor: "Do not argue--believe!" Only one ruler in the world says: "Argue as much as you please, but obey!" We find restrictions on freedom everywhere. But which restriction is harmful to enlightenment? Which restriction is innocent, and which advances enlightenment? I reply: the public use of one's reason must be free at all times, and this alone can bring enlightenment to mankind. On the other hand, the private use of reason may frequently be narrowly restricted without especially hindering the progress of enlightenment. By "public use of one's reason" I mean that use which a man, as scholar, makes of it before the reading public. I call "private use" that use which a man makes of his reason in a civic post that has been entrusted to him. In some affairs affecting the interest of the community a certain [governmental] mechanism is necessary in which some members of the community remain passive. This creates an artificial unanimity which will serve the fulfillment of public objectives, or at least keep these objectives from being destroyed. Here arguing is not permitted: one must obey. Insofar as a part of this machine considers himself at the same time a member of a universal community--a world society of citizens--(let us say that he thinks of himself as a scholar rationally addressing his public through his writings) he may indeed argue, and the affairs with which he is associated in part as a passive member will not suffer. Thus it would be very unfortunate if an officer on duty and under orders from his superiors should want to criticize the appropriateness or utility of his orders. He must obey. But as a scholar he could not rightfully be prevented from taking notice of the mistakes in the military service and from submitting his views to his public for its judgment. The citizen cannot refuse to pay the taxes levied upon him; indeed, impertinent censure of such taxes could be punished as a scandal that might cause general disobedience. Nevertheless, this man does not violate the duties of a citizen if, as a scholar, he publicly expresses his objections to the impropriety or possible injustice of such levies. A pastor, too, is bound to preach to his congregation in accord with the doctrines of the church which he serves, for he was ordained on that condition. But as a scholar he has full freedom, indeed the obligation, to communicate to his public all his carefully examined and constructive thoughts concerning errors in that doctrine and his proposals concerning improvement of religious dogma and church institutions. This is nothing that could burden his conscience. For what he teaches in pursuance of his office as representative of the church, he represents as something which he is not free to teach as he sees it. He speaks as one who is employed to speak in the name and under the orders of another. He will say: "Our church teaches this or that; these are the proofs which it employs." Thus he will benefit his congregation as much as possible by presenting doctrines to which he may not subscribe with full conviction. He can commit himself to teach them because it is not completely impossible that they may contain hidden truth. In any event, he has found nothing in the doctrines that contradicts the heart of religion. For if he believed that such contradictions existed he would not be able to administer his office with a clear conscience. He would have to resign it. Therefore the use which a scholar makes of his reason before the congregation that employs him is only a private use, for no matter how sizable, this is only a domestic audience. In view of this he, as preacher, is not free and ought not to be free, since he is carrying out the orders of others. On the other hand, as the scholar who speaks to his own public (the world) through his writings, the minister in the public use of his reason enjoys unlimited freedom to use his own reason and to speak for himself. That the spiritual guardians of the people should themselves be treated as minors is an absurdity which would result in perpetuating absurdities.

CALL FOR RESEARCH PAPERS ON WITH EXTENDED DEADLINE TILL 5TH APRIL 2012 Revelation of Truths: Critical Perspectives on Autobiographies and Biographies in English Editors Dr. Arvind Nawale, (Head, Dept of English, Shivaji Mahavidhylaya, Udgir, Dist: Latur (M.S.) Ms. Ankita Khanna, (Lecturer in English, Sardar Vallabhbhai National Institute of Technology, Surat (Gujarat) No Contribution/Subscription fees. Papers will be accepted and published free of cost and only on basis of quality and each contributor will get a free complimentary copy from publisher Dear All, We are glad to inform you that we are going to edit jointly a book of research papers on Autobiographies and Biographies in English tentatively titled as Revelation of Truths: Critical Perspectives on Autobiographies and Biographies in English. Authentic, scholarly and unpublished research papers are invited from scholars/faculty/researchers/writers/professors from all over the world for this volume. Proposed Publisher: The volume will be published with an ISBN (International Standard Book Number) by a renowned publisher from India. Thematic Focus of the Volume: The articles should be on any theme of confession, revelation of truth on any work of English Autobiographies and Biographies. Editing requirements: Paper size: A4, Font & size: Times New Roman 12, Spacing: Single line, Margin of 1 inch on all four sides. Title of the paper: bold, title case (Capitalize each word), centered. Text of the paper: justified. Font & size: Times New Roman 12. References: Please follow MLA style (Only Author-Date or Number System) strictly. Dont use Foot Notes. Instead use End Notes. Titles of books: Italics. Titles of articles from journals and books: quoted. Articles should be submitted as MS Word 2003-2007attachments only. The paper should not usually exceed 14 pages maximum, 5 pages minimum in single spacing. Each paper must be accompanied by i) A declaration that it is an original work and has not been published anywhere else or send for publication ii) Abstract of paper about 100-200 words and iii) A short bio-note of the contributor(s) indicating name, institutional affiliation, brief career history, postal address, mobile number and e-mail, in a single attachment. Please dont send more attachments. Give these things below your paper and send all these things in a separate single MS-Word attachment. The papers submitted should evince serious academic work contributing new knowledge or innovative critical perspectives on the subject explored. Mode of Submission: Each contributor is advised to send full paper with brief bio-note, declaration and abstract as a single MS-Word email attachments to email address: ankita.khanna@ymail.com up to 5th April 2012. The contributors are also supposed to submit one hard copy of (i) Full paper (ii) A declaration and (iii) Abstract and (iv) Brief bionote typed in above mentioned format to the postal address given bellow. One hard copy is required for our record. Without hard copy, no paper will be considered for publication. Selection Procedure: All submissions will be sent for blind peer reviewing. Final selection will be made only if the papers are recommended for publication by the reviewers. The details of the selection of your paper will be informed to you telephonically or on your email. The editor has the right to make necessary editing of selected papers for the sake of conceptual clarity and formatting. Non-selected papers will not be sent back to the contributor in any form. So, all contributors are advised to keep a copy of their submission with them. Each contributor will get a free complimentary copy from publisher but in case of joint paper, only first writer will get free copy. Overseas contributors will get a soft copy (pdf) of their papers with details of ISBN specification. Plagiarism Alert: Contributors are advised to adhere to strict academic ethics with respect to acknowledgment of original ideas from others. The editors will not be responsible for any such lapse of the contributor. All submissions should be original and must be accompanied by a declaration that it is an original work and has not been published anywhere else. It will be your sole responsibility for such lapses, if any. Neither editor, nor publisher will be responsible for it. For more details email the editor at ankita.khanna@ymail.com

But should a society of ministers, say a Church Council, . . . have the right to commit itself by oath to a certain unalterable doctrine, in order to secure perpetual guardianship over all its members and through them over the people? I say that this is quite impossible. Such a contract, concluded to keep all further enlightenment from humanity, is simply null and void even if it should be confirmed by the sovereign power, by parliaments, and the most solemn treaties. An epoch cannot conclude a pact that will commit succeeding ages, prevent them from increasing their significant insights, purging themselves of errors, and generally progressing in enlightenment. That would be a crime against human nature whose proper destiny lies precisely in such progress. Therefore, succeeding ages are fully entitled to repudiate such decisions as unauthorized and outrageous. The touchstone of all those decisions that may be made into law for a people lies in this question: Could a people impose such a law upon itself? Now it might be possible to introduce a certain order for a definite short period of time in expectation of better order. But, while this provisional order continues, each citizen (above all, each pastor acting as a scholar) should be left free to publish his criticisms of the faults of existing institutions. This should continue until public understanding of these matters has gone so far that, by uniting the voices of many (although not necessarily all) scholars, reform proposals could be brought before the sovereign to protect those congregations which had decided according to their best lights upon an altered religious order, without, however, hindering those who want to remain true to the old institutions. But to agree to a perpetual religious constitution which is not publicly questioned by anyone would be, as it were, to annihilate a period of time in the progress of man's improvement. This must be absolutely forbidden. A man may postpone his own enlightenment, but only for a limited period of time. And to give up enlightenment altogether, either for oneself or one's descendants, is to violate and to trample upon the sacred rights of man. What a people may not decide for itself may even less be decided for it by a monarch, for his reputation as a ruler consists precisely in the way in which he unites the will of the whole people within his own. If he only sees to it that all true or supposed [religious] improvement remains in step with the civic order, he can for the rest leave his subjects alone to do what they find necessary for the salvation of their souls. Salvation is none of his business; it is his business to prevent one man from forcibly keeping another from determining and promoting his salvation to the best of his ability. Indeed, it would be prejudicial to his majesty if he meddled in these matters and supervised the writings in which his subjects seek to bring their [religious] views into the open, even when he does this from his own highest insight, because then he exposes himself to the reproach: Caesar non est supra grammaticos. 2 It is worse when he debases his sovereign power so far as to support the spiritual despotism of a few tyrants in his state over the rest of his subjects. When we ask, Are we now living in an enlightened age? the answer is, No, but we live in an age of enlightenment. As matters now stand it is still far from true that men are already capable of using their own reason in religious matters confidently and correctly without external guidance. Still, we have some obvious indications that the field of working toward the goal [of religious truth] is now opened. What is more, the hindrances against general enlightenment or the emergence from self-imposed nonage are gradually diminishing. In this respect this is the age of the enlightenment and the century of Frederick [the Great]. A prince ought not to deem it beneath his dignity to state that he considers it his duty not to dictate anything to his subjects in religious matters, but to leave them complete freedom. If he repudiates the arrogant word "tolerant", he is himself enlightened; he deserves to be praised by a

grateful world and posterity as that man who was the first to liberate mankind from dependence, at least on the government, and let everybody use his own reason in matters of conscience. Under his reign, honorable pastors, acting as scholars and regardless of the duties of their office, can freely and openly publish their ideas to the world for inspection, although they deviate here and there from accepted doctrine. This is even more true of every person not restrained by any oath of office. This spirit of freedom is spreading beyond the boundaries [of Prussia] even where it has to struggle against the external hindrances established by a government that fails to grasp its true interest. [Frederick's Prussia] is a shining example that freedom need not cause the least worry concerning public order or the unity of the community. When one does not deliberately attempt to keep men in barbarism, they will gradually work out of that condition by themselves. I have emphasized the main point of the enlightenment--man's emergence from his self-imposed nonage--primarily in religious matters, because our rulers have no interest in playing the guardian to their subjects in the arts and sciences. Above all, nonage in religion is not only the most harmful but the most dishonorable. But the disposition of a sovereign ruler who favors freedom in the arts and sciences goes even further: he knows that there is no danger in permitting his subjects to make public use of their reason and to publish their ideas concerning a better constitution, as well as candid criticism of existing basic laws. We already have a striking example [of such freedom], and no monarch can match the one whom we venerate. But only the man who is himself enlightened, who is not afraid of shadows, and who commands at the same time a well disciplined and numerous army as guarantor of public peace--only he can say what [the sovereign of] a free state cannot dare to say: "Argue as much as you like, and about what you like, but obey!" Thus we observe here as elsewhere in human affairs, in which almost everything is paradoxical, a surprising and unexpected course of events: a large degree of civic freedom appears to be of advantage to the intellectual freedom of the people, yet at the same time it establishes insurmountable barriers. A lesser degree of civic freedom, however, creates room to let that free spirit expand to the limits of its capacity. Nature, then, has carefully cultivated the seed within the hard core--namely the urge for and the vocation of free thought. And this free thought gradually reacts back on the modes of thought of the people, and men become more and more capable of acting in freedom. At last free thought acts even on the fundamentals of government and the state finds it agreeable to treat man, who is now more than a machine, in accord with his dignity. Notes 1. Translated by Mary C. Smith. 2. [Caesar is not above grammarians.] CC 1102. Required Readings Philosophy of history From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia For the work by Hegel, see Lectures on the Philosophy of History.

The term philosophy of history refers to the theoretical aspect of history, in two senses. It is customary to distinguish critical philosophy of history from speculative philosophy of history. Critical philosophy of history is the "theory" aspect of the discipline of academic history, and deals with questions such as the nature of historical evidence, the degree to which objectivity is possible, etc. Speculative philosophy of history is an area of philosophy concerning the eventual significance, if any, of human history.[1] Furthermore, it speculates as to a possibleteleological end to its developmentthat is, it asks if there is a design, purpose, directive principle, or finality in the processes of human history. Part of Marxism, for example, is speculative philosophy of history. Though there is some overlap between the two, they can usually be distinguished; modern professional historians tend to be skeptical about speculative philosophy of history. Sometimes critical philosophy of history is included under historiography. Philosophy of history should not be confused with the history of philosophy, which is the study of the development of philosophical ideas through time. Speculative philosophy of history asks at least three basic questions:

What is the proper unit for the study of the human past the individual subject? The polis ("city") or sovereign territory? The civilization or culture? Or the whole of the human species?

Are there any broad patterns that we can discern through the study of the human past? Are there, for example, patterns of progress? Or cycles? Is history deterministic? Or are there no patterns or cycles, and is human history random? Related to this is the study of individual agency and its impact in history, functioning within, or opposed to, larger trends and patterns.

If history can indeed be said to progress, what is its ultimate direction? What (if any) is the driving force of that progress? Contents [hide] 1 Pre-modern history 2 Cyclical and linear history 3 Sustainable History 4 The Enlightenment's ideal of progress

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4.1 Social evolutionism 4.2 The validity of the "Great man theory" in historical studies 5 Does history have a teleological sense?

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5.1 Historical accounts of writing history 5.2 Michel Foucault's analysis of historical and political discourse 5.3 History and education 5.4 Narrative and history 5.5 History as propaganda: Is history always written by the victors? 6 See also 7 References 8 Further reading 9 External links

[edit]Pre-modern history In the Poetics, Aristotle argued that poetry is superior to history, because poetry speaks of what must or should be true, rather than merely what is true. This reflects early axial concerns (good/bad, right/wrong) over metaphysical concerns for what "is". Accordingly, classical historians felt a duty to ennoble the world. In keeping with philosophy of history, it is clear that their philosophy of value imposed upon their process of writing historyphilosophy influenced method and hence product. Herodotus, considered by some as the first systematic historian, and, later, Plutarch freely invented speeches for their historical figures and chose their historical subjects with an eye toward morally improving the reader. History was supposed to teach one good examples to follow. The assumption that history "should teach good examples" influenced how history was written. Events of the past are just as likely to show bad examples that are not to be followed, but these historians would either not record them or re-interpret them to support their assumption of history's purpose.[citation needed] From the Classical period to the Renaissance, historians alternated between focusing on subjects designed to improve mankind and on a devotion to fact. History was composed mainly of hagiographies of monarchs or epic poetry describing heroic gestures such as the Song of Roland about the Battle of Roncevaux Pass, during Charlemagne's first campaign to conquer the Iberian peninsula. In the 14th century, Ibn Khaldun, who is considered one of the fathers of the philosophy of history, discussed his philosophy of history and society in detail in his Muqaddimah (1377). His work was a culmination of earlier works by Muslim thinkers in the spheres of Islamic ethics,political science, and historiography, such as those of al-Farabi, Ibn Miskawayh, alDawwani, and Nasir al-Din al-Tusi.[2] Ibn Khaldun often criticized "idle superstition and

uncritical acceptance of historical data." As a result, he introduced a scientific method to the philosophy of history, which was considered something "new to his age," and he often referred to it as his "new science," which is now associated withhistoriography.[3] His historical method also laid the groundwork for the observation of the role of state, communication, propaganda andsystematic bias in history.[2] By the 18th century, historians had turned toward a more positivist approach focusing on fact as much as possible, but still with an eye on telling histories that could instruct and improve. Starting with Fustel de Coullanges and Theodor Mommsen, historical studies began to progress towards a more modern scientific form. In the Victorian era, the debate in historiography thus was not so much whether history was intended to improve the reader, but what causes turned history and how historical change could be understood. [edit]Cyclical and linear history Further information: Social cycle theory Given that human beings are currently understood by humans to be the single Earthly creatures capable of abstract thought, a perception of time, and a manipulation of thought concerning the past, the future and the present, an inquiry into the nature of history is based in part on some working understanding of time in the human experience. History (as contemporarily understood by Western thought), tends to follow an assumption of linear progression: "this happened, and then that happened; that happened because this happened first." This is in part a reflection of Western Thought's foundation of cause and effect. Most ancient cultures held a mythical conception of history and time that was not linear. They believed that history was cyclical with alternating Dark and Golden Ages. Plato called this the Great Year, and other Greeks called it an aeon or eon. Examples are the ancient doctrine of eternal return, which existed in Ancient Egypt, the Indian religions, or the Greek Pythagoreans' and the Stoics' conceptions. InThe Works and Days, Hesiod described five Ages of Man: the Gold Age, the Silver Age, the Bronze Age, the Heroic Age and the Iron Age, which began with the Dorian invasion. Other scholars suggest there were just four ages, corresponding to the four metals, and the Heroic age was a description of the Bronze Age. A four age count would be in line with the Vedic or Hindu ages known as the Kali, Dwapara, Treta and Satya yugas. The Greeks believed that just as mankind went through four stages of character during each rise and fall of history so did government. They considered democracy and monarchy as the healthy regimes of the higher ages; and oligarchy and tyranny as corrupted regimes common to the lower ages.

In the East cyclical theories of history were developed in China (as a theory of dynastic cycle) and in the Islamic world by Ibn Khaldun. The story of the Fall of Man from the Garden of Eden in Judaism and Christianity can be seen in a similar light, which would give the basis fortheodicies, which attempts to reconcile the existence of evil in the world with the existence of God creating a global explanation of history with the belief in a Messianic Age. Theodicies claimed that history had a progressive direction leading to an eschatological end, such as theApocalypse, given by a superior power. Augustine of Hippo, Thomas Aquinas or Bossuet in his Discourse On Universal History (1679) formulated such theodicies, but Leibniz, who coined the term, was the most famous philosopher who created a theodicy. Leibniz based his explanation on the principle of sufficient reason, which states that anything that happens, does happen for a specific reason. Thus, what man saw as evil, such as wars, epidemia and natural disasters, was in fact only an effect of his perception; if one adopted God's view, this evil event in fact only took place in the larger divine plan. Hence, theodicies explained the necessity of evil as a relative element that forms part of a larger plan of history. Leibniz's principle of sufficient reason was not, however, a gesture of fatalism. Confronted with the antique problem of future contingents, Leibniz invented the theory of "compossible worlds", distinguishing two types of necessity, to cope with the problem of determinism. During the Renaissance, cyclical conceptions of history would become common, illustrated by the decline of the Roman Empire.Machiavelli's Discourses on Livy (15131517) are an example. The notion of Empire contained in itself its ascendance and its decadence, as in Edward Gibbon's The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776), which was placed on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum. Cyclical conceptions were maintained in the 19th and 20th centuries by authors such as Oswald Spengler, Nikolay Danilevsky, and Paul Kennedy, who conceived the human past as a series of repetitive rises and falls. Spengler, like Butterfield was writing in reaction to the carnage of the first World War, believed that a civilization enters upon an era of Caesarism after its soul dies. He thought that the soul of the West was dead and Caesarism was about to begin. The recent development of mathematical models of long-term secular sociodemographic cycles has revived interest in cyclical theories of history (see, for example, Historical Dynamics by Peter Turchin, or Introduction to Social Macrodynamics[4] by Andrey Korotayev et al.). [edit]Sustainable History

Sustainable History and the Dignity of Man is a philosophy of history proposed by Nayef AlRodhan, where history is defined as a durable progressive trajectory in which the quality of life on this planet or all other planets is premised on the guarantee of human dignity for all at all times under all circumstances.[5] This theory views history as a linear progression propelled by good governance, which is, in turn, to be achieved through balancing the emotional, amoral, and egoistic elements of human nature with the human dignity needs of reason, security,human rights, accountability, transparency, justice, opportunity, innovation, and inclusiveness. [6] Human dignity lies at the heart of this theory and is paramount for ensuring the sustainable history of humankind. Among other things,human dignity means having a positive sense of self and instilling individuals with respect for the communities to which they belong. Thus, reconciling humans predisposition for emotionally self-interested behavior with the imperatives of human dignity appears as the one of the most important challenges to global policymakers.
[7]

At national level, they have to protect their citizens against violence and provide them with

access to food, housing, clothes, health care, and education. Basic welfare provision and security are fundamental to ensuring human dignity. Environment and ecological considerations need to be addressed as well. Finally, cultural diversity, inclusiveness and participation at all levels, of all communities are key imperatives of human dignity. In this respect, the sustainable history philosophy challenges existing concepts of civilisations, such as Samuel Huntingtons clash of civilisations.[8] Instead, it argues that human civilisation should not be thought of as consisting of numerous separate and competing civilisations, but rather it should be thought of collectively as only one human civilisation. Within this civilisation are many geo-cultural domains that comprise sub-cultures. Nayef Al-Rodhan envisions human civilisation as an ocean into which the different geo-cultural domains flow like rivers, The Ocean Model of one Human Civilization. At points where geo-cultural domains first enter the ocean of human civilisation, there is likely to be a concentration or dominance of that culture. However, over time, all the rivers of geo-cultural domains become one. There is fluidity at the oceans centre and cultures have the opportunity to borrow between them. Under such historical conditions the most advanced forms of human enterprise can thrive and lead us to a civilisational triumph. Nevertheless, there are cases where geographical proximity of various cultures can also lead to friction and conflict. Nayef Al-Rodhan concludes that within an increasingly globalised, interconnected and interdependent world, human dignity cannot be ensured globally and in a sustainable way through sole national means. A genuine global effort is required to meet the minimum criteria of human dignity globally. Areas such as conflict prevention, socio-economic justice, gender equality,

protection of human rights, environmental protection require a holistic approach and a common action. [edit]The Enlightenment's ideal of progress Further information: Age of Enlightenment and Social progress During the Aufklrung, or Enlightenment, history began to be seen as both linear and irreversible. Condorcet's interpretations of the various "stages of humanity" or Auguste Comte's positivism were one of the most important formulations of such conceptions of history, which trusted social progress. As in Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Emile (1762) treatise on education (or the "art of training men"), the Aufklrungconceived the human species as perfectible: human nature could be infinitely developed through a well-thought pedagogy. In What is Enlightenment? (1784), Immanuel Kant defined the Aufklrung as the capacity to think by oneself, without referring to an exterior authority, be it a prince or tradition: Enlightenment is when a person leaves behind a state of immaturity and dependence (Unmndigkeit) for which they themselves were responsible. Immaturity and dependence are the inability to use one's own intellect without the direction of another. One is responsible for this immaturity and dependence, if its cause is not a lack of intelligence or education, but a lack of determination and courage to think without the direction of another. Sapere aude! Dare to know! is therefore the slogan of the Enlightenment. In a paradoxical way, Kant supported in the same time enlightened despotism as a way of leading humanity towards its autonomy. He had conceived the process of history in his short treaty Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Purpose (1784). On one hand, enlightened despotism was to lead nations toward their liberation, and progress was thus inscribed in the scheme of history; on the other hand, liberation could only be acquired by a singular gesture, Sapere Aude! Thus, autonomy ultimately relied on the individual's "determination and courage to think without the direction of another." After Kant, Hegel developed a complex theodicy in the Phenomenology of Spirit (1807), which based its conception of history on dialectics: the negative (wars, etc.) was conceived by Hegel as the motor of history. Hegel argued that history is a constant process of dialectic clash, with each thesis encountering an opposing idea or event antithesis. The clash of both was "superated" in the synthesis, a conjunction that conserved the contradiction between thesis and its antithesis while sublating it. As Marx famously explained afterwards, concretely that meant that if Louis XVI's monarchic rule in France was seen as the thesis, the French Revolution could be seen as its antithesis. However, both were sublated in Napoleon, who reconciled the revolution with

the Ancien Rgime; he conserved the change. Hegel thought that reasonaccomplished itself, through this dialectical scheme, in History. Through labour, man transformed nature so he could recognize himself in it; he made it his "home." Thus, reason spiritualized nature. Roads, fields, fences, and all the modern infrastructure in which we live is the result of this spiritualization of nature. Hegel thus explained social progress as the result of the labour of reason in history. However, this dialectical reading of history involved, of course, contradiction, so history was also conceived of as constantly conflicting: Hegel theorized this in his famous dialectic of the lord and the bondsman. According to Hegel, One more word about giving instruction as to what the world ought to be. Philosophy in any case always comes on the scene too late to give it... When philosophy paints its gray in gray, then has a shape of life grown old. By philosophy's gray in gray it cannot be rejuvenated but only understood. The owl of Minerva spreads its wings only with the falling of the dusk. [9] Thus, philosophy was to explain Geschichte (history) afterward. Philosophy is always late, it is only an interpretation of what is rational in the realand, according to Hegel, only what is recognized as rational is real. This idealist understanding of philosophy as interpretation was famously challenged by Karl Marx's 11th thesis on Feuerbach (1845): "Philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways; the point, however, is to change it. " [edit]Social evolutionism Further information: Sociocultural evolution Inspired by the Enlightenment's ideal of progress, social evolutionism became a popular conception in the 19th century. Auguste Comte's (17981857) positivist conception of history, which he divided into the theological stage, the metaphysical stage and the positivist stage, brought upon by modern science, was one of the most influential doctrines of progress. The Whig interpretation of history, as it was later called, associated with scholars of the Victorian and Edwardian eras in Britain, such as Henry Maine or Thomas Macaulay, gives an example of such influence, by looking at human history as progress from savagery and ignorance toward peace, prosperity, and science. Maine described the direction of progress as "from status to contract," from a world in which a child's whole life is pre-determined by the circumstances of his birth, toward one of mobility and choice. The publication of Darwin's The Origin of Species in 1859 introduced human evolution. However, it was quickly transposed from its original biological field to the social field, in "social

Darwinism" theories. Herbert Spencer, who coined the term "survival of the fittest," or Lewis Henry Morgan in Ancient Society (1877) developed evolutionist theories independent from Darwin's works, which would be later interpreted as social Darwinism. These 19thcentury unilineal evolution theories claimed that societies start out in a primitive state and gradually become morecivilised over time, and equated the culture and technology of Western civilisation with progress. Ernst Haeckel formulated his recapitulation theory in 1867, which stated that "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny": the evolution of each individual reproduces the species' evolution, such as in the development of embryos. Hence, a child goes through all the steps from primitive society to modern society. This was later discredited. [citation needed] Haeckel did not support Darwin's theory of natural selection introduced inThe Origin of Species (1859), rather believing in a Lamarckian inheritance of acquired characteristics. Progress was not necessarily, however, positive. Arthur Gobineau's An Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races (185355) was adecadent description of the evolution of the "Aryan race" which was disappearing through miscegenation. Gobineau's works had a large popularity in the so-called scientific racism theories that developed during the New Imperialism period. After the first world war, and even before Herbert Butterfield (19001979) harshly criticized it, the Whig interpretation had gone out of style. The bloodletting of that conflict had indicted the whole notion of linear progress. Paul Valry famously said: "We civilizations now know ourselves mortal." However, the notion itself didn't completely disappear. The End of History and the Last Man (1992) by Francis Fukuyama proposed a similar notion of progress, positing that the worldwide adoption of liberal democracies as the single accredited political system and even modality of human consciousness would represent the "End of History". Fukuyama's work stems from an Kojevian reading of Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit (1807). Unlike Maurice Godelier who interprets history as a process of transformation, Tim Ingold suggests that history is a movement ofautopoiesis[10] A key component to making sense of all of this is to simply recognize that all these issues in social evolution merely serve to support the suggestion that how one considers the nature of history will impact the interpretation and conclusions drawn about history. The critical underexplored question is less about history as content and more about history as process. [edit]The validity of the "Great man theory" in historical studies Further information: The validity of the "hero" in historical studies and Great man theory

After Hegel, who insisted on the role of "great men" in history, with his famous statement about Napoleon, "I saw the Spirit on his horse",Thomas Carlyle argued that history was the biography of a few central individuals, heroes, such as Oliver Cromwell or Frederick the Great, writing that "The history of the world is but the biography of great men." His heroes were political and military figures, the founders or topplers of states. His history of great men, of geniuses good and evil, sought to organize change in the advent of greatness. Explicit defenses of Carlyle's position have been rare in the late 20th century. Most philosophers of history contend that the motive forces in history can best be described only with a wider lens than the one he used for his portraits. A.C. Danto, for example, wrote of the importance of the individual in history, but extended his definition to include social individuals, defined as "individuals we may provisionally characterize as containing individual human beings amongst their parts. Examples of social individuals might be social classes [...], national groups [...], religious organizations [...], large-scale events [...], large-scale social movements [...], etc." (Danto, "The Historical Individual", 266, in Philosophical Analysis and History, edited by Williman H. Dray, RainbowBridge Book Co., 1966). The Great Man approach to history was most popular with professional historians in the 19th century; a popular work of this school is the Encyclopdia Britannica Eleventh Edition (1911), which contains lengthy and detailed biographies about the great men of history. For example to read about (what is known today as) the "Migrations Period," consult the biography of Attila the Hun. After Marx's conception of a materialist history based on the class struggle, which raised attention for the first time to the importance of social factors such as economics in the unfolding of history, Herbert Spencer wrote "You must admit that the genesis of the great man depends on the long series of complex influences which has produced the race in which he appears, and the social state into which that race has slowly grown....Before he can remake his society, his society must make him." The Annales School, founded by Lucien Febvre and Marc Bloch, were a major landmark on the shift from a history centered on individual subjects to studies concentrating in geography, economics, demography, and other social forces. Fernand Braudel's studies on theMediterranean Sea as "hero" of history, Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie's history of climate, etc., were inspired by this School. [edit]Does history have a teleological sense? For further information: Social progress and Progress (history) Theodicy claimed that history had a progressive direction leading to an eschatological end, given by a superior power. However, this transcendent teleological sense can be thought as immanent to

human history itself. Hegel probably represents the epitome of teleological philosophy of history. Hegel's teleology was taken up by Francis Fukuyama in his The End of History and the Last Man (see Social evolutionism above). Thinkers such as Nietzsche, Michel Foucault, Althusser or Deleuze deny any teleological sense to history, claiming that it is best characterized by discontinuities, ruptures, and various time-scales, which the Annales School had demonstrated. Schools of thought influenced by Hegel see history as progressive, too but they saw, and see progress as the outcome of a dialectic in which factors working in opposite directions are over time reconciled (see above). History was best seen as directed by a Zeitgeist, and traces of the Zeitgeist could be seen by looking backward. Hegel believed that history was moving man toward "civilization", and some also claim he thought that the Prussian state incarnated the "End of History". In his Lessons on the History of Philosophy, he explains that each epochal philosophy is in a way the whole of philosophy; it is not a subdivision of the Whole but this Whole itself apprehended in a specific modality. [edit]Historical accounts of writing history Further information: Historiography A classic example of history being written by the victorsor more precisely, by the survivors [11] would be the scarcity of unbiased information that has come down to us [who?] about the Carthaginians. Roman historians left tales of cruelty and human sacrifice practiced by their longtime enemies; however no Carthaginian was left alive to give their side of the story. Similarly, we only have the Christian side of how Christianity came to be the dominant religion of Europe. However, we know very little about other European religions, such as Paganism.[citation
needed]

We have the European version of the conquest of the Americas, with an interpretation of the

native version of events only emerging to popular consciousness since the early 1980s. We have Herodotus's Greek history of the Persian Wars, but the Persian recall of the events is little known in Western Culture. In many respects, the head of state may be guilty of cruelties or even simply a different way of doing things. In some societies, however, to speak of or write critically of rulers can amount to conviction of treason and death. As such, in many ways, what is left as the "official record" of events is oft influenced by one's desire to avoid exile or execution. However, "losers" in certain time periods often have more of an impetus than the "winners" to write histories that comfort themselves andjustify their own behavior.[11] Examples include the historiography of the American Civil War, where it can be argued that the losers (Southerners) have written more history books on the subject than the winners and, until recently, dominated

the national perception of history. Confederate generals such as Lee and Jackson are generally held in higher esteem than their Union counterparts. Popular films such as Cold Mountain, Gone with the Wind and The Birth of a Nation have told the story from the Southern viewpoint. Also, despite "losing" theVietnam War, the United States produces more scholarship on the war than any other country, including Vietnam.[12] Popular history abounds with condemnations of the cruelty of African slave traders and colonists, despite the "winning" status of those people in their heyday.[11] As is true of pre-Columbian populations of America, the historical record of America being "discovered" by Europeans is now sometimes presented as a history of invasion, exploitation and dominance of a people who had been there before the Europeans. This reinterpretation of the historical record is called historical revisionism, which can take the form of negationism, which is the denial of genocides and crimes against humanity. The revision of previously accepted historical accounts is a constant process in which "today's winners are tomorrow's losers", and the rise and fall of present institutions and movements influence the way historians see the past.[11] In the same sense, the teaching, in French secondary schools, of the Algerian War of Independence and of colonialism, has been criticized by several historians, and is the subject of frequent debates. Thus, in contradiction with the February 23, 2005 law on colonialism, voted by the UMP conservative party, historian Benjamin Stora notes that: As Algerians do not appear in their "indigenous" conditions and their sub-citizens status, as the history of nationalist movementis never evoqued, as none of the great figures of the resistance Messali Hadj, Ferhat Abbas emerge nor retain attention, in one word, as no one explains to students what has been colonisation, we make them unable to understand why the decolonisation took place.[13] Obviously the victors do have advantages in promoting their version of events, even if they don't erase their enemies completely from existence. The victors may have control over the churches, the courts and schools. This may give the ruling elites nearly total control over the molding of consciousness and discourse over those they rule. In dictatorships, ruthless censorship allows only the state-approved version of events to be made public, and much that happened remains secret if it proved hurtful to the ruling elite. Liberal democracies are not immune however. In the West for example, the concentration of media into ever fewer hands has given the captains of major media and the Public Relations industry increased control over the parameters of public discourse that form the boundaries of debate we all have in classrooms, and with friends and coworkers on matters such as war and politics. [edit]Michel Foucault's analysis of historical and political discourse

The historico-political discourse analyzed by Michel Foucault in Society Must Be Defended (197576) considered truth as the fragile product of a historical struggle, first conceptualized under the name of "race struggle" however, "race"'s meaning was different from today's biological notion, being closer to the sense of "nation" (distinct from nation-states; its signification is here closer to "people"). Boulainvilliers, for example, was an exponent of nobility rights. He claimed that the French nobility were the racial descendants of the Franks who invaded France (while the Third Estate was descended from the conquered Gauls), and had right to power by virtue of right of conquest. He used this approach to formulate a historical thesis of the course of French political historya critique of both the monarchy and the Third Estate. Foucault regarded him as the founder of the historico-political discourse as political weapon. In Great Britain, this historico-political discourse was used by the bourgeoisie, the people and the aristocracy as a means of struggle against the monarchy - cf. Edward Coke or John Lilburne. In France, Boulainvilliers, Nicolas Frret, and then Sieys, Augustin Thierry and Cournotreappropriated this form of discourse. Finally, at the end of the 19th century, this discourse was incorporated by racialist biologists andeugenicists, who gave it the modern sense of "race" and, even more, transformed this popular discourse into a "state racism" (Nazism). According to Foucault, Marxists also seized this discourse and took it in a different direction, transforming the essentialist notion of "race" into the historical notion of "class struggle", defined by socially structured position: capitalist or proletarian. This displacement of discourse constitutes one of the bases of Foucault's thought: discourse is not tied to the subject, rather the "subject" is a construction of discourse. Moreover, discourse is not the simple ideological and mirror reflexion of an economical infrastructure, but is a product and the battlefield of multiples forceswhich may not be reduced to the simple dualist contradiction of two energies. Foucault shows that what specifies this discourse from the juridical and philosophical discourse is its conception of truth: truth is no longer absolute, it is the product of "race struggle". History itself, which was traditionally the sovereign's science, the legend of his glorious feats, became the discourse of the people, a political stake. The subject is not any more a neutral arbitrate, judge or legislator, as in Solon's orKant's conceptions. Therefore, - what became - the "historical subject" must search in history's furor, under the "juridical code's dried blood", the multiple contingencies from which a fragile rationality temporarily finally emerged. This may be, perhaps, compared to the sophistdiscourse in Ancient Greece. Foucault warns that it has nothing to do with Machiavelli's or Hobbes's discourse on war, for to this popular discourse, the Sovereign is nothing more than "an illusion, an instrument, or, at the best, an enemy. It is {the historico-political discourse} a discourse that beheads the king, anyway that dispenses itself from the sovereign and that denounces it".

[edit]History and education Further information: Education, Pedagogy, and Philosophy of education Since Plato's Republic, civic education and instruction has had a central role in politics and the constitution of a common identity. History has thus sometimes become the target of propaganda, for example in historical revisionist attempts. Plato's insistence on the importance of education was relayed by Rousseau's Emile: Or, On Education (1762), a necessary counterpart of The Social Contract (also 1762). Public education has been seen by republican regimes and the Enlightenment as a prerequisite of the masses' progressive emancipation, as conceived by Kant in Was Ist Aufklrung? (What Is Enlightenment?, 1784). The creation of modern education systems, instrumental in the construction of nation-states, also passed by the elaboration of a common, national history. History textbooks are one of the many ways through which this common history was transmitted. Le Tour de France par deux enfants, for example, was the Third Republic's classic textbook for elementary school: it described the story of two French children who, following the German annexation of the AlsaceLorraine region in 1870, go on a tour de France during which they become aware of France's diversity and the existence of the various patois. In most societies, schools and curricula are controlled by governments. As such, there is always an opportunity for governments to impose. Granted, often governments in free societies serve to protect freedoms, check hate speech and breaches of constitutional rights; but the power itself to impose is available to use the education system to influence thought of malleable minds, positively or negatively, towards truth or towards a version of truth. A recent example of the fragility of government involvement with history textbooks was the Japanese history textbook controversies. [edit]Narrative and history A current popular conception considers the value of narrative in the writing and experience of history. Important analysts in this area includePaul Ricur, Louis Mink, W.B. Gallie and Hayden White. Some have doubted this approach because it draws fictional and historical narrative closer together, and there remains a perceived fundamental bifurcation between historical and fictional narrative (Ricur, vol. 1, 52). In spite of this, most modern historians, such as Barbara Tuchman or David McCullough, would consider narrative writing important to their approaches. The theory of narrated history (or historicized narrative) holds that the structure of lived experience, and such experience narrated in both fictional and non-fictional works (literature and historiography) have in common the figuration of temporal experience." In this way, narrative has a generously encompassing ability to grasp together and integrate[] into one whole and

complete story the composite representations of historical experience (Ricur x, 173). Louis Mink writes that, the significance of past occurrences is understandable only as they are locatable in the ensemble of interrelationships that can be grasped only in the construction of narrative form (148). Marxist theorist Fredric Jameson also analyzes historical understanding this way, and writes that history is inaccessible to us except in textual form [] it can be approached only by way of prior (re)textualization (82). [edit]History as propaganda: Is history always written by the victors? See also: Truth by consensus In his "Society must be Defended", Michel Foucault posited that the victors of a social struggle use their political dominance to suppress a defeated adversary's version of historical events in favor of their own propaganda, which may go so far as historical revisionism (see Michel Foucault's analysis of historical and political discourse above). Nations adopting such an approach would likely fashion a "universal" theory of history to support their aims, with a teleological and deterministic philosophy of history used to justify the inevitableness and rightness of their victories (see The Enlightenment's ideal of progress above). Philosopher Paul Ricoeur has written of the use of this approach by totalitarian and Nazi regimes, with such regimes "exercis[ing] a virtual violence upon the diverging tendencies of history" ( History and Truth183), and with fanaticism the result. For Ricoeur, rather than a unified, teleological philosophy of history, "We carry on several histories simultaneously, in times whose periods, crises, and pauses do not coincide. We enchain, abandon, and resume several histories, much as a chess player who plays several games at once, renewing now this one, now the another" ( History and Truth 186). For Ricoeur, Marx's unified view of history may be suspect, but is nevertheless seen as: the philosophy of history par excellence: not only does it provide a formula for the dialectics of social forcesunder the name of historical materialismbut it also sees in the proletarian class the reality, which is at once universal and concrete and which, although it be oppressed today, will constitute the unity of history in the future. From this standpoint, the proletarian perspective furnishes both a theoretical meaning of history and a practical goal for history, a principle of explication and a line of action. (History and Truth 183) Walter Benjamin believed that Marxist historians must take a radically different view point from the bourgeois and idealist points of view, in an attempt to create a sort of history from below, which would be able to conceive an alternative conception of history, not based, as in classical historical studies, on the philosophical and juridical discourse of sovereignty--an approach that would invariably adhere to major states (the victors') points of view.

George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four is a fictional account of the manipulation of the historical record for nationalist aims and manipulation of power. In the book, he wrote, "He who controls the present, controls the past. He who controls the past, controls the future." The creation of a "national story" by way of management of the historical record is at the heart of the debate about history as propaganda. To some degree, all nations are active in the promotion of such "national stories," with ethnicity, nationalism, gender, power, heroic figures, class considerations and important national events and trends all clashing and competing within the narrative. [edit]See also Whig history is the approach to historiography which presents the past as an inevitable progression towards ever greater liberty andenlightenment, culminating in modern forms of liberal democracy and constitutional monarchy. In general, Whig historians stress the rise ofconstitutional government, personal freedoms and scientific progress. The term is often applied generally (and pejoratively) to histories that present the past as the inexorable march of progress toward enlightenment. The term is also used extensively in the history of science for historiography that focuses on the successful chain of theories and experiments that lead to present-day science, while ignoring failed theories and dead ends. [1] Whig history has many similarities with the Marxist theory of history, which believes that humanity is moving (through historical stages) to the classless, egalitarian society of communism.[2][3] Whig history is a form of Liberalism, that puts its faith in the power of human reason to reshape society for the better, regardless of past history and tradition. It demonstrates the inevitable progress of mankind. Its opposite is conservative history or "Toryism." English historianA.J.P. Taylor explains, "Toryism rests on doubt in human nature; it distrusts improvement, clings to traditional institutions, prefers the past to the future. It is a sentiment rather than a principle." [4] Contents [hide] 1 Terminology 2 Butterfield's intervention
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2.1 Butterfield's formulation 2.2 Subsequent views 3 The Whig historians within a tradition 4 Other applications of the term

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4.1 In the history of science 4.2 As teleology 4.3 In popular culture 5 Further reading 6 See also

7 Notes 8 External links [edit]Terminology The British historian Herbert Butterfield coined the term "Whig history" in his small but influential book The Whig Interpretation of History(1931). It takes its name from the British Whigs, advocates of the power of Parliament, who opposed the Tories, advocates of the power of theKing. The term has been applied widely in historical disciplines outside of British history (the history of science, for example) to criticize anyteleological or goal-directed, hero-based, and transhistorical narrative. The abstract noun "Whiggishness" is sometimes used as a generic term for Whig historiography. It should not be confused with "Whiggism", which is a political ideology, and has no direct relation to either theBritish Whig or American Whig parties. (The term "Whiggery" is ambiguous in contemporary usage: it may either mean party politics and ideology, or a general intellectual approach.) [edit]Butterfield's intervention When H. A. L. Fisher in 1928 gave the Raleigh Lecture on The Whig Historians, from Sir James Mackintosh to Sir George Trevelyan he implied that "Whig historian" was adequately taken as a political rather than a progressive or teleological label; this put the concept into play.[5] P. B. M. Blaas has argued that Whig history itself had lost all vitality by 1914. [6] Butterfield's book on the 'Whig interpretation' marked the emergence of a negative concept in historiography under a convenient phrase, but was not isolated. Undermining 'whiggish' narratives was one aspect of the post-World War I re-evaluation of European history in general, and Butterfield's critique exemplified this trend. Subsequent generations of academic historians have similarly rejected Whig history because of its presentist and teleological bent. According to Victor Feske, there is too much readiness to accept Butterfield's classic formulation from 1931 as definitive.[7] A study, Herbert Butterfield and the Interpretation of History by Keith Sewell, was published in 2005. [edit]Butterfield's formulation The characteristics of Whig history as defined by Butterfield include interpreting history as a story of progress toward the present, and specifically toward the British constitutional settlement. Butterfield wrote: It is part and parcel of the whig interpretation of history that it studies the past with reference to the present [...][8]

Typical distortions thereby introduced are:

Viewing the British parliamentary, constitutional monarchy as the apex of human political development;

Assuming that the constitutional monarchy was in fact an ideal held throughout all ages of the past, despite the observed facts of British history and the several power struggles between monarchs and parliaments; Assuming that political figures in the past held current political beliefs (anachronism); Assuming that British history was a march of progress whose inevitable outcome was the constitutional monarchy; and Presenting political figures of the past as heroes, who advanced the cause of this political progress, or villains, who sought to hinder its inevitable triumph. [9]

Butterfield argued that this approach to history compromised the work of the historian in several ways. The emphasis on the inevitability of progress leads to the mistaken belief that the progressive sequence of events becomes "a line of causation," tempting the historian to go no further to investigate the causes of historical change. [10] The focus on the present as the goal of historical change leads the historian to a special kind of abridgement, selecting only those events that seem important from the present point of view. [11] Butterfield's antidote to Whig history was "to evoke a certain sensibility towards the past, the sensibility which studies the past 'for the sake of the past', which delights in the concrete and the complex, which 'goes out to meet the past', which searches for 'unlikenesses between past and present'".[12] [edit]Subsequent views Butterfield's formulation has subsequently received much attention, and the kind of historical writing he argued against in generalised terms is no longer academically respectable. Despite its polemical success, Butterfield's celebrated book itself has been criticised by David Cannadine as slight, confused, repetitive and superficial.[13] Michael Bentley[14] analyses the "Whig theory" according to Butterfield as equivalent to the formation of a canon of 19th-century historians of England (such as William Stubbs, James Anthony Froude, E. A. Freeman, J. R. Green, W. E. H. Lecky, Lord Acton, J. R. Seeley, S. R. Gardiner, C. H. Firth and J. B. Bury) that in fact excludes few except Thomas Carlyle; the theory identifies the common factors. Bentley comments that, Carlyle apart, the so-called Whigs were predominantly Christian, predominantly Anglican, thinkers for whom the Reformationsupplied the critical theatre of enquiry when considering the origins of modern England. When they wrote about the history of the English constitution, as so many of them did, they approached their story from the standpoint of having Good News to relate. Roger Scruton, in his A Dictionary of Political Thought (1982), takes the theory underlying "Whig history" to be centrally concerned withsocial progress and reaction, with the progressives shown as victors and benefactors. Cannadine[15] wrote of the English tradition that: It was fiercely partisan and righteously judgemental, dividing the personnel of the past into the good and the bad. And it did so on the basis of the marked preference for liberal and progressive causes, rather than conservative and reactionary ones. [...] Whig history was, in short, an

extremely biassed view of the past: eager to hand out moral judgements, and distorted by teleology, anachronism and present-mindedness. [edit]The Whig historians within a tradition Paul Rapin de Thoyras's history of England was published in 1723 and became "the classic Whig history" for the first half of the 18th century. [16] Rapin claimed that the English had preserved their ancient constitution against the absolutist tendencies of the Stuarts. Rapin's history was, however, replaced as the standard history of England in the late 18th century and early 19th century by that of David Hume. Hume challenged Whig views of the past and the Whig historians in turn attacked Hume; but they could not dent his history. In the early 19th century some Whig historians came to incorporate Hume's views, dominant for the previous fifty years. These historians were members of the New Whigs around Charles James Fox and Lord Holland, in opposition until 1830, and so "needed a new historical philosophy". [17] Fox himself intended to write a history of the Glorious Revolution of 1688 but only managed the first year of James II's reign. A fragment was published in 1808. James Mackintosh then sought to write a Whig history of the Glorious Revolution, published in 1834 as the History of the Revolution in England in 1688. William Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England (17659) and Henry Hallam'sConstitutional History of England (1827) reveal many Whiggish traits. According to Arthur Marwick,[18] Hallam was the first Whig historian. Hume still dominated English historiography but this changed when Thomas Babington Macaulay, utilising Fox and Mackintosh's work and manuscript collections, published the first volumes of his History of England in 1848. It was an immediate success, replacing Hume's history and becoming the new orthodoxy.[19] While Macaulay was a popular and celebrated historian of the Whig school, his work did not feature in Butterfield's 1931 book. According to Ernst Breisach[20] "his style captivated the public as did his good sense of the past and firm Whiggish convictions". Perhaps the pinnacle of Whig history is his widely read multivolume History of England from the Accession of James II. Macaulay's first chapter proposes that: I shall relate how the new settlement was, during many troubled years, successfully defended against foreign and domestic enemies; how, under that settlement, the authority of law and the security of property were found to be compatible with a liberty of discussion and of individual action never before known; how, from the auspicious union of order and freedom, sprang a prosperity of which the annals of human affairs had furnished no example; how our country, from a state of ignominious vassalage, rapidly rose to the place of umpire among European powers; how her opulence and her martial glory grew together; how, by wise and resolute good faith, was gradually established a public credit fruitful of marvels which to the statesmen of any former age would have seemed incredible; how a gigantic commerce gave birth to a maritime power, compared with which every other maritime power, ancient or modern, sinks into insignificance; how Scotland, after ages of enmity, was at length united to England, not merely by legal bonds, but by indissoluble ties of interest and affection; how, in America, the British

colonies rapidly became far mightier and wealthier than the realms which Cortes and Pizarro had added to the dominions of Charles the Fifth; how in Asia, British adventurers founded an empire not less splendid and more durable than that of Alexander. ... (T)he history of our country during the last hundred and sixty years is eminently the history of physical, of moral, and of intellectual improvement. A crucial figure in the later survival and respectability of Whig history was William Stubbs, the constitutional historian and influential teacher of a generation of historians. According to Reba Soffer[21] His rhetorical gifts often concealed his combination of High Church Anglicanism, Whig history, and civic responsibility.

George Kitson Clark writes[22] ...the survival of the myth through the times of Stubbs is one of the most interesting and significant facts in its history. [...] ... indeed it was largely later 19th century historians who converted that very equivocal, essentially medieval characterSimon de Montfort into a forward-looking, Liberal-minded statesman with a profound understanding of the virtues of representative government.

[edit]Other applications of the term [edit]In the history of science It has been argued that the historiography of science is "riddled with Whiggish history". [23] Like other Whig histories, Whig history of science tends to divide historical actors into "good guys," who are on the side of truth (as we now know it) and "bad guys," who opposed the emergence of these truths because of ignorance or bias. [24] From this Whiggish perspective, Ptolemy would be criticized because his astronomical system placed the Earth at the center of the universe while Aristarchus would be praised because he placed the Sun at the center of the solar system. This kind of evaluation ignores historical background and the evidence that was available at a particular time: did Aristarchus have evidence to support his idea that the Sun was at the center; were there good reasons to reject Ptolemy's system before the 16th century? The writing of Whig history of science is especially found in the writings of scientists[25] and general historians,[26] while this whiggish tendency is commonly opposed by professional historians of science. Nicholas Jardine describes the changing attitude to whiggishness this way:[27] By the mid-1970s, it had become commonplace among historians of science to employ the terms Whig and Whiggish, often accompanied by one or more of hagiographic,

internalist, triumphalist, even positivist, to denigrate grand narratives of scientific progress. At one level there is, indeed, an obvious parallel with the attacks on Whig constitutional history in the opening decades of the century. For, as P. B. M. Blaas has shown, those earlier attacks were part and parcel of a more general onslaught in the name of an autonomous, professional and scientific history, on popular, partisan and moralising historiography. Similarly,... For post-WWII champions of the newly professionalized history of science the targets were quite different. Above all, they were out to establish a critical distance between the history of science and the teaching and promotion of the sciences. In particular, they were suspicious of the grand celebratory and didactic narratives of scientific discovery and progress that had proliferated in the inter-war years. More recently, some scholars have argued that Whig history is essential to the history of science. At one level, "the very term 'the history of science' has itself profoundly Whiggish implications. One may be reasonably clear what 'science' means in the 19th century and most of the 18th century. In the 17th century 'science' has very different meaning. For example chemistry is inextricably mixed up with alchemy. Before the 17th century dissecting out such a thing as 'science' in anything like the modern sense of the term involves profound distortions."[28] The science historians' rejection of whiggishness has been criticized by some scientists for failing to appreciate the temporal depth of scientific research.[29] [edit]As teleology In The Anthropic Cosmological Principle (1986, see anthropic principle for details) John D. Barrow and Frank J. Tipler identify Whiggishness (Whiggery) with a teleological principle, of 'convergence' in history to liberal democracy.[30] [edit]In popular culture Despite their shortcomings as interpretations of the past, Whiggish histories continue to influence popular understandings of political and social development. This persistence reflects the power of dramatic narratives that detail epic struggles for enlightened ideals. Aspects of the Whig interpretation are apparent in films, television, political rhetoric, and even history textbooks.[31] Popular understandings of human evolution and paleoanthropology may be imbued with a form of "whiggishness". See, for example, the celebrated scientific illustration, The March of Progress (1965). Most portrayals and fictionalized adaptations of the Scopes Trial, such as inInherit the Wind (1955), subscribe to a Whig view of the trial and its aftermath. This was challenged by historian Edward J. Larson in his bookSummer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America's Continuing Debate Over Science and Religion (1997), for which he won the Pulitzer Prize for History in 1998.[32]