Remembered Past: on History, Historians, and Historical Knowledge
by Bob Cheeks | View comments |
Print This Post
John Lukacs’ work rejects Descartes’ idea that history can be defined as a science, or even a social science, that it is reducible to raw data much like physics. Rather, the historical imperative is “understanding.”
Truth is the only merit that gives dignity and worth to history. John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton, Lord Acton The History of Freedom and Other Essays, 1907
In his essay, "Lord Acton: The Historian as Thinker," Richard Weaver tells of James Bryce’s meeting with the great historian,
He spoke…as if from some mountain summit high in the air, he saw beneath him the far winding path of human progress from dim Cimmerian shores of prehistoric shadow into the fuller yet broken and fitful light of modern time.
Lord Acton believed the purpose of history was to “heighten the conscience” of man. And, “conscience,” Dr. Weaver explained, “…signifies in its root meaning something very much like recollection.” To be imbued with “conscience” is to remember the past, to understand those things that were done correctly, and those things that were grievous error. History then, is, or should be, a force of knowledge that strengthens man’s conscience, and the historian, Dr. Weaver explains, “is not only the interpreter of the past; he is also in a sense the guardian of morality.”
But historical genius is rare. The nineteenth century was blessed with Lord Acton, but our own era has provided a gentleman whose gifts as a philosophical historian may very well rise to the level of Acton.
John Lukacs is a Hungarian émigré who fled his native land during the Soviet occupation in 1945. Arriving in the United States, he took a teaching position at Chestnut Hill College in 1947 and began his long and notable career. He has published more than twenty books and literally hundreds of articles, essays, and reviews. Lukac’s work is not as well known as that of Stephen Ambrose, Forrest MacDonald, or Howard Zinn but that may change soon with the publication, by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, of a compendium of Lukacs’ writings, titled, Remembered Past.
Lukacs’ work rejects Descartes’ idea that history can be defined as a science, or even a social science, that it is reducible to raw data much like physics. Rather, the historical imperative is “understanding.” The historian must come to grips with the question of actual occurrences and potential occurrences. And, it is a subject predicated on the imperfection inherent not only in man’s communication but in the fallibility of the specie itself.
Lukacs argues that historical consciousness is “personal and participant,” and it is here that he reflects the perspective of Lord Acton. The great philosophical quest to “know thyself” requires an examination of our historical antecedents. More importantly, Lukacs rejects modernity’s notion that man is perfectible. There is a limit to man’s knowledge predicated on “the nature of their being,” and if we comprehend that fact we “do not aspire to utter definitive statements, do not pretend to speak for all time, and do not incline to dream of utopia (or of the apocalypse).”
Lukacs' historical philosophy is established upon the Judeo-Christian, Western tradition: man is flawed, his nature is evil (Original Sin), and above all he is fallible. But modernity challenges the traditional worldview: the ancient temptation is to rise above God, to reject Him, and set out on our own in foolish pursuit of “pure” truth, (that “belongs to God alone, the changeless source of man’s variable being”) defines the ultimate blasphemy!
In his book, At the End of an Age, Lukacs wrote, “the coming of Christ to this earth may have been? no,…it was, the central event of the universe;…the greatest, the most consequential event in the entire universe has occurred here, on this earth.” And so, Lukacs’ historical philosophy affirms and mirrors the inherent, revealed, truth of God’s plan, through Christ. Perhaps it is Lukacs' rejection of modernity’s permitted historical “categories,” or the seminal workings of his intellect that have excluded him from public notoriety, but his writings, his thoughts, are both enlightening and enduring. His prose is brilliant, clever, and somewhat melancholy for the “Modern Age” is in “a long decline.”
Remembered Past is a heavy tome, nearly one thousand pages, and his essays and reviews are best read in quiet and solitude for there is much meat to digest. The publishers have included not only copious notes, which are gems in themselves, but a bibliography of Lukacs’ work, and a required index. I have utilized a brilliant “preface” written by historian Mark Malvasi of Randolph-Macon College in Ashland, Virginia and ISI vice president of publications, Jeffery O. Nelson, in this review.
While Lord Acton believed that sovereignty was necessary in the development of conscience, Lukacs has expanded the concept in explaining, that metaphysical “reality” is revealed within historical consciousness, “which is nothing less than the consciousness of ourselves.”
robertcheeks@core.com
Read more articles by Bob Cheeks
