A Brief History of Modern History: A Selection from Susan Neiman’s Learning from the Germans (2019)
“Once, history was a matter of consolation or pride: just see how far we’ve come from barbarism. Now it’s a matter of warning and shame. The modern subject of history evolved as a substitute for Providence. Since language began, peoples have recorded their histories in everything from songs to tax records, but the systematic study of history began with the process of secularization. The idea of Providence was the idea that the problem of evil is no problem at all, for an unseen and all-seeing God will turn the wheels of fortune so that every wrong is eventually righted, every righteousness rewarded. That idea was mortally wounded by the Lisbon earthquake of 1755, and it could not be revived. By the end of the eighteenth century, Kant knew that this promise of justice could not be kept by theology, so he set history in its place. His critical philosophy allows us to believe that the human race may be progressing to a better state. If we cannot believe this much, we will never maintain the fortitude we need in order to make it true. That’s why Kant calls this belief rational faith.
Hence history was studied for signs of progress within it. The discipline flourished in the nineteenth-century Prussian Academy, where faith in history as an exact science was so unshaking that it gave historians lavish funding that their colleagues in natural science envied at the time. As Nietzsche later summarized, ‘It put history in the place of the other spiritual powers, art and religion, as the one sovereign: inasmuch as it is the ‘idea realizing itself,’ ‘the dialectic of the spirit of the nations,’ and ‘the tribunal of the world.’ The idea must have encouraged the empirical toilers: all those hours in the archives were not devoted simply to finding information, but to proving we live in the best of all possible worlds.
There was a notable jump from Kant to Hegel, who argued that history always tends toward justice and freedom. Kant believed that progress is possible. Hegel and his student Marx believed that progress is necessary. The twentieth century left little room for belief in the latter, notwithstanding temporary Hegelian outbursts like those of Francis Fukuyama. One consequence was a turn from studies of history to studies of memory. Memory makes no claim to meaning beyond itself. Those who insist on the importance of preserving memory are, often enough, deliberately anti-messianic. We should, they believe, preserve historical memory not as source of hope or comfort, but as warning. This is how fragile our civilization can be.”—Susan Neiman, Learning from the Germans: Race and the Memory of Evil (2019)
