The Complexity of History, Essay Example

Although, at the first glance, it may seem that history is an entirely exact science that remained the same through the entire human civilisation, in fact, it is far from being so. Just as any other aspect of the human civilizational development, history was gaining its contemporary embodiment through various stages of evolution and transformation. The aim of this essay is to address this transformation of history through various epochs and to demonstrate various perspectives on it.

Although history can be applied to the various phenomena, in terms of this essay by history is meant the study of the past events of the human activity. In this regard, history is viewed as an exploration of various facts and events taking place in the human civilizational development together with cause-effect and conditionality of these events in the framework of particular times and socio-cultural specifics (White, 1973). In other words, history is more complex than just an act of establishing factors of the human development. It is also interested in the verification or authentication of those events and their interpretation.

On the other hand, history was not always perceived as it is nowadays. The father of history Herodotus had a different perception of it. He is considered to be the father of history because, he was the one to write down the event surrounding him and the experiences he had in various travelling. Consequently, he was writing down the historical events he lived through (Evans, 1968). However, the main difference between his approach and contemporary history is that it was a subjective narrative that reflected Herodotus’ political and ethno-cultural perspective. Although the nowadays interpretation of history varies across political and cultural perspectives, they are not reinventing events, creating mythological discourses like Herodotus did (Evans, 1968). In other words, Herodotus created the historical narrative, while the medieval philosopher Ibn Khaldun outlined the science of history.

Unlike Herodotus, Ibn Khaldun emphasised the necessity of studying the history of the past epochs as a science with all its complexity and interconnectivity to other factors of socio-cultural life. In this regard, he outlined the necessity of studying the context together with the events:

“History is an art of valuable doctrine, numerous in advantages and honourable in purpose; it informs us about bygone nations in the context of their habits, the prophets in the context of their lives and kings in the context of their states and politics, so those who seek the guidance of the past in either worldly or religious matters may have that advantage” (Al-Jubouri, 2005).

On the other hand, with the development of the human civilisation history became misused in political and manipulating purposes and changed its primary functionality from educating to manipulating, which is reflected in the speech of Malcolm X “History as a weapon” (Malcolm X, 1963). In this regard, he states that history is written from the perspective of the dominant and oppressing power of the White people and is aimed at indoctrination of racism and oppression of the Afro-American people. He argues that the history was rewritten to deprive his people off the origins and roots of their ethno-cultural belonging: “When you know the origin, you know the cause. If you don’t know the origin, you don’t know the cause. And if you do not know the cause, you don’t know the reason, you’re just cut off, you’re left standing in midair” (Malcolm X, 1963).

In this narration, Malcom X demonstrates that although history is a science and vital one for individual understanding of the ethno-cultural belonging, it is written by the dominant political powers within a certain society. Thus, the danger of misusing history is that the human self-perception can be easily altered and manipulated for the purposes of a single dominant group. For the spreading of the freedom of the human thought, history has to be studied as an unbiased science and protected from its politicisation (Tomlinson, 1985).

References

Al-Jubourni, A. (2005). Ibn Khaldun and the Philosophy of History. Retrieved from https://philosophynow.org/issues/50/Ibn_Khaldun_and_the_Philosophy_of_History.

Evans, J.A. (1968). Father of History of Father of Lies: the reputation of Herodotus. The Classical Journal, 64(1), 11-17. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/3296527?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents.

Malcolm X (1963). History is a Weapon: Message to the Grassroots. Retrieved from http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/malcgrass.html.

Tomlinson, R. (1985). What Is The History of Science? Part I. History Today, 35(4). Retrieved from http://www.historytoday.com/richard-tomlinson/what-history-science-part-i.

White, H. (1973). Interpretation in History. New Literary History, 4(2), 281-314. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/468478?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents.

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