All history is presentism

While I agree that the concept of “presentism” is a bit of atheoretical nonsense (of course we start with our position in the present in interpreting the past, how could it be any other way? Doesn’t necessarily mean our interpretations are wrong. Of course we try to use the past to try to understand the present, the future and the nature of our species- did you think it was meant to as little more than a game of sudoku, referring to nothing outside itself?) I thought the treatment of David Armitage was disgraceful.

It seems to me that the quoted bit from Gannon substitutes something banal (that our research methods and standards of evidence change over time, and that researchers have their own interests in picking topics) for the idea of “presentism”, which, if it’s interesting, has to mean something more than that, and is usually taken to mean studying the past so as to make change or influence the present (and future). But the first, banal, bit doesn’t imply the second, so even if it’s completely true, it doesn’t support “presentism” in the sense that’s relevant and interesting.

(I dont’ have anything special against the interesting sense of “presentism” as such, although I think it can lead people astray in their evaluation of their own work and that of others if the approach isn’t consciously acknowledged and carefully applied. But the idea that the strong/interesting version is really what “everyone” is doing seems pretty obviously wrong and often dishonest.)

… I thought the treatment of David Armitage was disgraceful.

But you’re not sufficiently outraged by it to let us into the secret of what it was.

I, for one, welcome the fact that when a prominent academic makes a theoretical argument I disagree with, he is forced to issue a grovelling apology.

I couldn’t agree more John. There is nothing such as value-free inquiry as there is nothing as a value-free inquirer.

How does this apply to climate science, evolution or virology?

The trouble with a term like “presentism” is that so much is hiding behind the slogan. IIRC the complaint that Hunt had was basically that too much history projected onto people involved in, say, the French Revolution, aspirations and projects that were really no part of what motivated them and how they saw themselves. So, for example, to see the Jacobins, in Marxist terms, as agents of the bourgeois revolution, would be to project onto them an understanding that they did not themselves have. I’m fine with this, basically, so long as we also acknowledge and make room for the fact that people’s conceptions of themselves are fallible and defeasible and that what they were in fact engaged in doing may be different from what they took themselves to be doing.

I’m fine with this, basically, so long as we also acknowledge and make room for the fact that people’s conceptions of themselves are fallible and defeasible and that what they were in fact engaged in doing may be different from what they took themselves to be doing.

It’s so common for people’s actions to have consequences that they didn’t intend and wouldn’t have wanted that it is (or would be) odd for anybody not to be able to grasp that ‘What did the Jacobins intend to achieve?’ and ‘What were the results of the Jacobins’ actions?’ are two different questions, and odd also to suppose that only the first of these, and not the second, was worth considering; although people are often just that odd and even much odder.

Hunt is also worried a different, though related, form of “presentism”, that people (particularly students and early career historians) are now more interested in the relatively recent past (after 1800) than in the more distant past. That’s related to the broader lament about the decline of the classics.

If other people are not interested in the same things that I am interested in, it’s reasonable for me to regret that, but not for me to blame them for it.

If it’s true (as it well may be, although I wouldn’t know one way or the other) that there has been a shift in the balance of historical interest, with a growth in the level of interest in recent history and a decline in the level of interest in, say, pre-1800 history, then–whether you think that’s a good thing, a bad thing, or neither–‘Why is this change happening?’ would be a reasonable question. It might repay historical and/or sociological investigation. In particular, anybody who thinks the shift has gone too far and who wants to halt or even to reverse it would be best advised to begin by investigating its causes. Lamenting exhortations are unlikely to be strategically effective.

the non-academic critics of ‘presentism’ conflate its two meanings and hop backwards and forwards between them… the interpretation of the past using modern conceptions like racism… is not the same as ascribing such conceptions to people in the past – but it’s implied that it is, when it suits them

Possibly revealing myself as a annoying “non-academic critic” of academic history but I don’t really understand how you can interpret the past in terms of racism without ascribing racism to anybody in the past (that seems a bit like saying a society had money but nobody knew what money was).

@engels “that seems a bit like saying a society had money but nobody knew what money was”. Well, it seems a standard view of Marxists (e.g. GEM de Ste Croix) that ancient society had classes even though nobody knew what classes were. No doubt there are other examples.

The payoff in the Gannon article is to condemn Sweet as privileged, while apparently Gannon is not privileged. The notion that Sweet is a racist for attacking Clarence Thomas and the 1619 Project needs interrogation. I’m not sure that Gannon actually has a clear idea what “privilege” means. Tax exemption or the franchise and such are really are privileges. It it not at all clear that being white is privilege in the moral sense, as 1)being white is not a moral choice, since it’s not a choice at all and 2)it is not clear how this so-called privilege is bestowed, enforced or withdrawn. Gannon’s charge that Sweet is wrong because he thinks Bad Thoughts makes me wonder why he doesn’t defend Thomas against the villainous Sweet.

One meaning of the word “presentism” is forgetting that the people of the past did not know what was going to happen, while we do. It is not clear at all that Gannon knows even this much.

I find these claims, both about history and economics, disingenuous. Of course, values play a role in how we choose and frame questions. Also, however, surely we agree that there are more and less value-laden ways to go about our research? Research where the idiosyncratic political preferences of the author seem to, over and over, drive the conclusions they draw should correctly make us very suspect – academic research relies on trust that evidence is being fairly presented, that outliers are not being presented as representative, that a fair reckoning with alternative views is being followed. And even when it comes to the selection of questions, I don’t see any problem with objecting to the value of research that, say, a reader in China or a reader in 2040 would find hopelessly driven by idiosyncratic, short-run concerns.

The real issue underlying this debate, and I hope we all can see this, is that some people would like academia to play a role in political fights (I mean, the main complaint about the AHA essay was exactly about this!). Just due to the makeup of academia, by and large this means taking on a role in these fights from a very left-wing standpoint. Whole academic fields now have lost trust from the public because they have interpreted a technical Quine-style “all research has auxiliary assumptions built in” argument as meaning “well, I might as well then go whole-hog with me-search reifying my personal preferences into a published article.” That’s a huge, huge, huge mistake in academia.

I think the “ism/ist” suffix in “presentism” means “in favor of”, like in “monarchist.” It seems wrong to say, for example, that since both the left and the right in the 18th century took a stand with respect to monarchy, therefore all politics is monarchist.

It’s possible to be a supporter of monarchy, meaningfully, to the extent that monarchy is a live option, but not the only one. The present is the only live option. If we could actually choose between the present and the past (or the present and the future), then it would be meaningful to have a concept of ‘support for the present’; but we can’t.

@22: ‘The real issue underlying this debate, and I hope we all can see this, is that some people would like academia to play a role in political fights (I mean, the main complaint about the AHA essay was exactly about this!). Just due to the makeup of academia, by and large this means taking on a role in these fights from a very left-wing standpoint.

No that’s not true and is in fact impossible in terms of the neoliberal nature of the American* (and, increasingly, British) University system. What is true is that an increasing number of American academics view themselves as being unpaid propagandists for the American Democratic Party. And that really is what the AHA essay was about. But mainstream (‘normie’) Dems are right-wingers, with a sprinkling of social justice rhetoric on top (which is permitted, as long as it stays at the level of rhetoric).

There are few Marxists or revolutionary agitators in the American university system, and none under the age of 50.

*The idea that in the American university system, which is seamlessly integrated into the American capitalist/imperalist system and which functions as an indoctrination machine and a creator of workers for that system, there could be large numbers of academics telling their students to overthrow capitalism/imperialism is simply not possible. It’s like arguing that in the Soviet university system c.1937 there were large numbers of Soviet academics arguing for the restoration of capitalism, or that in 1938 in Germany there were large numbers of academics arguing against Nazi-ism. It’s simply a contradiction in terms.

“I don’t see any problem with objecting to the value of research that, say, a reader in China or a reader in 2040 would find hopelessly driven by idiosyncratic, short-run concerns.”

I’m not really sure what point the author is trying to make but this bit made me curious. Does the author really think that when you ask random people on the street about the value of research about Roman trade relations, they will generally agree that this field of research is worth pursuing due to its objective long term scientific value, as opposed to “hopelessly idiosyncratic” concerns like, er, slavery in recent US history?

Even more to the point, what do you think educated people in Africa have to say about the relvance and objectivity of the output of Western made historical research? I’m sure opinions will vary but many will point out (and have pointed out) the narrowness and self-centeredness of the research questions of generations of Western historians.

The purpose of the educational system is to produce semi-finished labor power and reproduce the ruling ideas, which are the ideas of the ruling class. No system is perfect, so it is inevitable there will be failings. That’s why the likes of DeSantis want to tighten up the ideological indoctrination (in the name of fighting an imaginary indoctrination, a perfect example I think of the militant irrationalism that seems so depressingly popular in all quarters.)

Or in other words, Hidari@26.

“Being white is not a choice, but being born rich or a member of the aristocracy is?”
Of course being born is not a moral choice. That’s why the TMs of the world are still butt-hurt over the Bolshevik execution of the Tsar’s family. Yet…It is absolute monarchy that says the blood of the monarchs is better than the blood of the common people. That’s why to fight monarchy you have to pour the blood out and prove that, no, it’s not any different. It has nothing to do with punishing some kids for what they did.

All varieties of reformism which pretend that the real problem is that this group or that clique is the problem because they are just villains is hopelessly misled or misleading. The real implication is that you just need to put in nice people. People who will mouth the correct phrases about right and wrong suitable to the moment or milieu however will not reform the system. I couldn’t watch McKay’s Succession series because it really believed that the problem was bad people, not bad systems. I’m sympathetic to Marxism not McKayism.

The problem with the rich is not that they aren’t nice, or that they grind the faces of the poor for fun, or—for the more backward, that the rich indulge their sexual decadence with impunity—the problem is that their wealth, in this society, comes from the exploitation of labor, which puts them in opposition to the workers in the system of social production, period.

The cure is not the moral reformation of the rich so they are nice, nice has nothing to do with the objective situtation, the cure is abolition of private property in the means of production. A social system of production should be operated by society, not by a private individual. The notion that owning a factory or a mine or most sorts of enterprises is the same as owning a hammer and screwdriver and pliers is nonsense. Your personal tools are for personal use, not production. Some things need to be private to fulfill their function. A common toothbrush is not a toothbrush but a health hazard. Socializing simple home repair tools really is like taking them away. But then, loaning them out to family risks losing them too.

But the McKayist version where the problem is that the rich are mean or the Netflix The Crown version where the problem is that the royals are just awful people is nonsense, morally speaking. Any kind of historical analysis carried out as some sort of judgmentalism where ritual scapegoating of today’s villains discovered in the past, or the positive version where petty bourgeois fantasies of self-made success (aka “agency” in some quarters) are projected onto today’s heroes, disguised as “real” historical figures are also wrong.

Hidari @26. Are there any Marxists under 50?

Stj 30: Is your problem really just reading comprehension?

Ahem. I’m a Marxist (although I’ve been told by various liberals on here I’m not). Jacobin, Tribune, etc are all full of Marxists. Many NLR contributors/editors are now under 50 I believe. There are many younger academic Marxists in fields like economics, history, political theory and social sciences. There are Marxist-influenced communist, socialist and social democratic parties and politicians in many countries in the world including, increasingly in recent years, in the west. As Hidari says, China is officially Marxist and there are also vibrant radical/dissident Marxist communities. It’s a bit of an odd question really!

John, I could not disagree more. The claim is:

1) The (social scientist) researcher selects a topic, arranges evidence and presents one interpretation of the evidence being shaped by the concerns of the present.

This is clearly true in many (if not all) cases. Researchers are humans and it is not surprising that they pick their topics based on their interests, lived experiences, political preferences etc. Clearly, in this sense, research is not value-free.

The real issue is if research is also evidence-free. Is social science research just projecting of the values (of the researcher, the “society”, the capitalist class, whatever) or is there a residual notion of more or less objective facts against which the proposed interpretations need somehow to square with? One may say, no, there are no objective facts. Fine. But then it is not clear to me how you can stop the slippery slope toward relativism and the alternative facts theory that you have so nicely attacked in the past. When you and Krugman defended (correctly imho) more fiscal stimulus in the 2008 recession, one could just have replied to you: “well, you are just saying that because of your values”. Which in a sense is probably correct (you care more about the unemployed etc.) but the issue of whether we were well below potential GDP or not is an empirical question which I think you and Krugman had right while others (possibly left leaning as well) had not.

As a side, I find this turn toward “it’s all values” in leftist academia concerning. Many “facts” are on the left-wing side (inequality increasing, persisting institutional racism in the US and elsewhere etc.) and if we start saying it’s all values, then we lose the power that “evidence” has. Be careful what you wish for.

I’ve become somewhat cynical and would currently suggest:

“Presentism” essentially is an accusation of lacking the theory of Dilthey, which is why it’s almost always directed by people who identify as conservative against those they perceive as too liberal. It can just mean lacking the correct grounding in the culture of the period (conservative in a narrower, disciplinary sense), but there seems to be a bait and switch much of the time where “getting it” means “getting” the conservative attitude that moral judgment that goes against tradition is illegitimate. This makes it difficult to care much about the broadening of the term from the liberal or progressive side to mean anything conservatives think is the wrong way to do history. Obviously that’s especially frustrating for liberals and centrists who’ve spent years and years working out how they want to think about the concept and how they can helpfully use or counter it.

Also, I wonder if “presentism” is all too often a poor cousin to “relativism” for people who are allergic to relativism almost to the point of finding it difficult to understand that anybody else could have a legitimate view different from their own. (Though probably like “relativism” it comes to mean merely “rejecting the correct version while claiming to be correct.”) they would react strongly against being told the past’s view is different from ours. But create a complex bit of theoretical jargon that requires work to understand and looks higher-class than what they used to believe, and maybe they’ll buy it.

That’s not to say it doesn’t name a real problem.

there are soghtly different definitions of what it means to be a

‘Marxist’

but in order to be a real ‘Marxist’ you HAVE to believe that –
‘the conflict of classes ultimately would lead to a revolution in which the working class would overthrow the capitalist class and seize control of the economy’.

And as even most of the Chinese by now have realised that ‘it aint happening’ and they much rather embrace ‘capitalism’ and the US working class is so confused that they can’t differentiate between ‘one of their own’ and a Capitalistic Right-Wing Racist Science Denying Idiot – the las Marxist on earth might be a old dude – who call himself ‘Engels’ on
some blog called Crooked Timber – and he for sure isn’t younger than 50.

And come on –
John!
Let the silly comment pass –
(it tries really hard to be funny!)

the las Marxist on earth might be a old dude – who call himself ‘Engels’ on
some blog called Crooked Timber – and he for sure isn’t younger than 50

If I was going to lie about my age don’t you think I’d be doing it on Tindr rather than Crooked Timbr?

stj @39
You do not have to discover some sort of malice in the souls of rich people to reject capitalism

There are different ways to reject capitalism. One might reject capitalism in favor of a genuinely democratic form of socialism — leaving as an open question for the moment whether such has ever existed “at scale.” Or one might reject capitalism in favor of a set of inflexible dogmas and formulas that relentlessly simplify all complexities. There’s Marx at his most insightful and then there’s Marx at his most dogmatic and polemical. The label “Marxist,” standing alone, obscures that there was arguably more than one Marx, just as there is indisputably more than one variety of Marxism. As one noted socialist wrote quite a long time ago in a slightly different context: “People speak of socialism. We should speak of socialisms.”

To be sure, many people and organizations have in some way been influenced by the work of Marx – the SPD may be one of the oldest still existing. But that’s not the same as being Marxist.

I am too lazy to read the guy’s essay that caused the fuss but when I saw his apology tweet I went and read it.

Here were my impressions which could be completely totally wrong but might prompt someone to read the essay

1) The essay had an underlying element of the usual fretting about his subfield and a ‘kids today!’ type of message

I thought his point was also presentism makes people look in the wrong place sometimes. I believe his field is something that is unrelated to slavery in African history.

So he was possibly griping American historians are always drawn to Africa because of the legacy of slavery while ignoring the other possible historical topics.

2) His apology was just to African American colleagues which is OK but his essay probably had some holes so maybe he could also offer to look at them

3) The Twitter outcry was, like usual, a mix of sharp observations that I, as a non-historian, thought were probably important for people in the field to talk about. Or substantive discussions seemed to be happening. (Maybe there is already a conversation going on it.)

And everything else that arises when the subtest is race

From the outside if I was looking at this like a couple’s counselor it was like

–White scholar has underlying anxiety they don’t get as much say because other narratives are forming out of the perspective from people that aren’t white (and they are younger)

–They try to police ideas in some way to defend their influence and legacy and power

–A lot of grievances arise in the response that indicate a productive discussion is hard to have.

I think a major underlying problem in academic turf wars arises when some people try to shut other people up.

This usually happens when fields change because new people come into them whose identity or orientation isn’t the same.

The fields will die unless new people come into them.

If I were counseling these anxious scholars I’d ask them to look at their feelings. Are they afraid of being left out? Because you can’t control what people will want to know about. You can’t control what happens in your field but you can make your discipline very unpleasant…you won’t feel left out but you also will gatekeep so hard you may eventually fail to replace enough scholars to keep it going.

haven’t encountered any actual Marxists in 30 years of involvement in leftist politics

The times they are a-changin’

“I always really believed in the idea of a meritocracy—you know, like ‘Work hard and you’ll be fine,’” [23-year-old Melissa] Naschek told me later. “But all of that completely eroded…once I became a Marxist.” She puts herself in the same category that she believes most new DSA members belong to: “downwardly mobile millennials.” She’s one of about 24,000 people—70 to 80 percent of them under 35—who have joined DSA since November 2016…

At DSA meetings, [Marxist publisher Bhaskar] Sunkara said, organizers used to ask: “Is anyone here under 60?” The question now is: “Is anyone here over 30?” Today, the median age of DSA’s membership is 33, down from 68 in 2013… The age distribution is immediately apparent at gatherings, and it gives DSA meetings a funny dynamic, like a multigenerational family get-together in which the parents have left the room.

https://web.archive.org/web/20181112230448/https://www.thenation.com/article/in-the-year-since-trumps-victory-democratic-socialists-of-america-has-become-a-budding-political-force/

Are production relations not socially constructed?

Not in the specific sense I mean and that I have tried to explain (#37, #43).

Races are socially constructed but these constructions have objective consequence

I’m not denying that.

What exactly is it you are disputing? The white Europeans enslaving Africans in the 17th century were racist?

No.

What are you disputing?

“you can interpret the past in terms of racism without ascribing racism to anybody in the past”

An analogy comes to mind.

Consider the case of a cross-sectional, ecological study that finds, at the level of the US metropolitan statistical area (MSA), a relationship between police killings of Blacks in one year (year Y), and sexually transmitted infections among Blacks the next year (year Y+1). The median number of Blacks killed by police in an entire MSA in year Y is 1.0, with modest variance (o-3 between quartiles).

The study then suggests that a difference of 1 police killing between MSAs in Y has the ecological effect of traumatizing Black residents in ways that lead them to discount the value of safer sex practices over and above other variables, as measured by greater rates of syphilis infection in Y+1. It concludes that America’s police may be a significant cause of sexually transmitted infections among Blacks.

Now assume this study is published in a respectable, peer-reviewed journal, and presented as knowledge by news outlets. In my opinion, this would be a case of a bad type of presentism in behavioral science. It is taking the crisis of the moment and shaping a retrospective study around it, with a scientifically dubious result that is accepted owing to.. presentism. The extent to which historians do something similar is the extent to which presentism may be a problem in history, too.

Here is the article: https://sti.bmj.com/content/96/6/429.long

I think this point might have already been made in the thread, but perhaps bears repeating: there is a difference between the issue of “presentism” and the question of “value-free” history (or social science). Weber made the point a long time ago that values influence, e.g., the selection of topics and which questions to ask and (perhaps) the general approach, but that doesn’t mean that “objectivity” is a meaningless notion. It can be viewed as an effort to be rigorous, thorough, and (relatively) unbiased, or at least self-conscious, in the use of evidence and conclusions drawn from it, recognizing that this sort of “objectivity” is an ideal and that actual practice will never fully match it.

A somewhat, though not entirely, different statement on the matter is I. Wallerstein’s in his Introduction to vol. 1 of The Modern World-System (1974). In the interest of space, just an excerpt:

I do not believe there exists any social science that is not committed. That does not mean however that it is not possible to be objective… The past can only be told as it truly is, not was. For recounting the past is a social act of the present done by men [sic] of the present and affecting the social system of the present… Objectivity is a function of the whole social system. Insofar as the system is lopsided, concentrating certain kinds of research activity in the hands of particular groups, the results will be “biased” in favor of these groups. Objectivity is the vector of a distribution of social investment in such activity such that it is performed by persons rooted in all the major groups of the world-system in a balanced fashion. Given this definition, we do not have an objective social science today. On the other hand, it is not an unfeasible objective within the foreseeable future.

nastywoman 53 +1. In America these days, if you don’t don’t totally oppose socialised health care you are a socialist, and if you discover that your economic system isn’t as “meritocratic” as you have been brought up to believe, you instantly mutate into a Marxist, obviously without having read any actual Marxist literature and without having any clue of what Marxism actually is/was about.

MisterMr 59: I would agree that if historians fail to make the distinctions you are mentioning here, that would be sloppy work and deserves to be called out. I also don’t think that any serious historians of racism are unaware of these distinctions. I’m not a historian, I’m a lay person interested in these topics, and I’m very much aware of these distinctions thanks to the work of historians. You are aware of them probably for the same reason.

I still don’t see how this is related to the question of presentism. An excellent reason for wanting to understand the historical development of racism and antisemitism, in all its complexities and contradictions, is the fact that racism and antisemtism are very important contemporary issues. One can call that presentism but it has nothing to do with scholarly sloppiness.

Are jews even a race?

If I discriminate against a group of people because I consider them to be an inferior race, then my attitude is a racist one, regardless of whether the victims of my discrimination form a race: therefore, whether anti-Semitism is a form of racism does not depend on whether Jews are a race.

In any case, it doesn’t matter as much as some people might think: if anti-Semitism is a form of racism, it differs from other forms of racism in some significant respects (although not in all); if anti-Semitism is not a form of racism, it resembles racism in some significant respects (although not in all). Given any two things, it is possible (with sufficient effort) to find both points of resemblance and points of difference; the points of resemblance and the points of difference will be the same regardless of whether one describes the comparison as one between anti-Semitism and racism or one between anti-Semitic racism and other forms of racism.

For examples, classical greeks despised all non greeks and tought they were only good as slaves, does it count as racism? In my opinion not so, because they didn’t think in terms of race.

A similar analysis applies: the points of resemblance and the points of difference will be the same regardless of whether one describes the comparison as one between classical Greek racism and other forms of racism or one between classical Greek prejudice against non-Greeks and racism.

MisterMr, I may be mistaking your point, but the discussion about medieval racism is not about antisemitism. It seems to bethe claim that there were a significant number of people in various parts of Europe (including England), in medieval and early modern times, who were of African descent, recognized as being of African descent, but considered to be as “European” as their neighbors. I.e., as more European than the Jews were.

65: This is indeed an interesting example but let me point out that identifying a policy as „sensible“ is precisely not purely descriptive, it’s clearly a judgment based on certain values. Otoh identifying a position as minoritarian is descriptive, but identifying it as „extremist“ already seems judgmental.

These disputes often take the form „today’s morality condemns X but back in the year Y, everybody thought X was ok so we should judge the people living then by their own standards, not by today’s“. I don’t dismiss this kind of argument completely. But Usually when we look closer, it turns out that by no means was it the case that „everybody“ back then thought X was okay. It is a particularly absurd argument wrt slavery in the 19th century US. Not only was there a huge abolitionist movement – the US constitution itself claimed as self-evident that all men are created equal. This is not our modern projection, it was well established 18th century enlightenment thinking.

I have another interesting example here. As late as 1864, the Swiss government in a public declaration stated support for the institution of slavery. This may be surprising since obviously Switzerland did not practice slavery, but quite a few Swiss investors were involved in slaveholding e. g. in Brazil. The government felt not only that this wasn’t immoral, but that abolishing slavery would be be immoral and unjust since it would deprive slaveholders of their property!

Now in 2018 and 2021, the current Swiss government was asked to retroactively retract the 1864 statement. And can you believe it, they refused twice based on the argument that this was just the values of the time. A historically absurd and politically tone-deaf argument given that by 1864, Switzerland was perhaps the last European government to publicly espouse such an odious attitude.

https://www.woz.ch/-c795

So if I can summarise several thousands words of indignant spluttering: there are no true Marxists under 50.

Define “racist” without using the word “racist.” Then see if past societies met the definition while calling what they were doing something else.

This would be like saying the French don’t have the concept of a quarterpounder because they call it a “McRoyale”: not what I meant, and I said it didn’t count in #37. (The approach you go on to describe does sound like presentism to me because you are taking behaviour that has some superficial similarities to racism and calling it racism apparently because that concept is familiar: a bad way to interpret other cultures imho.)

engels:

I pictured you as 5-10 years older than me (currently mid 50s) so if you’re under 50 I’m experiencing some cognitive dissonance.

I disagree with your Big Mac example. It would be like saying people in olden times had influenza even if the word they used for it was catarrh and they thought it derived from living near a swamp, not from being near other people who were sick, and thought it was a variation on one and the same thing that was sometimes the common cold, tuberculosis, and certain cancers. Now, if you don’t care much about the scientific mindset, maybe that won’t be persuasive to you.

If you’re committed to racism being about a belief in races, you’re not going to be persuaded, but you’re wrong that one needs “structure” to understand racism otherwise.

History is not a social science. Nor is anthropology. Both are attempts to understand other times and cultures, which necessarily involves developing a ‘view from the inside” – a sense of how Roman elites or Japanese housewives or some group of C19 Americans thought – their values, how they saw the possibilities. The direction of research is guided by current concerns, but this is not the same thing.

What a lot of the (conservative) angst is about is that many of the current research directions threaten their preferred narratives, by incorporating into the broader picture the presence and views of women, slaves and other subaltern groups. It’s not the labeling they object to – it’s the ‘disfiguration’ of the portrait they prefer. Amusingly, as that portrait is a major prop to their current politics, the charge of ‘presentism’ is more accurately fixed to the accusers.

political football@65 tries to cite an actual example. The NYT editorial by Vowell requires signing up so I didn’t see it, so I’m not sure Vowell’s views are on the present are correctly presented. But so far as I can tell, Vowell’s is not applying Fillmore’s standards today, but projecting her understanding of the present (a very common one, which sees the fundamental problem as “polarization” that prevents compromise saving the status quo) onto Fillmore and rates him more highly because he anticipates her misunderstanding of the present (assuming, again, Vowell is correctly presented here.) This is indeed presentism and a bad thing.

The thing is, it doesn’t help understand a damn thing to assume that the present’s assumption that private property in men is not even a thing because it shouldn’t be. The present is as dominated by religious awe for the sanctity of private property of all other kinds as it was in Fillmore’s day, but the presentist assumption that “we” don’t believe just as much that a government that tramples on private property is by definition tyranny is actively misleading. Once again, if you don’t understand the present, you can’t understand the past.

Tm@66 accidentally confirms this by not understanding the Swiss government’s attitude, then or now. Tm, who shares the reverence for private property of other kinds, assumes Tm’s tone is the only tasteful one and therefore accusing the Swiss government of being politically tone-deaf is simply false.

The thing is, not just that both Tm and the Swiss government are wrong in their unquestioning adoration of private property, but that the Swiss government apologizing is nothing but a symbolic gesture. It’s not even real politics. I’m sure Tm has accidentally said something correct at random occasions. But the political analysis is generally what is to be expected of someone who thinks the Constitution says all men are created equal, which it does not. That sort of thing is why John Calhoun for one took issue with the Declaration of Independence. But then, Calhoun was mostly logical and attuned to reality rather than “tone.” The black humor is that Calhoun’s denigration of the Declaration is shared by the condemnation of Jefferson as a Bad Person, end of discussion.

J, not that one@70 “If you’re committed to racism being about a belief in races, you’re not going to be persuaded, but you’re wrong that one needs ‘structure’ to understand racism otherwise.” The clause after “but” seems to say that one can understand racism without addressing ‘structure.’ Structure is in scare quotes. Being as fair as I can, I can’t see any reason for that other than denying the relevance of legal liberties, privileges and immunities; customs of discrimination by institutions; academic and political projects that indoctrinate notions of inferiority. That racism is just personal attitudes.

That strikes me as a terrible misunderstanding of the present and projecting it backward into the past is entirely useless. Also, the politics that say fighting racism is a matter of moral suasion aimed at converting the bad people strikes me as ineffective as any other religious program. It is an alternative that serves ultimately as a diversion from effective political change.

J-D@71 “Because using one term does not require excluding use of another.” Clarity in communication sometimes does even though a blizzard of synonyms can be very useful in confusing issues.

“If two things are not identical, that doesn’t mean that you can’t compare them: saying that they are not identical is itself a comparison; and if two things are not identical, that doesn’t mean you can’t use the same word for them: a word would be useless if it couldn’t be used for two non-identical things.” A collection of objects, say, sand grains, is not identical to a heap, either. Sometimes it is indeed correct to say this collection of sand grains is a “heap.” But it would be absurd to call a handful of grains brushed off your shoe is a “heap.” The useful question is when, and these observations are useless tfor answering that question.

And, there is actually a difference in saying two things are sufficiently similar to be called the same thing, and saying that one is…something else. That “something else” formally is an infinity of possibilities, which empties the non-identity of concrete meaning. Maybe it’s still good philosophy to consider a statement as specific, as these two things are sufficiently alike, as meaningful as saying, that other can be anything else…but that’s not a good look for philosophy. That’s like saying, pointing at this and just waving your hands around to encompass the universe, are the same kind of reference.

Peter T@72 condemns history and anthropology as being part of the humanities. If they are, then Henry Ford was right. It’s true that lots of people claim that you have to understand other people and “cultures” (whatever they may be in this understanding) as they think of themselves. I think this is a misunderstanding of the present and exercising this kind of thing in antiquarian and exotic studies may be entertaining according to taste, or not. But I don’t think it need to taken seriously.

But even this kind of “research” can be severely impaired by current concerns, because the people of the past or foreign nations, don’t know the future or “our” souls/soul (?) of this country. For a trivial example, how easy is it to understand women’s attitudes to childbearing when children were their hope for survival in old age. What women want when they have Social Security seems to be different.

Peter T finishes by reading the minds of conservatives. History that is merely one of the humanities cannot refute the portraits or narratives they prefer, any more than the views of subaltern groups can. The humanities are about communicating feelings, not facts. Mere facts, assisted by concepts like historical trends, periods/eras, forces and by—-dare I say it—-scientific theories about causation may, but the humanities are matters of taste.

It’s obvious that steven t johnson has misread Peter T’s comment.

LFC 76: see 34.

stj @ 74

Maybe the point should be that I think engels (and you) is defining “structure” too broadly.

and what is it?

As wasn’t one of the utmost interesting questions about ‘presentism’ asked by the Prof. himself?
– ‘looking backwards, when does the present stop and the past begin? Should Thatcher and Reagan be regarded as people of their times, exempt from critical judgement?
and/or
‘Similarly, if it’s appropriate to condemn Donald Trump’s racism now, does it make sense to view the same racism, as expressed by Trump in the 1960s, as a morally neutral product of the times?’

So what’s wrong -(or not postable) with the answer that in the case of somebody like Jefferson it could be considered to be ‘a morally neutral product of the times’
BUT
NOT
in the case of ‘Trump’?

So what’s wrong with believing