Philosophy of History

[Gary Childress]

Some people prepare for Zombie Apocolypses. I wonder if I ought to prepare for the next historical revision of Western Philosophy. I say that because I find that some things that I learned back in the 1980s while attending college now seem to be out of vogue. Has anyone else noticed changes or shifts in the way historical events or figures are perceived?

Most notably, I'm thinking of a book I read many years ago about the Ancient Cynic philosophers that was considered a very reputable source at the time. Now, when I go to ChatGPT to look up info, some things I recall from the book are disputed as to their veracity or accuracy.

Another example that comes to mind is the movie A Bridge Too Far, which was based on Cornelius Ryan's interviews with veterans of the campaign that he collected in his famous book. More recently, I recall seeing a forensic history show that disputed some of the theories presented in Ryan's synopsis as to why Operation Market Garden failed for the Allies.

I've seen the same thing happen with claims made by Carl Sagan in his series Cosmos, where some of his facts are disputed now.

Does our understanding of History progress (getting better and better, or more accurate) or does it simply change? Are we learning more about ancient history (for example) as new evidence crops up, or are we progressively losing more and more historical context as the past gets further and further away from us? How accurate can we take historical eyewitness testimony? I mean, we can't even agree on what is "actually" happening in the present. then there's the famous phrase, "History is written by the winners". Will we ever really know the past? Or will we forever live in the present?

[Impenitent]

one foot in the past and one foot in the future leaves you on your ass today...

-Imp

[Veritas Aequitas]

Does our understanding of History progress (getting better and better, or more accurate) or does it simply change? Are we learning more about ancient history (for example) as new evidence crops up, or are we progressively losing more and more historical context as the past gets further and further away from us? How accurate can we take historical eyewitness testimony? I mean, we can't even agree on what is "actually" happening in the present. then there's the famous phrase, "History is written by the winners". Will we ever really know the past? Or will we forever live in the present?

In the philosophy of History we seek wisdoms in the fundamentals of the history of past realities involving human activities.

What is reality and the facts of reality are conditioned upon a specific human-based Framework and System [FS].

What is fact? [mine]

A fact is a true datum about one or more aspects of a circumstance.[1] Standard reference works are often used to check facts.

Scientific facts are verified by repeatable careful observation or measurement by experiments or other means. [within the scientific FS]
"This sentence contains words." accurately describes a linguistic fact, [within a linguistic FS]
"The Sun is a star" accurately describes an astronomical fact. [within the astronomical FS]
"Abraham Lincoln was the 16th President of the United States" and "Abraham Lincoln was assassinated" both accurately describe historical facts. [within a historical FS]
Generally speaking, facts are independent of belief and of knowledge and opinion.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fact

There are no standalone facts, i.e. facts are always conditioned upon a specific human-based FS; thus historical facts are conditioned upon a specific human based historical FS.

"History is written by the winners" implies subjectivity and depending on who the winners are and the credibility and objectivity of their FS system.

The point that whatever is outputted from a FS is based on the consensus of a group people, that makes it objective as defined i.e. independent of one person's beliefs and opinion.

So there are varying degrees of objectivity from different FS.

As such to determine whether a history fact is credible or objective, we need to assess its degrees of objectivity by examining its methodology and system conditions.

The gold standard of objectivity is the scientific FS.
As such those historical facts that relied and piggy-back on scientific based facts would be more reliable than those historical facts that are based on personal testimony or hearsays.
For example archeological facts that depend heavily on scientific-based empirical data would be more objective on historical political facts that are based past writings. We also need to consider how old is the history related to. We also need to take into account human psychology e.g. divine based claims which are heavily emotionally based and thus subject to high confirmation bias.

To arrive at whether a historical fact is credible and objective we will have to include all the relevant variables and criteria involved to make an assessment.

The greater the degree of objectivity will lend greater support to whether we can learn from the past for whatever the positive reasons.

[FlashDangerpants]

If you read the work of historians themselves you will note that they don't outsource the "philosophy of" end of their subject to philosophy, tending to keep it in house. All historians are to some extent philosophers of history and that crops up in all the books because they always have to deal with the limits of what can reliably be inferred on the basis of what limited physical and textual evidence.

Economics and Law are a couple of other areas that embed so much philosophy into their core scholarship that they don't really need external philosophers to poke around too much. There are lots of philosophy of law texts, but the authors are usually considerd scholars of law I believe. Similarly we usually think of Adam Smith as economist, but he's probably the most influential philosopher of all time.

So a philosophical case is made in almost every history book. And likewise every use of history to tell some other story is probably philosophically suspect. Marx would be the other candidate for most influential philosopher, but academically speaking, his economic analysis was out of date when he wrote it, and his sociological work is suspect. But his materialist historiography lives on and will continue to do so long after even Age has been fogotten let alone the rest of us nobodies.