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The Purpose of History — Inside the Classic

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Authors: Woodbridge, Frederick James Eugene, 1867-1940 Digital Source: Project Gutenberg Gutenberg Release Year: 2018 First Publication Year: Not confirmed

Key Word: History -- Philosophy Target Reader: Readers of public-domain and historical texts

Book Edition: Project Gutenberg digital edition Book Language: en

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Words 22,080

Reading time 96 min

Text sections 2

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Woodbridge's 1916 lectures argue that history is a pluralistic, relative enterprise shaped by the historian's own standpoint, not an absolute narrative. The text moves from a critique of youthful versus mature historical study to a philosophical defense of multiple, equally valid histories.

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THE PURPOSE OF HISTORY

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS SALES AGENTS

NEW YORK: LEMCKE & BUECHNER 30-32 WEST 27TH STREET

LONDON: HUMPHREY MILFORD AMEN CORNER, E. C.

THE PURPOSE OF HISTORY

BY FREDERICK J. E. WOODBRIDGE

New York COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS 1916 _All rights reserved_

Printed from type, July, 1916.

This book contains three lectures delivered at the University of North Carolina on the McNair Foundation in March of the current year. It expresses certain conclusions about history to which I have been led by the study of the history of philosophy and by reflection on the work of contemporary philosophers, especially Bergson, Dewey, and Santayana.

I am happy to acknowledge my indebtedness to the Faculty and Students of the University of North Carolina for a most delightful visit at Chapel Hill.

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY IN THE CITY OF NEW YORK JUNE, 1916

I. FROM HISTORY TO PHILOSOPHY 1

II. THE PLURALISM OF HISTORY 27

III. THE CONTINUITY OF HISTORY 58

THE PURPOSE OF HISTORY

FROM HISTORY TO PHILOSOPHY

The serious study of history is characteristic of a certain maturity of mind. For the intellectually young, the world is too new and attractive to arouse in them a very absorbing interest in its past. Life is for them an adventure, and the world is a place for excursions and experiences. They care little about what men have done, but much about what they might do. History, to interest them, must be written as a romance which will fire their imagination, rather than as a philosophy which might make them wise. But maturity, somewhat disciplined and disillusioned, confirms the suspicion, which even youth entertains at times, that the world, while offering an opportunity, hedges the offer about with restrictions which must be understood and submitted to, if effort is to be crowned with success. The mature may thus become eager to understand life without ceasing to enjoy it. They may become philosophical and show their wisdom by a desire to sympathize with what men have done and to live rationally in the light of what is possible. They may study history, convinced that it enlarges their sympathies and promotes rational living.

We might, therefore, conclude that the prevailing interest in historical studies is a sign that the age is growing in maturity and is seeking an outlook upon life which is both sane and encouraging. This may well be true. But even if the study of history indicate a certain maturity of mind, it is not a guarantee that history will not be studied in the spirit of youth. History may do little more than afford a new world for wild adventure and undisciplined experience. Moreover, maturity is not necessarily wise. Disgust, revolt, and loss of sympathy are not always strangers to it. Historical studies may be pursued with little comprehension of their aim or meaning; and history may be taught with little reflection on its philosophical significance. It would appear, therefore, that the study of history itself affords an opportunity for philosophical inquiry, and may profitably stimulate questions about the character of those facts with which history is concerned.

In these lectures I intend to deal with the purpose of history. I would not, however, be misunderstood. My aim is not, by making another attempt to find the increasing purpose running through the ages, to win permanently the laurel which, hitherto, ambitious philosophers have worn only for a season. There is, no doubt, a kind of rapture in seeing history as St. Augustine saw it,--the progress of the City of God from earth to heaven; and there is a kind of pride not wholly ignoble, in seeing it as Hegel did,--the vibrating evolution from the brooding absolution of the East to the self-conscious freedom of one's own philosophy embraced and made universal by the civilizing energy of one's own state. My aim is more modest. It is not romantic, but technical. Metaphysics rather than poetry is to be my domain, although I cherish the hope that poetry may not, therefore, be misprized. If it may ultimately appear, not only as an ornament to living, but also as an exemplary method of living well, I may even now invoke the Muses to my aid, but Clio first, and, afterwards, Calliope. It is my aim, through an examination of what the historian himself proposes, to discover in what sense the idea of purpose in history is appropriate, and to what ideas we are led when we think of history as the record of human progress.

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Woodbridge opens his first lecture by contrasting the intellectually young, who see the world as an adventure, with the mature mind that turns to history for wisdom. He warns that even mature study can be pursued in a youthful spirit, treating history as a new field for undisciplined experience. This framing sets up a central tension: history can enlarge sympathy and promote rational living, or it can become mere romance. The author's own voice is measured and philosophical, often using antithesis to sharpen his points.

The Historian’s Standpoint

Woodbridge insists that the historian is himself an historical fact. Any account of the past is colored by the historian's own career and cultural position. He illustrates this with a thought experiment: an enlightened historian from China or Japan would not begin with the cradle of European civilization. Instead, they would construe world history relative to their own civilization's progress. This is not a flaw but an inescapable condition. The historian must understand himself first if he is to forget himself and understand others. The argument is concrete and avoids abstraction; it grounds philosophical pluralism in a practical example of how different starting points produce different narratives.

Pluralism Without Relativism

Woodbridge does not conclude that all histories are equally good. He distinguishes between the claim that no history can claim absolute preëminence and the claim that histories are indistinguishable. Each event in its own history is the law. He uses a striking analogy: the rain falls equally on the just and the unjust, but that does not mean vice and virtue have equal outcomes. Similarly, the cosmos is impartial to its many histories, but that impartiality does not rob any history of its own distinction. The argument is tight and avoids the trap of nihilism by affirming that relative considerations are the only kind possible, and they are sufficient for meaningful historical understanding.

Against Scientific Superstition

Woodbridge criticizes those who seek to read human destiny from the constitution of matter or the mechanism of the physical world. He calls such scientists superstitious, no less than those who read fate from constellations. The phrase 'dust thou art and unto dust thou shalt return' is, he argues, an essential truth only about the history of dust; it is merely incidental to the history of man. This rhetorical move uses a biblical quotation to expose a category error. The passage is pointed and polemical, showing Woodbridge's willingness to challenge prevailing scientific attitudes. His voice here is sharper, almost aphoristic, as he insists that one learns nothing peculiarly characteristic of humanity from physical reductionism.

Woodbridge's lectures are best read as a sustained argument for historical pluralism, not a survey of historical events. Readers should attend to his recurring use of contrast—youth versus maturity, absolute versus relative, dust versus humanity—as a structural device. The prose is dense but rewards careful attention to his qualifying phrases, which often carry the philosophical weight. The three lectures form a single arc from critique to constructive pluralism, and the final lecture on continuity promises to reconcile the multiplicity of histories with the unity of time.

I remember sitting on a sun-warmed porch, the lecture’s calm claim that every history is a personal standpoint settling into me like an old blanket. Years earlier, The Servile State — A Closer Reading stirred the same quiet hum—both books whispering that what we call truth is just a hand we’re dealt, played differently each time.