 Is it true, those words spoken by Napoleon on St. Helena, that history is the only true philosophy and the only true psychology? If so, then it would be imprudent for a philosopher to write it off as but the dreary secession of dates and names. All that our race has become is due to its occurrence. It would not be outside the realm of reason to say that each individual event, each person, however insignificant, has played some role in molding the humanity which walks the earth today. If we would like to understand the endless flow of daily events, determine their significance, and come to feel the basic currents underlying surface movements and changes, then we must have our history ever present before our eyes. There are many reasons for the philosopher to study history. These are just five. Reason one. Because the best preparation for understanding the problems of the present is to study and learn the past, for it is there where you will discover what the nature of humankind truly is. It was the great English politician and political philosopher Lord Bollingbrook, to who even the great Voltaire was indebted, that said history is philosophy teaching by examples, and how right he was, for it is history that explains to us how humanity, through the actions of thousands of years, has behaved and how it is likely to continue behaving if faced with similar circumstances. Would it not be convenient to know beforehand what the likely reaction would be to any given social experiment, to know if the outcome intended was the outcome received? Well, as it happens, most of our modern social theories have been proposed in one garb or another. We need not start from scratch and fool ourselves into believing that what was less than successful yesterday will transform with our magic touch and theories today. This is not to say that improvements cannot be made upon past failures, but that in order to achieve progress, we must first know the underlying causes of such failures. We have all heard this lesson, usually in the form of that ever-present quote from the late George Santiana, which usually ends up in some comment section. It reads, those who don't know history are destined to repeat it. Reason 2. To gain immunity from the disillusionments of our own time. There is, in truth, no complete immunity from the anxiety of impending or perceived catastrophe, for it has been developed for good reason. But perhaps with enough understanding, we can learn to bear it with an increased level of equanimity and repose. I understand that when one witnesses humanity, despite a thousand reforms, remain essentially what it has always been, their heads may wander into the pessimistic abyss which often consumes our young. But through the study and analysis of history, I believe the philosopher may come to accept the limitations placed upon a species by biology and take strength by witnessing those gilded men and great women, stand triumphant at their life's end, pleased that they could aid their neighbor and make their society just one person better. After all, I would say that it is better to fight and lose than to never have fought at all. Reason 3. To learn that we have but a partial perspective of any given subject or event. This lesson, I believe, is particularly important in the age of information of which we are a part. We are choked with news, if one could call it even that. Full campaigning would be more akin to most news we consume. We must remember the lesson first taught to us some 2,500 years ago by the weeping philosopher of Ephesus, Heraclitus, that life is strife, meaning competition. And what better tactic is there to increase your chances of victory in a competition than to deceive your opponent? I state this example to emphasize the proclivity of some to embellish what is written for the purpose of painting a particular picture to achieve a desired result, and the partial perspective it delivers to those who consume it. This has been done since the days of antiquity and has more often divided than united. We must take reported events for what they in all likelihood are, partial viewpoints of the total situation. Reason 4. To build gratitude by understanding the hardship and sacrifice endured by those who came before us. There is in every generation an untold level of hardship suffered by its people, though by and large we today enjoy a level of comfort unimaginable to most peoples born prior to 1850. While we may have plenty of chaos to contend with, it is in my opinion preferable to the mass superstition, disease and ignorance which plagued our species in bygone eras. The critic will inform us that many still suffer with such calamities to which I acknowledge its truth, but it would be amiss to say that conditions for the vast majority of humanity have not improved considerably, both mentally and materially. Do these progressions make us happier? Who can say? Though I do believe gratitude for what has been painstakingly developed throughout a thousand generations can. We likely feel envy and maybe even anger when we see those who have what we do not, but envy is easy when all we do is look above and ahead of ourselves. However, take the time to look beneath and behind you, for it is there where you will find gratitude. I find it helpful to remember that we have reached the heights that we enjoy today because we are standing on the shoulders of those who came before us. In 2005, to discover those individuals that, through their thoughts and their actions, inspire us to be a little greater than we were before. In The Greatest Minds and Ideas of All Time, a work by Durant published posthumously in 2002, he posed this question, why should we stand reverent before waterfalls and mountaintops, or a summer moon on a quiet sea, and not before the highest miracle of all, a man who is both great and good? What we are searching for is not that person without flaw, for your search will never end, but one who brings light to the problems of their day and our own, an individual who, though flawed, holds out their hand for the benefit of the next generation. We may find those who garner our intellectual respect, but of even more importance is to find those who may help to shape our character. Let Seneca speak. Happy is he who can so revere a man as to calm and regulate himself by calling him to mind, for we must indeed have someone according to whom we may regulate our characters. You can never straighten that which is crooked, unless you use a ruler. Our species history is vast enough for an entire lifetime of study to be directed toward a single country in a single century, and whether you choose to light your candle at every torch or to huddle around a singular flame is ultimately up to you. What's important is that you take the time to bring the past into the present, because I firmly believe that it will be of great aid to your understanding of events which seem otherwise, novel and confusing in our own day. If you have in mind other reasons that the philosopher should take to studying history, put them in the comments below. And as always, thank you for talking philosophy with me. Until next time.