Presentism (historical analysis)

Presentism is a mode of historical analysis in which present-day ideas and perspectives are anachronistically introduced into depictions or interpretations of the past. Some modern historians seek to avoid presentism in their work because they believe it creates a distorted understanding of their subject matter.

The Oxford English Dictionary gives the first citation for presentism in its historiographic sense from 1916, and the word may have been in use in this meaning as early as the 1870s. Historian David Hackett Fischer identifies presentism as a logical fallacy also known as the "fallacy of nunc pro tunc". He has written that the "classic example" of presentism was the so-called "Whig history", in which certain eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British historians wrote history in a way that used the past to validate their own political beliefs. This interpretation was presentist because it did not depict the past in objective historical context, but instead viewed history only through the lens of contemporary Whig beliefs. In this kind of approach, which emphasizes the relevance of history to the present, things which do not seem relevant receive little attention, resulting in a misleading portrayal of the past. "Whig history" or "whiggishness" are often used as synonyms for presentism, particularly when the historical depiction in question is teleological or triumphalist.

Presentism and sociological analysis

Presentism has a shorter history in sociological analysis, where it has been used to describe technological determinists who interpret a change in behavior as starting with the introduction of a new technology. For example, scholars such as Frances Cairncross proclaimed that the Internet had led to "the death of distance" without realizing that most community ties and many business ties had been transcontinental and even intercontinental for many years.

Presentism and moral judgments

Presentism is also related to the problematic question of history and moral judgments. Among historians, the orthodox view may be that reading modern notions of morality into the past is to commit the error of presentism. To avoid this, some historians restrict themselves to describing what happened, and attempt to refrain from using language that passes judgment. For example, when writing history about slavery in an era when the practice was widely accepted, using language that condemns slavery as wrong or evil would be presentist, and should be avoided.

There are many critics of this application of presentism. Some argue that to avoid moral judgments is to practice moral relativism, a controversial idea. Some religious historians argue that morality is timeless, having been established by God, and therefore it is not anachronistic to apply timeless standards to the past. (In this view, while mores may change, morality does not.) Others argue that historians, like all humans, cannot truly be objective, and so moral judgments will always be a part of their work. David Hackett Fischer, for his part, writes that historians cannot avoid making moral judgments, and indeed they ought to make them, but that they should be aware of their biases, and write history in such a way that their biases do not create a distorted depiction of the past.

Disambiguation: The term "presentism" is also used in Ethics, to indicate an attitude that since the present is the only thing that really exists (the past being made up of nothing but present memory traces and the future being made up of nothing but present anticipations), ethical judgments need to weigh actual present good on a different scale than hypothetical past good or future good. This ethical use of "presentism" and the historical use of the term seem to have little in common.

See also

• Anachronism
• Chronological snobbery
• Historian's fallacy
• Whig history

References

• Fischer, David Hackett. Historians' Fallacies: Toward a Logic of Historical Thought. New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1970.