![]() ![]() But of course, that context connected to the soul exists: Literature. It lacks a context that is connected to the human soul, despite the fact that history is something which we ourselves created to understand our world-therefore, connected to our soul and expressive of it. History in schools is taught as a collection of facts. The invention of the field of history, academically defined, has probably done more damage to the concept of history than anything else. For reasons that are too long and complicated to explore, history has hardly ever been taught in such a way that we would recognize as useful. The way that we understand ourselves and make decisions would be drastically and dramatically altered if everyone had a respectable amount of knowledge of their country’s national history as well as world history (again, because history is not supposed to be subjective). Such is the case with the French Revolution: One need not have French ancestry to feel compelled by the lessons it demonstrated. It can speak to our personal experiences without being directly related to us. ![]() For whatever reason it may be, we derive our understanding of who we are through memory of where and who we come from. But history is as real as any tangible object because our nature made it so that we perceive the world through memory. That which we call history is an abstract concept of our own creation, like time. ![]() George Santayana said this, Henry Adams said this. History, after all, is not supposed to be about memorizing and preserving the past for its own sake: It has a practical use. For Burke actually did something with history, and he is just one thinker whose interpretation of history helps us to make the field something applicable from which we can learn. Of course, this opinion only summarizes what political thinkers have said for years, but I can think of no brighter future for history than one where we echo Burke’s writings through our own paraphrases. ![]() That condition is our inability to fully measure the unintended consequences of even the best of our intentions. Something about the French revolution makes it a timeless topic: It encapsulates the totality of our human condition. ![]()
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