The Historian: Wise Judge or Zealous Prosecutor?

Warriors of Left and Right, Nietzsche, Tony Judt - Reflections            

Photo by Macu ic on Unsplash

Note: prior versions of this essay have been posted on Substack and Medium. They have been deleted. This expanded version here is the cannonical version.

Amid the Deluge, the Fall

We live today amid a deluge of history, or at least purported history. Even our AI billionaires are telling us stories about the past, and projecting new glorious histories to be written for a wondrous future with AI help, maybe by AI itself. Everywhere, this or that claim or argument is rooted, badly or well, in some take on history, usually a bad or distorted take, cheap fable, or long dead myth, once true, now deadly. This is never innocent.          

Decades ago, as a student, I went to the library and read original accounts from the local newspaper, The Halifax Herald, on microfiche about the military ship that exploded in the harbour in 1917 in Halifax, Canada, killing thousands. What struck me then was how-well written the stories were – with grace, clarity, evidence, and reason. How far we have fallen from these watchwords today, not just in the use of history by columnists, news-entertainment shows, and social media, but even by critics and professional historians.     

A fine history has a magisterial sense of the whole. It includes all the polemical, one-sided, fragmentary histories within its wide lens, yet always returns to the primordial facts and arguments about what is a fact, and how they fit together in narrative as a synthesis. The miracle is fine and balanced judgement, which can be educated, but likely not ultimately taught. For this historian, no one is intrinsically good or bad, but may well be so judged, but always with deliberation       

Of course, while things are particularly bad today, fights over history must have nearly always existed. As soon as you had rival groups of people who could speak, you had at least two sets of stories about what happened, what matters, and why. Needless to say, each group knew that justice was on its side, as was God, to vary a Bob Dylan song title.          

But what happens when, instead of having two groups sending their stories into battle, you have thousands of historical points of view from hundreds of peoples, past and present, struggling each day on the internet and social media? This is our situation today, and how we manage it will greatly impact the planet’s future.      

I learned a lot about history fights when, as a lawyer who had worked both as a prosecutor and a Defence lawyer, I wrote a book (Who Speaks for the River?) about the battle over a dam that took place in the 1980s. Three groups took part: irrigation farmers, environmentalists, and Indigenous people. The latter two groups were making their voices heard for the first time, at least in public discourse. Farmers wanted the dam, Indigenous people wanted no dam or a share of the profits, and environmentalists wanted no dam. Each group did what it could to win and pressed history into the battle. One can read my book for details about the battle. My interest in this article is with how we think about history.        

When I began the book, like any other urban dweller from that era, I was intensely focused on what had happened to the Indigenous people in Canada. When the publisher – a well-respected publisher in Western Canada – had their editorial advisor review my book he or she said: “It needs more about the farmers.” What a genius comment. No one told me what to write, but they did note that the farmers, and their point of view, was nearly absent from my book. But how could one understand the indigenous struggles without also honouring the entire canvas of events including all those who shared the history of that place? As in a novel, to understand one side, one had to see all the others and the clashes. Even if this or that group had to be criticized, how could one “write them out,” of the history, like we used to do to the indigenous people themselves? As a friend of mine, who is a professional historian in New York said, “We all have our favourites.” If one realizes this, you can take the necessary countermeasures – but more about that below.            

We live in turbulent times. Will things get worse? Or are our times the birth pains to create a better world? I leave the reader to their view, but I will say that we should all aim, each in their own fashion, for the latter option, not the former. Before we can manage history conflicts more wisely, we must understand them better. To help us, let me turn to one of Friedrich Nietzsche’s early essays, the wonderfully insightful and nuanced “The Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life.” He wrote it when he was 30.     

The Uses and Disadvantages of History For Life           

I will only look at the few aspects of this remarkable essay relevant to this inquiry. Nietzsche tells us that we do not need history like the scholar needs it, “though they may look nobly down on our rough and charmless needs and requirements.” We need history “for the sake of life and action….” He says that there are three kinds of history, and each serves the living in its own way. Note that in my use of words, I apply these ideas to all persons equally. Nietzsche uses the customs of his time of “men, man, mankind” etc.        

Monumental History           

First, history belongs to “the man of action” who “fights a great fight, who needs models, teachers, comforters, and cannot find them among his contemporaries.” The goal of such people is happiness, perhaps not their own, but “that of a nation or of mankind as a whole.” Such people “flee from resignation” and need history to help them. Nietzsche adds that such people often seek no reward, other than fame, understood as “a place of honour in the temple of history” so that they teach, comfort, and admonish those who come after them.    

The toughness of the present hour, the wars, and the doubts we all have about the flaws of human nature are by no means new.           

Nietzsche sees this vision as a “solidarity” and “continuity” of what is fine in all ages. It defeats the transience of time and human life, nourishes and aids the present, and reminds us that great things were done in the past and can still be done today. The toughness of the present hour, the wars, and the doubts we all have about the flaws of human nature are by no means new: we can combat them today and discipline ourselves to create great works again. His view is more nuanced than my account here, but it will do for our present purposes.         

Every Plus Has Its Minus          

The strength of the above paragraphs and the weaknesses are readily apparent: if we focus too much on what is worthy in events and the past, it will be “somewhat distorted, beautified, and coming close to free poetic invention….” When the monumental mode of history “rules,” then “the past itself suffers harm.” One is “deceived by analogies” and may become “foolhardy” or a “fanatic.”          

Another danger is that so-called cultured philistines, who cannot themselves create, will use the past as a stick to beat the strong creative spirits of today who make art or live in new and unexpected ways. The motto of such connoisseurs is: “let the dead bury the living.”        

Antiquarian History       

Antiquarian history serves the person who wants to “preserve and revere,” who looks back to their past with love, loyalty, and piety. By “tending with care” the forms of life of their ancestors, they wish to preserve these forms for today. One makes a home, for example, in a city of the past. “Here we lived, he says to himself, for here we are living; and here we shall live, for we are tough and not to be ruined overnight.”     

This view of history has its dangers too. The past itself suffers under the distorting need to revere. Also, this reverence for the past can become indiscriminate and total; “everything new and evolving is persecuted.” If an entire people do this, then history does not serve life but “mummifies” it. There is also the “blind rage” for “collecting.” Finally, if everything old, simply due to its age, becomes immortal and cannot be questioned, it will seem “arrogant..even wicked” to replace it with novelty. How, then, can new life evolve? This situation leads to a solution: the use of the third mode of history, the critical. Having studied the first two modes of history, Nietzsche says that it becomes clear how much one needs a critical history.        

Critical History           

Having studied the first two modes of history, Nietzsche says that it becomes clear how much one needs a critical history. It also serves life. One must, from time to time, have “the strength” to “break up” and “dissolve a part of the past.” How does one do this? By bringing history “before the tribunal, scrupulously examining it, and finally, condemning it.” Why we should condemn history is complicated, but let me sketch out a way through the material.         

Firstly, because “human violence and weakness have always played a mighty role” in past events. He gives examples such as a “privilege, a caste, a dynasty.” We take a knife “to its roots to clarify how unjust something is.” Nietzsche notes that this process is fraught with danger, as we are the product of this very history that now we condemn, even if we say that we are free of it now.    

For Nietzsche, such injustice is not limited to one time, place, or people but is everywhere, in all places, at all times. The powerful have a terrible habit of oppressing whomever they can, and all groups have been victims or oppressors at one time or another.           

He suggests that “the best we can do is to confront our inherited and hereditary nature with our knowledge,” to “combat” it to create new habits and instincts, to do and be better than before. Nietzsche is realistic about our prospects. He notes that often “we know the good but do not do it,” and we “know the better and cannot do it.” Yet, he concludes, “here and there a victory is nonetheless achieved….”       

In this essay, unusually for him, Nietzsche has high praise for justice. “No one has a greater claim to our veneration than he who possesses the drive to and strength for justice.” And yet, he does not see the critical mode of history as disinterested justice either. It, too, is meant to serve life. It clears the rubble and confronts injustice, not to destroy the culture but to allow it to function better. Based on my reading, it seems clear, at least to me, that “better” includes operating with more justice and doing more good. Neither of these ideas is associated with later Nietzsche.        

Before I get to how these insights might help us, let me make a few points about life today. This tremendous cacophony of voices, at times justifiably angry, at times not, can be both creative and dangerous.       

Creative Turbulence of the Digital Age          

Our age is tremendously turbulent for many reasons, but let me name one. Social Media allows all cultures and people within each culture to speak simultaneously, with or against each other. The power of this clash of histories is atomic. These collisions happen faster than a wildfire and are everywhere at the same time. It is potentially a world on fire: new identities, old identities, victors, vanquished, enemies, resentments, grievances, and those with legitimate claims to justice all fight each other. This tremendous cacophony of voices, at times justifiably angry, at times not, can be both creative and dangerous.        

Due to the speed of social media, we often do not think or act carefully to assess events. Based on groupthink and little evidence, we often rush to judge events that we know little about. People are fired at times before an inquiry, and social media is the judge, jury & executioner. How can we manage some of these problems and dangers? Let’s turn back to Nietzsche       

How Does Nietzsche help Us?   

For all his genius, Nietzsche lacks the sober maturity to help directly in managing our history fights. What he does do is help us understand them better, and he even hints at the way to manage them.        

First, how often do we see people in one social group speaking critically about someone else’s history but in monumental terms about their own? This is what I call the “all good or all bad” syndrome. For many, the past is not important; what matters is how it might justify one’s present claims. This self-involved group bias is a natural thing to do. We all do it, often innocently. One “cuts slack” for the failings of their group but is harsh with the failings of others. One can look up the psychology on this, but likely we all feel a deep need to belong to a group to protect us in an uncertain world.         

Secondly, in Nietzsche, we see both the use and grave dangers of monumental and even antiquarian history. On the plus side, we need a story, place, history, and people to call our own. We feel embedded in the universe, rooted, if we have a home, a set of stories and rituals, heroes and heroines, and cultural meaning. Properly managed, this longing is essential and good.       

On the negative side, these stories were usually chauvinistic. We are great, and our foe, the unnamed “other,” is evil, stupid, inferior, etc. Such stories are helpful for dictators or wanna-be dictators who want more power. This dangerous fantasy must be resisted.      

The Danger of Narrow One-Sided Attacks       

Critical history correctly done is immensely useful and performs (if unintentionally) a vital reckoning with the past and injustice itself. It may reveal a hard-won truth that was previously obscured. Or the history of an oppressed group is brought into the light. The dangers of critical history are woven into its strengths.      

If the author is not subtle, and there are many unsubtle ones, such a history can degenerate into a one-sided attack, usually from a politically fashionable point of view of the present historical moment.  Or, maybe fashionable extreme right views and extreme left views fight, with truth and subtlety dead in the bloodied dust.      

The complex history of an entire country, place, or event is indicted through the narrow lens of a particular, perhaps even just, critique of a specific issue or event. Much worse than this is a truly grievous error: at times, one finds the terrible mistake of condemning peoples as intrinsically better or worse morally based on their background: colour, race, gender, country, politics etc.       

No peoples are better or worse, as humans are the same everywhere: what can be better or worse are values and conduct in particular circumstances. And even the bad conduct must be understood as a product of the time. We must judge particular people based on the values of that time and place, not our own. We can judge acts as terrible, but we must also understand all the subtlety around what happened.     

Take, For Example, Colonialism        

For example, take the word “Colonialism.” Enormous time, effort, and energy have gone into the arguments around this word, and I do not doubt that this word, properly applied, has real use. But the problem is the intellectual “laser” vision that only sees the one thing it wants to see and misses everything else that is the same but does not serve the immediate argument. For example, I have great respect for Indigenous persons, yet powerful Indigenous peoples also took land from those who were less powerful. These things, nasty though they are, are universal. America has done it. China is now doing it; Russia is trying again, not too successfully (thankfully).        

The point is not to defend the actions of any one people but to note that this is a universal problem. But how rarely is this obvious point noted today on the political left? In the same way, how rarely is the validity of this argument, when properly made, honoured by those on the right? American history cannot be reduced to the story of slavery. On the other hand, is slavery and race-based injustice an important aspect of American history that is still having consequences today? You betcha.       

Good People/Bad People — The Danger of the Prosecutorial Approach   

The past has multiple crisscrossing narratives and is tough even to understand, let alone condemn. Ultimately, a condemnation may be required, but it must be nuanced. The historian should be like a wise judge, not a prosecutor.      

The prosecutorial approach is, unfortunately, widespread today. Social Justice histories often use it. Any decent person is interested in social justice. But it is a real problem, a fundamental error, if we think we know, before any inquiry, who the “good” people and whom the “bad” people are in a story, based on general factors about the background of each group. A better approach is to be attentive to universal questions of justice and to look carefully, with open eyes, to see what precisely did happen in a given event. One may be surprised, as life is much more complex than we usually allow.     

Some of the “good” people may have behaved terribly. Or some of the “bad” people, like a prison guard in a Nazi death camp who was a former classics scholar and was scrupulously kind to Jews, might be “good.” If injustice occurred in the past, as it always does to varying degrees, telling the story fairly with all the subtlety intact will not obscure it. Not only that, appreciating the subtlety that even most of our enemies are not all bad humanizes us.         

The political right is as varied as the left, from reasonable (as in reasonable people may differ), to the extremes. I leave aside in this essay a discussion of the often brutal pronouncements from the further left or right, as they do not reach the level even of bad history, but remain propaganda. One thinks of the poem, "Waiting for the Barbarians," by Cavafy. But now, the barbarians have, in fact, arrived. And they are not interested in speeches, at least ones that use true arguments and speech. The best way to judge anybodies speech, left or right, is to assess whether anyone is excluded autuomatically from their vision of humanity. To be judged individually, with evidence, is just and proper. I am referring to the exclusion of anyone from our shared humanity. The rotten tree produces rotten fruit.

The final danger of one-sided attacks, from any political angle, is that they weaken our institutions and endanger them. A fair attack shows both the good and the bad, what works, what does not work, who is treated fairly, and who is not. We can work with this to improve. But we can do nothing with one-sided inflammatory attacks from the extremes of left or right. Their pure inhuman world often leads to concentration camps and civil war.     

Nietzsche’s Hint and Our Solve     

In his “Uses and Disadvantages…” Nietzsche affirms the importance of justice, as I mentioned above. In general, Nietzsche focused more on power than on justice, not because he was an evil man but because he was a realist. Yet, I would argue that he underestimated the real power of justice, which by definition, is universal i.e. – must apply to all equally, and ontological. By this fancy word I mean a simple thing: how we treat others has natural and inevitable consequences. A society of killers will be violent and brutal. A society of fair men and women governed by law, a constitution, and a wise democratically elected leader will be much more productive, safe, and a better place to live.          

If we know that many historically based arguments are often used to advance present battles, even sometimes made by professional historians, what are we to do? How are we to mediate all these claims? Do we succumb to the total war of rhetorical attack and counterattack leading toward “a war of all against all.”? Many will. But there is a better way.         

The short answer is that we must use a sound, universal, and rigorous process based on evidence and reason to review all such arguments. All diverse groups are understood to be equally human, with flaws and strengths, and susceptible to circumstance. Assertions must be tested with evidence. Reasonable people and groups may still differ, but more wisely. We must vigorously resist histories that try to set up simple “good people, bad people” dichotomy. This oversimplification is deadly and may justify new forms of injustice today. There are cases now in my country where the descendants of the “bad” people, cannot even apply for certain jobs. If all cultures and peoples use the “good people, bad people” syndrome against their opponents, there can be no rational conversation, negotiation, or reconciliation.       

Against the dangers of zealotry, lies, dead myth, power-seeking fables, I present the fine historian Tony Judt. Near the end of Postwar: A History of Europe since 1945, in discussing the evil of Nazi Germany, He wrote: “Impossible to remember as it truly was, it is inherently vulnerable to being remembered as it wasn’t,” he wrote, before quoting the historian Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi: “Against this challenge memory itself is helpless: ‘Only the historian, with the austere passion for fact, proof, evidence, which are central to his vocation, can effectively stand guard.’ ”       

The second danger is if we forget how to bond as humans. If we lose our sense of fraternity and community, it will be an angry and lonely life indeed. This alienation is rampant today for many reasons. We are the age of the angry, the rootless, and the depressed.         

Furthermore, given that all cultures have widespread injustice, we must decide what to do today based on past events. We must, in short, focus on doing universal, procedural justice today, excluding no one. Given that many of the arguments about history are about the present let’s solve our present injustices now in a way that does not deny one single person their rights. All are equal. No one is guilty or innocent based on group association, but based on their conduct. Furthermore, justice as having less social inequality is also vital, but beyond the scope of this inquiry. I would merely note that due process, i.e., a fair and universal process, applies there also.

The Angry, The Rootless, and the Depressed     

We are more than ever aware of our diversity as humans. Having tolerance for the differences in ways of being and seeing, even honouring these differences, is an undiluted good. The danger is if we forget that beneath diversity is universality — the solitary suffering human being of whatever background. The second danger is if we forget how to bond as humans. If we lose our sense of fraternity and community, it will be an angry and lonely life indeed. This alienation is rampant today for many reasons. We are the age of the angry, the rootless, and the depressed.         

Finally, everyone is entitled to love their cultural home. The urban dwellers who have been told that their history is bad or irrelevant and now believe in nothing have few resources to resist the latest intellectual fad or technological gadget. The trick is to love one’s home culture while acknowledging its mistakes and injustices and also honouring other peoples. Sadly, Nietzsche is right that power will always be crucial, but processes of justice and sound institutions may mediate what is worst and most dangerous about the human being if we can manage to attain these vital things.         

Human beings do not make justice; they attune themselves to it. One can both hope for a better world and act in the spirit of that hope. Enacted justice brings harmony and hope, while injustice brings fragmentation, despair, and violence. It is our choice.

This essay was written a few years ago. Let me merely note here that the democratic, constitutional, institutional, law-based justice in one of the key democracies in the world, if not the key democracy, the United States, is under attack and crumbling. One can only hope that forces defending these values ultimately prove themelves stronger than these destructive forces, which do not reside only in one man, but in a general malaise.. Sound, balanced, rigorous and fair history can play its role of integration and humanity, opposing tyranny and destruction. All is in the balance....

Note (1) Nietzsche quotes are from Untimely Meditations, from Cambridge Univ. Press, translated by R.J. Hollingdale

Note (2) The story about the concentration camp guard who was a classics scholar and very kind is from When Evils Were Most Free, by George Gabori