The Historian and History (review)

Book Reviews The Historian and History. By Page Smith. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1964. Pp. viii + 249 + Bibliography 261. $4.95.) The dedication of this book to Rosenstock-Huessy sets the stage for what may become the call for reform in "history" in the United States. In later recognizing Rosenstock-Huessy's insights as "the first historical work under the new dispensation," Smith sustains his critique of historical thought. And when historian Smith decries the ignoble rejection which met Rosenstock-Huessy's earlier call for a re-evaluation of "the most basic assumptions of the prewar West" (p. 95), it is well within the style and mood of this book to characterize Smith not simply as a reformer but as a prophet---one grasped and informed by Judeo-Christian tradition. It is Smith's belief that "history," as taught and practiced in the educational-professional matrix, has lost its vision and thereby its relevance to a generation struggling for identity. The blame for this situation is deeply rooted in the historian and the method he has pursued. However, as a review of the contents of the book will reveal, Smith's concern is constructive as well as critical: His purpose is to direct attention to the wider implications of historiography -metaphysical or theological--wherein a promise for meaningful existence in an imperfect world may be forthcoming. In broad outline the book contains four parts. The first, chapters 1-6 inclusively, traces the evolution of the idea of history. In this context the contributions of the Jews ("who discovered history," p. 5), the Greeks, Christianity, Augustine, Nietzsche, and Dilthey--to name only a few of the particulars--are presented. The theme is that modern historical thought, consciously or unconsciously, is more deeply rooted in the heritage of the Christian linear-time motif, as opposed to the Greek cyclical-time scheme, than historians have been predisposed to admit. The second part, chapters 7-10, presents some of the more outstanding characteristics and trends of modern-contemporary historiography. In this connection the impact of the neoorthodox movement in theology, reacting to the shock of World War I, is dialectically interpreted among the more recent moods of philosophic existentialism on the one hand, and scientific historicism on the other. The thrust of this section is the positive acknowledgment that "history" is too much immersed in the contingencies of human existence---with all its frailties--to be uncritically delimited by any particular "science." In the third section, chapters 11-14, a more definitive analysis and critique of contemporary standards of historiography is presented. Subjects which come under Smith's perspicacious and sometimes sardonic criticism include "objectivity," "subjectivism," "relativism," "individualism ," "sciantism," and "historicism," to name only a few. The insight of this part, provocatively delineated and defended in the Twelfth Chapter ("A Case in Point: The American Revolution") is that generally speaking it is an illusion to believe that "perspective" or "distance in time" necessarily guarantees a "truer interpretation." More specifically and positively Smith argues that the relation between "historic event" and the "authentic integrity of the participant" must remain inviolable. The fourth and final part, chapter 15, discerns how an awareness of the historic dimension of human existence may provide a help, albeit a limited one, to those who seek meaningfulness amidst "the turbulent waters of our time." The theme of this section, although somewhat confessional and poetic in tone, is that "the historic" frees the individual ]tom the weight of the present and ]or the wider dimensions of authenticity in terms of community, on the one hand, and the Divine, on the other. The underlying thesis which unites the four parts of the book is: The historian's task is a moral one in which it is his responsibility to discern from the drama of the race a vision of authentic selfhood aetualizable in terms of transcendence. Just what the implications of this [251] 252 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY thesis are, and what it presages for "history" in "a new frame of reference" (p. 224) can be appreciated in part by reading it from the point of view of more explicit themes characteristic of Smith's position. In this regard his contributions to the...