Historical Amnesia

"After a decade of college teaching, I've concluded that one of the key differences between good and mediocre liberal arts students is a sense of history.  This is something more, and more subtle, than a knowledge of events and dates.  It is the realization that the past had a past, and that the past of the past is different from our past.Some students get all the facts right, but for them history remains flat.  Alexander defeated the Persians at Issus in 333 B.C., and that’s that.  What they miss is the fraught background of earlier clashes between Greece and Persia; the miss Alexander’s passion for Hellenizing the world, fired by Homer and Aristotle.  They forget that issus, too, had a past.We are reminded that those who forget history are condemned to repeat it. But “remembering” history by remember dates and names is another form of amnesia.  We learn the lessons history has to offer only if we nurture a pluperfect imagination."

Citation: Leithart, Peter J. From the “Quodlibet” department in “Touchstone” magazine. July/August 2010. Page 7.