Abstract

The past which the present acknowledges tends to be deceptively simple. Attention is most frequently paid to those of its aspects which appear to have anticipated the present, or to those which contrast with what the present takes to be most uniquely its own. Consequently, the past in which the present takes an interest tends to change, and it is unlikely that successive generations will assign equal significance to precisely the same aspects of what occurred in the past. This need not lead to distorted views of those particular features on which attention is focused, but it can lead to a neglect of whatever aspects of the past are not of pressing present concern. Consequently, the context in which any generation views the past may easily become too narrow, and a sense of the past’s complexity will be lost. For reasons that I have elsewhere suggested, this situation is more likely to obtain in the field of cultural history than in studies of political and institutional change. When previous views as to what is most important in literature, or in philosophy, or in the arts undergo change, the whole history of these forms of endeavor will reflect that change. In what follows, I wish to call attention to some of the ways in which our own philosophic preconceptions have led to a neglect of important facets of nineteenth-century thought.