Clio Among the Muses: Essays on History and the Humanities

180 Pages·2013·1.3 MB·English

by  Peter Charles Hoffer

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CLIO AMONG THE MUSES
Clio among the Muses
Essays on History and the Humanities
Peter Charles Hoffer
NEW YORK UNIVERSITY PRESS
New York and London
www.nyupress.org
© 2014 Peter Charles Hoffer
All rights reserved References to Internet websites (URLs) were accurate at the
time of writing. Neither the author nor New York University Press is responsible
for URLs that may have expired or changed since the manuscript was prepared.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Hoffer, Peter Charles, 1944–
Clio among the muses: essays on history and the humanities / Peter Charles
Hoffer.
pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-47983283-5 (hardback)
1. History —Methodology. 2. Historiography. 3. History —Philosophy.
4. Humanities. I. Title.
D16.H686 2013
907.2 —dc23 2013027458
New York University Press books are printed on acid-free paper, and their
binding materials are chosen for strength and durability. We strive to use
environmentally responsible suppliers and materials to the greatest extent
possible in publishing our books.
Manufactured in the United States of America 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Also available as an ebook
CONTENTS
Preface
Introduction: The Problem with History
1. History and Religion
2. History and Philosophy
3. History and the Social Sciences
4. History and Literature
5. History and Biography
6. History and Policy Studies
7. History and the Law
Conclusion: An Answer?
Notes
A Very Short Bibliography (with Annotations)
Index
About the Author
PREFACE
In beginning our history proper, it might perhaps be wise to forget
all that we have said before and start fresh, as a lot of new things
have come up.
ROBERT BENCHLEY, 1944
The humorist, essayist, and pseudo-documentary movie maker Robert Benchley
had a rare gift for parody. One of his targets was the academic know-it-all who
learns everything from books. For example, “in order to write about snake-
charming, one has to know a little about its history, and where should one go to
find out about history but to a book. Maybe in that pile of books in the corner is
one on snake-charming. Nobody could point the finger of scorn at me if I went
over to those books for the avowed purpose of research work.”
Benchley put his finger on exactly what historians do when they write about
other historians (a subject inelegantly called “historiography”). They go over to
that pile of books, sort and read, compile genealogies of ideas and methods, and
make judgments, and another book goes on top of the pile. Historians (if not,
alas, their readers) find the study of the discipline of history endlessly
fascinating. For at the center of the study of the past is a compelling paradox: We
demand to know about the past but can never be sure we have gotten our account
right. We would love to go back in time (all historians are secret re-enactors), but
we cannot go back, and even if we could, how could we see all the events from
all the perspectives that the past offers? History is Odysseus’ Sirens calling us to
a place that we cannot reach, yet we persist in listening. The Sirens’ call is so
enchanting—writing history is an act of such artistry—who can blame historians
for spending a lifetime of research and writing at their command?
In a 1998 essay for the American Historical Association’s Perspectives, the
historian Peter N. Stearns listed the benefits of studying history: History helps us
understand change, provides clues to our own identity, and hones our moral
sense. But history is not a standalone discipline. Indeed, it stands on the
shoulders of its companions in the humanities and social sciences. In the
following pages’ brief span, I assay history’s complicated partnership with its
coordinate disciplines of religion, philosophy, social science, literature,
biography, policy studies, and law. These are Clio’s modern sister disciplines,
comparable to the eight other muses who accompanied Clio in the ancient world.
That companionship, sometimes immensely rewarding, sometimes testy and
rancorous, adds to the authority and humanity of chronicle, but history is not just
the accumulation of other disciplines’ knowledge. More than the sum of these
collaborations, the study of history is something unique, ennobling, and
necessary. One can live without religion, philosophy, and the rest. One cannot
exist without history. But I do not want to give away here what should be earned
by reading the following pages.
I wish to acknowledge those kind people who have assisted me in this
Herculean task (which I liken to wrestling Antaeus): Clive Priddle and Michael
McGandy for their help in my attempts to grapple with the meaning and method
of history; Peter Onuf and Claire Potter, whose readings of an earlier essay
taught me how to get a hold on key themes; and Richard Bernstein, William
Cronon, Paul Finkelman, Michael Gagnon, John T. Juricek, Stanley Katz, Allan
Kulikoff, Maureen Nutting, Thomas Whigham, and Michael Winship, whose
combined intellectual weight added to my own effort enabled me to pin down
the subject. Michael Zuckerman’s refereeing of the manuscript was overly kind,
his pages of admonitions and emendations invariably fair. My wife and scholarly
partner, N. E. H. Hull, and my older son, Williamjames Hull Hoffer, have read
bits and pieces of this project over a course of years and cheered me on. At New
York University Press, editor Debbie Gershenowitz urged me to submit the
manuscript; and her successor editor, Clara Platter, guided it through the Press
Board approval process and then offered a remarkably kind pre-edit. No
wrestling match with an opponent as experienced and wily as history will ever
result in a complete victory, but to all of the kind people who shared this contest
with me, my heartfelt thank you.
Introduction
The Problem with History
It is said that Clio cannot be taken by storm, but requires much
patient and skillful Wooing. Moreover, Clio likes a certain degree
of self-effacement in her suitors.
CHARLES DOWNER HAZEN,
“This Country as Mr. Chesterton Sees It,”
New York Times Book Review, June 8, 1919
Clio, paramount among the nine ancient Greek muses, was gifted by her mother
with memory and shared lyric skills with her eight sisters. She inspired those
who assayed to sing, tell, and write stories of the past. Ancient audiences held
the followers of Clio in high regard, for they captured the imagination of the
listener and reader. For Hellenes gathered around the fire pit to hear Homer sing
about Troy, or Hellenized Romans who delighted in reading their copy of
Plutarch’s Parallel Lives, or the monks in the English abbeys who squinted in
the candlelight as they re-read older chronicles of the lives of Saxon saints and
kings, or the thousands of nineteenth-century middle-class families that gathered
in gaslit parlors to devour the tales of heroism in Francis Parkman’s volumes,
history enchanted and instructed, just as Clio wished. The Greeks defeated the
Trojans; Caesar failed where Alexander the Great succeeded; Alfred the Great
unified Anglo-Saxon England; and the British chased the French and their Indian
allies from North America for reasons that historians’ listeners and readers
thought worth knowing. In the nineteenth century, no educated person in the
West doubted that history was “assigned the office of judging the past, of
instructing the present for the benefit of future ages.”1
The university-trained historians of the late nineteenth century echoed this
creed as they lobbied for required history courses in the schools alongside the
sciences.
If it is desirable that the high-school pupil should know the physical