The Birth of the Past PDF
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The Birth of the Past KKKKKKK KKKKKKK KKKKKKK B irth KTKhKe KKKK KKKKKKK KKKKKKK KKKKKKK KKKKKKK KKKKKKK KKKKKKK KKKKKKK KKKKKKK The Johns Hopkins University Press KKBKaltimorKe KKK KKKKKKK KKKKKKK KKKKKKK KKKKKKK KKKKKKK P KKKKKaKstK of the KKKKKKK KKKKKKK KKKKKKK Z AC HA RY S AY R E S C H I F F M A N KKKKKKK KKKKKKK Foreword by A N T HON Y G R A F TON KKKKKKK KKKKKKK KKKKKKK KKKKKKK © 2011 The Johns Hopkins University Press All rights reserved. Published 2011 Printed in the United States of America on acid- free paper 2 4 6 8 9 7 5 3 1 The Johns Hopkins University Press 2715 North Charles Street Baltimore, Mary land 21218- 4363 www .press .jhu .edu Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data Schiff man, Zachary Sayre. The birth of the past / Zachary Sayre Schiff man. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN- 13: 978- 1- 4214- 0278- 9 (hardcover : alk. paper) ISBN- 10: 1- 4214- 0278- 5 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. History— Philosophy. 2. Historiography— Philosophy. 3. Historiography— Western countries. 4. Western countries— Intellectual life. 5. Civilization, Western. I. Title. D16.8.S268 2011 901—dc22 2011008229 A cata log record for this book is available from the British Library. Special discounts are available for bulk purchases of this book. For more information please contact Special Sales at 410- 516- 6936 or [email protected]. The Johns Hopkins University Press uses environmentally friendly book materials, including recycled text paper that is composed of at least 30 percent post- consumer waste, whenever possible. For Hanna Holborn Gray and Karl Joachim Weintraub ( 1924– 2004 ) K “And I too am a paint er,” have I said with Correggio. —Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws, quoting Correggio’s reputed words upon fi rst viewing Raphael’s St. Cecilia This page intentionally left blank Contents Foreword, by Anthony Grafton ix Gestation xiii Introduction The Past Defined 1 part one A ntiquity 15 Flatland 16 Pasts Present 25 The Herodotean Achievement 35 Thucydides and the Refashionings of Linear Time 50 Hellenistic Innovations 63 part two C hristianity 77 Can’t Get H ere from There 78 The Power of Prayer 81 Breakthrough to the Now 88 The Idea of the Sæculum 103 The Sæculum Reconfigured 111 Gregory of Tours and the Sæculum 119 Back from the Future: Bede and the Figural View of Reality 126 viii Contents part three R e naiss ance 137 The Living Past 138 The Birth of Anachronism 144 Petrarch’s “Copernican Leap” 152 The Commonplace View of the World 172 Jean Bodin and the Unity of History 183 part four E nlightenment 201 Presence and Distance 202 Biography as a Form of History 210 The Politics of History 217 The Relations of Truth / The Truth of Relations 226 Montesquieu and the Relations of Things 234 The Past Emerges 245 Epilogue The Past Historicized 267 Notes 279 Selected Bibliography 291 Index 309 Foreword Americans know that history matters. Jurists and politicians, pundits and bloggers invoke history to support their visions of the form of government we should live under and the sort of wars we should wage, the schools and universities we should build and support and the ways in which we should exploit our natural resources. But as Jill Lepore and others have pointed out, most of the history that is retold in such contexts is actually unhis- torical.1 Ordinary citizens and politicians alike assume that past thinkers can guide us in a present they could not have envisioned: that the found ers of the United States can tell us everything we need to know about women’s rights, nuclear weapons, and the exploration of space. We ask what Jesus would have driven, without refl ecting that he rode a donkey rather than a car. Historians look at the past in a very diff erent way. Like L. P. Hartley, they assume that “the past is a foreign country: they do things diff erently there.” Past societies and leaders certainly off er examples that we can still study with profi t. But we can learn from them only if we bear in mind that they are part of a past— a continuum of social and cultural, economic and po liti cal development, their place in which was diff erent from ours. We judge our colleagues and grad- uate students by their ability to put this principle into practice, and we train our undergraduates, or try to train them, to do so as well. When did Western intellectuals fi rst begin to think about the past in these distinctive terms? In this book, Zachary Schiff man off ers a powerful and engag- ing answer. For a quarter of a century, he has explored, in articles that are now classics, in a remarkable study of French historical thought, and in a prescient collaborative book, the history of Western ways of preserving and imagining the past.2 His work has shaped that of his colleagues and of younger scholars— for example, the distinguished Harvard historian Ann Blair, whose own bril- liant inquiries into the history of information management began from a read- ix
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