Gu Che
What Is “Whig History”?
This forum is updated the slowest of all, so let me ask a “layman’s question”~
In a previous post (see: http://hps.phil.pku.edu.cn/bbs/read.php?tid=284), Brother Yuzhile said that the discussion had “changed in nature,” shifting from professional questions to layman’s questions. Since he put it that way, I was no longer comfortable pursuing the matter in that post. But the very basic layman’s question involved there struck me as something really worth pressing further!
Brother Yu said: “History is necessarily Whig history. Don’t say that you know the original history, or a philosopher’s original thought, unless you are God.”
Good heavens! What does that mean? I’ve even begun to doubt my previous understanding of the concept of “Whig history.”
What is Whig history?
In historiography, there is indeed a saying that has circulated: “All history is contemporary history.” That was Croce, and of course there is much truth in it. What this sentence means (I’m guessing as a layman, mind you) is that historiography must always be approached through contemporary modes of thought, through contemporary contexts and problems; there can be no objective history that transcends all eras. Or rather, only God knows the “original history,” while human history always starts from a contemporary standpoint.
But what is “Whig history”? This concept already feels to me like academic common knowledge, and there should not be much ambiguity about it. Let me casually quote the entry from Baidu Baike:
“Whig history” is a historiographical concept created by the British historian Herbert Butterfield. The Whig Party was a party in British history, appearing around 1679 and renamed the Liberal Party after 1860. The party believed in Protestantism, supported Parliament’s resistance to royal power, advocated a constitutional monarchy, and upheld freedom of religious belief. In the nineteenth century, Whig historians stood on the party’s standpoint and depicted British political history as a history of continuous progress toward the goals advocated by the party, forming a distinctive Whig history (Whig History). In his book The Whig Interpretation of History, published in 1931, Butterfield expanded Whig history from a specific British school of historiography into a historiographical concept in a general sense. This conceptual expansion quickly won recognition in the historical field and became a rather rhetorically powerful phrase in historiography. So-called Whig history is history written from the standpoint and perspective of the present, depicting the past as a history of progress toward today’s goals, dividing historical figures into those who promoted progress and those who hindered it, and compiling history mainly by selecting progressive figures and events; it will, of course, thereby achieve recognition of and agreement with today’s goals and standpoint.
http://baike.baidu.com/view/1301580.html
Are “history is necessarily contemporary history” and “history is necessarily Whig history” the same thing? Is saying that historians always look at history from a contemporary standpoint the same as saying that history should be depicted as a linear story of continuous progress toward the present? Obviously not! The most basic requirement of Whig history is to hold a view of history as progress; a cyclical or regressive view of history cannot be called Whig history. And holding to a “historical perspective,” and striving to understand historical events within their own historical circumstances, is even less Whig history. Although it is absolutely impossible to abandon the contemporary perspective altogether, refusing to regard the present as history’s goal is of course possible.
Have I misunderstood it?
[Host] | Posted: 2008-01-13 06:10
jack
………… I always thought Whig history emphasized speaking from one’s own standpoint; I never really considered the other linear factors
[1st floor] | Posted: 2008-01-13 21:26
Gu Che
This shows that this concept really does need to be brought out and clarified~ I had thought Whig history was closely tied to the idea of “progress.” Butterfield was certainly not simply repeating Croce’s words; they were talking about different issues.
Last time I heard Wu Laoshi mention it, people say the history of mathematics is necessarily Whig history, and I thought there was indeed reason in that. It is really difficult to make the history of mathematics into anti-Whig history. Making the history of the other natural sciences into Whig history is also reasonable; it’s just that one should not thereby see historical development as too simple, nor dogmatically treat the standard for measuring progress as the only standard.
But there is one kind of history that, when made into Whig history, often becomes extremely ugly. That is philosophy. We have all seen what Whig history of philosophy looks like, and that is the writing method of traditional textbooks—the whole history of philosophy becomes a history of the struggle between materialism and idealism, until materialism finally defeats idealism, and dialectics defeats metaphysics~~
In my view, the best model for showing what Whig history is not the history of science, but the history of philosophy in traditional textbooks. How ugly and shallow this kind of history is—one glance tells you.
[2nd floor] | Posted: 2008-01-13 21:48
Xinzhai Lao Jiang
I really haven’t thought carefully about this common concept.
Still, the history of mathematics can of course be anti-Whig; for anyone who dislikes the direction mathematics has taken over the most recent period, the history of mathematics is not Whig.
[4th floor] | Posted: 2008-01-14 19:29
Gu Che
Teacher Jiang is right: the history of mathematics can of course be anti-Whig, especially since the development of mathematics since the twentieth century, from the intuitionist school’s point of view, has not necessarily all been progress.
But it is not easy to truly make the history of mathematics anti-Whig. Whig history requires a view of history as progress; however, a view of history as progress does not necessarily think history is always endlessly advancing. There is also the saying of “wave-like advance, spiral ascent.” Therefore, “the history of mathematics in the eyes of someone who dislikes the direction mathematics has taken in recent times” is not necessarily non-Whig history; they may regard recent mathematical development as a wrong path or a regression, and if the standard for judging whether the direction of development is good or bad is treated as singular, what results is still Whig history.
[5th floor] | Posted: 2008-01-14 20:27
Xinzhai Lao Jiang
I still don’t quite understand what is distinctive about mathematics in this issue?
[6th floor] | Posted: 2008-01-15 16:59
Gu Che
My feeling is that the particularity of the history of mathematics lies in the fact that it has almost never undergone a “revolution.” Of course, there have been many large and small changes in the history of mathematics, and at times certain paradigm shifts in some sense have also occurred—for example, the concept of “fractions” recognized by the ancient Egyptians was completely different; the “number” recognized by Pythagoras was also different from the modern one; and Diophantus’s number theory also differed somewhat from the modern version. However, compared with other sciences, the development of the history of mathematics does a very good job of “downward compatibility.” The ancient Egyptians may not have been able to understand many aspects of modern mathematics, but modern mathematics can in turn go back and express itself in forms recognized by the Egyptians, and can translate some new results back into that language. Thus, even if we set aside those new contents that cannot be translated back, and look only at the part of mathematics that the Egyptians could recognize, then even from the Egyptians’ standpoint one would have to admit that there has indeed been “progress.” Mathematics can translate almost all achievements of previous paradigms back into the current language in their original form, inheriting everything that came before. Other sciences cannot do this. Newtonian science had to negate most of Aristotle’s “achievements,” but modern mathematicians can still affirm most of Diophantus’s achievements—unless we discover that he had already proved something wrongly at the time; if it was indeed proved wrongly, then even translated into the original language it will often still be wrong.
Of course, I believe the difference between the history of mathematics and the histories of other sciences is only one of degree, not of essence. What I mainly want to say is that making the history of mathematics Whig is not really a bad thing; perhaps the history of mathematics is the most suitable kind to make Whig, while the history of philosophy is the least suitable.
[7th floor] | Posted: 2008-01-15 17:32
Xinzhai Lao Jiang
I agree with Little Gu’s view: there are only differences of degree; Whig history of mathematics is the best kind of Whig history, while Whig history of philosophy is the worst.
Why is the history of mathematics most suitable for a Whig style?
My understanding is that we place those relationships and understandings that are not suitable for Whig outside mathematics, and define those formal things, those things that need to be interpreted and explained, as the internal part of mathematics. In this way, the development of mathematics looks as if it were the accumulation of various techniques and of structures detached from their applied contexts.
And philosophy just happens to make this operation difficult.
But many beggar-brother friends probably think that the history of philosophy is also Whig; they would think that compared with Frege, people like Plato were too unsophisticated (Russell once seemed to hold this view), and Laozi probably cannot really count as a philosopher. I don’t much like this understanding, but I admit that it can also be made to cohere with itself, and that it has its value.
[8th floor] | Posted: 2008-01-15 18:43
Translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The original text is authoritative.
Leave a Reply