Why Study History?
Is it important to study history? Why do we need to know what’s come before us? Isn’t it enough to just “live in the moment?” Renowned historian Victor Davis Hanson explores these important questions.
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Script:
Why study history?
Ironically, this question is as old as history.
Twenty-five hundred years ago, Thucydides, the great chronicler of the Peloponnesian Wars between Athens and Sparta, and the man many call the “first historian” said that “…I have written my work, not…to win the applause of the moment, but as a possession for all time.”
Thucydides hoped that what he was writing would help future generations understand what transpired in his day. If they could learn from it and make better decisions, his efforts would not be in vain.
More than two millennia later, the American social thinker George Santayana said much the same thing, “Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”
But while knowledge of the past is a prerequisite to wisdom, it doesn’t give the historian a crystal ball.
We must be modest in our claims: studying history provides an invaluable guide—but only a guide—to current and future political, economic, military, and cultural challenges.
Just as it is dangerous to be ignorant of past events, so too it is equally risky to assume that history across time and space will repeat itself in exactly the same fashion. It never does.
Still, with the proper caution, studying history can warn us of dangers ahead.
For example, across the ages appeasing or ignoring enemies has rarely proven to be a prudent strategy. Usually, it’s disastrous.
The Greek city-states’ coddling of the Macedonian king Philip II, the weak Western democracies’ reaction to the aggression of Adolf Hitler in the 1930s, and the indifference shown to the dangers of radical Islam by an affluent West in the 1990s make the point.
There is another—perhaps less recognized—value in studying history.
Every generation, none more than our own, suffers from a pernicious presentism—the arrogance that those now alive have created the most prosperous period in history. The result is that too often we judge a materially poorer past by the same contemporary standards of an affluent and leisured present.
Those who study history can avoid these fallacies.
Aside from the fact that the present is the beneficiary of the accumulated intellectual, moral, and scientific contributions of the past, proper knowledge of the hardships of prior ages teaches us the value of humility.
To take just one possible example, it might be an easy thing to chronicle what seems to us prejudices recorded among the wagoneers on the Oregon Trail in the 1840s. It is quite another to imagine how the trailblazers struggled to survive one more day in an age without effective medicines, labor-saving machines, or adequate shelter.
Studying history also confers much needed perspective.
It’s neither fair nor wise to attempt to apply the moral standards of today to say, the far more deadly 17th century when life, in the words of English philosopher Thomas Hobbes, was “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”
The COVID-19 pandemic seems to many like a public health crisis without precedent—until we take time to learn of the global outbreak of the H1N1 influenza virus in 1918. The “Spanish flu” killed nearly 600,000 Americans in a nation of 100 million, with a worldwide toll of perhaps 50 million dead—and yet our nation and planet survived and learned from it.
One of the ways that I used to endure the tedium, dust, and noise of tractor driving was to remember that my farming grandfather covered the same ground with a team of horses. It took him two days of back breaking labor to cultivate four acres of land. I could do it in an hour—sitting down.
For the complete transcript visit: https://www.prageru.com/video/why-study-history
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Disagree with you on Robert E. Lee. Lee gave up his slaves before General Grant. Grant was not an abolitionist by any stretch. The north was involved in shipping slaves and in financing slavery. Stop leaving excluding the complicity of the north in slavery. The north passed anti-immigration laws to prevent Freedman from immigrating north. This channel always throws in some historical lies while making some good points. Southerners were not fighting for slavery they were fighting for Independence. I am not from the south.
students – history is useless
canada pm – im bout to prove yall wrong by inviting a nazi
We study history so groups like Prager U can be called out for being imbeciles.
I was struggling to feel motivated in my US History class, thanks to this video my eyes have been opened.
An excellent video!
I am so thankful for history for he scold me about whether i should learn or not learn history, because of him i am a thing for history especially wars or major events across the globe
Napoleon, Gaius Julius Caesar, and Robert E. Lee were great men and military leaders. To dismiss them as tyrants isn't fair to their accomplishments.
radical islam is a threat to the islamic world too. it is no different from the threat white supremacists pose toward their own people in the USA.
I learned and studied the anti Vietnam war protests. Is about the United states refused too let the Vietnam handle themselves and helping Vietnam trying preventing take over by the communist. Right now people don't learn about it and don't care about the anti Vietnam war protest while the pushing intervening with Russia and Ukraine conflict. Russia will win and same results as what happen in the Vietnam war.
I love history but I think most just find it unimportant in the current situation in sense of being pointless. They don't study it to understand but rather memorise then forget and just focus on subjects that guarantee a job.
Funny coming from a channel that says civil war wasn't about slavery, and leaves out a ton of important history itself.
Find yourself in a historical character. Learn all you can about them. This will develop a clearer focus, better resilience, and the comfort of knowing you've never truly been alone in your struggles.
I got a a+frome this
Really helped me in school
Video should be renamed to "why study European history"?
Not a single non European example has been taken into perspective
Please , do not refer to Macedonia as if it was not a Greek Kingdom, enough of this. Great video though
🙏🙏🙏
I try iterating this exact sentiment to the people close to me. Some get it to some extent, while the rest seem to have no idea what I am talking about. People do not emphasize enough on the importance of perspective in time…
Ive always been a history buff (specifically WWII) as I've gotten older I've realized presentism is a a very real thing. Even compared to my own parents especially in the digital age. My grandmother said herself she was racist against Americans of Japanese heritage (she saw pearl harbor attacked and lost her father at coral sea). It was after the lead pilot who led the attack on pearl came back and asked for forgiveness after becoming a christian did my grandmother do a total 180 in her life. Im grateful to have learned from her own historical experience, so that I can be more cautious on my own lifestyle.
PragerU is all about learning history until they realize that the Nazis were rather flattering of a lot of American history, Manifest Destiny being one such example, a famous one they tried to copy through Lebensraum.
Agree on everything however history is told by men. If we learnt something from the past 2 years is that we can control history’s narrative and shape opinions. I discovered years ago that what I learnt about WWII for example was from one side of history then there is so much more to learn. Who controls the narrative of history that the future generation will learn from? I for sure can control the one from my lifetime because I lived it but what after? before ?
How much money does vlad pay Mr. Prager?
So when prager u says something you know they're lying. Come on. Kirk Cameron. What a joke Mr. Prager is.
when i see a vdh video i like it before i even watch it.
Another great piece by Victor.
Maybe study history because the Ukraine is looking very extremely much like the Sudetenland in in 1938?
You are a national treasure. I hope you get to say everything you want to before you leave this world. Thank you for passing on your wisdom 🙏🏽