Great Ideas of Philosophy

Lecture SixHerodotus and the Lamp of HistoryScope: Does history teach? Herodotus thought so, and this because of what he took to be certain universal humanaspirations and deficiencies.Herodotus, born in 484 B.C., is said to be the first historian in the accepted sense of the term. His treatise,The Persian Wars, is filled with details on character, armaments, battle strategies, and perhaps mostsignificantly, attempted explanations of why events took the form they did.As something of the “father” of historical scholarship, Herodotus would inevitably be found limited bysucceeding generations of historians. There are patent impossibilities to be found in his major work;consider only the famous meeting between Solon and Croesus in chapters 30–32 of Book I. Given theirrespective chronologies, these two men could not have met; however, the point of their inclusion byHerodotus is not to relate a historical encounter but to tell something of a “moral tale.” Such defects are notuncommon in Herodotus and have been subjected to deserved and predictable criticism by those who arenow ranked as “professional” historians. Herodotus invented the subject, not the profession!OutlineI. Herodotus is usually accepted as the first historian in the modern sense of the term. This is not because he wasthe first to chronicle major events or to establish dates for occurrences of interest to his contemporaries. Thewriting of history is not the occupation of the mere chronicler.A. Herodotus writes The Persian Wars to record the causes of the events and to ensure that brave deeds not beforgotten.1. In this way, he recorded the ancient Greek sense of the past as prologue but, as we shall see, in a formless indebted to myth and religious notions of retribution.2. But he is also wrestling with the problem of knowledge. What could be a more burning question, atleast at the level of daily life, than to determine the causes of war?B. Men make war not out of hate and aggression but out of devotion to irreconcilable values, expressed incultural symbols—themselves a form of discourse. Herodotus thus devotes many pages to customs,religious beliefs, the form of dress, weapons, and so on. He understands that an informing account of aworld war calls for more by way of explanation than can be found in mythology.1. Herodotus teaches that, to account for events of historic proportions, one must go well beyond themere chronicling of the events. One must undertake a veritable “sociology” of those events and a“psychology” of the participants.2. We see Homer’s influence here, which suffuses nearly every aspect of the ancient Greek world and itsachievements.C. Herodotus also recognized that history teaches and inclines people toward actions, but how does historyteach?1. The answer must be found at a level Herodotus takes to be more fundamental than ethnicity andculture: the level of our common humanity.2. The lamp of history illuminates the very commonalities that constitute human nature itself. Historyteaches that wherever you find human beings, certain lessons are worth learning.3. There is a root humanity that is reached by certain events and that allows us to predict how we arelikely to behave under certain conditions and how those conditions, therefore, should either bepromoted or shunned.D. Does the account teach us of the gods? In Herodotus, the religious and mythic elements are relegated tosecondary importance. Rather, events are to be understood in terms of actual patterns of motivation, interms of local conditions and contextual factors.1. The Persian wars were caused by us. Religious beliefs, not divine will, were a factor. As he says inchapter 64 of Book II, when speaking of Egyptian religion, Herodotus will not attempt an explanationfor, to do so, “I should be led to speak of religious matters, which I particularly shrink frommentioning.”©2004 The Teaching Company Limited Partnership 15