Enlightenment, though brought a new und? brought a new understanding to history.. It became an actual realm independent of what we say about it. I think "time" became history when progress became something obvious and irrefutable. (By the way, I know Christian theology contributed to the concept of linear time. But, it was progress which gave us history.) Time is a bogus framework for understanding history for the following very simple reason: In order for time to make sense as a framework for history, there must be a consciousness with a "bird's eye view" observing things as they unfold over the centuries. Obviously no one person can do that. the Christian God won't work, either because God is temporal. History is therefore a gratuitous extrapolation of our own, personal understanding of time.
If that's true, then it means the Greeks got it right. History is merely the narrative of events which we either witness or else surmise. Incorporating the insight, that narrative is best understood as a place embedded in it's dramatic telling. What do you think of this?
If that's true, then it means the Greeks got it right. History is merely the narrative of events which we either witness or else surmise. Incorporating the insight, that narrative is best understood as a place embedded in it's dramatic telling. What do you think of this?