Lessons of History: An Impossible Equation? Towards New Perspectives on Historical Learning

Abstract

Lessons of history are two-sided cultural products. They serve as active
instruments of temporal orientation in a society in which historical trajectories seem obsolete and the future open, but they are also passively framed within historical cultures that often have prefigured them. Thus, lessons are seldom arbitrarily constructed. While lessons of history for many centuries were highly esteemed as guides to the future from the viewpoint of a practical past, and still are among economists, politicians and social scientists, few professional historians have trust in lessons. The distrust is explained from the lessons’ lack of congruence with traditional professional standards, but also from a frequent use of historical lessons for ideological and political purposes. The purpose of this essay is partly to discuss the theoretical assumptions behind lessons of history, partly to argue in favour of a more constructive use of lessons that can meet reasonable scholarly requirements.