It is somewhat unbelievable that I should be discoursing on history at Lunar New Year's Eve, with some pending papers. But the subject simply fascinates me - as you can tell - if not also because a recent encounter, while reading accounts of the Holocaust and a subsequent controversy, with some deeply disconcerting questions about the public use of history, has prompted me to think more hard about history. Anyways, I want to add a few points to my earlier reply, and tell a fable.
(1) The Problem of Preconception
It is commonly the case, I believe, that one who tries to downplay the scientificity, or even persuasiveness, of historical knowledge tends himself to entertain some surreptitious historical preconceptions in the recess of his mind. While declaring that no one can tell the truth from falsehood in history - for, so goes the belief, everything is so remote and so much in flux - his judgment and his ethical stand are often revealed to be informed by some idea, vague or precise, about the past. He
would readily concede that his idea is no more scientific or persuasive than his neighbor's, but it is well on this concession that he bases the inviolability of his own. It amounts to a categorical denial of the possibiity and the need to rectify, when confronted with convincing evidence, one's knowledge of historical events. It is a defensive move after all.
(2) The Fable of the Drunkard
Recall the fable of the drunkard searching his lost key under the street lamp. In our own tradition we have a comparable story - ke zhou qiu jian. The drunkard does not search where the lost key might have been; rather, he lets his search be dictated by the light source alone. His strategy seems not very promising, to say the least.
Now, compare the key and the light to our object and method of study respectively. The light is meant to illuminate; but when it is simply not around - too far away from the key - we can only leave it aside, however unwillingly. The key should guide us, not the light. Likewise, it is the object of study that should be our ultimate guide, not some preconceived method. When out of logic, narrowly defined, and the falsification ideal is a searching light made, the key goes out of sight. The light becomes too bright for the drunkard, and, after some acquaintance therewith, too dear to be given up.
When a passer-by asks him about his endeavor, and suggests him that he might want to search without the light, or gather a light closer to where the key might be, the drunkard must be perplexed, and later annoyed. "How can one ever search without the brightest light in the world? Elsewhere is all darkness!"
The light helps the drunkard gradually to build up, about the key and the searching of it, a web of experiences, assertions, arguments, proofs, theorems, theories, paradigms. The web gets tighter every hour, more aesthetically pleasing, and more subjectively certain. It is his own creation under the light. He allows everybody to take a position respecting the dark world outside, and declares that, for want of light, all these positions are more or less equal, equally respectable and equally respected. Within the light, however, things are much more serious and strict. He even tries to fathom the deepest mystery of life, the better part of which, unfortunately, lies still in the dark. He has determined, with the help of this bright light, that the world must be grounded on one unmovable point, and that that point must be a hard pebble. With this firm belief, the drunkard stretches out his hand to the right and to the left; he grasps a small granite stone, round enough to be called a pebble. He raptures into joy. A joy with which he can never part.
The drunkard refuses to consider the passer-by's suggestion that he might want to do some searching out in the dark first, if not to see whether the world were really grounded on one point, at least whether that point could have been a hard pebble. He stands fast: "In luce quaero."
(3) History and the Drunkard
If I have not clarified the relationship - one relationship - between logic and faith in my previous reply, I hope this little fable whould do. A strong assertion about the power of logic can co-exist with a strong assertion about the absoluteness of faith. Logic is made so strict that it relentlessly restricts the domain of engaged thought; like a bomb clearing out all signs of life, it allows the free ghosts of faith to populate the land absolutely.
Sometimes, the absoluteness of the belief in faith exacts awe; he who comes before it cannot but be carried away by its magnificence. The dirty difficulty in life is, however, not to create such awe (which is easy, I should say), but to revitalize the landscape after bombing it to null; not to glorify a pebble in the innocence of the light, but to grope in the dark, hoping that by effort and chance some trace to the key may be found.
The study of history is interesting in its own right. But more
rewardingly, I think, it prevents me from getting drunk and, if betimes unsuccessful, at least from searching too happily only in the light.
Too eager for the key makes one a slave to the light. Light, thus seen, is but another name for blindness.
All my love for the New Year,
Y.T.
January 28, 2006.