Why Bother with History?: Ancient, Modern and Postmodern Motivations

Front Cover
Routledge, 2013 M11 4 - 200 pages
.Why Bother With History? argues for an increasingly important role for a revitalised historical study. Examining the motivations of past historians, the author rejects the ancient aspiration to a 'history for its own sake' and argues that historians' importance lies in their own adoption of a moral standpoint, from which a story of the past can be told, that facilitates the attainment of a future we desire. Inevitably controversial, in that it challenges many of the assumptions of modernist history, this is an interdisciplinary book, which draws in particular on psychology and literature.
 

Contents

1 History for historys sake
1
2 History and historical examples
19
identity memory and forgetting meaning and purpose
36
4 History politics and power
59
5 History and religion
86
6 History and education
112
7 Postmodernism history and values
130
8 Postmodern history and the future
149
Bibliography
170
Index
178
Copyright

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

About the author (2013)

Beverley Southgate is Reader Emeritus, University of Hertfordshire. His many publications include History- What and Why? (1996).

Bibliographic information