How Did Danto Misconceive Of Their Object Of Study?
Danto demonstrates how historians can misconceive of their object of study when they consider this object to be past events that are isolated temporally from other events that occur through the course of time. Danto begins to elucidate how history bears a complex relationship to time, after considering the nature of past and future. He states, “We are always revising our beliefs about the past, and to suppose them ‘fixed’ would be unfaithful to the spirit of historical inquiry.” (Danto, 148). It seems to be evidently true that we are always revising how we conceive of the past because it is common for people to reconsider and revise the beliefs that they held about past events whether those events are historical and broadly impact humanity
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He considers the simple sentence, “‘The Thirty Years War began in 1618’” (Danto, 155). In this sentence that employs straightforward language, Danto shows the complex interrelationship of past, belief, and the course of time. Considering again the Ideal Chronicler, it is apparent that he could not produce the aforementioned sentence, even though he can provide a detailed record of every thought or occurrence that took place in 1618. The seeming strength of the Ideal Chronicler— that he is able to capture every occurrence slightly after it has happened— is also his weakness. The Ideal Chronicler only seems to perceive and record happenings basically as they occur within the course of time. The Ideal Chronicler’s temporal proximity to these occurrences and his lack of retrospection seems to deprive him of a sense of how time is demarcated. The Ideal Chronicler’s lack of retrospection and his sole concern with the extremely recent past causes him to lack a sense of beginning, middle, or end. The most that the Ideal Chronicler could directly express to us about the time period that encompasses the Thirty Years War is that some battles, among other things, occurred between 1618 and 1648. The Ideal cannot point to the beginning or conclusion of events because he cannot construct chains of events that constitute larger events. Since the occurrences that constitute the Thirty Years War cannot be bound together by the Ideal Chronicler, it seems that for the Ideal Chronicler, the Thirty Years War does not
He considers the simple sentence, “‘The Thirty Years War began in 1618’” (Danto, 155). In this sentence that employs straightforward language, Danto shows the complex interrelationship of past, belief, and the course of time. Considering again the Ideal Chronicler, it is apparent that he could not produce the aforementioned sentence, even though he can provide a detailed record of every thought or occurrence that took place in 1618. The seeming strength of the Ideal Chronicler— that he is able to capture every occurrence slightly after it has happened— is also his weakness. The Ideal Chronicler only seems to perceive and record happenings basically as they occur within the course of time. The Ideal Chronicler’s temporal proximity to these occurrences and his lack of retrospection seems to deprive him of a sense of how time is demarcated. The Ideal Chronicler’s lack of retrospection and his sole concern with the extremely recent past causes him to lack a sense of beginning, middle, or end. The most that the Ideal Chronicler could directly express to us about the time period that encompasses the Thirty Years War is that some battles, among other things, occurred between 1618 and 1648. The Ideal cannot point to the beginning or conclusion of events because he cannot construct chains of events that constitute larger events. Since the occurrences that constitute the Thirty Years War cannot be bound together by the Ideal Chronicler, it seems that for the Ideal Chronicler, the Thirty Years War does not