Aperçu #2

Historical Censoriousness

    We continue to topple statues and erase names from buildings and I suggested in an earlier post that we should, in most cases, hold our judgement in reserve.  The author of Aperçu #2 agrees:

" Yet we need to be charitable about the moral failings of our ancestors - not as an act of charity to them but as an act of charity to ourselves.  Our own unconscious assumptions and cultural habits are doubtless just as impregnated with bias as theirs were. We should be kind to them, as we ask the future to be kind to us."

Source: "American Prophet: The Gifts of Frederick Douglas," Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker, Oct. 15, 2018, p. 82.

Post Script: My earlier suggestion is found in my own rather censorious post and year-end rant in which I quoted from The Whig Interpretation of  History.

“The dispensing of moral judgments upon people or upon actions in retrospect,” wrote Butterfield, is the “most useless and unproductive of all forms of reflection.”