History is a Discipline

Over to the NYRB blog, Ingrid Rowlands is lamenting the religious bigotry that motivated burning the library at Alexander and murdering Hypatia. She doesn't get the stories exactly right and her general point is that in this moment of unrest in Alexandria, of whom "[o]ne ancient writer claimed that there was no people who loved a fight more than those of Alexandria"[1], they Alexandrines are protecting the library and that this is a good thing. So in a discussion of the use and abuse of history for an argument, to paraphrase someone or another isn't that bad, although why  bowlderize I always wonder. Her argument, protection of important things by coalitions of folks willing to protect important things, is compelling enough on its own, the introduction of history, bowdlerized especially, really doesn't advance the argument.

Over to the Corner Duncan Currie quotes Reuel Marc Gerecht's argument that you can't get to Jefferson without Luther as prelude to approving the idea that the Muslim Brotherhood has to be allowed to participate in any Egyptian Election.  The conclusion is correct, but I wonder what he means by Luther?  There is, it's true, a sort of intellectual history that seeks to associated the Reformation with the development of modern political notions. There is also a historiographical tradition that seeks to link Luther to Hitler.  Neither is particularly compelling.  It seems to me what Gerecht means to argue is that absent the extended intra-Christian violence preceding and including the Thirty Years' War and the  increasing importance or acceptance of the so-called Politiques' ideas about toleration as a pragmatic good you can't get to Jefferson.  This might be slightly harder to sell, of course, since the suggestion is of the necessity for years of intra-Muslim violence.

Why not drop the historical analogies altogether, particularly as neither seems to have a very firm grasp on either historiography or the facts, and stick to stuff they know.  Gerecht and Currie are both willing to risk the MB's success at the ballot box because, I take it, they privilege full participation over predicted outcome.  If you exclude the MB from participating you can predict that they won't win any elections; you can also predict, they seem to argue, that the election won't be seen as legitimate. A position that seems sound.  Why pretend you understand history?


 [1] second link