Presuppositions.

Posted on February 5, 2008
Filed Under historians |

Today, I want to take a break today from the discussion historical topics and write little bit about history itself. I hope you’ll indulge me a day or two for this diversion, or at least come back later in the week if you’re not interested.

Before it can do that, however, I will need to tell you about a professor of mine in college. Glenn Martin was in his sixties when I first took his Western Intellectual and Social History course. He was a small man; standing about 5′6″ at the most. By the time I met Glenn, he was chair of the History department at Indiana Wesleyan University . He had lectured from Switzerland to Australia, and all over the United States. Glenn Martin was a figure that, at least on our little liberal arts campus, was larger than life. In fact, there were a whole subset of students at Indiana Wesleyan known as ” Martinites,” who followed Glenn Martin’s ideas and ideals.

I took the WISH course on a bit of a whim. I was majoring in Philosophy at the time, and the course was any easy way for me to earn my required credits in history, as well as add credits to my major. I didn’t go into the class expecting that I would come out the other side with a dual major in history, that I would be signing up for every course that Glenn taught, or that I would earn my own label of “Martinite.”

So, what was it about Glenn that made his courses so compelling? In retrospect, they think there were, essentially, two factors. First, Glenn was committed to his ideas. I recall one lecture, in particular, when Glenn was especially animated. He was known for his hand motions; how he would raise them up into the air and bring them down directly in front of his chest, letting students know that he believed what he was saying was important. In this particular lecture, Glenn brought his hands down, and when he did, his left hand caught the edge of the lectern. Glenn looked surprised, but he didn’t stop his lecture. He continued the lecture, for fifteen more minutes, holding his left hand directly in front of him at his chest. At the end of the lecture, he announced, “For those above you who are in my next hour class, we will not be meeting today. I believe I have broken my finger.” Sure enough, the next time I saw Glenn, his finger was splinted and bandaged.

I think the second reason that Glenn was so popular was that he was up front about what he believed. If he believed something, he would tell you, and he would tell you why. In the same respect, he would also tell you what he did not believe and why he did not believe it. He was honest about it, and he didn’t soften the blow by being politically correct or try to hide behind some false sense of objectivity. He’d tell you exactly what he thought about Lincoln, for example, and why, regardless of whether it made him sound unpatriotic, racist, or any other sort of label.

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In grad school, I had a similar experience. This time, the professor was name Steve. Steve held radically different views from Glenn. But, like Glenn, Steve was passionate, and he was honest about what he believed. Steve was, by his own admission, the “last purely Marxist historian on the campus.” He taught history from a Marxist point of view, and made sure you knew it. Steve was much less serious than Glenn, and didn’t have the same sort of following that Glenn did, but they were cut from the same cloth, even with opposed ideologies.

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I spend more time on Glenn because he’s gone, and because I know there are others who miss him as much. Steve is still out there, preaching his rhetoric to anyone who will listen. When he passes, I’m sure I’ll offer a longer eulogy, as I’ve done with Glenn.

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So, what does this have to do with history? I’m getting to that. I took you through Elf-land and Topsy-turvydom so that I could tell you something very simple about myself, and about how I view history:

I have an agenda. Fact is, ever historian I’ve ever met has had an agenda. No matter how objective we’ve tried to sound (or even honestly tried to be), we all come into this thing with out own biases, our own presuppositions and our own ideas about what makes history tick. So, what’s my agenda?

Come back Thursday, and I’ll tell you.

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