Hello, r/askhistorians,
I'm in something of an epistemological or even existential crisis about the subject I love. I'm a History undergrad and can still remember the Damascene moment of reading I, Claudius on a train when the question to the boy Claudius "are you to be an historian too?" fired out of the page at yours truly. That was then. Now I'm despairing at the confusion that comes from reading about the Philosophy of History and what History actually means.
If the goal of science is not merely to obtain the Theory of Everything but also compress it onto a t-shirt, I seek an answer to the question 'What is History?' that I could explain to a new student. I'm currently incapable of providing an answer even for myself. I've always opposed the work of postmodernists and deconstructionists if only for the destructive impact it has - reading about the Science Wars and the assault on history in 1990s characterises the entire postmodernist enterprise as set on ruining every other academic discipline and rebuilding it in a neo-Marxist ideological framework. This is a ridiculous caricature but there's something pernicious about PoMos and Post-structuralists trashing History after the historical failure of every Marxist political enterprise that makes it difficult to look at the conflict soberly.
But on the response by Evans in In Defence of History and the subsequent student primers produced since then, I still cannot find any firm anchoring for how I would approach or describe the subject to others. Perhaps it's a personal limitation but I cannot think of History in anything other than childish metaphors and aphorisms about biases and repetitions that were dolled into us at school. None of the contemporary definitions or understandings of it seem consistent.
I do believe History is essential to human understanding and the consideration of life. Civilization could not exist wtihout it. But this is an idiosyncratic humanist definition and has no sound theoretical or epistemological basis. I'd be more at home in the 18th century. So help thou my unbelief. What Is History now and can it be compartmentalised into an aphorism or a quick defence against naysayers?
Thanks
I admit to being a little unsure of what you are asking for. Who are these "others" you need to defend history to? Are you defending the practice of history, the discipline of history, the status of historical work, its value in the modern world (value to whom and for what purpose?), or your choice to study it? These are all very different questions, as you can appreciate. I wonder, perhaps, if the reason you find the question so vexing is because you have posed it too broadly, in the same way that many other seemingly vexing questions (e.g. "Do humans have free will?") become more clear if you restate them in terms of what you hope to do with the answers (e.g. "Should we hold people responsible for their actions?").
I see that sabbatical isn't treating you so well.
Relax.
History is many different things to many different people. Some see it as the cultural path trodden by their society which they love or loathe today. Others see it as a testing ground for the intellect. Ultimately history is a construct, either a personal or a societal one, and your connection to history might be loose or tight - it might define you or have only indirectly molded you.
If you are worried about what you might gain from studying history, then the answer is simple. You can either view it as a career, or as something which supplies a suite of skills for a career (something American employers could do with re-learning, if the number of 'why both with history / is it worth it' questions are anything to go by).
Post-mod./struct. history has a very important place in modern historiography and in our understanding of medieval societies in general. While I am not entirely in the camp of 'we know nothing' I think that the decision that 'we don't know everything' was an essential one in the '90s. It has reopened numerous narratives which dominated our conception of the past and obfuscated what evidence we actually possessed. Perhaps if you actually start reading the sources, and comparing them to historiography from the 1880s through 1970s you'll realise quite how potent these narratives are. Even the keenest mind can be blunted by centuries of peer pressure (see the example of Frank Stenton's The First Century of English Feudalism.
Finally, and I state this as bluntly as possible, but remove thy head from thine own arse. If you're undergoing an existential crisis at an undergraduate level then you need to go back to basics and really readdress why you are interested in history rather than what history is. Until you can set out your objective, as /u/restricteddata points out, you will gain nothing from your inquiry (either personally or publicly).
As a fellow history undergrad and a tour guide at my state's historical museum, I will sum up the conclusion I have come to. History is more than dates and names, memorization and dusty diaries. History is not the just story of the past, but our interpretation of the past.
I am not denying that history is not part a story, in fact that is the very essence of what history is. History is the examination of previous chapters in the story we are still acting out. We would be hard pressed to explain our own present situation without understanding how we came to be in the first place. No, history is the preceding chapters to sociology, chemistry, anthropology, etc.
Environmentalists would be stumped to understand global warming if the entire chapter of the rise of industry went missing. Likewise, consumer science's would be guesswork without understanding past patterns of supply and demand.
Historians, one could argue, provide the background for these disciplines and explain why certain artifacts, events, people, etc. are relevant to their interests. We think about how the world came to be how it was, politically and environmentally so that leaders and scientists can address any perceived hiccups in social order.
When I am giving tours, I like to use the analogy of an instruction manual to explain what history does for society. We might not have constructed the parts of the machine or even put them all in the box (shout out the archeologists, our partners in crime), but we will explain how and why you should use them while eliminating unrelated parts.
I hope this helps out. I have complete confidence that history will stay very relevant in the future. People are fascinated by stories and themselves, and history is completely focused on helping explain both of these.