#historical thought

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Giambattista Vico – Scientist of the Day

Giambattista Vico, an Italian philosopher, was born June 23, 1668, in Naples.

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Myth as History - History as Myth

Something I don’t think that a lot of us think about enough is that our lore was recorded with the intention of being a mytho-historical record of Ireland. 

Specifically, the Book of Invasions and the Fitness of Names work together to form a lineage of the kingship of Ireland, beginning with the Biblical Noah. By starting with Noah, the lore is positioned in such a way to place the kings of Ireland in the same kind of lineage that many other royal houses and monasteries were in the medieval period, by establishing a connection to antiquity and specifically to Biblical antiquity. But beyond that connection to Biblical figures, the lore aims to explain past events, the stories of the mythic kings and queens of Ireland are really something akin to the hagiographies of saints from this period, they're something of exaggerated tales of grandeur- what makes them mythic is that the written record matches up with folklore passed down among uneducated and illiterate classes of people - it's not just the historians and scribes exaggerating these figures to make them more impressive, the oral history (for lack of  a better term) matches up with the written record.

Essentially what I'm trying to say is that in the Gaelic tradition the gods aren't so much manifestations of xyz, but rather ancestors, they're people and they were very real kings and queens of Ireland (as far as the lore is concerned), so the lore is telling their story, their history as part of the history of Ireland. The lore is written in much the same way as other histories from this period, and notably it is being written/transcribed by the same class of person- by monks and clergy, often specifically of predominantly Irish descent. Rather than focusing primarily on the extraordinary powers of the key figures found in the lore, its focus is more on interactions between groups, who waged war against who and at what time of year, was xyz a good king or a bad king, etc. And within the context of the lore, it is being recorded by a victorious conquering people, a people who overtook the gods and who, in the Book of Invasions, place a member of their own people within these mythic figures that many of us know/interpret as deities.

It's important to note as well that historians generally look at our lore as myth, rather than as historical text- mainly because we can't prove anything that's shown in the lore as being historical fact. But that doesn’t mean that it was never accepted as historical fact. We can't discount the lore as a historical text just because it’s now understood to be myth. For those who practiced the religion that we're reconstructing or reviving these stories were very real, and for centuries these stories formed the foundational history of Ireland. The lore’s position as historical text influences not only the style in which it’s written, but the ways in which it should and can be interpreted. Thinking of the lore as a historical text not only allows one to better understand the stylistic and literary choices that were made, but it also gives us greater insight into what was important to these people, which aspects of their history did they consider worth preserving and why, and what can we gain from that insight?

[mvlindsey]

Failure to Comprehend: The Asymmetry of Historical Experience

Failure to Comprehend: The Asymmetry of Historical Experience

A few weeks ago, this article, titled “The Banality of Butter” was published in response to the controversy surrounding Deen and her commonplace use of the word “nigger” amongst other things. The author, Professor Strauss of NYU, focused on using Arendt as a lens to understand why a group of individuals, who were aware of Deen’s use of racist terms, and her desire to have a plantation wedding…

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