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The Use and Abuse of History by Sir Moses I. Finley (22-Nov-1990) Paperback
This volume is a collection of essays ranging from detailed studies of ancient societies to a discussion of the broader topics of historical technique. The book also considers what the classical tradition has to offer us. From the author of "The Ancient Greeks".
Unknown Binding
First published March 3, 1987
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About the author
Moses I. Finley
72 books62 followersSir Moses I. Finley was an American and English classical scholar. His most notable work is The Ancient Economy (1973), where he argued that status and civic ideology governed the economy in antiquity rather than rational economic motivations.
He was born in 1912 in New York City as Moses Israel Finkelstein to Nathan Finkelstein and Anna Katzenellenbogen; died in 1986 as a British subject. He was educated at Syracuse University and Columbia University. Although his M.A. was in public law, most of his published work was in the field of ancient history, especially the social and economic aspects of the classical world.
He taught at Columbia University and City College of New York, where he was influenced by members of the Frankfurt School who were working in exile in America. In 1952, during the Red Scare, Finley was fired from his teaching job at Rutgers University; in 1954, he was summoned by the United States Senate Internal Security Subcommittee and asked whether he had ever been a member of the Communist Party USA. He invoked the Fifth Amendment and refused to answer.
Unable subsequently to find work in the United States, Finley moved to England, where he taught classical studies for many years at Cambridge University, first as a Reader in Ancient Social and Economic History at Jesus College (1964–1970), then as Professor of Ancient History (1970–1979) and eventually as Master of Darwin College (1976–1982). He broadened the scope of classical studies from philology to culture, economics, and society. He became a British subject in 1962 and a Fellow of the British Academy in 1971, and was knighted in 1979.
Among his works, The World of Odysseus (1954) proved seminal. In it, he applied the findings of ethnologists and anthropologists like Marcel Mauss to illuminate Homer, a radical approach that was thought by his publishers to require a reassuring introduction by an established classicist, Maurice Bowra. Paul Cartledge asserted in 1995, "... in retrospect Finley's little masterpiece can be seen as the seed of the present flowering of anthropologically-related studies of ancient Greek culture and society".[1] Finley's most influential work remains The Ancient Economy (1973), based on his Sather Lectures at Berkeley the year before. In The Ancient Economy, Finley launched an all-out attack on the modernist tradition within the discipline of ancient economic history. Following the example of Karl Polanyi, Finley argued that the ancient economy should not be analysed using the concepts of modern economic science, because ancient man had no notion of the economy as a separate sphere of society, and because economic actions in antiquity were determined not primarily by economic, but by social concerns.
He was born in 1912 in New York City as Moses Israel Finkelstein to Nathan Finkelstein and Anna Katzenellenbogen; died in 1986 as a British subject. He was educated at Syracuse University and Columbia University. Although his M.A. was in public law, most of his published work was in the field of ancient history, especially the social and economic aspects of the classical world.
He taught at Columbia University and City College of New York, where he was influenced by members of the Frankfurt School who were working in exile in America. In 1952, during the Red Scare, Finley was fired from his teaching job at Rutgers University; in 1954, he was summoned by the United States Senate Internal Security Subcommittee and asked whether he had ever been a member of the Communist Party USA. He invoked the Fifth Amendment and refused to answer.
Unable subsequently to find work in the United States, Finley moved to England, where he taught classical studies for many years at Cambridge University, first as a Reader in Ancient Social and Economic History at Jesus College (1964–1970), then as Professor of Ancient History (1970–1979) and eventually as Master of Darwin College (1976–1982). He broadened the scope of classical studies from philology to culture, economics, and society. He became a British subject in 1962 and a Fellow of the British Academy in 1971, and was knighted in 1979.
Among his works, The World of Odysseus (1954) proved seminal. In it, he applied the findings of ethnologists and anthropologists like Marcel Mauss to illuminate Homer, a radical approach that was thought by his publishers to require a reassuring introduction by an established classicist, Maurice Bowra. Paul Cartledge asserted in 1995, "... in retrospect Finley's little masterpiece can be seen as the seed of the present flowering of anthropologically-related studies of ancient Greek culture and society".[1] Finley's most influential work remains The Ancient Economy (1973), based on his Sather Lectures at Berkeley the year before. In The Ancient Economy, Finley launched an all-out attack on the modernist tradition within the discipline of ancient economic history. Following the example of Karl Polanyi, Finley argued that the ancient economy should not be analysed using the concepts of modern economic science, because ancient man had no notion of the economy as a separate sphere of society, and because economic actions in antiquity were determined not primarily by economic, but by social concerns.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
April 21, 2012
Originally published on my blog here in May 1999.
The Use and Abuse of History is a collection of articles written by Finley in the early seventies on the subject of historiography, many dealing with the relationship between ancient history (in the sense of the history of classical civilisation) and other subjects. His views are often critical of standard viewpoints on his subject, and they are always interestingly and cogently argued.
The three articles which are most concerned with the philosophy of history and its applications are also those that, judging by the back cover of the book, the publisher expected to be of the greatest interest. The Ancestral Constitution is about the way that history - or, more accurately, cultural traditions about history - have been used in political debate. Finley chooses three examples where those on one side of an issue had been advocating a return to an "ancestral constitution": Demosthenes cited by both sides of an argument over the abandonment of democracy by Athens near the end of the Pelopponesian War; supposed Anglo-Saxon ideas - based on faked documents and misunderstandings - about common law and the royal prerogative used by Royalist legal theorists at the time of the Restoration; and ideas attributed to Thomas Jefferson at the time of the American New Deal. Finley is interested in questions including why historical precedent was considered so important, how they got away with such bad history, why they chose these particular examples. The title of the essay Utopianism Ancient and Modern speaks for itself (this article has a fair amount in common with those which criticise the methodology of ancient historians) while The Heritage of Isocrates concerns the influence of his categorisation of the knowledge needed for adult life as a man of affairs, and the way that (through forming the basis of the Roman and medieval trivium) it has influenced education ever since.
The major theme of the remainder of the articles, which I personally found more interesting, is an examination of and criticism of the methods used in ancient history. This can be divided into two main categories. First, there are essays about the relationship between ancient historians - distinct, Finley argues, from the historians of other periods because their training is primarily literary rather than historical - and other disciplines, specifically anthropology and archaeology. Both of these subjects seem to an outsider to have a clear relationship to historical research, particularly when analysing cultures like classical Greece which have strong connections with the pre-literate cultures that preceded them. However, in both cases, ancient historians regard practitioners of these subjects from a somewhat jaundiced viewpoint, and vice versa. There is a tendency for archaeology to try and emancipate itself from history (for example, by classifying itself as a science rather than as part of history). This, Finley argues, tends to focus it on cataloguing rather than explaining artefacts. Ancient historians tend to know little about anthropology, and tend to view it as bringing in dangerous points of view to sully the purity of the classics. (In somewhat Nietszchian terminology, you could say that classicists have concentrated on the Apollonian side of ancient Greece and Rome, the serene, ordered beauty, and are suspicious of the Dionysian, the wild unruly and dangerous, to the point where they have tended to virtually deny its existence.)
Secondly, there are articles dealing with problems within ancient history itself, including specific issues which arise from mistakes in method (articles on legal issues, claiming that too great a use is made of very late documents to make up for the scarcity of earlier information, and an article on Sparta, which is just about the only Greek state which tends to be analysed through anthropological parallels which Finley believes to be misapplied).
Other articles include one on Generalisations in Ancient History. With scarce source material, these are difficult (if not impossible) to avoid, but professional historians should at least be aware that they are making sweeping statements which may not be universally true. A specific example of this is attacked in The Ancient Greeks and Their Nation, the use of the word "Greek". To us today the word implies a similarity of culture and institutions far beyond what was in fact the case. It is quite problematic to understand what being Greek meant to an ancient Greek; what is easiest to see is that it was of profound importance to them.
Each essay is thought provoking; Finley's writing is never an end in itself, but contains many intriguing ideas which could be fruitfully investigated further.
The Use and Abuse of History is a collection of articles written by Finley in the early seventies on the subject of historiography, many dealing with the relationship between ancient history (in the sense of the history of classical civilisation) and other subjects. His views are often critical of standard viewpoints on his subject, and they are always interestingly and cogently argued.
The three articles which are most concerned with the philosophy of history and its applications are also those that, judging by the back cover of the book, the publisher expected to be of the greatest interest. The Ancestral Constitution is about the way that history - or, more accurately, cultural traditions about history - have been used in political debate. Finley chooses three examples where those on one side of an issue had been advocating a return to an "ancestral constitution": Demosthenes cited by both sides of an argument over the abandonment of democracy by Athens near the end of the Pelopponesian War; supposed Anglo-Saxon ideas - based on faked documents and misunderstandings - about common law and the royal prerogative used by Royalist legal theorists at the time of the Restoration; and ideas attributed to Thomas Jefferson at the time of the American New Deal. Finley is interested in questions including why historical precedent was considered so important, how they got away with such bad history, why they chose these particular examples. The title of the essay Utopianism Ancient and Modern speaks for itself (this article has a fair amount in common with those which criticise the methodology of ancient historians) while The Heritage of Isocrates concerns the influence of his categorisation of the knowledge needed for adult life as a man of affairs, and the way that (through forming the basis of the Roman and medieval trivium) it has influenced education ever since.
The major theme of the remainder of the articles, which I personally found more interesting, is an examination of and criticism of the methods used in ancient history. This can be divided into two main categories. First, there are essays about the relationship between ancient historians - distinct, Finley argues, from the historians of other periods because their training is primarily literary rather than historical - and other disciplines, specifically anthropology and archaeology. Both of these subjects seem to an outsider to have a clear relationship to historical research, particularly when analysing cultures like classical Greece which have strong connections with the pre-literate cultures that preceded them. However, in both cases, ancient historians regard practitioners of these subjects from a somewhat jaundiced viewpoint, and vice versa. There is a tendency for archaeology to try and emancipate itself from history (for example, by classifying itself as a science rather than as part of history). This, Finley argues, tends to focus it on cataloguing rather than explaining artefacts. Ancient historians tend to know little about anthropology, and tend to view it as bringing in dangerous points of view to sully the purity of the classics. (In somewhat Nietszchian terminology, you could say that classicists have concentrated on the Apollonian side of ancient Greece and Rome, the serene, ordered beauty, and are suspicious of the Dionysian, the wild unruly and dangerous, to the point where they have tended to virtually deny its existence.)
Secondly, there are articles dealing with problems within ancient history itself, including specific issues which arise from mistakes in method (articles on legal issues, claiming that too great a use is made of very late documents to make up for the scarcity of earlier information, and an article on Sparta, which is just about the only Greek state which tends to be analysed through anthropological parallels which Finley believes to be misapplied).
Other articles include one on Generalisations in Ancient History. With scarce source material, these are difficult (if not impossible) to avoid, but professional historians should at least be aware that they are making sweeping statements which may not be universally true. A specific example of this is attacked in The Ancient Greeks and Their Nation, the use of the word "Greek". To us today the word implies a similarity of culture and institutions far beyond what was in fact the case. It is quite problematic to understand what being Greek meant to an ancient Greek; what is easiest to see is that it was of profound importance to them.
Each essay is thought provoking; Finley's writing is never an end in itself, but contains many intriguing ideas which could be fruitfully investigated further.
Displaying 1 of 1 review