ABSTRACT
Each generation has a fresh opportunity to understand the past, by perceiving it from a unique standpoint: that of the present. Since this standpoint constantly shifts, so also do views of the past. This common-sense assertion does not imply a retreat into relativism-that there can be no common description of phenomena, only an infinite choice of attitudes-because it is true of all our cognitive processes: out of the uniqueness of personal experience, common perceptions emerge. It does, however, help to make sense of why certain views of the world are espoused at certain times, and why our perceptions differ from those of our predecessors (and, not unusually, many of our contemporaries). What contemporary conditions do is foreground certain properties of the world around us, because of their current relevance. They direct our attention to comparable conditions in the past. To a previous generation these particular properties were unimportant or even invisible, because they had no pressing relevance. They were not within the visual field of the backward-looking gaze. It is only by accumulating the insights of successive generations, and observations made from a diversity of standpoints, that a fully three-dimensional view of the past can be obtained. That is why intellectual history is one of the most fundamental disciplines of the social sciences: it explains why opinions differ, and why our colleagues can be blind to what seem to be self-evident truths.
