Page 40 - History 2020

criticism was that it is an example of “teleological” thinking. Teleology means that

history has a meaning because it is going somewhere, that it has a direction towards
a destination. It views history as the inevitable unfolding of some idea considered
desirable: in this case, the triumphal rise of the British constitution embodying
parliamentary government, liberty and stability. Other examples of teleological
histories have included the rise of modern science and modern capitalism, Marx’s
view that history lead to the triumphal rise of communism, and religions such as
Christianity and Islam which see their respective faiths as history’s driving force and
ultimate goal.

Nearly all modern historians and philosophers reject teleological thinking as flawed.
Their key objection is that history does not have “goals”. It is logically impossible for
the ideas on which these goals are based to exist independently of history; rather
they are part of history itself; they can only exist in the minds of people in history;
each new generation in effect continually reimagines and reworks and reconstructs
these ideas in historical time. Thus, they reject the notion that some idea or goal can

exist “outside” history, or can somehow “drive” history, or can give history a purpose
and a direction. Historians, they insist, must study the past for its own sake and on its
own terms, rather than viewing it as the inevitable working out over historical time of
some external idea.

Butterfield argued that adopting a teleological approach to history leads historians to
adopt a flawed method, which begins with the idea, then goes to the historical
evidence to seek support for it. The interpretation doesn’t arise from the evidence; it

is imposed on it by the selective use of evidence. Historians today reject this
approach as profoundly unhistorical, because it is based not on the evidence but on
ideology. The ideology behind the Whig Interpretation is British exceptionalism, the
claim that we are uniquely destined to bring to the world the benefits of
parliamentary* government, such as freedom and democracy, and that this is the
meaning of our history.

*Britain is not, as is often assumed, “the mother of parliaments. Strictly, this is Thingvellir, or the
“Thing Fields”, an open plain in Iceland 28 miles east of Reykjavik. It claims to be the site of the
Althing, the longest running parliament in the world. Its establishment as an outdoor assembly or
Thing held from about 930 laid the foundation for an independent Icelandic nation.

Leading historian Niall Ferguson expresses the modern consensus that events like

Magna Carta or 1688 were somehow “divinely ordained.” Instead, he says, historians
should adopt the aphorism of Frederic Maitland: “We should always be aware that
events now long in the past were once in the future.” In other words, their outcome
was neither predictable, nor usually predicted.