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Roy seems to be getting more criticism than (I think) he deserves for what 
he says about "Whig history." I think that there are no unambiguous 
criteria for what constitutes Whig history; it is an interpretive matter, 
on which Roy has given the basic principle, and we go from there. (I also 
think that, in this post-modern age of social constructivism, lots of 
people are inclined to see everything as Whig history, or as presentism, or 
whatever.) 
 
One dimension of Whig history is frequently, I think, a kind of celebration 
of the present. So, for instance, when you point out, as you should, the 
errors of the past, is it done in a context in which we now know the truth, 
or know what is correct, or know better? If so, then you are doing Whig 
history, I suspect.  Or if you read a past book -- Robinson Crusoe, for 
instance -- and show how its ideas led to classical and then contemporary 
economics, you are probably doing Whig history ... unless you also talk 
about the other things (like master-slave relations, beginning with a 
civilized man in a state of nature, and an ignoring of sex, to pick two) 
that Defoe was doing and ask how they affect modern economics, too. 
 
One of the opposites of Whig history is skepticism about the present. Yes, 
we can pick out errors in the past -- to do so at a superficial level (they 
thought differently from us on this point, so they were wrong) is very 
easy, and the basis of Whig history. But frequently past thinkers were 
writing about different realities, and asking different questions, from us 
-- and it might be worthwhile (tho' non-Whig) to try to discern the 
validity of those questions. 
 
Peter G. Stillman 
 
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