----------------- HES POSTING ----------------- 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 ------------ FOOTER TO HES POSTING ------------ For information, send the message "info HES" to [log in to unmask]