20-20 hindsight or historical analysis, how do we determine which is which?

Makes perfect sense, Biak. In other words, the former involves imposing our knowledge, attitudes, etc. on the past. The latter involves studying the past so we can understand it in spite of our own context.

 

Yes - where it gets tricky is when 'we' know facts which were not or could not have been known to 'them' at the time......

 

Gets even more tricky when you move away from facts into "mindsets", that are just as important as facts in decision making. What seems "obvious" to us may be "unthinkable" to a 1940 mindset and vice versa.

 

Excellent point. I would have said "moral sensibilities", but "mindsets" works, too. A good example is the issue of slavery in America. Why didn't the Founders prohibit slavery in the Constitution? Why did Lincoln take certain positions that would be considered anathema by today's standards?

 

I agree with Biak. Nothing annoys me more than people using 20/20 hindsight in arguments.

 

Its what separates the historian (amateur or professional) from the arm-chair general. Historical Analysis allows us to put ourselves in their shoes, to know what/when/why/how. 20/20 Hindsight allows us to engage in some very interesting "what if" discussions. The former usually comes from an open and informed/educated mind. The latter from the opposite.

In my (usually wrong) opinion, of course.

 

As vision is a fault I must deal with a bit on a daily basis, I have to say we are very lucky if we have had opportunity to actually get a measurement of our true vision. I will complicate things by pointing out that two people looking back into time can be as blind as bats and think they are looking back with "perfect" vision. I caution us all that there is always the threat of some unfound manuscript in existence that could bring forth a great fact changing collection of information about something we thought we had perfect hind sight for. For me.....and maybe not for you......but for me 20/20 hindsight is an imperfect view at best..........and historical analysis is a difficult science to get right. I point out we cannot know the minds of every past participant of history therefore we can only sample the most vocal sources of the period to get somewhat of a generalization built from our observations. That is not perfect vision in any sense as 20/20 hindsight may infer. How very often reliable historians have a slightly differing view on certain periods in our past where all the facts appear to be available.....so how often they also have wide, varying opinions of other parts of history. For me....no such thing as 20/20 hindsight.....and historical analysis just gets us closer to possibly an unattainable perfect view of the subject we chose to analyze.

 

I would argue that it is exactly in "what if's" that one has to be most careful of using hindsight. Certainly useful in analzying what happened but should it be used to suggest what the participants "should have done"?

 

Great discussion topic, OP.

 

... 20-20 hindsight is the tool of the Revisionist. While historical analysis of new and traditional contemporary sources can LEAD the historian on a journey of discovery forming a thesis, the Revisionist picks and chooses from those sources to DIRECT towards what is usually a preconceived anti-thesis.

 

I agree with Marmat, 20/20 hindsight is the main tool in the revisionist's tool box, they try to change the big picture by by concentrating on one little aspect of it and than distort the facts to suit their purpose. The scary thing is how easily they can influance the unimformed and turn demons into saints or saints into demons . That is when the rest of us need to take a step back look at the larger picture and let these people know that's not how it was ...

 

For what its worth...i think 20/20 hindsight is/should only be used by people who were there...Historical analysis is for everyone else...One is for the people who experienced it, the other is for people who werent there to understand it...
Oh and i think both are legitimate...indeed necessary...if we relied soley on the people who were there we would get a skewed view of what happened...(Remember the old story of 10 people seeing a murder and ten people give ten different accounts of what they saw...) The man on the ground's view of the war was very narrow...and of course open to bias. One needs both to get a full and as truthful as possible account of what ACTUALLY happened.