Historical and future awareness

author

Bakr Abu Bakr

In historical consciousness, the German philosopher (Hans-Georg Gadamer) is considered one of the most important people who formulated this concept under the name “consciousness affected by history” in his well-known book Truth and Method[1]. He said: “In fact, history does not belong to us, but rather we are the ones who belong to history.”

Gadamer believes that historical awareness means recognizing that our contemporary understanding is conditional and governed by the “prejudices” and traditions that we inherited from history. Man cannot separate himself from history in order to study it with absolute impartiality, but rather he is immersed in it.

We can define historical awareness philosophically or intellectually as a person's awareness of his position within the temporal process, and his understanding that the present is not the product of the moment, but rather the product of the accumulations of the past.

As for why we need such historical awareness to understand the present, the Iraqi Future University answers this by saying [2]:

1. To understand the roots of reality: Many political conflicts, economic imbalances, and even cultural transformations have historical roots. Without understanding the historical background of any issue, our analyzes become superficial, our judgments are quick, and perhaps wrong.

2. To understand our identity and form our collective consciousness: Historical awareness helps individuals and communities understand their cultural and civilizational identity. Whoever knows his history knows who he is, where he came from, and how his values, institutions, and concepts developed.

3. Let us learn from mistakes and lessons: History is not only a record of events, but a mirror that reflects successes and failures. Whoever is aware of history can benefit from previous experiences and avoid repeating the mistakes that previous generations paid the price for.

4. To resist manipulation of information and facts: In a world full of targeted media and fast information, historical awareness becomes a weapon against misinformation. A person who is aware of the history of his region and the history of the world is difficult to deceive with false narratives or distorted interpretations.

5. To see the future with deeper eyes: The present is not the end of the road, but rather a station between the past and the future. Whoever has an awareness of the history of things can anticipate where they are going, and participate effectively in charting a different and more conscious path.

In contemporary Arab thought, the philosopher Abdullah Al-Arawi presents historical awareness in his book Arabs and Historical Thought as a methodological tool that views reality as “an objective process subject to the laws of continuous development, and not merely eternal cultural constants.” In other words, he sees that the crisis of Arab thought, the field of his research, lies in ahistoricism (living in the past or outside the movement of universal time) and what we call pastism, and that true historical awareness is that which breaks with tradition and absorbs the gains of the modern mind and modernity as cumulative and sequential steps. In the journey of humanity.[3]

If we recall here the thought of Muhammad Abed Al-Jabri in “Critique of the Arab Mind,” then historical awareness for him does not mean identifying with the past or reproducing it, but rather reading it closely reveals the mechanisms of its formation, and freedom from models ready to capture the present and the future.

Al-Jabri says in his book We and the Heritage: A Contemporary Reading of Our Philosophical Heritage that: “Correcting the Arab awareness of its history requires an integrated approach and vision for study and research, but without prior prejudices or ready-made templates, but rather a request for a conscious dialectical view that enriches itself as much as it breathes life into its subject.”[4]

Al-Jabri believes that addressing the problem of Arab historical backwardness and establishing a new Arab renaissance does not mean placing heritage in a museum and treating it as something that is past and there is no point in recalling it or returning to it, because that is not possible, as every people and every nation thinks about its heritage and not the heritage of others. Al-Jabri relies in this on the history and logic of the major renaissances, despite the differences in the mechanisms that distinguish each renaissance from the other. All the renaissances witnessed in history have expressed themselves ideologically and cognitively by returning to the origins and regularity in the heritage.[5]

Al-Jabri says: “It is necessary to be filled with Arab culture and the Arab-Islamic heritage when delving into modern European modernity and its issues and the possibility of adopting it or borrowing something from it. Filling with Arab-Islamic culture, which is our national culture, is full of identity, and without an identity full of its components, openness to other cultures, especially dominant ones, is a reason for sliding towards falling prey to alienation and penetration.”[6]

Footnotes

[1] To consider Zuhair Al-Khuwailidi’s article in Al-Hadaf newspaper under the title: Hermeneutics of the Fusion of Horizons according to Hans-Georg Gadamer

[2] Future University (Iraq), Historical Awareness in Understanding the Present, link: https://uomus.edu.iq/College/Details/87745

[3] To consider Kartali Nour al-Din’s research entitled: Modernity and Consciousness in the Thought of Abdullah al-Aroui. In Al-Abr Journal for Historical Studies in North Africa, Volume 4, Issue 2, September 2021, pp. 778-804.

[4] Al-Jabri, We and Heritage: A Contemporary Reading of Our Philosophical Heritage, p. 33

[5] Dr. Leading leaders in an article in 2022 AD in Al-Muthaqaf newspaper entitled: The Arab mind and the necessity of order in heritage according to Muhammad Abed Al-Jabri.

[6] Dr. Muhammad Abed Al-Jabri: The Arab Renaissance Project, critical review, Center for Arab Unity Studies, 2nd edition, 2000, p. 177