Essential History and Philosophy for Activists, a new column published by The Humane Herald, will kick off in a few weeks. This column will highlight historical and philosophical material that may be especially beneficial for people working to make the world a better place. An exciting journey awaits!
In setting the stage for this column, let’s address a couple of preliminary questions.
Who is an activist?
An activist is someone who seeks change. The word is used in many different contexts.
For instance, an “activist judge” is one who tends to make up new laws or to make significant changes to existing laws through new interpretation. In this context, “activist” may have a negative connotation, since lawmaking is generally the province of the legislative branch, not the judicial branch.
An “activist investor” is one who seeks to change the way a business is run. In this context, the word carries no particular connotation; activist investors are simply pursuing an investment strategy that may generate favorable returns.
Many readers of The Humane Herald are likely to be a third type of “activist.” These activists seek to change how people and organizations behave in light of certain pressing concerns, such as environmental degradation. Such activists may seek to change behavior directly (simply asking people to stop doing a destructive thing, for example) or may seek to enact laws that encourage or discourage such behavior (providing a tax incentive to do a less destructive thing, for example).
Regardless of method or approach, the above activists all share a common theme: pursuit of change.
Why should activists study history and philosophy?
Studying history and philosophy offers numerous benefits for activists. One need not pursue such study as a formal matter (at a university, for instance) in order to reap these benefits; indeed, many of the world’s most influential thinkers had little or no formal training, degree, or certification in the field to which they made lasting contributions.
In no particular order, here’s a quick sample of how history and philosophy can benefit activists:
- self-mastery: being an activist can be—and, indeed, often is—a frustrating or overwhelming endeavor; studying history and philosophy can help an activist identify, understand, and manage such feelings
- prioritization: faced with an array of pressing issues (e.g., climate change, nuclear weapons, biocollapse), an activist may not know where to begin; lessons from history and philosophy can help triage these issues
- methodology: simply knowing what one wants to change isn’t likely to be enough to make that change happen; studying history and philosophy can help ascertain which methods are most likely to yield results and avoid repeating mistakes that others have made
- argumentation: changing the world is no easy task(!); learning from history and philosophy can help activists do a better job of communicating with others, articulating reasons why a given change is desirable, and understanding why certain counter-arguments fail
Many more such benefits could be added, but here’s the key takeaway: studying history and philosophy can empower, enhance, and protect one’s activist endeavours. We hope Essential History and Philosophy for Activists can help do just that for you.
Examples of What We’ll Discuss: Age of Enlightenment
As part of this preview, here’s an example of the type of material we’ll examine in this column.
Historians generally regard the “Age of Enlightenment” as spanning from about the mid-1600s to about 1800. But if a person lives in or is a citizen of the U.S., that person is still living in the Age of Enlightenment. That’s because the key political ideas of the Enlightenment exercised a profound influence on the U.S.’s founders, and these founders embodied Enlightenment ideas in the U.S.’s founding documents and in its governmental structure—the very structure we still have today. These documents are often regarded as the ultimate real-world, concrete, put-into-practice manifestation of the Enlightenment’s abstract ideals and values, both in the reasoning of the texts themselves and in the real-world institutions and effects they create. Such documents include:
- Declaration of Independence
- Constitution
- Bill of Rights (the first ten Constitutional amendments)
Ideas that rose to prominence and were refined into a form we recognize today include:
- the supremacy of reason (as opposed to divine revelation, faith, etc.)
- commitment to science and method (systematically using empiricism and reason to acquire and share reliable knowledge as opposed to, again, divinely revealed or inherited “knowledge” or casual, anecdotal observation)
- social contract (the source of a government’s powers is the people, specifically, the consent of the people being governed, not “divine right” or inheritance)
- individual rights (boundaries protecting individuals from governments, lines over which a government can’t cross)
Activists (in the U.S. and other countries embracing this tradition) who are fluent in these ideas are better equipped to:
- understand why the legal-political structure is the way that it is;
- defend its strengths;
- critique its weaknesses;
- argue for changes by way of intelligent reference to this structure and its underlying rationale; and
- construct those changes so that they function effectively with the whole once implemented.
Essential History and Philosophy for Activists launches in a few weeks. We’ll look forward to seeing you back here at The Humane Herald for that launch.
~ Shelley Harrison
The Humane Herald 