to get hold of the human condition, we need next a much broader definition of history than is conventionally used.

The historic ascent of humanity, taken as a whole, may be summarized as a succession of victories of consciousness over blind forces — in nature, in society, in man himself.

My PhD dissertation and first book were about the proslavery argument. You might say I wanted to understand inhumanity—how men and women throughout history have persuaded themselves to defend ideas, practices, societies, governments that we of a different era see as indefensible. I wanted to know how humans can become blind to evil. Perhaps if we could understand their processes of denial and rationalization we might gain insight into our own failures of vision, the shortcomings of our own time.
History, in other words, can expand our awareness of ourselves. It releases us from the confines of our own individual lives; it offers us other ways of seeing that cast our assumptions into relief. It reminds us of choices people have made—or not made—and thus illuminates realms of possibility. It shows us that things have been otherwise and reminds us they can be different once again. By documenting contingency and agency, history undermines any acceptance of crippling inevitability. And contingency means opportunity. It means that we can change things and that what we do matters. To my mind this may be history’s most important lesson.

I think the history of humanity is the history of our co-evolution with devices and artifacts that make our lives easier. And I think it's now a question from moral philosophy — not for science — to decide how we use them and what it would mean to be enslaved by them, whether we do so willingly or reluctantly and genuinely.

The liberation of our continent means more than overcoming economic, social, and political dependence. It means, in a deeper sense, to see the becoming of mankind as a process of the emancipation of man in history. It is to see man in search of a qualitatively different society in which he will be free from all servitude, in which he will be the artisan of his own destiny.

Let us labor for that larger and larger comprehension of truth, that more and more thorough repudiation of error, which shall make the history of mankind a series of ascending developments.

An occasion such as this which has brought us here can not but direct our consideration to these things. It has been a painful and difficult experience, this by which another race has been recruited to the standard of civilization and enlightenment; for that is really what has been going on; and the episodes of Negro slavery in America, of civil war, and emancipation, and, following that, the rapid advancement of the American colored people both materially and spiritually, must be recognized as parts of a long evolution by which all mankind is gradually being led to higher levels, expanding its understanding of its mission here, approaching nearer and nearer to the realization of its full and perfected destiny.

History is the long struggle of man, by the exercise of his reason, to understand his environment and to act upon it. But the modern period has broadened the struggle in a revolutionary way. Man now seeks to understand, and to act on, not only his environment, but himself; and this has added, so to speak, a new dimension to reason, and a new dimension to history. The present age is the most historically minded of all ages. Modern man is to an unprecedented degree self-conscious and therefore conscious of history. He peers eagerly back into the twilight out of which he has come in the hope that its faint beams will illuminate the obscurity into which he is going; and, conversely, his aspirations and anxieties about the path that lies ahead quicken his insight into what lies behind. Past, present and future are linked together in the endless chain of history.

Those who desire to envision history not as a mythologem but rather in its essential context are forced to a central conclusion: If history, in all its darkness and its horrors, but also in its confusing novelty, is to have meaning for coming generations, this meaning must be the liberation from collectivist thinking.

Liberation from every form of exploitation, the possibility of a more human and dignified life, the creation of a new humankind - all pass through this struggle.

The progress of the human race could be described as the history of how we didn't know what we didn't know.

Just handling this ocean of different books — new and used, in and out of print, famous and forgotten — it was literature as this giant mosaic of texts and experiments and attitudes. I think it’s just very liberating to break out of a great man’s theory of history.

I guess I’ve always liked working from that sense of — what would you call it? — license that the margins permit. I always just visualize myself writing books that were meant one day to be dusty, forgotten volumes being encountered by intrepid browsers in a used bookstore. It was a much less freighted way to think about trying to enter the conversation than to imagine I had to write The Great Gatsby.

History tells us of wars and conquests and empires and revolutions, of cities and cultures, and of religions and persecutions. Yet actually it is a rather superficial survey. It leaves out almost entirely one vital part of the picture — the most important part. It has very little to say of man’s purpose in living, of his understanding of the reason of his existence and of his conception of life around him, and his interpretation of the mystery of creation and evolution. So little does history say about this aspect of man — the mainspring and motive of his living—that we are left guessing about the most important part of the story—the extent of man’s actual knowledge throughout the ages. We are given superficial and rather materialistic details of the outward forms and the bitter strife which accompanied the development of the various religions as they were interpreted and practised by the people, much of which leaves us with an impression of brutal and bigoted primitiveness. So much for orthodox history. Nevertheless, if we have the time ourselves to go exploring amongst less hackneyed literature than our average text books, we will soon find traces of an underlying, thrilling and significant way of life permeating the history of mankind... The legends of the Flood, the Virgin Birth, the World Messiah, the Resurrection, Paradise, Hades, Reincarnation, the progress of the soul and the Plan of Creation, are to be traced in every land and with great similarity of detail. p.6

When we study history we obtain a more profound insight into human nature by instituting a comparison between the present and former states of society.