The Future of History

The self-confessed reactionary Lukacs (Five Days in London) renders another lament for the passing of not just a historical generation, but an epoch. His perspective stretches back more than 400 years this time, to the Renaissance, with special emphasis on the 1750s, when a patrician western European bourgeoisie flourished. He mourns the departure of larger-than-life individuals, like Churchill and Napoleon, and historians like Acton and Burkhardt, who wrote about "politics and states and their leading persons." For him, the modern age, with its science and technology, is a pale replica, characterized by bureaucracy, anonymity, and mediocrity that pervade politics, education, even life itself. Lukacs memorializes the passing of the old order, and even questions the meaning of history and historians, the difference between history and fiction and how both relate to truth and justice, and what he calls our "choice" of ideas. It could be argued that the life Lukacs misses has continued, but in channels other than the ones the author prefers; new pens for the emerging story of mankind have been created. This slim requiem is full of reminiscences of a lost world which will likely ring hollow to many American ears. (May)