Is History Doomed to Repeat Again

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'Those who do not larn history are doomed to echo it.'

The quote is most likely due to writer and philosopher George Santayana, and in its original form it read, "Those who cannot think the past are condemned to repeat it."

Santayana was known for aphorisms, and for being a professor in philosophy at Harvard which he abandoned. Prior to that, Santayana attended Boston Latin School andHarvard College, where he studied under the philosophersWilliam James andJosiah Royce.

According to Santayana's philosophy, history repeats. The phrasing itself certainly is catchy. Information technology's a big one, not only because information technology is so common, but too because if information technology is true and if history, driven by homo nature, is ugly (hint: it is), then this saying ought to guide our public and private policy.

George Santayana (Sketch artist: Samuel Johnson Woolf)

The sentiment that history repeats aspires to common sense and is hard to disagree with. In the history of the United states and Europe, wars take ended with confiscatory terms of government give up inevitably breeding more than wars. Revolutions, similar those in France and Russian federation, that gave an individual accented power—Napoleon and Stalin, respectively—inevitably end upward every bit failed empires brutal dictatorships. Fifty-fifty individuals are subject to this advice. Couples who do not learn from their fights intermission up. People who don't learn from their mistakes don't mature.

In the 21st century, specific events in Syria take proven a repeated lessons most civil wars, similar the Vietnam war, that when great powers intervene to fight proxy battles, conflict becomes protracted. Incidentally, when Abraham Lincoln governed during the American Civil War, he recognized information technology was essential to keep out foreign powers like United kingdom and French republic.

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So it is the ruling of The Proverbial Skeptic that history repeats and the saying is true, but …

An impoverished Syrian girl hugs her injured father in the rebel-held boondocks of al-Nashabiyah, east of Damascus, on Nov 30, 2017. More than 340,000 people have been killed in Syria since the conflict began in March 2011 with anti-government protests. (AMER ALMOHIBANY/AFP/Getty Images)

But, it doesn't really have any ability. Why? History shows that both those who do not learn history and those who do learn history are doomed to echo information technology. If it'south also true that those whodo learn history are doomed to repeat it, then the saying doesn't really add anything at all.

And so is that the case?

Subsequently repeated 19th century wars between Germany and France, France nevertheless demanded that confiscatory terms of give up be imposed on Germany after the 20th century's Commencement World War. Then the 2nd World War happened .

After failing to invest in education and infrastructure in Transitional islamic state of afghanistan after arming the Mojahadin against the invading Soviet Marriage in the 80's, America neglected to make the same investments after after Heart Eastern military machine campaigns. Then rose The Taliban and Al Qaeda.

Afterwards Stalin'southward brutal regime of secret police and leader worship, Cuban revolutionaries allowed their charismatic revolutionary leader to seize absolute ability. A Castro however holds a seat of dictatorial power in Cuba.

It may exist common sense that all of the skillful things and all of the bad things about people, and the fashion that we organize ourselves, are simply going to breed patterns as we proceed to make history equally a species. It may be that nosotros are but given to a certain irrationality which leads us down paths, some disastrous, again and again.

Santayana also said of human nature, "Only the expressionless have seen the end of war." Santayana, who famously disagreed with his contemporaries like William James, died in Rome in 1952. After leaving the United States, he became generally critical of American society, though such criticism was divide from his system of philosophy.

Consider what humorist and writer Mark Twain famously said on the matter: "History doesn't repeat itself, merely it does rhyme."

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Source: https://bigthink.com/culture-religion/those-who-do-not-learn-history-doomed-to-repeat-it-really/

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