The History of Burial and Funeral Customs

The history of funeral service is a history of mankind. Funeral customs are as old as civilization itself. Every culture and civilization attends to the proper care of their dead. Every culture and civilization ever studied has three things in common relating to death and the disposition of the dead: Some type of funeral rites, rituals, and ceremonies; A sacred place for the dead and Memorialization of the dead. In the beginning, early humans would drop the dead into a hole and cover it with a stone. Some of the dead's possessions may have been placed with the body. Prehistoric humans also might purposely bury their dead in a shallow hole with a heavy stone to prevent the dead from coming back to life. It is believed that between 20,000 and 75,000 years ago, Neanderthals began to bury their dead. Evidence of many of our contemporary customs appears at Neanderthal sites. At Iraq's Sharindar Cave, for example, flowers were left with a burial. Personal effects accompany other burials. The first cities may have been cities of the dead, complexes of grave mounds whose walls were adapted to other purposes. Saxons, which were skilled at digging, buried their dead. The more important the person, the more dirt was piled on top of their grave. These graves were called barrows. Some of the earliest tombs were made in Egypt ,China, and Rome. In Egypt, the dead were wrapped in linen and the pharaohs were buried in huge pyramids.

The earliest known burial ritual is the planting of the deceased that is believed to be for later renewal. In Sumer, the King such as A-Bar-gi, insisted that their advisors and other personal servants join them in the afterlife. While in Egypt the pharaohs substituted statues for the living servants. Many ancient people recognized the burial ground's potential for spreading disease and placed their cemeteries outside their cities or took other precautions. Followers of Zoroaster, known as Parsees, built their Towers of Silence within city walls. Here they exposed their dead. Elaborate drains and charcoal filters purified the rainwater that dribbled off within these towers. Vultures cleaned the bones of the flesh which would otherwise attract maggots and other disease vectors.

Early Christians, who had grown used to spending their religious lives hiding among the dead in the catacombs, forgot the importance of hygienic measures. The dead were often stacked high in churches. Church burial yards were often covered over several times to make room for successive layers of corpses. In the Middle ages and Victorian times, the dead were buried just around the churches. This caused many problems, however. First, these burial plots had limited space, causing the churches to sell the graves multiple times. Any number of corpses might be buried together in a hole only a few feet deep. After the bodies were stuffed into the shallow holes, plagues rose through the soil and infected most people going to mass and the children playing in the areas around the churches. Also, before burial, the valuables were often stolen off the body. Later laws were passed making it illegal to bury bodies less than six feet under the soil, but not after thousands of people were killed from the spreading plagues. Tombstones were first used in this time, most of which depicted death and skeletons. Some time after the law was passed, body snatchers began stealing bodies from their graves to be used in medical research. These people had found a loophole in the laws, and what they did was not officially illegal. The church yards quickly filled and the dead were buried in areas just outside the cities. As cities expanded, the cemeteries would end up in the middle of cities as an area where nature could flourish.

Humans have also long marked graves and commemorated their dead. Stones were used to prevent wild animals despoiling the gravesite. Later, seashells, tools, beads, clothing and other items were piled atop the grave or buried with the dead and funereal rites began. The ancient societies of Egypt, China, and others are particularly noteworthy for their funeral customs, the building of elaborate tombs, and the development of unique types of funerary art and sculpture. When you think of Egypt, the images of mummies, elaborate pyramid tombs, hieroglyphic paintings, and other death-related objects immediately come to mind. The ancient Romans interred their dead in niches beneath the city in what are known as the Catacombs. In fact, studies of all human civilizations reveal that, to some degree or other, they have developed some ritual customs for dealing with death and with the remains of their dead. These include mound building, cremation, launching the dead out to sea in boats, sacrifices (human and otherwise), body painting, hair cutting, keening and wailing, erecting huts or tomb buildings, placing simple or elaborate markers at the death and/or burial site, and a wide variety of other customs. European cultures developed in similar fashion. Pictorial images have been used to commemorate death, with a wide variety of images used. Religious symbols and icons were used and perpetuated by the various sects. Other images came into use during less than cheerful circumstances. The death's head and the dancing skeleton, for instance, became common representations for life's brevity during the epidemics of the plague in Europe. As the centuries passed, more and more graphic representations came into use. During the Victorian era in both Europe and the United States, exceedingly elaborate tombs, gravestone carvings, statuary, funerary clothing and other paraphernalia evolved to commemorate the dead. They also allowed the living to share their sorrow and mourning with one another and for posterity. And entire cemeteries, planned as rural recreational parks, were developed.

Funeral Rites and Customs, observances connected with death and burial. Not only are they deeply associated with religious beliefs about the nature of death and the existence of an afterlife, but they also have important psychological, sociological, and symbolic functions for the survivors. Thus, the study of the ways in which the dead are treated in different cultures leads to a better understanding of the many diverse views about death and dying, as well as of human nature. Funerary rites and customs are concerned not only with the preparation and disposal of the body, but also with the well-being of the survivors and with the persistence of the spirit or memory of the deceased. In all societies, the human body is prepared in some fashion before it is finally laid to rest. Today, washing the body, dressing it in special garments, and adorning it with ornaments, religious objects, or amulets are common procedures. Sometimes the feet are tied together—possibly to prevent the ghost of the deceased from wandering about. The most thorough treatment of the body is embalming which probably originated in ancient Egypt. The Egyptians believed that in order for the soul to pass into the next life, the body must remain intact; hence, to preserve it, they developed the procedures of mummification The purpose of embalming in the United States is to prevent mourners from confronting the process of putrefaction.

The various methods used for disposal of the body are linked to religious beliefs, climate and geography, and social status.

Burial is associated with ancestor worship or beliefs about the afterlife; cremation is sometimes viewed as liberating the spirit of the deceased. Exposure, another widespread practice, may be a substitute for burial in Arctic regions; among the Parsis (followers of an ancient Persian religion) it has religious significance. Less common are water burial (such as burial at sea); sending the corpse to sea in a boat (a journey to ancestral regions or to the world of the dead); and cannibalism (a ceremonial act to ensure continued unity of the deceased with the tribe). The actual funeral—conveying the deceased to the place of burial, cremation, or exposure—also provides an occasion for ritual. In Hinduism the procession to the place of cremation is led by a man carrying a firebrand. The mourners at one point walk around the bier; in former times among some groups, a widow was expected to throw herself onto the burning pyre of her husband . Finally, the cremated remains are deposited in a sacred river. In ancient Greece, Egypt, and China, servants were sometimes buried with their masters. This form of human sacrifice was based on the belief that in the afterworld the deceased continued to need their services.

Fear of death, and to be in awe of it, inspired many peoples from this Neanderthal to modern man. We follow the same 3 customs all the way to the present. Today however, we have devolved, evolved religions, and most people subscribe to one or the other. These religions all seem to have their own set of burial and remembrance guidelines, and some are very elaborate indeed!________________________________________________________________________

Sources:

Funeral customs. Retrieved October 20, 2008 from http://www.alsirat.com/silence/history.html

Burial customs. Retrieved October 20, 2008 from http://www.sacred-texts.com/etc

Death. Retrieved October 20, 2008 from http://www.spiritandsky.com/death-and-funeral

Braudel's Conception of TIME

The writing of history all depends on how the historian will be able to explain and recreate the past. Amongst the past philosophers that I am able to do readings on, Braudel might as well be of those who sparked my interest. History writing as we know is not just about narration or recreation of the past but it has always had an overtone underlying those events. There must be in one way or another reason for an event to happen. When we mean history writing, one of the more familiar schools was the Annales School, which was founded in 1929 by Marc Bloch and Lucien Febvre, where Braudel based his principles.


His essay On History is his take on the Annales School having the imprint of structuralism. For Braudel, history is not just the retelling of the before and the after of an event but also the understanding of the nature of society by carefully examining its structure. When we say structure what he means is the stretches of time that the event has happened and with all its institutions, culture and practices. He tried to examine the development of the society that does not occur at a steady rate but rather in a span of time -- the span of time that can be short or can last for centuries or even thousands of years. These have something to do with three principal time span of historical analysis.


The first of this time span is the history of the event. By this, we mean the events that have happened over a very short period of time. This span of time usually focuses on the events that however short has caused such an effect on the society like the Great Wars, events in politics, and also the study of the individuals who were a\major players in this events. It focuses on the major events that we can actually write a narrative on because it has a beginning, middle and an end. What makes this sort of history interesting is that even if it is short, there’s a dramatic twist to it. There are personalities who evolved out of those events. There’s a particular change that has happened over a very short span of time. Historians usually consider this as traditional history and that it may be from five to seven years or as short as one year.


The second time span would have to be that of the conjuncture. The conjuncture on the other hand is an intermediate time span. It runs around 20 or 50 years and might as well be cyclical because it studies the normal cycles. Economic history, the history of technology can be considered as a part of this life span. There are certain aspects of the society that happens on a cycle. If we are going to study it, an event has happened before. It followed a certain age. We might include the history of science and talk about the age of Galilee, Newton and Einstein. They are all in a conjunctural level in that one follows the other. So in a sense, conjuncture is much deeper than history of the event because it attempts to explain the mind frame of hwy those things happen.


The third one is history and the longue duree or long duration is the longest because it is measured in centuries or even thousands of years. This is the deepest and the most profound. Because the time span is some 100 – 500 years, the longue duree covers even the history of civilizations itself, the geographical history of a nation, the wars and how they relate to one another as sort of a wave of conflicts. The changes may be slow or gradual but there is unity in some way. The pace being so slow that it covers an immense stretch of time and space. But there’s a sense of richness studying these events. It focuses not just on the event by itself but rather the thematic approach to it. The transformation is slow but the collective thought is there.



Now, the three time spans basically differs but they are still about the study of the humanity and of how mankind stepped up and change over time or became stagnant in some way. There is what Braudel calls a structure that is a pattern of relationships between man and the institutions and entities. There’s a particular behavior for a specific time frame. And from these behaviors we can make a model of these structures. Braudel was also able to mention three relatively rigorous uses of language for the recreation of the past. These he calls the language of necessary facts where there is a model, contingent facts where there is some sort of a hypothesis and no exceptions and the last being the language of conditioned facts where there is a theoretical model of strategies and outcomes.

The three time span is an obvious showing that history can happen at different rhythms or different pace. We may have different approach to the study of history but as always we talk about the event, the people, and the relationship of these events to us and how it has affected our lives. Lucien Febvre said to have repeated and I quote “History, science of the past, science of the present.” I would have to quip that this explains Braudel. History no matter how short or how long is the time span that has happened is still history. It covers all the ages and the entire time span and along with it the story of humanity. The story of all our struggles, all our victories and how each one of us was able to survive the change.

____________________________________________________________________

Sources:

Braudel, F. (1982). On history. (S. Matthews, Trans.).

University of Chicago. (Original work published 1969).

Staloff, D. (1995). The search for a meaningful past philosophies, theories and interpretations.

NY: The Teaching Co.

Annales School. Retrieved October 14 2008 from http://www.wikipedia.com/ Annales

The Black Death

The work of William McNeill “Plague and People” is an attempt to explain the past through a sort of biological means. It is in some way an explanation of historical event by taking a look at the influence of nature. McNeill is a naturalist and that he considers the environment as a big factor in history. It’s a naturalistic approach to the study of history. If we examine closely the work of McNeill, we might be able to get the idea that human beings and the history of humans is in a way related to the environment and that we play a role.


The Black Death is one example of how a civilization or a society can be swept away by an epidemic. If McNeill’s argument is correct, a certain society will adapt to it but certain parts of the population will definitely be gone. It had caused millions of death. The Black Death seems to have arisen somewhere in Asia and was brought to Europe from the Genoese trading station of Kaffa in the Crimea (in the Black Sea). The story goes that the Mongols were besieging Kaffa when a sickness broke out among their forces and compelled them to abandon the siege. The Mongol commander loaded a few of the sick dead onto his catapults and hurled them into the town. Some of the merchants left Kaffa for Constantinople as soon as the Mongols had departed, and they carried the plague with them. It spread from Constantinople along the trade routes, causing tremendous mortality along the way.


The disease was transmitted primarily by fleas and rats. The stomachs of the fleas were infected with bacteria known as Y. Pestis. The bacteria would block the "throat" of an infected flea so that no blood could reach its stomach, and it grew ravenous since it was starving to death. It would attempt to suck up blood from its victim, only to transfer it back into its prey's bloodstreams. The blood it injected back, however, was now mixed with Y. Pestis. Infected fleas infected rats in this fashion, and the other fleas infesting those rats were soon infected by their host's blood. They then spread the disease to other rats, from which other fleas were infected, and so on. As their rodent hosts died out, the fleas migrated to the bodies of humans and infected them in the same fashion as they had the rats, and so the plague spread. The disease appeared in three forms:bubonic [infection of the lymph system -- 60% fatal]; pneumonic which can be through a respiratory infection -- about 100% fatal], and septicaemic which the infection of the blood and probably 100% fatal].

The plague lasted in each area only about a year, but a third of a district's population would die during that period. People tried to protect themselves by carrying little bags filled with crushed herbs and flowers over their noses, but to little effect. Those individuals infected with bubonic would experience great swellings ("bubos" in the Latin of the times) of their lymph glands and take to their beds. Those with septicaemic would die quickly, before any obvious symptoms had appeared. Those with respiratory also died quickly, but not before developing evident symptoms: a sudden fever that turned the face a dark rose color, a sudden attack of sneezing, followed by coughing, coughing up blood, and death. The disease finally played out in Scandinavia in about 1351but another wave of the disease came in 1365 and several times after that until -- for some unknown reason -- the Black Death weakened and was replaced by waves of typhoid fever, typhus, or cholera. Europe continued to experience regular waves of such mortality until the mid-19th century.

What did the society do the control the plague and how has it affected the population? The effects of that plague and its successors on the men and women of medieval Europe were profound: new attitudes toward death, the value of life, and of one's self. It kindled a growth of class conflict, a loss of respect for the Church, and the emergence of a new pietism (personal spirituality) that profoundly altered European attitudes toward religion. Still another effect, however, was to kindle a new cultural vigor in Europe, one in which the national languages, rather than Latin, were the vehicle of expression.

These were natural disasters, but they were made all the worse by the inability of the directing elements of society, the princes and clergy, to offer any leadership during these crises. In the next few lectures we will examine the reasons for their failure to do so. The 14th century became an era of catastrophes. Some of them man-made, such as the Hundred Years' War and the Great Schism. These were caused by human beings. But the Black Death caused millions of deaths, and had in its way demonstrated a dramatic fashion the existence of new vulnerabilities in Western European society. The plague subjected the population of medieval Europe to tremendous strains, leading many people to challenge old institutions and doubt traditional values, and, by so doing, these calamities altered the path of European development in many areas.

____________________________________________________________________


Sources:

Black Death. Retrieved October 20, 2008 from http://www.wikipedia.com/black death

Great famine. Retrieved October 20, 2008 from ttp://www.vlib.us/medieval/lectures/black_death

McNeill, W.H. (1998). Plagues and peoples. New York: Anchor Books.

PLagues and People

The work of William McNeill “Plague and People” is an attempt to explain the past through a sort of biological means. It is in some way an explanation of historical event by taking a look at the influence of nature. McNeill is a naturalist and that he considers the environment as a big factor in history. It’s a naturalistic approach to the study of history. If we examine closely the work of McNeill, we might be able to get the idea that human beings and the history of humans is in a way related to the environment and that we play a role. There is a sort of ecological niche that we are to find. Humans play a link between environments. There is a continuum or a series of things that humans should play his part so as not to break the series. From this, we will find that even the littlest of the organisms like the parasites play a role. These parasites that live off another organism are related to humans. This relationship is a balance between the micro and macro parasitism that humans tend to work in between. Let us take a look between the so-called macro and micro parasitism


Micro parasitism according to McNeill (1998) is an organism that is a parasite on us. This might include organisms that are inside us feeding on the nutrients that we are taking in. Macro parasitism on the other hand is when we talk about parasitism in a very large scale. In history, it might mean the physical or feeding in some way like abuse of authority to gain more. That is parasitism. But there should always be an equilibrium or balance. Parasites who have had enough that the host is destroyed or can no longer provide would mean destruction or even death. The parasite then will die off. McNeill means this in history to be that sort of abuse that can destroy a society. This became an epidemic because it came to a point that the host is destroyed. On the other hand, if it is just stable we call it endemic.


Humans can be considered the greatest parasite. We have the knowledge that we can think of ways to destroy and hunt even the fiercest creatures that thrive on earth. From the beginning man has been a threat to every species that ever existed. Even to their kind. Man has been ruling since the beginning and it has destroyed quite a number of species along with it are the parasites that live within those species. But what about those parasites that can live on those that humans need for survival and thus humans took care off? We destroyed a great number of small animals to do farming and in so doing killing some plants and animals that once live in the unplowed land.


The growth of population has a lot to do with trying to balance the ecosystem. There are three things that would result from the growth. First is are diseases because the population expands and there are more hosts; second would be war due to conflicts and third would have to be famine because the society was able to consume too much to the point that the ecosystem can no longer provide nourishment. McNeill sees the relationship between these diseases, famine and war to the society. History has given us quite a number of examples of societies that disintegrated because of disease, famine and war. From these, we can say that a society can likely be affected by whatever is happening to the ecosystem. A certain disease can kill off an entire population. Trade and foreign relations of the ancient times had introduced to a certain place a disease unknowingly. What we learned from this epidemic is that human beings tend to adapt to it and battle it out. The method of quarantine would have to be the simplest way that humans battle out the spread of a disease. The advent of these diseases also caused much attention to religion and some belief. We find mystical religious movements that boast of healing.

What McNeill is trying to say is that if there is a sort of an unbalance in the society, it dies off. It can be due to the relationship between the players of the people of the community or a naturalistic approach to it; something might have happened that human beings were not able to react to it. The advent of the diseases upon a shore may sometime affect the delicate balance. Humans are sometimes caught in the middle of an epidemic that no matter how much we try to console it, we are caught by the fact that it is not in our hands anymore. A disease (viral or bacterial) that kills its victims before they can spread it to others tends to flare up and then die out, like a fire running out of fuel. A more resilient disease would establish an equilibrium, its victims living well beyond infection to further spread the disease. This function of the evolutionary process selects against quick lethality, with the most immediately fatal diseases being the most short-lived. Thus both diseases and populations tend to evolve towards an equilibrium in which the common diseases are non-symptomatic, mild, or manageably chronic. When a population that has been relatively isolated is exposed to new diseases, it has no inborn resistance to the new diseases (the population is "biologically naïve"); this body of people succumbs at a much higher rate, resulting in what is known as a "virgin soil" epidemic.

Civilizations thrive and flourish because of this balance. Some may die off because of parasitism within themselves or as a relationship to other beings. McNeill sees the natural method of things that influence history. I might agree with him. Humans have always been in complete struggle of controlling the environment but there are some things that he just might not be able to over turn. History is indeed a balance between all the factors of the society and there should be a relationship established amongst them.

____________________________________________________________________

Sources:

McNeill, W.H. (1998). Plagues and peoples. New York: Anchor Books.

Staloff, Darren (2000) “The search for a meaningful past,philosophies,theories, and
interpretation of human history”. New York: The Teaching Company

population history. Retrieved October 20, 2008 from http://www.wikipedia.com/population

The Chronicle of EDSA II

The EDSA Revolution of 2001 OR EDSA II, also called by the local media as EDSA II (pronounced as EDSA Dos or EDSA 2) or the Second People Power Revolution, is the common name of the four-day popular revolution that peacefully overthrew former president Estarda from January 17 - 20, 2001. He was succeeded by his then vice president Gloria Macapagal Arroyo on Ocotber 04, 2001. Ilocos Sur Governor Chaivt Singson, a longtime friend of Estrada went public with accusations that Estrada, his family and friends received millions of pesos from operations of the illegal numbers game,jeuteng. What follows is a string of protests calling for the resignation of the President Joseph Estrada. Later, on January 20, 2001 Estrada and his family leave Malacañang Palace, smiling and waving to reporters and shaking hands with the remaining members of his Cabinet and other palace employees. He was placed under house arrest and eventually confined to his rest home in Sampaloc, a small village in Tanay, Rizal. The story however can be told in four different manners following Hayden’s White Metahistory and the use of emplotment.

ROMANCE

The story of EDSA 2 is the struggle of the many people who fought for the resignation of President Estrada. These were the 10 senators who tried to fought for it. A The day-to-day trial was covered on live Philippine television and received the highest viewing rating at the time. Another hero would be Clarissa OCampo, an ordinary person who tried to testify against the president and exposed herself to the dangers of assassination and being thrown out of jail for false accusation of the court is not going to side on her. Among the highlights of the trial was the testimony of Clarissa Ocampo, senior vice president of Equitable PCI Bank who testified that she was one foot away from Estrada when he signed the name "Jose Velarde" documents involving a P500 million investment agreement with their bank in February 2000.


TRAGEDY

The story of EDSA 2 is a tragedy. The country faced the greatest battle after the revolution and that is to resolve the conflict that divided the nation. Those who call for the resignation are faced with the challenge of proving that president Estrada is guilty of treason and the other charges against him. On the other hand, the pro-Estrada people marched the streets and held protests against President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo. The country then faced the tumultuous task of battling the effects of the revolt. What followed is more protest and the economy of the country was affected by it. Though foreign nations, including the United States immediately expressed recognition of the legitimacy of Arroyo's presidency, foreign commentators described the revolt as "a defeat for due process of law. The Pro-Estrada blamed EDSA 2 of having "inflicted a dent on Philippine democracy".


COMEDY


Former president Joseph Estrada has been found guilty beyond reasonable doubt of plunder by the Sandiganbayan and has been sentenced to life imprisonment. At the same time, the anti-graft court ordered the freezing of Estrada’s accounts estimated at $87 million. Fears that a guilty verdict could trigger widespread street protests and possible riots in Manila seemed misplaced. Pro-Estrada activists staged scattered low-key demonstrations in the city of 12 million people but all were peaceful. The crowd was far smaller than the thousands predicted and riot police sent to guard against them snacked and chatted. Some sat down, their shields by their sides. But after being in detention for six and a half years, Estrada who is now 70, was granted an executive pardon by President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo on Thursday, just a month after he was sentenced to life imprisonment for abuse of power and plunder. In her decree, the president said Estrada was freed under the current administration's policy of releasing prisoners who had reached the age of 70. The six and a half years that he had already spent in detention during the trial was also taken into consideration.



SATIRE


The EDSA revolution is satirical because the heroes failed in their futile attempt to achieve what the preceding era failed according to their criteria. The country at the moment is facing the hardest times. We are faced with economic crisis that no matter what policy the hero, the current president, is doing it proved to not work that much. Estrada was charged with perjury but the country has been on the list of the most corrupt nations in Asia even after the so-called corrupt officials were gone. The country has been trying hard enough to move away from cronyism and the claws of dictatorship but we have our officials who might as well represent the traditional politicians of the past. President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo failed in her attempt to win over the masses which had supported Estrada’s administration.

__________________________________________________________________________

Sources:

White, H. (1973). Metahistory: The historical imagination in nineteenth-century Europe. B

altimore: John Hopkins University.

EDSA Revolution. Retrieved October 20, 2008 from http://www.wikipedia.com/edsa 2

Hayden White and Metahistory

Hayden White and his take on Post- Structuralism is an attempt to explain the events of the past and that there is a nature to reality. In his work Metahistory, White was able to present history in different facets. There is historical thought for an event and that there is also a way to present it depending on the historians. A historical work is a verbal presentation of events. There is a sense a sort of poetic approach to it.

A historical work is of course poetically constructed. We reconstruct the past in a way that is understandable to the audience. Thus, we drop of some lines that are not as important as the event itself. It is poetic because we are in a way trying to make history as interesting as we want it to be. For White, every historical work takes the form of a narrative prose and I cannot oppose it. History is indeed, a narrative prose essay. To present history, we take a look at unprocessed history. We have documents, evidences, and all those that have something to do with the historical field that we are interested in. We may include in our study of the past, historical accounts. By carefully merging these issues – historical accounts, records and evidences – a historian can present it to an audience. By this, we mean the reader of the work. It will in some way affect the historical writing because the audience should be taken in to consideration. By this, we mean readership. So, history is not just the retelling of the past, it has to deal with a lot of elements and a lot of features. And that is not an easy task. Hayden White in his Metahistory was able to explain the more important elements on history writing. He mentioned five important elements and these are chronicle, story, motive emplotment, and motive argument and motive ideological implication.

The first element being the chronicle is the retelling of an event in a chronological manner. The second element of course is the story. In history, it is the event. Historical writing centers on an issue or an event and that is the story. The retelling will require a beginning, middle and an end. In between there are words such as first, then, finally, ultimately and those transition words differentiate a chronicle from a story. A chronicle is just a chronological timeline while history is different because it takes in a chronicle, put a motif and initiate the events. White mentioned four different modes of emplotment to be the third element. By emplotment, we mean of the manner that a certain story is presented. We have an event and it has a particular undertone or a mood. White mentions four emplotments and these are – romance, satire, comedy and tragedy. The first mode is romance. It is a straight forward narrative of a hero who won over adversity. This is the emplotment that tells us of a hero and how he was able to beat all the odds. It is a sense of spectacle of how a certain person became victorious after all those struggles and in the end he triumphed over all these. The second mode is tragedy satire which is the opposite of romance because it is the evil that has prevailed. This mode is an account of an event that has caused evil in some way. Then we have the third mode and that is comedy. By comedy, we have the adversities and the struggles but in the end, the conflict is resolved by reconciliation. It’s a happy ending. That no matter how painful the struggles have been, the end is always on a positive note. Now, the fourth mode is what we call as satire. Here, we mean that the hero or the antagonist for that matter faced struggles and fail. This shows that in history, the hero is not always victorious. There are struggles that a hero is not able to be victorious. It is tragic.

White’s four mode of emplotment is in itself already a great explanation. Besides these four emplotment, he was able to employ the so-called modes of arguments. These are explanatory techniques and also got four variations – formist, organicist, mechanist, contextualism.

Now, I will turn to the discussion of the four modes of argument. Formism has something to do with form. It is an idiographic take on the historian because it tells of an event and what makes it particularly interesting or different. There is always in some way a particular uniqueness to an event. Organicist on the other hand tells us of events that are probably separate but is seen as unified whole. Some events may be united in one or more of principles. We have the mechanist view that talks about the mechanisms or the elements that has to do with an event. The contextualist view on the other hand is about the context of the event or the contextual background of the event that is being examined.

White also employs the so-called motive of ideological implications in history writing. It is a reflection of ho an event affects life, an individual or even the civilization. By these we mean four ideologies – conservative that tells us that history evolves; liberal that is explains that a change in law or government would mean a change in the present state of affairs; radical that explains that only radical means can effect a change; and anarchist saying that the state is corrupt that a new community must pave the way for change.

To sum up, I see White as a great historian, a great narrative writer and a great philosopher. It is not easy to employ those means in historical writing but he was able to explain and note those mechanisms. As a historian, we can extract one event and make use of the four types of emplotment. There is a lot of method in the retelling of history but as always there is a reason behind the historians mind. His belief may quite be a form of an art but history is more than just writing but it includes explaining and trying to effect change. Over all his work is interesting with all its art and the method that he presented history. He was able to note some of the philosophers view and make an analysis of their works. I believe in so far as presentation and analysis is concerned, White was able to present history as a fun and light. I agree with him and I believe that White did a great job.

__________________________________________________________________

Sources:

Staloff, Darren (2000) “The search for a meaningful past,philosophies,theories, and
interpretation of human history”. New York: The Teaching Company.

White, H. (1973). Metahistory: The historical imagination in nineteenth-century Europe.

Baltimore: John Hopkins University.

THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

According to Carl Hempel history can be explained through a general law just like the sciences. A general law is a universal conditional proposition. It says something absolutely without exception and that always takes the form of a condition. If we get this first condition we will get that afterwards. There is a connection of cause and event through that conditional nexus. It produces an effect because of the conditions.

Hempel got a simple law that can be read as A Set of events such as C1, C2 and C3 can cause an event known as E. To further understand what Hempel means I would like to use the French Revolution as an example. The French Revolution (1789–1799) was a period of political and social upheaval in the history of FRance. Then, it is our E.


What causes the E? What is the cause of the French Revolution which are the C’s? C1 would have to be political factor and that is the change in structure of the government. Politics controls the entire society at the time and a change in the structure of the government from absolute monarchy to some other form caused widespread division. C2 would have to be the economic factor including the growth of population causing widespread famine. C3 would have to be the social factors such as the struggle of the masses causing some sort of social upheaval. What are the laws that will prove that our C1, C2 and C3 will cause the E?


In politics, whenever there is a change in government what follows are social upheavals. Our C1 had the law that “evils of society arose from defective social institutions, and that there was more than enough wealth for all, if it were only distributed equally” (Malthusian Theory) which means that the government of the time being a monarchy was not able to provide for the needs of the people and thus the constituents called for another form of government. As always, the conflicting interest of those that are supporting the present state will go head to head with the ideas of the new system. During the revolution, the supporters of absolute monarchy were battling against the Enlightenment and its ideas of nationalism and equality.


The C2 or economic factors as always is one of the most influential events to cause a revolution. According to Adam Smith “increase of population among the poorer classes is checked by scarcity of subsistence.” The poor people not being able to suffice for their needs would resort to other means and cause social upheaval. Malthus also stressed that “population if unchecked grows at a proportionate rate (1..2..4..8..16..32) while food only increases at an arithmetic rate (1..2..3..4..5..6).” The population rate at the time was increasing and the people were not able to produce food supply to provide for their increasing number.


The C3 or the social factors are the struggle of the masses. According to Karl Marx, there is always a struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie that will caused a certain kind of movement. During the French revolution, the masses held up arms to battle the nobles. The Marxists view the entire period (there were numerous revolts led by different groups) as one inseparable and inevitable process that represented the decisive stage between feudalism and capitalism . The Revolution ultimately occurred because of a growing discrepancy between public pretension and economic reality. In the Old Regime, land ownership was the basis of privileged position the nobility enjoyed. This arrangement became increasingly obsolete because of the rise of commerce gave rise to the numbers and economic power of the bourgeoisie. The aristocratic landed order still retained social predominance despite economic eclipse. Although still dominant in virtually every aspect of society, the nobles resented the growing influence of the bourgeoisie and wished to stifle the lower classes


I will agree with Hempel but I also would like to stress that not all laws will apply to a particular event because history is always is unique in some way. It is not always the same. It is changing and we cannot predict the outcome of an event by using a law. It is not like science where one leads to another. History is not.

____________________________________________________________________

Sources:

Staloff, D. (1995). The search for a meaningful past philosophies,
theories and interpretations. NY: The Teaching Co.

Hempel, C.G. (1942). The function of general laws in history. In
The Journal of Philosophy, 39, 35-48.

French Revolution. Retrieved October 20, 2008 from
http://www.wikipedia.com/ French revolution


French Revolution. Retrieved October 20, 2008 from http://www.conservapedia.com/French_Revolution


Theories of population. Retrieved Oct 20, 2008 from.http://www.newadvent.org/theories


Malthus. Retrieved October 20, 2008 from http://www.wikipedia.com/malthus