The range of held opinions on the construction of gender, criminal punishment and both the nature and the contents of history is much broader than one hundred years ago.
Frankly, I disagree with that statement so deeply that I’m at a loss how to even begin my response to it. Either we’re using radically different measures of breadth, or one (or both?) of us has had a grossly inadequate and unrepresentative exposure to the thought of each of these epochs.
Two hundred years ago, the institutions were very different, and there was much less total intellectual output than a century ago, so it’s much harder to do a fair comparison because it’s less clear what counts as mainstream and significant.
However, the claim is still flat false at least when it comes to criminal punishment. In fact, in the history of the Western world, the period of roughly two hundred years ago was probably the very pinnacle of the diversity of views on legal punishment. On the one extreme, one could still find prominent advocates of brutal torturous execution methods like the breaking wheel (which were occasionally used in some parts of Europe well into the 19th century), and on the other, out-and-out death penalty abolitionists. (For example, the Grand Duchy of Tuscany abolished the death penalty altogether in 1786, and it was abolished almost completely in Russia around the mid-18th century.) One could also find all sorts of in-between views on all sides, of course. Admittedly, one would be hard-pressed to find someone advocating a prison system of the sort that exists nowadays, but that would have been economically impossible back in those far poorer times (modern prisons cost tens of thousands of dollars per prisoner-year, not even counting the cost of building them).
Depending on what exactly is meant by “the nature and the contents of history,” one could certainly point out many interesting perspectives that could be found 200 years ago, but not today anymore. That, however, is a very complex question. As for gender, well, I’d better not go into that topic. I’ll just point out that people have been writing about these matters since the dawn of history, and it’s very naive (though sadly common nowadays) to believe that only our modern age has managed to achieve accurate insight and non-evil attitudes about them.
As for gender, well, I’d better not go into that topic. I’ll just point out that people have been writing about these matters since the dawn of history, and it’s very naive (though sadly common nowadays) to believe that only our modern age has managed to achieve accurate insight and non-evil attitudes about them.
Dawn of history? Now I’m imagining uncovering writing on the wall of caves: “Why women make better hunters” and expressing indignation at under-representation of females in cave paintings of battles.
No I’m not. The counterfactual referred to writing, writing which incidentally happened to be a commentary on the quality of the historical record keeping. (It is not my position that the counterfactual is particularly likely—if anything the reverse.)
People still argue those things nowadays though. Any remotely salacious criminal story has hacks crawling out of the woodwork to gloat about how the perpetrators will be raped, and the current Attorney General has deliberately delayed introduction of mechanisms to clamp down on the practice. For a long time one of the most popular proposal out of Britain’s “let the public suggest policies” initiative was to send paedophiles to Iraq as human mine detectors.
And you’re missing the major reason for the increase in variety of criminal punishments, which is that the increase in the number of non violent crimes. I don’t think I’ll run too much risk of embarrassing myself if I suggest that mephedrone clinics weren’t considered an alternative to jail time 100 years ago.
As to gender, I was under the impression that radically post- and anti- gender views like those expressed by Julie Bindel and Donna Harroway were novel, if there are 19th century author’s with similar viewpoints I’d be happy to hear them. Again this is an issue where I don’t see any dead viewpoints, so even small increases in radical-ness increase the general width of ideas held.
It strikes me though from the prison issue that our differences are mostly over what qualifies a belief as respectable. There are many beliefs that are no longer taken seriously by liberal academics, if that’s what you mean by mainstream then I agree the 19th century showed a much broader range of opinion then ours.
Getting back to my original point, just about everything in the OP is within the range of orthodoxy of public opinion, and everything except “obama is a muslim” within the academic one, and yet they can be modeled as contrary to one another.
Two hundred years ago, then?
Two hundred years ago, the institutions were very different, and there was much less total intellectual output than a century ago, so it’s much harder to do a fair comparison because it’s less clear what counts as mainstream and significant.
However, the claim is still flat false at least when it comes to criminal punishment. In fact, in the history of the Western world, the period of roughly two hundred years ago was probably the very pinnacle of the diversity of views on legal punishment. On the one extreme, one could still find prominent advocates of brutal torturous execution methods like the breaking wheel (which were occasionally used in some parts of Europe well into the 19th century), and on the other, out-and-out death penalty abolitionists. (For example, the Grand Duchy of Tuscany abolished the death penalty altogether in 1786, and it was abolished almost completely in Russia around the mid-18th century.) One could also find all sorts of in-between views on all sides, of course. Admittedly, one would be hard-pressed to find someone advocating a prison system of the sort that exists nowadays, but that would have been economically impossible back in those far poorer times (modern prisons cost tens of thousands of dollars per prisoner-year, not even counting the cost of building them).
Depending on what exactly is meant by “the nature and the contents of history,” one could certainly point out many interesting perspectives that could be found 200 years ago, but not today anymore. That, however, is a very complex question. As for gender, well, I’d better not go into that topic. I’ll just point out that people have been writing about these matters since the dawn of history, and it’s very naive (though sadly common nowadays) to believe that only our modern age has managed to achieve accurate insight and non-evil attitudes about them.
Dawn of history? Now I’m imagining uncovering writing on the wall of caves: “Why women make better hunters” and expressing indignation at under-representation of females in cave paintings of battles.
What Constant said. I meant “history” in the narrow technical sense of the word, i.e. the period since the invention of writing.
You’re mixing up history with prehistory.
No I’m not. The counterfactual referred to writing, writing which incidentally happened to be a commentary on the quality of the historical record keeping. (It is not my position that the counterfactual is particularly likely—if anything the reverse.)
People still argue those things nowadays though. Any remotely salacious criminal story has hacks crawling out of the woodwork to gloat about how the perpetrators will be raped, and the current Attorney General has deliberately delayed introduction of mechanisms to clamp down on the practice. For a long time one of the most popular proposal out of Britain’s “let the public suggest policies” initiative was to send paedophiles to Iraq as human mine detectors.
And you’re missing the major reason for the increase in variety of criminal punishments, which is that the increase in the number of non violent crimes. I don’t think I’ll run too much risk of embarrassing myself if I suggest that mephedrone clinics weren’t considered an alternative to jail time 100 years ago.
As to gender, I was under the impression that radically post- and anti- gender views like those expressed by Julie Bindel and Donna Harroway were novel, if there are 19th century author’s with similar viewpoints I’d be happy to hear them. Again this is an issue where I don’t see any dead viewpoints, so even small increases in radical-ness increase the general width of ideas held.
It strikes me though from the prison issue that our differences are mostly over what qualifies a belief as respectable. There are many beliefs that are no longer taken seriously by liberal academics, if that’s what you mean by mainstream then I agree the 19th century showed a much broader range of opinion then ours.
Getting back to my original point, just about everything in the OP is within the range of orthodoxy of public opinion, and everything except “obama is a muslim” within the academic one, and yet they can be modeled as contrary to one another.
Mephedrone clinics? Do you mean methadone clinics?