Moral fluidity and the presentist paradox
Has it ever happened to you..? That you find the name for a thing you’ve experienced many times, but could never point it out for a lack of words? It’s an interesting feeling, like the world expands upon you. Names bring things to life. They give you tools to experience the world, to hold dialogue with this thing that now exists because it has a name.
Originally published on Substack. Get every post on TheEndNote delivered to your email by subscribing here.
I’ve spent a good part of my adult life debating with my dad. I used to avoid it, I told myself “I’m not gonna change his mind, I just don’t have the patience for it”. Turns out, I just didn’t have the arguments to do so. Now that I’ve built a better bookshelf, it’s actually quite a pleasure. We have nice back and forths, and he’s more open to different perspectives than I ever gave him credit for. I’ve learnt to listen to him too, and understand where opposing ideas are coming from. It’s a nice experience that has taught me a lot—especially, how to build an argument.
It is however not the point right now.
What I wanted to get to was: When talking about historical events with my dad, he frequently had an ace up his sleeve that shut down many of my arguments: “You can’t judge the past from a present perspective”, he said. It’s a máxima in history academics. Applying current moral standards or beliefs to evaluate past events or people is a bias and could cripple their study. So you shouldn’t do it and that’s that. He wins this round.
Or so I thought…
Until I came across the term to explain it all. Turns out, there had always been a word for this:
Presentism (noun): an attitude toward the past dominated by present-day attitudes and experiences
– As defined by the Merriam-Webster dictionary
Granted—presentism, from a historical analysis perspective, is a bias and is generally rejected for its study.
But having a name for it allowed me to dive into the research. And the research, in turn, allowed me to challenge it.
The presentist paradox
In my mind, the whole point of studying history is, as they say, not to repeat it.
But no matter how much we try, the same stuff seems to happen time and time again. Especially the bad stuff. Only each time it comes in different flavours and with different backdrops, but remains, in essence, fruit of the same mistakes.
So, I thought, what if we tried a different approach? Would presentist judgement be a more fertile vessel for change?
Well, before historians jump on my neck, I have to say I quickly arrived at the limitations of this theory.
However, as former AHA president and Eugen Weber Professor of Modern European History at the University of California, Lynn Hunt wrote in her article from 2002 “Against Presentism”, “(…)those in the present always have a better shot at grasping truth than do people in the past”. The problem? This applies to the future too, and we can’t look at the present teleologically, assuming we are at the pinnacle of morality. At which we are, most certainly, not.
At this point in my research, Lynn Hunt became my arch enemy, as her obviously more informed points were delivering critical blows to my face.
But we can only build the future in relation to the present, yet we’re supposed to assume the otherness of the past as if it had no relation to us?
Sure, we can only study history looking backwards, whereas we head into the future somewhat blind. But is it even possible to look at the past entirely sober when its events impact how we live today? Something was still not sitting right with me.
Presentism, or the critique on presentism isn’t so much about our visceral reaction to the past, but in the careful judgement to the people and contexts of the time, considering life and morality could’ve been completely different to their present equivalents.
Hmm.
But what about the universal truths? What about human rights and all men* are created equal and so and such. What about moral values? What even is morality then?
*I know, I see it too
The moral issue
Morality (noun): principles concerning the distinction between right and wrong or good and bad behaviour.
– Definition from Oxford Languages
We may agree on a definition. But to define what is and isn’t morally correct, well that’s a different story.
You swerve a little too late into a lane and you just pass it off because you know your reasons and that was just totally an honest mistake. Yet someone else does it and they’re insane maniacs that should not be allowed to drive.
BTW if you wanna talk about road rage and how car culture brings the worst out of people, you should read Game of roads: How cars took over the streets
Similarly, you flinch at the stories of slavery, but wear brands that operate sweatshops and are killing the planet. This is not to shame the consumer, of course, I am writing this piece from an Apple computer sipping on cheap coffee because the “ethically sourced” alternative was significantly more expensive (and I only have free subs). We do what we can, I guess. But this shows a good example of how morality is fluid not only through time and place in the world, but also through individual perspectives and collective perceptions.
How exactly do these moral shifts happen then?
Think about yourself. Chances are you’ve learned some stuff in life (if you haven’t, then you should take the chance to subscribe to my substack).
There’s also a chance you judge your past self for having, for example, certain prejudices, certain ideas of how things should or shouldn’t be, or simply for not knowing any better. But you live and learn, and now you know better.
Individually, moral shifts happen by being open, even if just a little, and inevitably by living and learning.
But what about collectively?
We live in mass, but can we learn like this too?
Mainstream morality
Wonderfully serendipitously, I found, Professor Lynn Hunt would have the answers for that too in her 2007 book Inventing Human Rights: A History. Keep your enemies close I guess.
You can also find a primer for the book through this amazing lecture by Professor Hunt.
From the title I was provoked. It’s indeed easy to forget that, among all the terror, humans have come up with some really nice things—human rights, for example. These ideas that, it would seem, should’ve been unboxed along with everything else during the big bang. They should’ve been written down somewhere in the manual. But they weren’t. They are, in the end, just human-made things.
Anyway, in her book, Professor Hunt brings up the American declaration of independence and the French revolution’s Declaration of the Rights of Man as two key case studies for western morality shifts. But not as straightforwardly as that.
She reminds us Thomas Jefferson was a slave owner himself as he wrote that bit about all men being equal and the right for the pursuit of happiness and all of that.
She then stops on Voltaire—particularly, on the case of Jean Calas. In a nutshell, Calas was a protestant merchant who was unjustly convicted of murdering his son, judicially tortured to death and finally exonerated posthumously years later, thanks in part, to Voltaire’s defense efforts.
Voltaire’s initial writings on the case in 1762 and 1763, says Huny in her lecture, “never once used the general term torture. Employing, instead, the legal euphemism—the question.” It wasn’t until 1766, after reading Marchese Beccaria Essays on Crimes and Punishments, that he put two and two together, and linked Calas trial to torture, rejecting the concept through “natural compassion”, even though he had not done so earlier.
So basically, he was against the case and the power of the church from the beginning, but not so much because of the torture at first, as it was a usual practice at the time. But once his mind was blown by the Italian, he said Oh and that, too.
“What had long seemed acceptable to him and many others, now came into doubt,” Hunt says.
It was precisely in this time, the 1760s, that new attitudes towards human rights and torture started to take off in the western world.
What had for long been seen as a common form of punishment, shifted, and by the end of the century, public opinion demanded an end for judicial torture.
A new attitude towards the self and the body were on the rise.
Why?
Through different forms of reading, people found a new source for identification and empathy. Especially across more distant social and cultural boundaries. Particularly, Hunt points out the rise of the epistolary novel (novels based on the exchange of letters), and highlights three key works: Richardson’s Pamela and Clarissa, and Rousseau’s Julie.
Through these and other works, readers not only reflected on the social and cultural changes of the time, but found new feelings and recognized shared psychological experiences including the aspiration for moral autonomy.
The recognition of the self, and that the other has a self too, transcended social lines.
Novels now featured regular people as central characters facing everyday troubles and shown as equals or better than the rich and powerful.
And as literacy and the publishing of novels grew, readers learned “empathy through passionate involvement in the narrative”.
It was not only reading, of course, as Professor Hunt (who by now had gone from my sworn enemy to my true hero) is sure to clarify, that set the foundation for the collective moral shift. But the chronological coincidence suggests it was an effective vessel for change.
ut that was soooo long ago…
Well, yes. But as I said at the beginning of this essay. No matter how hard we try, the same kind of things keep happening over and over.
What’s another time this has happened, Eugenio? What’s another canonical event we can refer to when we talk about collective shifts in morality?
Inventing woke (?)
It was hard not to relate a good bunch of this work to the present. Most “enlightened” thinkers, I think, would be tagged as woke today. Liberal snowflakes who can’t take even a little judicial torture. Human rights? Back in my day we lost our limbs at the wheel and we liked it. I saw my first hanging at eight years old and look at me now, I turned out perfectly fine.
Ok enough.
But while woke ideals may be the current hot topic in terms of moral perceptions, it’s harder to point out when and how they were brought into the conversation. It might be too early to tell, and it might be that not all conversations go down in history as generally integrated into public opinion, but they have to happen—and only time will tell.
I tried to pinpoint specific events that could relate to what was happening in the period studied by Professor Hunt. How do the enlightened revolutions relate to the digital age?
The “Twitter revolutions” of the Middle East in the 2010s were a good example of social movements largely enabled by social media. Specifically, Twitter (back when it was cool). These events were powerful demonstrations of how far the reach of social media had come. But they were not yet the final catalyzers of bringing political discussions into the mainstream of the medium.
A common denominator for this, I found, were the BLM marches of 2016 and then even more in 2020. Social media again played a big part in this boom. People had not only live exposure to the events, but they got a POV experience of activism.
But there’s more. Another key aspect I had failed to see, but which my friend Zoe was quick to point out when discussing this article: You know what boomed during this time too? Podcasts.
Is the podcast this generation’s epistolary novel?
The medium was born politically charged, and just as people empathized with characters in epistolary novels by reading letters that were not for or from them, we sat back and listened to hosts and guests chatting while we pretended to be a part of their conversations.
I wouldn’t dare say these tools have taught us a new kind of morality or empathy yet. After all, didn’t Trump win the bro-vote by going on Rogan? But what’s consistent is the chronological order of events with the rise of a politically active online presence. Or the so-called “woke” era.
It was in this period of time that being politically active became a part of your digital persona. But that came with a caveat… brands wanted in too. Where people saw a chance to make a statement, brands saw a chance for profit.
This fantastic article by Eugene Healey, for example, notes that brands rode this wave to try and capitalize from woke ideology. A terrible step backwards, as most did without any substance or meaningful action, hurting more than helping the cause.
But what was clear at this point was that these conversations were becoming louder and more frequent.
All powerful celebrities were digitally lynched, statues came down, and institutions were renamed as cancel culture rose. And while it might have been a quick medication for many long standing issues, presentism shows us it may not be the long-term cure we actually need.
I mean… by all means, cancel assholes and stop sending money into terrible people’s pockets. Cancel everyone until proven innocent, I say. But to erase them from history is to do them a favor. Let them be shown for who they truly were by keeping the proof. Transparency is key, as history will be a better judge than any of us.
We can’t look back upon current events and their fruit just yet, but I do believe they are at a key point in their development, as powerful people and the far right weaponize measures like substanceless woke branding, cancel culture, and performative activism to fuel a conservative speech that polarizes and shuts down necessary conversations.
Linking again because please read this brilliant article by Tahirah Hairston: The limits of fashion and symbolic gestures as political tools
And there’s no way of knowing where those conversations would lead us, but in order to move forward, they must happen.
It is at this point I want to quote my now favorite historian, Professor Lynn Hunt’s conclusion to the Inventing Human Rights lecture:
“Human rights is not a once and for all program of demands. It is a view of the world and the place of people in it. It is—necessarily—a space of continuing contestation, because the threshold for what’s no longer acceptable is always shifting.
In the XVIII century, when people discovered human rights, they felt the scales literally falling from their eyes, and self-evident truths resonating in their hearts. How could they not have seen and felt its truth before? It is a question that we will continue to ask ourselves in different forms, one hopes, for a long time to come.”
So it is relevant today to fight to keep these questions alive. I agree now, that the presentist lens is biased and short-sighted.
But I still believe the discernment and judgement of history is necessary. People and events may have come and gone, but the ripples of the past are still very much alive in the present. So we should—we must—challenge them.
To see where we stand, what we stand for, and dare to correct the errors of the past. Not to erase them. You can’t change the past, of course, but you can stop it from spreading.
To do nothing, instead, is to leave no mark. It is, in turn, to erase yourself from history.
Sources:
THE IMPULSE OF THE PRESENT – Royal Historical Society (2023) (Blog post)
Against presentism – Professor Lynn Hunt (2002)
Lynn Hunt: Inventing Human Rights (Lecture, 2008)
Considered Chaos 02: The Death of the Woke Rebrand – Eugene Healey, Considered Chaos (2025)
Featured image: “Appius Claudius Punished by the People” John Leech (1850)
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