Presentism : Is it unfair to judge people and actions in the past by the standards of today?

"Is it unfair to judge people and actions in the past by the standards of today?"

It is impossible for historians to approach the past with no bias. There is always some prejudice in their works that they project willingly or unwillingly, it is human nature to do so. Humans are selfish, judgemental beings and it takes a lot to uncover and digest the secrets of the past. We aren’t perfect but one thing we are is hungry - Hungry for knowledge.

As the science and tech world develops, we gain more resources that are used to recollect the past and study about it. Some details about the past seem amazing, it is fascinating how different a human’s life was years ago, but some of the facts we learnt are not so good.


By uncovering the past, we also uncover some deeds performed by people that can be considered shameful, unethical, unfair or a violation of someone’s right to simply put. Many of these actions criticised harshly by the people today. Not so long ago, it was still allowed to own slaves in several countries and the rich owned them, even presidents and authority figures! Looking back, we realise how horrible the slave practice was, a person stripped off their own rights and forced to receive orders until they’re set free by their master.


But is it unfair to judge these acts with the mindset of a person from the year 2021? The answer is yes and no, varying person-to-person due to the human’s capacity to conceive different perspectives. The word for this is presentism. According to oxford, presentism is the uncritical adherence to present-day attitudes, especially the tendency to interpret past events in terms of modern values and concepts. My take on it is that it is fair to judge people for their actions with respect to the time period. The reasoning has to do with morality - the core moral of humans.

  “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”

Let’s continue with the idea of slaves. If the slave master had even thought about how it would be if the roles were reversed and showed some empathy to the slaves, the master wouldn’t have treated them as they were. The lack of empathy, their deeply rooted xenophobic values and the feeling of entitlement is what caused them to commit such heinous acts. Their acts didn’t align with this human moral, showcasing their entitlement that they deserve better than the rest. Excusing this entitled behaviour only shows us how deeply rooted the systematic bias is.


There are thousands of such issues with history. Judging it for what it is and recognising its faults in the present is what we should be doing. By recognising the faults, we can educate our present selves on what is right. We should be recognising the mistakes, holding the people of the past accountable for their actions, progress and evolve as human beings. After all, human beings are creatures of evolution.