Christopher Dawson (1889-1970) is remembered most for being a professional historian, he was really, first and foremost, a poet of historical writing and thought

How Christopher Dawson Tried to Save History

by Bradley J. Birzer



Christopher Dawson stood as an antagonist against the conformity of progressive and professional history, and he rightly noted that such history negates not just personality but the very essence of creativity itself…

While the domestic violence (criminals, cops, mobs) of this summer pales in comparison to the outrageous behaviors of the previous one, our season of American unrest has yet to abate.

Abroad, of course, things are worse this summer than last. Though amazingly enough, little reported in the news, the current president has dropped almost as many bombs on the Middle-east in his first seven months as president as the previous executive did over his eight years. Additionally, the threat (how real, remains to be seen) of the use of nuclear weaponry has the peoples and countries of the Pacific on edge. As of this writing, China has threatened to declare war on the United States if she launches a preemptive strike against North Korea, but to proclaim neutrality if North Korea strikes first. While nothing overt may come of the entire conflict, it will be difficult to trust China, anytime soon. Certainly, the United States has not had the best relationship with the Asian superpower over the past several decades, but we have at least been civil with one another, even while arguing over the South Sea and creating artificial islands. The prospect of war with China, even if a remote possibility, is a disturbing one, unleashing—at least in my mind—the kind of terrors the nuclear threat of the Soviets presented in my childhood.

Looking for some solace and comfort in all of this, as we approach the third decade of the twenty-first century, I turned to one of the single greatest thinkers of the previous one, Christopher Dawson (1889-1970): historian, economist, sociologist, anthropologist, and Anglo-Welsh Catholic man of letters.

Though Dawson is remembered most for being a professional historian, he was really, first and foremost, a poet of historical writing and thought. Not in the least arrogant (in fact, quite the opposite), he tried to explain this concept in one of his essays on the nature of metahistory and the metahistorian, terms that have been hijacked and destroyed by the inanities of the academic left since Dawson first employed them. “Metahistory is concerned with the nature of history, the meaning of history, and the cause and significance of historical change,” he wrote in 1951. As Dawson himself recognized, however, metahistory, if employed improperly, might easily descend into the historicism of Hegel. Dawson claimed for himself, however, the tradition of metahistory as first developed by St. Augustine of Hippo and, fourteen centuries later, contained by Alexis de Tocqueville. The former, led by Hegel, saw history as a type of God, while the latter recognized that God guided history, remaining transcendent over it. He could, however, as sovereign of time and space, enter into history itself in the Incarnation, thus sanctifying it and his own creation and artistry.

While there was a false metahistory—claiming the apotheosis of history itself, thus making a false god and a false idol out of the events of time and, equally dangerous, claiming history had a purpose, in and of itself—there was the equal danger presented by professional history, making the historian merely a recorder of events. As such, professional history erased the very personality of the human person, making him nothing more than a mere technician, though a highly-educated one. He would become, even with the most advanced degrees, a cog in the vast machine of academia, attenuating and then dismissing his own judgment and adopting something bland and tapioca-like. Certainly, he would not be liberal in the sense of liberal education. “The mastery of these techniques will not produce great history,” Dawson lamented, “any more than the mastery of metrical techniques will produce great poetry.” The twentieth-century, true to form, even in what should be its most liberal manifestations, had managed to denigrate the creativity of the unique individual. As with all great art, real history demands “intuitive understanding, creative imagination, and finally a universal vision transcending the relative limitations of the particular field of historical study.”

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