Herbert Butterfield by Kenneth McIntyre [Feature Review]

Page 2 – Herbert Butterfield by Kenneth McIntyre

McIntyre’s authorial work is tireless and can be tiring.  Any book whose length is almost one-third references and resources has sustained a necessary depth for argument.  Density of prose, however, unnecessarily weights the book, making reading difficult.  I found myself re-reading sentences multiple times.  Yet, I constantly wondered what other choice was there for McIntyre?  Some of the thick writing is owed to an intellectually thick subject.  Butterfield’s views of history are difficult to sort, even for historians.  Unsystematic, repetitious concepts dot the pages of Butterfield’s books which do not lend themselves to easy reading.  Here McIntyre builds the reader three windows directing attention on historical scenery.  Chapter one is a labor of love for those of us who love history, desiring to scrutinize the historian’s method.  Chapter two examines the long reach of Butterfield’s method into the historicity of science, a field he began almost single-handedly.  Chapter three engages political concerns, which is perhaps the chapter that lends itself most easily to application.

Butterfield’s initial chapter constrains our views and uses of the past.  The past should be understood for itself, in its own terms, not what we make it to be.  History should not be used as a bludgeon to beat down or prop up whatever positions we hold today.  Liberals and conservatives both need learn the lesson: past perspectives are not automatic molds for the present.  Assailing an ethnic group now for the sins of past generations must be held in check.  Transposing statements from past generations with immediate applications to our day must be resisted.  Objectivity—still the academician’s ideal—should be of primary concern throughout halls of learning.  Practices and methods of his discipline were Butterfield’s interest.

Butterfield’s Christian doctrine clearly played a role in his views of life.  Belief in inherent human corruption formed the crux of his viewpoints.  Folks are fallen, fragile, and finite, incapable of full intellectual understanding.  When politicians or movements co-opt the historical enterprise for their own ends speeches and textbooks are obviously limited by prearranged political perception.  Apart from God’s revelation to man, both history and science would never have the foundational support for human activity.  Indeed, Butterfield would argue that there was no ‘revolutionary’ thought which hatched history and science.  Compelled by Scripture, reason as its servant, men were led to God’s understanding of the world.  Practical, progressive, present-minded viewpoints only seek to reorient achievements in any academic discovery away from the service of God to the idolatries of men.

As is the case with everyone, views of the human person motivate thinking.  Both liberals and conservatives can share Butterfield’s basic practical political insight; the former spotlights the problems of big business, the latter of big government.  “Big” anything is repulsive to Butterfield who believed local communities are the best form of life for people.  Government’s role is simply to provide order for life, not to order people’s lives.  McIntyre elicits a smile when he summarily insists “human sin often leads Butterfield to advocate a purely prophylactic role for the state” (113).  Intrusions of top-down controls in any culture stultify a populace.  Citizenry begin to think the state owes them something, giving up individual freedoms along the way.  Of course, Butterfield would maintain the opposite is also true: pure democracy is unproductive (104).  Masses of people remain unrestrained by law.  One of many marvelous quotes expresses the essence of human cupidity which “sets every compass slightly wrong; it puts the bend into our wishful thinking; and it gives a bias to our very righteousness” (112).

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