I don't believe we should or must. I've never had reason to believe that historical knowledge is sufficient or necessary for what matters in life and in the world, and history's annals are littered with horrors perpetrated under false historical pretenses. Libraries are brimming with the works of brilliant minds with minute knowledge of history who still manage to churn out books of utter nonsense - the men we used to call nationalists or those other geopolitical savants and orientalists of old and new. The gurus of these and other schools of thought are true scholars, and I've thoroughly enjoyed reading their works as a man of letters. Their principles, however, are flawed, as are their results.
As far as I'm aware, historians who reach the correct conclusions in their studies of history are those who begin with the correct principles - about people, about the evolution of ideas, and about how important (or not) their own erudition makes them. Given these, studying history is superfluous; I'd trust them to do the right thing for the world already.
What we should learn is philosophy in its original sense, whether in the school of letters or the school of life, the first principles of dealing with knowledge in general, and ethics. If we choose to exercise the mind by applying it to complex and specific fields ranging from history to interior design to arithmetic, it should be based on solid foundations in the former or on the tracks of someone who already has one. A good historian is beneficial first and foremost not because of the facts he documents, but because of how he handles them and the people who created them - a bad historian, in the hands of the unwary, is harmful because no matter how much trivia he passes on, it is embedded in a morass of dogma, judgement, and malign perspective.
Answers & Comments
Yes because i want to learn the history of humans and other animals
Answer:
I don't believe we should or must. I've never had reason to believe that historical knowledge is sufficient or necessary for what matters in life and in the world, and history's annals are littered with horrors perpetrated under false historical pretenses. Libraries are brimming with the works of brilliant minds with minute knowledge of history who still manage to churn out books of utter nonsense - the men we used to call nationalists or those other geopolitical savants and orientalists of old and new. The gurus of these and other schools of thought are true scholars, and I've thoroughly enjoyed reading their works as a man of letters. Their principles, however, are flawed, as are their results.
As far as I'm aware, historians who reach the correct conclusions in their studies of history are those who begin with the correct principles - about people, about the evolution of ideas, and about how important (or not) their own erudition makes them. Given these, studying history is superfluous; I'd trust them to do the right thing for the world already.
What we should learn is philosophy in its original sense, whether in the school of letters or the school of life, the first principles of dealing with knowledge in general, and ethics. If we choose to exercise the mind by applying it to complex and specific fields ranging from history to interior design to arithmetic, it should be based on solid foundations in the former or on the tracks of someone who already has one. A good historian is beneficial first and foremost not because of the facts he documents, but because of how he handles them and the people who created them - a bad historian, in the hands of the unwary, is harmful because no matter how much trivia he passes on, it is embedded in a morass of dogma, judgement, and malign perspective.
EXPLANATION:
this is my opinion, btw.