Reflections on the literature of whither mankind
pp. 310-319
in: Leroy Rouner (ed), Philosophy, religion, and the coming world civilization, Berlin, Springer, 1966Abstract
Man, in a striking and not really paradoxical phrase I borrow from the distinguished physicist Dennis Gabor, is the creature that invented the future. A surprising amount of recorded human thought has been devoted to that invention. All the higher religions, if only since they must cope with the fact that man is a unique creature in that he knows he is going to die, have been deeply concerned with both individual and collective human future. The Christian faith has a very specific world view which ties past, present, and future into a plan, an eschatology. The Christian knows that the future holds for him as an individual ultimate salvation in heaven or damnation in hell and for all mankind a final day of Judgment, when past, present, and future will be one forever. The future is thus tied closely with the past, that is with history. And a surprising amount of writing by historians, or at least by writers directly concerned with, and using, material evidences from the past, is a history of the future.