Calling the whole past monstrous cannot inspire present action

Evidence

In the Manual the past is judged as “irrational” and “monstrous” and the history of philosophy becomes a historical treatise on teratology; because the starting-point is metaphysical. (The [Communist ] Manifesto , by contrast, contains the highest praises for the world that is a-dying.) If this way of judging the past is a theoretical error, a deviation from the philosophy of praxis, can it have any educative value or inspire energetic activity? It would seem not, because the matter becomes reduced to the presumption of being someone by virtue of the simple fact of being born at the present time instead of in some past century. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1596

Categorization

• CANDY: The phrase ‘justified by having been born now instead of in a past century’ is a sharp, quotable jab at presentist intellectual arrogance.