The Illusion that "History Will Judge"

It's tempting to think that "history will condemn" what the present regime is doing, but the reality is that all such judgments are dubious

“The concept of universal history… was plausible only as long as we could believe in the illusion of an already existing humanity, coherent in itself and moving upwards in a unified manner.” - Theodor Adorno, ‘On Interpretation: The Concept of Process (II)’

In the face of the current orgy of cruelty, stupidity, and institutional destruction, one common reaction is that, if it cannot be stopped, at least there will eventually have to be some sort of historical reckoning. And why not? It’s comforting to think that “in the end” the righteous will be redeemed from the villains condemned. But is this realistic? Will future historians condemn what the current regime is doing — or will they, in a perverse twist, even praise its impact? In fact, the likeliest scenario is that “history” will do neither.

Let me first lay out the bill of indictment that future historians will, in theory, one day have to reckon with.

First is the proposed deportation of many millions of peaceful residents of the United States. It is now clear that what the regime intends to do is not just to enforce immigration law more strictly against “criminals” (which is how the policy was sold politically), but rather a mass uprooting of individuals who have built American lives and contribute to American communities. The human cost, the economic disruption, and the moral stain of such an undertaking will be immense — an auto-da-fé of what we were long told America was supposed to be about. The forcible removal of tens of millions will require an unprecedented expansion of state power, an archipelago of detention camps, and a level of domestic surveillance and enforcement that ought to make even the most ardent security hawk (not to mention “small government conservative”) blanche. Beyond the psychological trauma caused to families and communities being ripped to shreds, the economic devastation is going to be vast: entire sectors — agriculture, hospitality, elder care, and construction, among others — are going to be starved of labor. Most profoundly, there will be the moral gangrene of normalized cruelty and legitimized xenophobia.

Can’t we at least hope that history will record all this as an act of criminal cruelty and a betrayal of foundational ethical principles, akin to past episodes of ethnic cleansing or forced displacement that until recently evoked shame and condemnation?

Beyond this immediate humanitarian crisis, the present regime is also gutting universities and science more generally. This involves not just budget cuts to NIH, NSF, etc. but a deeper ideological assault on expertise, critical thinking, and the pursuit of knowledge. Research institutions, foundational to progress in every field from medicine to technology, are being dramatically defunded, faculty purged for perceived political leanings, and scientific findings dismissed if they contradict the regime’s preferred narratives. The long-term consequences of such an intellectual famine are going to be catastrophic, eroding society’s capacity for innovation, problem-solving, and self-correction. Much of the disaster will take the form of advancements we fail to receive: the deliberate policy of anti-intellectualism means a future in which breakthroughs in cancer research are stifled, new antibiotics are not produced, and new technologies are never developed. The system of knowledge production that lifted billions out of disease and despair is grinding to a halt, leaving future generations vulnerable to scourges once thought conquerable. Compounding this, the destruction of the American health care system looms: from the systematic undermining of vaccination programs, leading to the resurgence of preventable diseases, to the decimation of Medicaid (and, next up, Medicare). This isn’t just about policy reform; it’s about dismantling the infrastructure that protects and cares for the country’s most vulnerable.

Isn’t it nice to think that at least the historical record will highlight the preventable suffering, the increased mortality, and the profound inequity stemming from such actions?

Or consider the implosion of the institutional foundations of a global economic system that lifted more people out of poverty than any in history. (Say what you will about neoliberalism and globalization, but in 1970, about 60% of humans were relegated to extreme poverty, whereas now the figure is under 9%.) The post-World War II order, built on international cooperation, trade agreements, and shared norms, fostered an era of unprecedented peace and prosperity. The present regime’s foreign policy isn’t just about unilateralism and militarism — sorry, you dipshits who voted for this because you thought it would keep us out of wars — but also is about neo-mercantalist disregard for the benefits of an open trading system. This is not just going to disrupt “the global economy” in some abstract sense, but will push millions if not billions back into poverty — and as a result will increase both the likelihood of armed conflict and refugee flows.

Can’t we at least comfort ourselves with the idea that some future historical narrative will confront the deliberate unraveling of a system that, for all its flaws, delivered tangible benefits to humanity on a scale never before seen?

And last but by no means least, and perhaps most damning, is the acceleration of anthropogenic climate change. By withdrawing from international accords, rolling back environmental regulations, and promoting the unfettered extraction and consumption of fossil fuels, the present regime is not just failing to mitigate but actively hastening the planet’s trajectory towards irreversible ecological collapse. Rising sea levels, extreme weather events, mass migrations, and biodiversity loss are no longer distant threats but present realities, intensifying suffering and instability across the globe.

But shouldn’t we at least take some solace in knowing that future generations, living with the consequences of a burning world, will judge those responsible for all this as having engaged in an unforgivable act of intergenerational theft?

The illusion of history as ultimate judge

This is the grim ledger that many believe “history” will one day balance. There is a deep (indeed quasi-religious) human need to believe that such a confluence of destructive actions will be met with an unequivocal historical condemnation. It is a source of solace, a flicker of hope that accountability, even if deferred, will ultimately prevail. But this very relief, the idea that history is the ultimate judge is, as my former advisor Martin Jay discusses in an important new article, a dubious one. (If you prefer to consume an oral version of Jay’s argument, you can watch him lecture on the topic here.)

Jay challenges the pervasive notion that “history will judge” or “history will absolve.” He argues that this idea, rooted in a secularization of the religious concept of a divine Last Judgment, rests on several shaky premises, making it a doubtful consolation to those who appeal to it.

Jay begins by deconstructing the figure of “absolution,” as invoked by the likes of Fidel Castro, who famously declared in his 1953 trial for the assault on the Moncada Barracks that “la historia me absolverá.” Jay points out that this religious language performed a crucial slippage: whereas in the Catholic tradition, true absolution requires contrition, confession, and penance, Castro’s posture was one of defiance, claiming dispensation for morally dubious acts based on perceived future success. But this highlights a fundamental flaw in the secularized analogy: unlike God, “history” cannot receive confession, nor can it grant or deny forgiveness in a morally meaningful sense. The judgment history offers is not one of divine discernment or mercy, but human — which is to say, contingent and mutable.

Secondly, Jay distinguishes between “fame” and “ultimate justice.” While posterity might recall great (or horrible) deeds, this remembrance, often called fame, is not equivalent to a moral judgment that delivers ultimate justice. Herostratus, who burned the Temple of Artemis in order to achieve notoriety, demonstrates that infamy itself is a form of lasting memory.¹ The religious Last Judgment aims at an “ultimate justice” that transcends earthly rewards or punishments, saving souls for eternity. By contrast, “history” cannot provide this redemptive conclusion. The questions that trouble theologians about divine judgment — when sin transforms a soul, whether repentance can cancel deeds, the role of free will versus predestination, or the possibility of universal salvation — find no resolution when transposed onto the historical plane.

The core of Jay’s critique lies in dissecting the two meanings of “history”: res gestae (history as events that happened) and historia rerum gestarum (the representation or narrative of those happenings). When “history” is understood as res gestae, as an impersonal process that will ultimately reveal justice, it relies on problematic assumptions. Drawing on Reinhart Koselleck, Jay outlines five models of justice in history, culminating in the Enlightenment’s “fifth position” where history itself becomes the ultimate court. This model attributes “sufficient reason” to impersonal causes and effects, imbuing mechanical causation with teleological meaning, effectively creating a secular theodicy. It assumes a “world history” that can be fashioned into a single, qualitatively distinct narrative with inherent meaning, a grand (often Eurocentric) metanarrative tied to ideas of progress, with what Hegel called the “cunning of reason” leading to a predetermined (positive) outcome. Martin Luther King Jr.’s proposition that “the arc of the moral universe… bends toward justice” is the archetypal American expression of this idea.

The collapse of grand metanarratives — from the crises of modernization theory to the postcolonial assault on Eurocentrism to the end of Communism’s universalist ambitions — has severely undermined this faith. It has been replaced instead with an “absurdist model” of history in which the sequence of events making up history are increasingly represented as simply “one damned thing after another” — full of sound and fury, but signifying nothing. (For Adorno, famously, this was the significance of Auschwitz: that history has no meaning.) This means that believing in an immanent justice in res gestae is increasingly untenable. The idea of “victors’ justice,” where success is equated with virtue, thus becomes little more than the ends justifying the means and might equaling right. And a callous utilitarian calculus follows: why should a life thwarted in the present be considered more worthy than a future life that might flourish as a result of that thwarting?

On the other hand, when “history” is instead understood as historia rerum gestarum — that is, as the narratives of future historians — the idea of historical judgment faces different challenges. While this shifts the prerogative of judgment from an impersonal process to human agents, it too is vulnerable. The assumption of impartiality, sine ira et studio (without anger and passion), is difficult to achieve, especially for heinous acts. Moreover, unlike an omniscient God, human historians must rely on “determinant” judgments (e.g. applying general rules) or “reflective” judgments (e.g. analogical comparisons). Determinant judgments risk false universalization, imposing contemporary values on a past with different ones, leading to what E.P. Thompson called the “enormous condescension of posterity.” Reflective judgments, based on phronesis or practical wisdom, reduce judgment to analogical comparisons of often incommensurable examples, potentially diminishing the uniqueness of singular events like the Holocaust.

Beyond these theoretical problems, there is also the inevitability of historiographical dissensus. The “community of historians” is never a monolithic entity with a single sensus communis. Different perspectives, national biases, and ideological leanings mean that narratives of the past are constantly contested and revised. The American Civil War, with its “Lost Cause” historiography, vividly illustrates how historical “judgments” can shift dramatically over time, often reflecting present political struggles rather than a dispassionate ultimate truth. And the arc of historiographical judgment does not always bend in one direction: ergo the recent restauration of Confederate generals.

In conclusion Jay argues that there is no “final boss” historian who will reliably ‘get the story right.’ “Although God may judge from the perspective of eternity,” Jay concludes, “historians remain within an ongoing process that is infinitely unfolding, at least until there are no humans left to judge anything.” The solace derived from the belief that future generations will condemn present-day injustices is thus misplaced: it outsources moral responsibility to an imagined, unified, and wise posterity that may never materialize. This fallacy substitutes posterity for divinity in a quest for a definitive judgment that can never, in fact, be rendered.

Living amidst the ruins

Given Jay’s compelling albeit dispiriting deconstruction of the idea that history can serve as an ultimate judge, the comforting thought that a future generation will unequivocally condemn the actions of the present American regime feels less like a promise and more like a misleading mirage. The enormous condescension of posterity might not be one of condemnation but of indifference, or worse, a re-narration that normalizes, or even celebrates, the very acts we bien pensants today find abhorrent.

Given that the trajectory of the present U.S. regime involves the systemic dismantling of institutions, the erosion of democratic norms, the widespread suffering from deportations and healthcare collapse, and the accelerated devastation of the climate, what kind of “history” will eventually be written? It would likely not be the linear, progressive narrative so many of us implicitly cling to, where accountability is assured and moral clarity prevails. Instead, it might be a fragmented, contested, or even absent narrative, lost amidst the ruins of a broken world.

This was exactly the point I landed on in an earlier substack, composed just a few weeks into the present regime. Unfortunately, if the present regimes succeeds in its agenda, future Americans (and perhaps people everywhere) are likely to end up a bit like the Romans or Mayans in 1100 A.D. — living lives of ignorance amidst the ruins of a formerly glorious civilization that few if any discuss or even remember with any accuracy.

Imagine a future humanity, severely diminished by the ravages of climate change, resource depletion, and societal collapse, inhabiting the physical detritus of our current era. They might stumble upon the crumbling remains of once-great universities, their libraries long since turned to dust or plundered for fuel. They might find the rusted skeletons of sophisticated medical facilities, their purpose dimly understood. The grand architecture of international cooperation, once symbolized by glass towers and global summits, will be nothing more than skeletal reminders, their original function and promise utterly lost to a miasma of deep, historical forgetting.

In such a future (which is indeed the one that the present regime is pointing us toward), the “judgment” of history will not be a resounding condemnation, but at best a quiet, almost mournful, recognition of decline. The physical traces around them — the dried-up riverbeds, the storm-scarred coastlines, the overgrown ruins of once-thriving cities — will bespeak a former greatness and beneficence, a civilization that once possessed the knowledge and capacity to avert its own demise, but which chose not to. At most they will dimly perceive that they live in a situation of degradation from a preceding era of relative stability and abundance.

Will they condemn the architects of this decline in the way the beginning of this post tried to imagine? Without the robust institutions of historical inquiry, without the shared foundational values that allow for a consensus on “good” and “evil,” without the very idea of a coherent, linear history leading to a final judgment, such condemnation will be well nigh impossible. These descendants’ priorities will be survival, adaptation, and the reconstruction of meaning in a world fundamentally altered. The names and specific actions of those who accelerated the decline might be lost to time, or reinterpreted through the lens of a new, harsher reality.

The Roman analogy is poignant. For centuries after the fall of the Western Roman Empire, people lived amidst its ruins, often reusing its stones for their own simpler structures. (By 1100, the population of the city of Rome had declined by 98% from its peak a millennium earlier.) The baths, aqueducts, and roads around them made them aware of a glorious past, but their daily lives were dictated by a new reality of localized power, diminished infrastructure, and intellectual regression. The “judgment” on those who precipitated Rome’s decline was not a unified, moralistic indictment across a millennium, but a complex, fragmented, and often mythologized understanding. Urban Rome’s collapse, insofar as it was considered at all, was seen as a divine verdict on the city’s sinfulness.

This sobering perspective underscores Jay’s argument that outsourcing our moral responsibilities to imagined descendants is not just a false hope, but also a cop-out. The burden of judgment — and more importantly, the burden of action — rests squarely on us, in the present. If we wait for “history” to condemn, we may find that “history” has ceased to be a moral arbiter and has instead become the silent witness to an irreversible decline, a testament to what was lost rather than a pronouncement on who was to blame. In this future, our ruins will speak not of justice, but of absence. The darkness of posterity, in the shadow of our present choices, will offer the most damning judgment of all.

1. At his trial, Herostratus was sentences not just to death but also to have his name erased from memory. However, the very fact that I am typing this sentence about him demonstrates a kind of historiographical Streisand Effect — in attempting to erase him from history, his judges ensured his posthumous immortality.