In what experiential contexts does the past become a problem? What motivates inquiry into bygone events? This paper explores these questions through a phenomenological interpretation of Thucydides’ The Peloponnesian War, one of the first works of Western historiography. I argue Thucydides’ methodological reflections (I.20-23) respond to the problem of a twofold concealment of the past. First, the past is only accessible to us for a while before becoming lost to memory through time (χρόνῳ ἀμνηστούμενα). Second, the past frequently becomes concealed or takes on a semblance character through being unheeded, unminded or non- remembered (ἀμνηστούμενα) due to the influence of (1) enduring past loyalties, (2) stories about the past currently in circulation, or (3) wanting to tell a good story oneself about past events.
Thucydides’ practices of interviewing multiple witnesses and drawing on physical and documentary traces of the past seek to counteract temporal oblivion and the influence of circumstantial exigencies and so to access the truth or clarity of bygone events (τῶν τε γενομένων τὸ σαφὲς). His inquiry has political import as he shows the human inclination towards semblance is central to the unfolding of disastrous events of the war itself, a fact the protagonists remain largely blind to. I illustrate this by focusing on Thucydides’ vivid account of how unfounded stories about past events fuel anxiety, suspicion, and a spiralling cycle of false accusations, extra-judicial killings, and social breakdown in the charged atmosphere of Athens in 425 BCE (VI.53-61).
This paper concludes by distinguishing this approach to unconcealing the past as such from Martin Heidegger’s understanding of the moment of historical decision, which he illustrates in his 1924-5 Plato’s Sophist course using an example from Thucydides’ The Peloponnesian War (III.38).