POLITICS AND POETICS

ON THE FANTASY OF BEING ON THE RIGHT SIDE OF HISTORY

FRIEDRICH SCHATTENAUER

February 5, 2026

This essay dismantles the belief that history serves as a moral court, showing instead how appeals to future judgment function as a secular theology that relieves the present of responsibility.

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The phrase “being on the right side of history” has become one of the most reassuring moral expressions of our time. It sounds patient, almost modest. It suggests a willingness to let events unfold, to accept that final judgment belongs not to the present but to time itself. Yet this modesty is deceptive. In practice, the phrase is rarely used as an admission of uncertainty. It functions instead as a declaration of confidence, a way of claiming moral authority without having to argue for it in the present tense.

What gives the phrase its peculiar power is the way it turns morality into inevitability. To be on the right side of history is not simply to believe one is correct, but to believe that correctness is itself a moral achievement and that it is guaranteed by the future. The phrase implies that history moves in a discernible direction and that this direction is inherently ethical. It promises eventual vindication. Disagreement becomes temporary, resistance becomes backwardness, and doubt becomes a failure to keep up. History, invoked in this way, ceases to be a record of what has happened and becomes a moral forecast.

This transformation of history into a moral force is not accidental. It fills a vacuum left by the gradual disappearance of older forms of certainty. For centuries, many societies understood history as guided by divine will. God was imagined as directing events toward an ultimate moral end, even when the path was painful or unclear. Suffering could be justified as part of a larger plan. Injustice could be endured with the belief that it would be corrected beyond human time. History, in this view, was not merely a sequence of events but a story with purpose, authored by a higher intelligence.

Ideas, corrected.

As belief in divine providence weakened, the need for a guiding moral force did not disappear. It migrated. History itself began to take on the role once occupied by God. Progress replaced salvation. The future replaced heaven. Moral righteousness was no longer guaranteed by divine judgment but by eventual consensus. To be on the right side of history became a way of saying that one’s actions aligned with a larger moral order, even if that order was no longer explicitly theological.

This shift allowed moral certainty to survive in secular form. One no longer needed to say that God would judge. History would do the judging. And like God, history was imagined as ultimately just, even if temporarily confusing. The phrase reassures its users that their actions participate in a moral arc larger than themselves. It promises that even if they face criticism now, they will be redeemed later. The future, like a secular afterlife, will make sense of everything.

The problem is that history has never behaved like this imagined moral authority. It does not consistently reward virtue or punish cruelty. It does not distribute recognition according to ethical merit. It records outcomes, not intentions. It preserves what survives, not what deserves to survive. To treat history as a moral guide is to confuse narrative with judgment.

The belief that history progresses morally is seductive because it flatters the present. Each generation is invited to see itself as more enlightened than the last. Past injustices are acknowledged, condemned, and safely placed behind us. The present, by contrast, is imagined as a moment of heightened awareness, clarity, and sensitivity. This self-image is comforting. It allows moral superiority without requiring much risk. One can condemn the past with confidence because the past cannot answer back.

History, cosplayed.

Yet history repeatedly undermines this confidence. Practices once considered self-evidently just have later been exposed as cruel. Ideas once celebrated as humane have been revealed as exclusionary. The language used to justify them often sounds eerily familiar. Again and again, people have believed they were acting in accordance with history’s direction, only to discover that history had moved on without them.

Colonial expansion offers one of the clearest examples. European empires justified their actions not only in terms of power and wealth but in explicitly moral language. Empire was presented as progress. Colonization was framed as education, modernization, even benevolence. Administrators and intellectuals alike spoke confidently about history’s march forward. They believed they were participating in a civilizing process that future generations would recognize as necessary and good. For a long time, they were right in one sense: History did recognize their actions, but not in the way they imagined. The moral narrative eventually shifted. What had once been framed as historical necessity came to be regarded as violence and domination. The confidence that had once seemed enlightened came to appear appallingly self-serving.

Similar patterns appeared in the twentieth century, particularly in movements that claimed to embody historical inevitability. Political systems promised that history itself guaranteed their success. Loyalty was demanded not merely as a matter of policy but as alignment with the future. Those who resisted were dismissed as obstacles to progress. Moral doubt was framed as weakness. When these systems collapsed, the language of inevitability collapsed with them, leaving behind records of repression that had once been justified as transitional sacrifices.

Cultural history offers its own examples. Artists, writers, and thinkers are frequently rejected in their own time as offensive, trivial, or irrelevant, only to be celebrated later. Others enjoy immense prestige during their lifetimes only to be quietly forgotten—or vigorously disavowed. In neither case does history deliver a final or stable judgment. It revises. It reorders. It reflects changing values rather than revealing timeless truths. To imagine that one can anticipate these revisions with certainty is to misunderstand how cultural memory works.

The path to hell is paved with good intentions.

The phrase “right side of history” also depends on the idea that history speaks with one voice. In reality, history is a layered accumulation of narratives, many of which contradict one another. What is remembered depends on who survives, who documents, who controls institutions, and who has the power to repeat their version often enough that it becomes familiar. Entire experiences disappear not because they were insignificant but because they were inconvenient or unreadable to later frameworks. History is less a tribunal than an archive shaped by selection and omission.

When people invoke history as a moral judge, they often ignore this process of construction. They imagine history as an impartial observer rather than a contested field. This allows them to treat future judgment as objective, even though it will be shaped by forces they cannot control and values they cannot predict. The authority they borrow from history-to-come is therefore fragile. It depends on an imagined future that may never arrive.

There is also a temporal distortion at work. The phrase borrows the authority of hindsight while operating in the present. It allows the speaker to imagine themselves already vindicated. This produces a sense of moral safety. If one is already on the correct side, then uncertainty becomes unnecessary. Questions can be dismissed. Complications can be treated as distractions. The future is asked to perform ethical labor on behalf of the present.

This is where the phrase becomes dangerous. Moral responsibility in the present is difficult precisely because outcomes are unknown. Decisions must be made under conditions of partial information, conflicting values, and real consequences. To act ethically without guarantees is uncomfortable. The idea of being on the right side of history offers relief from this discomfort. It promises that even if the present is messy, the future will tidy things up.

In this sense, the phrase functions as a secular theology. History replaces God as the ultimate arbiter. Future consensus replaces divine judgment. Moral righteousness is no longer grounded in faith but in anticipation. One does not need to believe in God’s plan, only in history’s direction. The comfort is similar. One can endure criticism now because redemption awaits.

Yet, unlike God, history does not promise mercy. It does not forgive intentions. It does not reward sincerity. It does not care whether actions were taken in good faith. It records effects. It preserves structures. It reflects power. To rely on history for moral reassurance is therefore a profound category mistake.

Correction in public.

The present moment reveals this mistake with particular clarity. In contemporary debates, especially those conducted in cultural and political spaces that value moral alertness and ethical sensitivity, appeals to the right side of history have become increasingly common. Positions are framed not as arguments but as alignments. To disagree is not merely to hold a different view but to reveal oneself as out of step with time itself. Language hardens quickly. Categories multiply. Moral seriousness becomes inseparable from social signaling.

This produces a climate in which being correct matters more than being careful. Complexity is treated with suspicion. Hesitation is framed as complicity. The confidence that history will vindicate certain positions allows their defenders to bypass uncomfortable questions. If the future already agrees, why linger in doubt?

What is striking is how closely this resembles earlier forms of moral certainty that history has since revised: A group understands itself as historically advanced. It believes it has achieved a level of awareness unavailable to earlier generations. It frames its values as inevitable rather than contingent. It treats dissent as a failure of understanding rather than a legitimate disagreement. The language changes, but the logic remains.

There is also a performative dimension to this stance. Moral positions become part of identity. To be seen on the correct side matters as much as the substance of the position itself. Declarations of alignment function as signals of belonging. History, invoked as a moral authority, provides cover for this performance. It allows individuals to present themselves as ethically secure without engaging deeply with the costs or limits of their views.

This does not mean that contemporary moral movements are wrong or insincere. Many address real injustices and demand necessary change. The problem lies not in moral conviction itself but in the confidence that history guarantees it. When moral certainty is grounded in anticipated future judgment rather than present responsibility, it becomes brittle. It resists self-correction. It mistakes momentum for truth.

Mercy, administered.

The hardest ethical position remains the present-tense one. Acting without certainty. Accepting that one may be wrong. Acknowledging that future generations may judge differently. This position offers no comfort. It does not promise redemption. It does not allow one to outsource responsibility to history. It requires engagement rather than alignment.

To live without the assurance of being on the right side of history is to accept that morality does not come with guarantees. It may lead to failure. It may lead to misunderstanding. It may lead to condemnation by standards not yet formed. But it is the only position that treats ethical action as something other than a rehearsal for applause.

The appeal of historical righteousness remains strong because it answers a deep human need. In the absence of God, history offers meaning. It offers direction. It offers the promise that our actions fit into a larger story that makes sense. But this promise is fragile. History does not lead. It follows. It does not choose the most moral path. It records the path that was taken.

If we will never know who history ultimately approves of, if no one involved will be present to receive its verdict, then the question changes. Why bother aligning oneself with history at all? Why act for an imagined future that will not include us? Why replace responsibility with anticipation when anticipation offers no lived reward?

The belief in the right side of history rests on a hidden assumption that history exists independently of those who live through it and those who remember it. We speak as though history were an external entity, waiting patiently to pass judgment, as though it continued in some stable form beyond individual lives. But this assumption is rarely examined.

History is not a force of nature. It does not exist like gravity or time. It exists only insofar as it is recorded, remembered, transmitted, and interpreted by living beings. Once no one is there to read, recall, argue, or care, the concept of history collapses into mere sequence. Events still occur, traces may remain, but meaning disappears. This raises an uncomfortable question. If history requires consciousness to exist, then what happens to history once we are gone?

Guilt, pending.

We often speak as though history will continue judging us long after our deaths. But who exactly will be doing the judging? Future generations, perhaps. But those generations are finite as well. They too will vanish. Beyond them there is no tribunal, no archive that evaluates, no audience that understands context or intention. There are only remnants. At that point, what we call history dissolves into geology.

This is the point at which the analogy to God becomes clearest. Divine judgment promised an eternal witness. Someone would always be watching. History promises something similar but only temporarily. It assumes an indefinite continuation of human presence, memory, and concern. Yet there is no reason to believe this continuation is guaranteed. Civilizations end. Archives decay. Languages disappear. Meaning erodes faster than matter.

If no one remains to interpret the record, then history does not merely stop judging. It stops existing in any meaningful sense.

From this perspective, the anxiety about being on the right side of history begins to look strangely misdirected. It is an ethical framework built around an audience that may never arrive or may arrive briefly and then vanish. It imagines a future consciousness that will care deeply, judge carefully, and remember accurately, but there is no evidence for this belief. It is an act of faith.

One might object that history matters while people still exist, that judgment does not need to be eternal to be meaningful. But even this limited claim is unstable. Historical judgment is unevenly distributed. Some lives are remembered, others erased. Some actions are documented, others misrepresented, and many are never recorded at all. Entire populations leave little trace beyond debris. History is not a shared reckoning but a selective one.

Right, but not inevitable.

And even when judgment does occur, it is not experienced by those judged. The dead do not learn that they were right. The disgraced do not feel shame. The vindicated do not feel relief. History’s verdict, if it arrives, arrives too late to matter to anyone involved. It does not function as reward or punishment. It functions as narrative.

This leads to a more unsettling conclusion. The appeal to the right side of history is not about history at all. It is about the present. It is about the desire to feel morally secure now. The imagined future serves as a mirror in which the present reassures itself. History, in this sense, is a projection screen. Once this is acknowledged, the phrase loses much of its authority. If history depends on living consciousness, and if that consciousness is finite, partial, and biased, then history cannot function as an ultimate moral court. It cannot replace God in any serious way. It lacks permanence, omniscience, and concern.

What remains, then, is a stark ethical landscape. There is no guaranteed witness. No final accounting that matters to those involved. No cosmic archive that preserves intention alongside outcome. There is only action, consequence, and disappearance. This does not mean that nothing matters. It means that meaning cannot be deferred.

If history does not exist once we are gone, or exists only as residue without interpretation, then acting for history’s approval is incoherent. One cannot orient oneself toward a judgment that will not be experienced, delivered by an entity that may not persist. Ethics, under these conditions, becomes something quieter and more demanding. It is no longer about being right in retrospect. It is about responsibility without spectators. Action without legacy. Choice without the promise of vindication.

In contemporary moral culture, however, the language of historical righteousness continues to thrive. It offers comfort in a moment of uncertainty. It allows people to feel aligned with something larger than themselves, even as traditional sources of meaning have weakened. History is asked to provide what religion once did: direction, reassurance, and the promise that things make sense in the end. But history does not make promises. It leaves traces.

Certainty, rehearsed.

The question, then, is not which side of history one is on, but why one needs history to be on one’s side at all.

In our moment, the language of being on the right side of history has become a substitute for moral reflection. It allows those who see themselves as ethically advanced to speak with the confidence once reserved for divine mandate. The certainty feels modern, enlightened, and justified, yet it rests on an old impulse. The desire to believe that something larger than ourselves guarantees our righteousness. History, like God before it, is asked to do the hardest moral work for us.

Friedrich Schattenauer (born 1988 in Kiel) is a reclusive German philosopher who studied at the University of Göttingen, initially enrolling in medicine in 2009, then switching to philosophy. He is best known for his essays on moral illusion, historical optimism, and the human need for metaphysical reassurance after the collapse of faith.

Cover image: The end of the argument.