I'm currently reading Breaking Bread with the Dead by Alan Jacobs which deals with a lot of these issues and our presentism arising from dismissing the past as uneducated, unrefined, almost an insult to our current mode of thought.
He advocates a balanced approach whereby we don't forgive the ignorance of the past but try to look at the good in a slightly different context. It's the whole "can we like someone's work while despising the person" argument.
Dismissing something as a product of its time does us a disservice because we do not properly explore why and learn the lessons that teaches.
The story of anything involves the story of everything else
I'm currently reading Breaking Bread with the Dead by Alan Jacobs which deals with a lot of these issues and our presentism arising from dismissing the past as uneducated, unrefined, almost an insult to our current mode of thought.
He advocates a balanced approach whereby we don't forgive the ignorance of the past but try to look at the good in a slightly different context. It's the whole "can we like someone's work while despising the person" argument.
Dismissing something as a product of its time does us a disservice because we do not properly explore why and learn the lessons that teaches.