This is exactly how I taught art and philosophical/religious history for decades. I also took up the various modes of historiography all at once. Antiquarian ( detailed research), monumental (exemplary contributions done even seemingly “timeless”), critical (like a dialogue between past and present that entertains value-moral gains and losses given a sense of the Good)symptomatic (cultural shadows and pathologies), and “messianic” (redemptive from the perspective ofthe future). Mainly the first two as celebration and resource for life in an age of overly stressed senses of victimhood without being blind to injustices through the ages.
This is exactly how I taught art and philosophical/religious history for decades. I also took up the various modes of historiography all at once. Antiquarian ( detailed research), monumental (exemplary contributions done even seemingly “timeless”), critical (like a dialogue between past and present that entertains value-moral gains and losses given a sense of the Good)symptomatic (cultural shadows and pathologies), and “messianic” (redemptive from the perspective ofthe future). Mainly the first two as celebration and resource for life in an age of overly stressed senses of victimhood without being blind to injustices through the ages.