It is not important to know who the first person to purify water or write a play was, even if the safety of humans and the expression of ideas and experiences in entertainment are significant. People can discover, rediscover, reflect on, and pursue such things with or without approaching them in the context of historical documents. Not only can historical events like scientific discoveries or wars not be proven or disproven at all (only logical possibilities and historical evidences can be known), but even when they inspire people to pursue truth, autonomy, and so on, it is not as if anyone needs the historical stories, true or false, to discover basic philosophical truths or to be inspired to pursue them! Almost every reason non-rationalists think history is important amounts to personal interest, which of course is irrelevant to whether history is important, and the usefulness of or familiarity with supposed historical facts in a society full of people who assume history is knowable and important is at best exaggerated by the typical person.
There are some historical events that, if they happened, are genuinely important, but this is not just because they are past events. If Jesus resurrected because of divine power, then the event of his resurrection and the related events are objectively important because it validates the ethics he taught; in contrast, if a town was founded in 1607 instead of 1616 or 1634 and there is no ideological reason why this was the case, there is no inherent philosophical significance. History is not important just because events have happened. Only certain kinds of events have relevance to matters of necessary truths, absolute certainty, moral obligation, and core metaphysics or general philosophy (an example that is relevant to general philosophy and metaphysics would be the Big Bang, and an example that is relevant to moral obligation would be the resurrection of Jesus if it occurred).
If racism, murder, rape, and abduction are evil, for example, then any event that involved someone taking a non-hypocritical, non-emotionalistic stance against them is important. Again, this would not be because history "matters" in itself, but because certain events are especially connected with things like moral progress (if moral obligations exist). Only a fool thinks they need examples of historical figures who might not even have existed and are epistemologically speaking the subjects of hearsay to avoid obvious ideological and societal inconsistencies. No event like the abolition of race-based slavery is truly significant apart from some sort of moral or metaphysical importance that is by nature not shared by all occurrences between the start of the cosmos and the present day.
Other than examples like those given above, there is nothing important or special about studying history except to see how other people reportedly lived in light of various worldviews. One cannot even demonstrate that these events other than the bringing of the universe into existence actually happened, and yet logical axioms, one's own conscious existence, and other related things are both true and knowable all the same. Absolutely nothing about the past is what enables one to know these things or what gives them their epistemological and metaphysical significance as philosophical issues. Regardless of what happened, even if the universe only began to exist a moment ago, I exist as a being that is aware of the necessary truths of reason and that is aware of my own existence and perceptions.
This is where a rational person starts--not with the potential illusions of historical evidences and other forms of sheer hearsay, for that is all that historical documentation reduces down to: a mere evidence that could be misleading or an illusion of the senses or memories. For the most part, it is only philosophically important to understand the epistemology of history, not many supposed events themselves, because it, like all other epistemological and metaphysical issues, reduces down to the laws of logic. Pure subjective fascination and cultural usefulness are the only valid reasons to care about history outside of the the rationalistic approach to history as an epistemological subject and an occasionally existential or theological one. In a world full of irrationalists who crave subjective persuasion and feelings of validation, pure subjective interest is just likely to be mistaken for something grand about the topic itself and not a feature of a person's feelings or attitudes.
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