Schedule and themes

 1-2, 20.01 BONON

What is History? Epistemology of History
Ancient and Modern History Writing (Historiography)
Can History be a Theology?

Reading: Carr, What is history?

Questions:
1) Is there no objective truth on the history?
- There is no "objective" historical truth'. In place of the theory that history has no
meaning, we are offered here the theory of an infinity of meanings, none any more right
than any other - which comes to much the same thing

- When we call a historian objective, we mean I think two things. First of all, we mean
that he has a capacity to rise above the limited vision of his own situation in society and
in history - a capacity which, as I suggested in an earlier lecture, is partly dependent on
his capacity to recognise the extent of his involvement in that situation, to recognise,
that is to say, the impossibility of total objectivity. Secondly, we mean that he has the
capacity to project his vision into the future in such a way as to give him a more
profound and more lasting insight into the past than can be attained by those historians
whose outlook is entirely bounded by their own immediate situation.
- Objectivity in history - if we are still to use the conventional term - cannot be an
objectivity of fact, but only of relation, of the relation between fact and interpretation,
between past, present, and future.

2) Can empirical theory of knowledge be easily applied to history?

- The empirical theory of knowledge presupposes a complete separation between

subject and object. Pacts, like sense- impressions, impinge on the observer from
outside and are independent of his consciousness.
- The Oxford Shorter English Dictionaryclearly marks the separateness of the two
processes by defining a fact as 'a datum of experience as distinct from conclusions'.
This is what may be called the common-sense view of history. History consists of a
corpus of ascertained facts. The facts are available to the historian in documents,
inscriptions and so on, like fish on the fish monger's slab. The historian collects
them, takes them home, and cooks and serves them in whatever style appeals to
him
- This will not do. Facts in history will always be interpreted.
3) What is the criterion which distinguishes the facts of history from other fact about the
past?

- Facts in themselves are only raw materials of history. These facts are used in order to
construct history.

- The duty of the historian to respect his facts is not exhausted by the obligation to see
that his facts are accurate. He must seek to bring into the picture all known or knowable
facts relevant, in one sense or another, to the theme on which he is engaged and the
interpretation proposed
- But this, in turn, does not mean that he can eliminate interpretation, which is the life-
blood of history.
- the nagging distinction between the facts of history and other facts about the past
vanishes, because the few known facts are all facts of history.
- It is the job of the historian to see the dual task of discovering the few significant facts
and turning them into facts of history, and of discarding the many insignificant facts as
unhistorical.

- . The facts, whether found in documents or not, have still to be processed by the
historian before he can make any use of them: the we he makes of them is, if I may put
it that way, the processing process.
- The facts of history cannot be purely objective, since they become facts of history only
in virtue of the significance attached to them by the historian. Objectivity in history - if
we are still to use the conventional term - cannot be an objectivity of fact, but only of
relation, of the relation between fact and interpretation, between past, present, and
future.
- Historical facts already have an interpretation and judged to be a fact worthy of
interpretation, while facts of the past remains just facts ready to be interpreted.
4) Can facts speak by themselves?
- Facts need an interpreter to process the facts. Facts cannot speak by themselves. It is
always brought about by an interpreter

- They never come to us 'pure', since they do not and cannot exist in a pure form: they
are always refracted through the mind of the recorder.