Historians and Their Duties
Historians and Their Duties
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Theory
JONATHAN GORMAN
ABSTRACT
have," but it is not that simple. Even philosophers might not want
know they should. Dare philosophers admit to some weakness o
They may admit it, but they are not giving up much. After all, a
still know, as philosophers, what is right, even if they are not very
accordingly. Philosophers may want essays like this to make a di
torians. Philosophers, supposedly with moral knowledge, perhap
historians what to do, try to change their minds, try to make them
comfortable practices are wrong. They can use the authorit
Aristotle for this, together with the latest morally safe modern
insisting on the extremes of political correctness. Philosophers w
peace of mind."4 Yet most modern philosophers will feel morally
with these thoughts. They think it is the duties of philosophers t
atic here, not the duties of historians. But perhaps they are the s
is philosophy teaching by examples, why should there be a
Historians, perhaps, are philosophers too. They ought already to
ought to do.
Whether shared or otherwise, whether acted on or otherwise, just how suffi-
cient or advanced is our moral knowledge? It is natural to think that philosophy
does not progress. One reason for this is that Western philosophers seem to con-
tinue to haggle over the answers to the old questions derived from Socrates, with-
out getting anywhere. Yet there is at least one error in this thought, namely, that
many philosophical questions are not perennial. It may seem that there are some
foundation issues (such as, for example, the Socratic issue whether we should
conceive reality in realist or idealist ways), but as the argument moves on-I will
not say "progresses," since that begs the question-it is apparent that we may not
have an issue here at all, let alone a perennial issue. Questions that we once
thought were metaphysical may turn out to be epistemological, or dissolve given
the proper understanding of language use. Our philosophy of language turns out
to be essentially connected to the philosophy of mind, and on (or back? Only
sometimes) we go.
A lot of this material is difficult, certainly for the novice student. By contrast,
those of us who have taken courses in moral philosophy may recall as under-
graduate students having turned with relief to that subject, where at least the
questions are clear, if not the answers. What is justice? How ought I to live my
life? What is the right thing to do? Are such questions perennial? Perhaps not;
the concept of a "human right," for example, using which we might well choose
to frame many moral puzzlements today, is-as we understand that concept-
comparatively recent. It is difficult to find such a notion in Greek moral thought.5
But however that may be, moral issues are practical issues, raising everyday
problems in our own present world. Clear questions, then; all we need are the
answers. And we have plenty! That sets a new problem of which to select, which
4. Derived from Carlin Romano, "Can Philosophers Help Handle Terror?," Inquirer review of
Philosophy in a Time of Terror: Dialogues with Jiirgen Habermas and Jacques Derrida (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press), posted February 8 2004 on http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer.
5. See Jonathan Gorman, Rights and Reason (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2003),
chapter 2.
9. Ibid., 4.
10 Ibid., 21.
11. Ibid., 46.
12. Vincent Barry, Moral Issues in Business, 2nd ed. (Belmont, California: Wadsworth, 1983), 57.
13. Ibid., 58.
14. Ibid., 61.
17. Letter from James Rich, Bolton School Boys' Division, The Tim
section, May 18, 2004.
18. This benchmark statement may be accessed at http://www.qaa.ac.uk/
ours.htm (last accessed September 17, 2004) and is ? The Quality Ass
Education 2000. Quotations that follow are from this document. It was p
ject benchmarking group, whose members were: Dr. M. Arnot; Pr
Professor C. Clark (Warwick); Professor M. Daunton (Churchill Colleg
It is true that, on the whole, people ought not to lie. But there are problem
cases. Philosopher Stuart Hampshire, towards the end of the Second World War,
had to "interrogate a French traitor (imprisoned by the Free French), who refused
to cooperate unless he was allowed to live. Should Hampshire, knowing the man
was condemned to die, promise him a reprieve, which he was in no position to
give, or truthfully refuse it, thereby jeopardising the lives of Resistance fight-
ers?"22 When a terrorist asked a child at his Belfast front door for his father,
should the child have told him? And cannot I tell even a white lie to keep some-
thing confidential?
What is a lie? Is it the making of a false statement? Hardly that, for a child who
gets his sums wrong would then be lying every time. The wrongness may have
to do with deception rather than falsehood, but cannot the crossword-puzzle set-
ter or the mystery thriller writer rightly seek to deceive the reader? It is far more
helpful to understand lying in terms of offending against those who have a right
to the truth. My medical condition is confidential; you do not have a right to the
truth about it. Nor does the terrorist have the right to hear the truth about my
father's whereabouts. Stuart Hampshire's decision "lay heavy on his con-
science"23 (and we do not know what his decision was), but his calculation might
have been eased had he reflected that the traitor plausibly had no right to have
the truth from him. I do not owe the truth to everyone. Lying may only be prima
facie a wrong, and its wrongness defeasible in contexts like these.
Let us now look with greater care at the question central to this essay: "do his-
torians as historians have an ethical responsibility, and if so, what, and if so, to
whom?" The present answer is that they have a responsibility to tell the truth.
"Truth" here should not be understood in a narrow sense as "statement truth," for
we know that we can mislead by inappropriate selection of such truths.24 Truth
should be understood as "the" truth about something.25 An objection to this
answer is that the responsibility to tell the truth is shared by everyone, and is
therefore not incumbent on historians as historians. But this objection is
unsound. True, I cannot lie about my father's whereabouts if asked in a court of
law, but I may lie to a terrorist. The wrongness varies with the audience, just as
the right to truth varies with the audience. Historians as historians have a respon-
21. Oscar Handlin, Truth in History (Cambridge, Mass: Belknap Press, 1979), 405.
22. Jane O'Grady, Obituary of Sir Stuart Hampshire, The Guardian (June 16, 2004).
23. Ibid.
24. See J. L. Gorman, "Objectivity and Truth in History," in History and Theory: Contemporary
Readings, ed. Brian Fay, Philip Pomper, and Richard T. Vann (Oxford: Blackwell, 1998), 320-341.
25. In a court case the demand is typically for "the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth."
Each one of us is an historical being, held in a pattern created by Time, and to be uncon-
scious of our historical selves is fraught with dangers .... The majority of men and women
... realize that they are a part of an historical process that has changed over the centuries.
?. They need an historical past, objective and true. The historian cannot be free from
either moral or political judgements ... , but he can do his best to form both in the light
of history . . . Any process which increases man's awareness of himself, that strengthens
his chance of controlling himself and his environment, is well worth pursuing.27
26. Pears, An Instance of the Fingerpost, 561, my stress on "all who read."
27. J. H. Plumb, The Death of the Past (Harmondsworth, Eng.: Penguin, 1973), 16, 15.
National history is central to national identity. A sustained and systematic study of the
construction, erosion and reconstruction of national histories across a wide variety of
European states is a highly topical and extremely relevant exercise for two reasons: first-
ly, because of the long and successful history of the national paradigm in history-writing;
and, secondly, because of its re-emergence as a powerful political tool in the 1990s in the
context of the accelerating processes of Europeanization and globalization. National his-
tories form an important part of the collective memory of the peoples of Europe. National
bonds have been, and continue to be, among the strongest bonds of loyalty. A genuinely
trans-national and comparative investigation into the structures and workings of national
histories will play an important part both in understanding the diversity of national histo-
ries in Europe and preparing the way for further dialogue and understanding among
European nation-states.29
28. Tristram Hunt, "Professor Plumb and the Victory of Reason," referring to Niall Ferguson's
introduction to a reissue of Plumb's The Death of the Past, The Times (London), Review ideas sec-
tion, January 17 2004.
29. Accessed June 1, 2004 from:
http://www.esf.org/esfarticle.php?section=2&domain=4&activity= 1 &language=O&article=363
30. Quoted by the First Draft Strategy (June 2003) from the Preamble of the Constitution of
UNESCO of 1945.
It is therefore for the theory behind the King's actions and behi
must ultimately be judged, rather than for the intrinsic merits of t
It is one of the paradoxes of history that the just men may somet
the unjust cause while the self-interested may occasionally stumb
course.35
Black is black to Miss Mangnall and white is white, the colour being irrevocably deter-
mined on the highest moral principles. Her prejudices, which are many and unconcealed,
arise from high-mindedness, if a little also from ignorance. Believing what she did of the
Hierarchy, the Inquisition and the Mendicant Orders-which 'prevented the dawning light
of the thirteenth century from penetrating the regions of darkness'-how could she think
well of the Church of Rome? She had none of that unnerving impartiality which in more
recent handbooks clouds the youthful mind with doubt.36
"Unnerving impartiality" here does not imply that the historian should be partial
or biased, but that the historian should judge when that is called for. This is to
show respect, and has nothing to do with distorting historical facts.
Politicians typically want to wait for history to judge them, but only historians
can do this. Why are historians so well placed to make moral judgments? There
seem to be two important bases: emotional distance,37 and hindsight knowledge
of consequences later to the situation being judged. Historians should not turn
away from this privileged position. Against this approach, Richard J. Evans says,
The very term "Holocaust," with its heavy baggage of religious and mystical significance,
is an invitation to engage in moral judgment rather than in explanation. This re-moraliza-
41. Neal Ascherson commenting on Richard J. Evans, The Coming of the Third Reich (New York
and London: Penguin/Allen Lane 2003) in "Still Spellbound by the Nazis," The Observer Review
(November 30, 2003), 15.