The Facts and Values of History
The facts of history, the values and interpretations of history can all be a subject of repeated debate; it is contested and perceived differently by different types of groups of people and ideas. At the same time it is important to remember that history is a part of our culture, it is something we all share and no individual group owns it. It is our past heritage and although it is gone, we feel a part of it. People from different interest groups and classes, regions and localities, religions and cultures, have seen and will see history in contrasting ways. History is far from simple. Historians are mutually exclusive; the things they say are nonetheless true as longs as these things are within the confines of the ideas and values of their creators. What I mean is that there are many ways for historians to tell the same story, each of them equally valid. There is an ability of historians to be objective with regards to the facts, but there are also propositions that there are some aspects of history that are absolute and may not be questioned. It is not about questions of the facts but about how an individual interprets those facts. Facts do not have, "meaning", when you question the meaning of historical events, you ar
When Carr speaks of a historian he says, " As he works, both interpretations and the selection and ordering of facts undergo subtle and perhaps partly unconscious changes through the reciprocal action of one or the other. Truth is objective, there is a way things are, independently of what we think about them and that statements and that statements are true if they say how things are. "3 Carr seems to treat history as constantly changing and that modern historians are different from those of the past and therefore there interpretations will be opposing. So the possibility of something being objectively the case is ruled out. He also uses the Battle of Hastings and the date in which it was fought. e not denying they occurred, it's just interpretations are bound to change from class to class, gender to gender, and of course, over time. When a historian is presenting truth should always be considered relative to his society because groups are just as prone to error as individuals are, maybe even more. For a historian to be objective, he needs to reveal the truth free from his values and cultural biases. One example Carr uses is Cesar crossing the Rubicon and the fact that there is a table in the middle of the room are the facts of the same and comparable order and that both these facts enter our consciousness in the same or in a comparable manner, and that both have the same objective in relation to the person who knows them. Facts in this case are dependent on the way people think and there is no room left for the idea that things can be the case whether anyone thinks they are or not. People don't generally record their thoughts unless they have a purpose; design or they're getting something out of creating the text. So very few historians are completely neutral.
Common topics in this essay:
Battle Hastings,
,
Carr's Historian,
Carr Cesar,
historical event,
contested perceived types,
types people ideas,
contested perceived,
perceived types people,
perceived types,
historian's views,
free values,
people ideas,
meaning past,
history constantly,
historian truth,
types people,
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Acceptance Essays
