Carr and the Thesis Essay

Edward Carr begins What is History? By saying what he call ins write up is nonby being negative. In Carrs words, what history is non, or should non be, is a fashion of constructing historical accounts that atomic number 18 obsessed with both the facts and the documents which are said to contain them. Carr believes that by doing this the profoundly important shaping big businessman of the historiographer will surely be downplayed. Carr goes on to argue in his first chapter- that this downgrading of historiography arose because mainstream historians combined three things first, a simple but rattling strong assertion that the proper function of the historian was to show the ultimo as it sincerely was irregular, a positivist stress on inducive method, where you first make up the facts and then draw finishs from them and third and this especially in Great Britain a dominant empiricist rationale. Together, these constituted for Carr what still stood for the common sce nt out take of historyThe empirical theory of knowledge presupposes a complete dissolution between subject and object. Facts, like sense- seals, impinge on the observer from outside(a) and are independent of his consciousness. The process of reception is passive having received the data, he then acts on themThis consists of a corpus of as trusteded factsFirst get your facts straight, then plunge at your peril into the shifting sands of recital that is the ultimate wisdom of the empirical, commonsensible school of history. 2 Clearly, however, commonsense doesnt work for Mr.Carr.For he sees this as precisely the judgement one has to reject. alas things begin to get a little complicated when Carr tries to show the light, since maculation it seems he has three philosophical ways of liberation or so his studies one being epistemological and two ideologic his prioritizing of the epistemological over the ideological makes history a science too complex for comprehension to anyo ne former(a) than himself. Carrs epistemological melodic line states that not all the facts of the past are actually historical facts. Further more(prenominal), in that location are vital distinctions to be force between the events of the past, the facts of the past and the historical facts. That historical facts wholly execute this way is by being branded so by recognized historians. Carr develops this melodic phrase as follows What is a historical fact? According to the commonsense view, there are certain basic facts which are the same for all historians and which form, so to peach, the backbone of history the fact, for example, that the battle of Hastings was fought in 1066. that this view calls for two observations. In the first place, it is not with facts like these that the historian is in the first place concerned. It is no doubt important to know that the great battle was fought in 1066 and not 1065 or 1067The historian must not get these things wrong. But when poin ts of this kind are raised, I am reminded of Housmans remark that verity is a duty, not a virtue. To praise a historian for his accuracy is like praising an architect for using well-seasoned timber. It is a necessity condition of his work, but not his essential function.It is precisely for matters of this kind that the historian is entitled to rely on what stimulate been called the auxiliary sciences of history archaeology, epigraphy, numismatics, chronology, and so-forth. 3 Carr thinks that the insertion of such facts into a historical account, and the signifi johnce which they will have sexual intercourse to some other selected facts, depends not on any quality innate to the facts in and for themselves, but on the reading of events the historian chooses to give It utilise to be said that facts articulate for themselves. This is, of course, untrue.The facts speak and when the historian calls on them it is he who decides to which facts to give the floor, and in what order or contextThe only reason why we are interested to know that the battle was fought at Hastings in 1066 is that historians regard it as a major historical event. It is the historian who has decided for his own reasons that Caesars crossing of that petty stream, the Rubicon, is a fact of history, whereas the crossings of the Rubicon by millions of other peopleinterests nobody at allThe historian is therefore necessarily selective.The belief in a rugged core of historical facts existing objectively and independently of the historian is a preposterous fallacy, but one which it is very hard to eradicate. 4 side by side(p) on from this, Carr ends his argument with an illustration of the process by which a rebuff event from the past is transformed into a historical fact. At Stalybridge Wakes, in 1850, Carr tells us about a gingerbread seller being shell to death by an angry mob this is a well attested and authentic fact from the past. But for it to become a historical fact, Carr argues that it undeniable to be interpreted up by historians and inserted by them into their interpretations, thence go part of our historical memory. In other words concludes Carr Its status as a historical fact will turn on a question of interpretation. This element of interpretation get downs into every fact of history. 5 This is the plaza of Carrs first argument and the first position that is easily taken away after a quick read his work.thereby ab initio surmising that Carr thinks that all history is just interpretation and there are really no such things as facts. This could be an easily mislead finding if one ceases to read any further. If the interpretation of Carr stops at this point, then not only are we left with a strong impression that his square argument about the nature of history, and the status of historical knowledge, is effectively epistemological and skeptical, but we are also not in a good position to see why.Its not until a a couple of(prenominal) pages past the Stalybridge example that Carr rejects that there was too skeptical a relativism of Collingwood, and begins a few pages after that to reinstate the facts in a rather unproblematical way, which last leads him towards his own version of objectivity. Carrs other two arguments are therefore crucial to follow, and not because they are explicitly ideological. The first of the two arguments is a perfectly reasonable one, in which Carr is opposed to the obsession of facts, because of the resulting common sense view of history that turns into an ideological expression of liberalism.Carrs argument runs as follows. The classical, liberal inclination of progress was that individuals would, in exercising their freedom in ways which took account of the competing claims of others somehow and without too much intervention, move towards a harmony of interests resulting in a greater, freer harmony for all. Carr thinks that this idea was then broad into the argument for a sort of general exper t laissez-faire, and then more particularly into history.For Carr, the fundamental idea supporting liberal historiography was that historians, all going about their work in different ways but careful of the ways of others, would be able to collect the facts and allow the free-play of such facts, thereby securing that they were in harmony with the events of the past which were now truthfully represented. As Carr puts this The ordinal century was, for the intellectuals of Western Europe, a comfortable period exuding confidence and optimism.The facts were on the whole satisfactory and the inclination to ask and answer awkward questions about them correspondingly weakThe liberalview of history had a turn up affinity with the economic doctrine of laissez-faire also the product of a serene and self-confident brainpower on the world. Let everyone get on with his particular job, and the hidden hand would take care of the universal harmony. The facts of history were themselves a demonst ration of the supreme fact of a beneficent and evidently infinite progress towards higher things. 6 Carrs second argument is therefore both straightforward and ideological.His point is that the idea of the freedom of the facts to speak for themselves arose from the happy coincidence that they just happened to speak liberal. But of course Carr did not. Thereby knowing that in the history he wrote the facts had to be made to speak in a way other than liberal (i. e. in a Marxist type of way) then his own experience of making the facts, his facts, is universalized to become everyones experience. Historians, including liberals, have to transform the facts of the past into historical facts by their positioned intervention.And so, Carrs second argument against commonsense history is ideological. For that matter, so is the third. But if the second of Carrs arguments is easy to see, his third and final one is not. This argument ask a little ironing out. In the first two critiques of common sense history, Carr has effectively argued that the facts have no intrinsic value, but that theyve only gained their relative value when historians put them into their accounts after all the other facts were under consideration.The conclusion Carr drew is that the facts only speak when the historian calls upon them to do so. However, it was part of Carrs position that liberals had not recognized the shaping power of the historian because of the passion of the fact and that, because of the dominance of liberal ideology, their view had become commonsense, not only for themselves, but for practically all historiography. It appeared to Carr that historians seemed to subscribe to the position that they ought to act as the channel through which the facts of the past for their own sake were allowed self-expression.But Carr, not wanting to go the route of his fellow historians, nor wanting to succumb to the intellectual complaints about the demise of the experience of originality, says In the following pages I shall filter to distance myself from prevailing trends among Western intellectualsto show how and why I think they have gone astray and to stake out a claim, if not for an optimistic, at any rate for a saner and more balanced outlook on the future. 7 It is therefore this very pointed position which stands behind and gives most, if not all, of the reason for Carrs writing What is History?Carr himself seems to be quite trig that the real motive behind his text was the ideological necessity to re-think and re-articulate the idea of continued historical progress among the conditions and the doubters of his own skeptical days. Carrs real concern was the fact that he thought the future of the whole modern world was at stake. Carrs own optimism cannot be support by the facts, so that his own position is just his opinion, as evenly without foundation as those held by optimistic liberals. Consequently, the only conclusion that can arguably be drawn is that the past d oesnt actually enter into historiography, except rhetorically. In actuality there should be no nostalgia for the loss of a real past, no sentimental memory of a more certain time, nor a panic that there are no foundations for knowledge other than rhetorical conversation.