“FACTS”
[A Transcript of a 1993
on-line discussion among historians involving what history is and what
relationship it has to presumed “facts”.]
----------------------------Original
message----------------------------
We saw a press conference, TV and newspaper
analysis indicating that Clinton had withdrawn Guinier's name[1]. Since millions of people saw these, and all
of this publicly, available evidence points in the same direction, the
overwhelmingly probable hypothesis is that Clinton withdrew Guinier's
nomination. Any argument that this is
really a conspiracy to cover up her death, or that she is now secretly running
the White House using Clinton as a puppet…. would face insurmountable
obstacles. There are lots of witnesses around to be interviewed, lots of
written documentation and film to invalidate such hypotheses immediately. Once we move from the very recent and
public history of current affairs to a previous generation, several things
begin to change. The quantity of evidence
decreases dramatically; the quality of our witnesses generally becomes less
certain (because we cannot cross-examine them in person); and therefore
hypotheses are not susceptible of the same kind of overwhelming verification. The corollary: a number of competing hypotheses will emerge,
and often (especially in ancient history) we are unable to decide which one most
adequately explains the evidence, or in other words, which one
"happened". For example, it used to be a "fact", in my
area, that the Dead Sea Scrolls were written by Essenes[2]. Now, it is no longer a fact (i.e., the
accepted hypothesis by anyone who counts) because of competing hypotheses.
I
said all of this in order to challenge the distinction between fact and
interpretation. In my view all of
history is reconstruction. The past is not a "given" (_datum_) but
the intellectual creation of those who know the evidence to be explained. There are no historical facts in the
strictest sense of word, but only overwhelmingly probable hypotheses based on a
wealth of (usually more contemporary) evidence, which we loosely call
facts. In this view, all history is
interpretation, and is therefore conditioned by ordinary moral and other human
factors.
--Steve Mason, Humanities, York U.
----------------------------Response
1--------------------------
Perhaps we've
overlooked, in the current volley, the difference between saying that an
interpretation (historical or otherwise) is based on FACTS, on the one hand,
& saying that it is based on THE FACTS, on the other. There's not much disputing
what the former are... At least, not compared to the latter. There's the rub! Which facts do I deem relevant? Which facts matter to me? Any & every work of interpretation
contains explicit or (more usually) implicit acts of selection... Another
problem: Of which facts am I even aware?
i.e. there is another kind of selection at work quite apart from the one
having to do with personal judgments or prejudices. I believe that in this process of selection, which
is not a flaw or a failing but rather an inescapable aspect of any sort of
inquiry, there is always a moral dimension, or to be more precise an ethical one. Even if it rarely comes out as "Bad King
John, good Queen Bess" any longer...
My selection of what is relevant, of what is included within the field
of the photograph & within the latter what is in focus, cannot help but be
influenced by ethics--my sense of what ought to be.
--Pablo J. Davis
Department of History
Franklin & Marshall College (PA)
----------------------------Response
2---------------------------------
If
I cannot make value judgements about a man who I cannot “totally assimilate
with", and I cannot possibly "totally assimilate with" any other
human being, does this mean I cannot make any value judgements? Carry this to
its extreme but logical conclusion. . . . if someone murders my infant daughter
. . . since I can't assimilate with this
person I . . . should, therefore, not judge him.
Why
is it politically correct to refrain from making moral judgements, or rather,
why do we feel it encumbent upon us to release ourselves from this particular
responsibility. Is the fact that people have made erroneous or damaging
judgements in the past sufficient cause to deny the validity or necessity of
this activity?
-- Hope A. Greenburg, University of Vermont
----------------------------Response
3---------------------------
This jump, from writing history to killing
babies, is a little too quick for my head. Hope, why do you assume that those
who avoid making value judgements, do so "happily"? Our first
function as historians, first in time, is to seek to understand. If we do not
first understand, then we only can pre-judge.
What is the purpose of making moral
judgements? In the case offered, the purpose of judging the baby-killer is to
prevent the hypothetical him from killing again, to change behavior in the real
world. However, once an historical actor is dead, all the judgements in the
world cannot change his/her behavior. So, I waste my time and the reader's, when
I judge that King John was a bad thing, or that Queen Victoria was a very good
thing. I think that Hope Greenberg is mixing up types of moral/ethical judgements
here, or perhaps confusing ethical judgements with historical judgements.
Why is the reluctance to make ethical
judgements itself to be labeled "politically correct" (i.e.,
insufficiently conservative, in the popular lexicon)? Historians must be very
cautioutious about making moral/ethical judgements about the past, remembering that
moral/ethical standards are relative, defined by the society of the day. What
historians do best is explain why a given society accepts a given moral/ethical
standard.
--Denis Paz Department of History
Clemson University, South Carolina, U.S.A.
[1] In 1993, early in his Presidency, Bill Clinton nominated attorney Lani Guinier to a high-ranking Federal job. Strong opposition to her nomination arose in wake of revelations that she had written an article suggesting that elections to some representative offices might be decided, not by simple majority of votes cast, but by some system which allowed different weights to different groups of voters, thus insuring that minorities could be represented. Amid the howls of outrage at her nomination, her defenders noted that the article in question hadn’t said what it was alleged to have said, but opponents insisted that, whether it said it directly or not, it meant the same thing. Clinton quickly withdrew her nomination. But was the withdrawal based on the facts of the case, or on some interpretation, and not necessarily a valid one?
[2] Essenes were an ascetic sect of Jews who, around the time of Christ, lived in monastic-like communes in deserts and other remote and forbidding areas in and around Palestine.