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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 June 2025
The past is never dead. It's not even past.
—William FaulknerHistory does not belong to us; we belong to it.
—Hans-Georg GadamerHistorians always have an ambiguous relationship with the present.
—Martin ConwayHannah Arendt stated that certain periods of history must be confronted, not so much because great evil happened at that time but because passivity or fatalism encouraged continuing insensitivity and even acceptance of the institutions and political culture that produced the evil. The attraction of certain groups to neo-Nazi policies indicates the grounds for her concern. The earlier events continue to exercise a dangerous and powerful influence on the present. Such history is not safely in the past but ‘live’; in William Faulkner's words, it is not even past.
However, Arendt's demand might perhaps be taken to imply that for a laudable political purpose academic objectivity should be sacrificed. In addition, requiring historians to deliver narratives mortgaged to contemporary needs surely undermines their academic freedom. That freedom is essential for maintaining a critical distance, for the sake of the objectivity that only an appropriately value-free discipline can deliver. That objection needs to be addressed.
There are also those of a postmodernist stripe who deem objectivity impossible for the humanist discipline of history. Some postmodernists, affirming the value of a diversity of perspectives, appear to think each historical narrative is as good as, and no better than, the next.
This chapter addresses both issues. It defends a pragmatic approach to historical objectivity. It makes a case for the claim that confronting history can sometimes enhance the objectivity of the historical narrative. Such confronting may even be necessary on occasion for depth in historical interpretation, which is closely related to objectivity.
Whose History?
Is confronting our history not a task for professional historians? The discipline has made great progress during the last hundred years. While professionalisation can have the side-effect of generating a gap between historians and the public, the overall result is expansion of available knowledge and understanding of history.
The work of academic historians is essential to the task of confronting the past. But the task cannot be left to historians for several reasons.
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