Carr and the Thesis Essay

Edward Carr begins What is aim statement? By saying what he thinks accounting is nonby organism negative. In Carrs words, what story is non, or should not be, is a federal agency of constructing historic accounts that atomic number 18 obsessed with some(prenominal) the items and the documents which are verbalise to necessitate them. Carr believes that by doing this the profoundly important shaping power of the historiographer go out su curse be downplayed. Carr goes on to argue in his branch chapter- that this downgrading of historiography arose because mainstream historians feature third things first, a simple plainly very strong command that the proper function of the historian was to show the ancient as it unfeignedly was second, a positivist stress on inductive method, where you first arouse the facts and then draw conclusions from them and third and this especially in Great Britain a dominant empiricist rationale. To stick toher, these constituted for Carr what still stood for the commonsense view of taradiddleThe confirmable theory of knowledge presupposes a complete separation between beat and object. Facts, the like sense-impressions, impinge on the observer from outside and are breakaway of his consciousness. The process of reception is passive having received the data, he then acts on themThis consists of a corpus of as authenticed factsFirst get your facts straight, then souse at your peril into the shifting sands of interpretation that is the ultimate experience of the empirical, commonsense school of history. 2 Clearly, however, commonsense doesnt break down for Mr.Carr.For he sees this as precisely the view one has to reject. Unfortunately things begin to get a micro complicated when Carr tries to show the light, since while it seems he has three philosophical ways of going about his studies one be epistemic and two ideological his prioritizing of the epistemological over the ideological makes history a sc ience too complex for comprehension to everyone some other than himself. Carrs epistemological program line states that not all the facts of the retiring(a) are actually historical facts. Furthermore, there are vital distinctions to be drawn between the events of the past, the facts of the past and the historical facts. That historical facts completely become this way is by being branded so by recognized historians. Carr develops this dividing line 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 speak, the backbone of history the fact, for lesson, that the battle of Hastings was fought in 1066.But this view calls for two observations. In the first place, it is not with facts like these that the historian is primarily vexationed. It is no doubtfulness 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 points of this kind are raised, I am reminded of Housmans remark that accuracy 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 necessary condition of his work, notwithstanding not his essential function.It is precisely for matters of this kind that the historian is entitled to rely on what grant been called the auxiliary sciences of history archaeology, epigraphy, numismatics, chronology, and so-forth. 3 Carr thinks that the insertion of such(prenominal) facts into a historical account, and the significance which they will gain relative to other selected facts, depends not on any quality intrinsic to the facts in and for themselves, notwithstanding on the considering of events the historian chooses to provide It used to be said that facts speak for themselves. This is, of course, untrue.The facts speak only when the historian calls on them it is he who decides to wh ich facts to give the floor, and in what order or contextThe only reason wherefore 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 resolute for his own reasons that Caesars crossing of that petty stream, the point of no return, 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 hard core of historical facts existing objectively and independently of the historian is a preposterous fallacy, except one which it is very hard to eradicate. 4 Following on from this, Carr ends his melody with an illustration of the process by which a slight event from the past is transformed into a historical fact. At Stalybridge Wakes, in 1850, Carr tells us about a gingerbread seller being beaten to death by an angry mob this is a well documented and authentic fact from the past. But for it to become a historical fact, Carr argues that it needed to be interpreted up by historians and inserted by them into their interpretations, thence becoming part of our historical memory. In other words concludes Carr Its status as a historical fact will turn on a question of interpretation. This member of interpretation enters into every fact of history. 5 This is the substance of Carrs first argument and the first grammatical caseset that is easily taken away later a quick read his work.Thereby initially 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 conclusion 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 whole 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 few pages past the Stalybridge example that Carr rejects that there was too skeptical a relativism of Collingwood, and begins a few pages after(prenominal) that to reinstate the facts in a rather unproblematical way, which eventually leads him towards his own strain 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 bonnie 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 judgement of improvement 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 congruity of interests resulting in a greater, freer harmony for all. Carr thinks that t his idea was then extended into the argument for a sort of general intellectual laissez-faire, and then more particularly into history.For Carr, the complete idea supporting liberal historiography was that historians, all going about their work in different ways but mindful 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 roams this The nineteenth century was, for the intellectuals of western Europe, a comfortable period exuding confidence and optimism.The facts were on the whole o.k. and the inclination to ask and answer awkward questions about them correspondingly shakyThe liberalview of history had a close affinity with the frugal doctrine of laissez-faire also the product of a serene and self-assured outlook on the humans. Let everyone get on with his particular job, and the out of sight hand would take car e of the universal harmony. The facts of history were themselves a presentation of the supreme fact of a beneficent and apparently 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 conjunction 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 lucky to see, his third and final one is not. T his argument needs a little ironing out. In the first two critiques of commonsense 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 cult of the fact and that, because of the dominance of liberal ideology, their view had become commonsense, not only for themselves, but for often all historiography. It appeared to Carr that historians seemed to subscribe to the position that they ought to act as the channel with 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 com plaints about the end of the experience of originality, says In the following pages I shall try to distance myself from paramount trends among Western intellectualsto show how and why I think they have departed 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 clear that the real motor 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 supported by the facts, so that his own position is just his opinion, as equally without foundation as those held by optimistic liberals. Consequentl y, the only conclusion that can arguably be drawn is that the past doesnt 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 holy terror that there are no foundations for knowledge other than rhetorical conversation.