Perspectives

As this blog is still in its infancy, and as I've chosen to write about a subject that is, in many ways, on a surer footing, historically speaking, than my previous studies (Christian origins and New Testament literature), I wanted to share my thoughts on historical interpretation and writing.
Ramon Eduardo Ruiz, in the Forward to his work Triumphs and Tragedy, opens with this assertion:

"Nothing is as it was," insisted Ramon del Valle Inclan, the Spanish intellectual, "merely as it is remembered." What Valle Inclan meant was that history is what actually occurs, but something else when historians recall it. Valle Inclan's wisdom, which I deem indisputable, flies in the face of Leopold van Ranke's hory cry for objective history, the need, as he put it, to "simply show how it really was," a call to arms answered by three generations of German, British, and French historians of the nineteenth century, and, also true, by a legion of American scholars and not a few Mexicans"

The writing of history is an art form says David McCollough. As such, it carries with it the limitations of being human (culturally-conditioned, geographically bound, etc). As aloof as we try to be, and as often as we try to work within the framework of "distanciation" (distancing oneself from the subject), Heisenberg's principle burdens historians as well. By the mere act of observation, we've changed the variables and, therefore, the outcome. Even our university systems, with respect to historical education, are plagued by this dry objectivity as the goal.
In this sense, J.D. Crossan is correct, our goal should not be an "...unattainable objectivity but an attainable honesty."

It seems a rather naive demand, doesn't it? When reputations and careers, money and revenues, popular acceptance and public notoriety are at stake, it seems honesty is an acceptable expenditure. And the very fact that these things are even an issue, speaks pointedly to the human condition in which we do our work.

The only remedy for the situation, I believe, is the critical (self and otherwise) process. Holding a thing up to criticism and question (that is to say, NOT ridicule and suppression) and examine its flaws. This is nothing new, of course. Socrates taught us this so very long ago. We need only apply it!

Nothing has happened until it has been described, warns Virginia Woolf, so write everyday. Something interesting happens every day. I tend to see the work of the historian in that light. We describe life in the hopes that, in doing so, the past and the present will resonate. I think that's when the awe of history arrives. (my fav. part, of course)

So there it is, this is how I approach studying history. Keenly aware of my own biases and limitations, I delve into the sources to tell a story. I can only hope (because I'll never know) that what I perceive to be true is congruent with what was "actually" true.

EAIII