The historian and his facts

“My first answer therefore to the question “what is History?” is that it is a continuous process of interaction between the historian and his facts, an unending dialogue between the present and the past.”

Funnily enough, even though he seems to be very aware of a changing order, the author seems unable to lose the comfortable pragmatic nature he was born into. He keeps searching for a “middle ground” between two apparent extremes, but, I regard “middle grounds” as excessively safe spaces which ultimately just go to show a lack of the courage in the individual striving to get there. The middle ground is additionally always has a very arbitrary demarcation. I think a struggle to define the role of a historian is ultimately irrelevant. Over time, the historian’s role is going to change, and ultimately the statement the author makes above seems to serve the exact same purpose as an ‘incantation’ like “Wie es eingentlich gewesen”, as they both are drawing blanket definitions across all the individuals within a certain period of time. The role of a historian, I feel, can only be determined by the historian himself. As he can, for himself, decide the relative subjectivity or objectivity of facts, as he chooses to be relevant (or she. I’m a little lazy, not sexist).

There’s all this brouhaha regarding the nature of”facts”, but it seems like there’s a point being missed somewhere. There’s something valid to be got from approaching a subject from any of these viewpoints, and limiting ourselves to any single one is going to lead to having to eventually bog ourselves down with whatever snags it comes with as well.

Anyway, that aside, the “fact” to me has become a sort of ironical term...I’m still conditioned into looking at the word to define a definite, hard, verifiable and absolute truth; but, past my conditioning, I know that no such thing exists, strictly as a “fact”. Therefore, I regard a historian’s principle job to be with interpretation....as it’s not just about the relations between facts anymore; it’s the interpretation of the fact as well. Though, since I’m breaking the absolute nature of a fact, I think this also implies an expanding of the definition of a “historian”. It’s not a strict discipline anymore; it’s a necessary aspect of everyday life. If I cannot define strongly a fact, and hence a historical fact, how can I define the one who has to deal with these notions? Even in the happening of an event, we cannot observe it in a common-denominator fashion....so as only the memory remains (and this is NOT in any way downgrading the value of a memory), how can we entertain the hope for absoluticity? (It’s not a word, but it should be)

While what I’m saying does sound excessively idealistic and extremist, I guess it’s just a thought I’m exploring, and I’m just hoping that this exploration bears fruit.