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By Elinor Evans\n \t\t<\/p>
Published: Thursday, 04 November 2021 at 12:00 am<\/p>
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In 2013, as preparations to commemorate the First World War centenary picked up pace, Max Hastings trained his sights on the UK government. The popular historian chastised politicians for their reticence on \u201cthe virtue of Britain\u2019s cause, or the blame that chiefly attaches to Germany for the catastrophe that overtook Europe\u201d. The government \u201ccalls this a \u2018non-judgmental\u2019 approach,\u201d Hastings declared. \u201cThe rest of us might call it a cop-out.\u201d<\/p>\n
Not all historians would have agreed with Hastings\u2019 scathing verdict on the government\u2019s quest for neutrality. In fact, many abhor attributing blame in their work. The famous French historian Marc Bloch declared that \u201cthe historian\u2019s sole duty is to understand\u201d, not \u201cpass judgment\u201d. Judgment was akin to a chemist preposterously separating \u201cthe bad gases, like chlorine, from the good ones like oxygen\u201d.<\/p>\n
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More recently, Richard J Evans wrote: \u201cThe historian\u2019s job is to explain; it is for others to judge.\u201d As with philosopher Michael Oakeshott\u2019s ban on treating the past as \u201ca field in which we exercise our moral and political opinions, like whippets in a meadow on a Sunday afternoon\u201d, moral judgments seem to have the bad odour of advocacy or propaganda.<\/p>\n
In my recent book, History and Morality<\/em>, I lay out a different position. My argument is that, where it matters, it is impossible to remove judgments from historical accounts. Historians need to recognise this, take responsibility for their judgments, and judge consistently.<\/p>\n In the explanation of human affairs, rather than in the chemistry lab, accounts of how and why something happened can\u2019t easily be separated from notions of responsibility and the existence or otherwise of justification. When explaining the causes of the First World War<\/a> \u2013 as with so many other historical events \u2013 whodunit?<\/em> is a question about cause and guilt together, given the negative attitudes to what followed. But, equally, allocating responsibility for historical events can be a form of praise, as when we talk about \u201cpeacemakers\u201d, for example.<\/p>\n Let\u2019s also consider revolutions, which are surely some of history\u2019s most contested battlegrounds. When we describe these events, we tend to factor in the strength of revolutionary grievances, the regime\u2019s willingness to address these grievances, the proportionality of grievances to the violence of revolutionary action, the nature of revolutionaries\u2019 actions to secure the goals of the revolution, and so on. These discussions are laden with concern about costs and benefits to people and society. And while ideas of what constitutes \u201cacceptable\u201d costs and benefits will vary, this only means that judgments will vary, not that judgments can be removed.<\/p>\n It is, of course, easy to caricature historical evaluations \u2013 and some demand caricature. Henry Steele Commager enjoined his fellow historians to \u201crefrain from the folly and vanity of moral righteousness about the past\u201d; Richard J Evans has warned against \u201cdenunciations\u201d and \u201cexpressions of moral outrage\u201d; while the medievalist David Knowles wrote that the \u201chistorian is not a judge, still less a hanging judge\u201d. Some have pictured historians acting like judges or like deities (Bloch mocked them as imitating \u201cMinos or Osiris\u201d behind their desks), working themselves into a lather and shouting words of damnation. But taking a moral stance doesn\u2019t need to be expressed like this.<\/p>\n Moral evaluation can be understated, qualified, or implicit \u2013 and positive as well as negative, as with the \u201cpeacemakers\u201d I mentioned earlier. Furthermore, rather than occurring summarily at the end of the account, as the jury pronounces, evaluative elements can infuse historical accounts throughout.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The language that historians use to characterise acts, motives, policies, social arrangements etc is often evocative, reflecting or prompting evaluations. Words like \u201ctheft\u201d, \u201cuncharitable\u201d, \u201ccorrupt\u201d, \u201cbrave\u201d, \u201cgenerous\u201d, \u201cdeceitful\u201d, \u201cvenal\u201d, \u201ckind\u201d or \u201cracist\u201d at once describe, evoke and evaluate. To describe some text as anti-Semitic is to convey its attitude towards Jews, but no one is neutral in regards to anti-Semitism (anti-Semites included). There are words that can\u2019t<\/em> be impartial. To describe a state as totalitarian may be empirically justified but the concept of \u201ctotalitarianism\u201d is freighted with implications \u2013 generally negative \u2013 that go beyond the purely analytical. The key question here is not whether the historian\u2019s wording implies or evokes judgment, but whether the wording is a reasonable inference from the evidence available.<\/p>\n And when historians insist on neutrality, what exactly do they mean? To venture into a different arena, is the \u201cneutral\u201d sports fan the one who does not care which team wins, the one who thinks the idea of caring who wins is a mistake, or the one who wants the better team to win based on criteria and evidence of superiority? More to the point, is it even possible to be \u201cneutral\u201d about non-neutral phenomena?<\/p>\n Of course some historical phenomena are morally neutral (by past as well as present standards). If I was researching the statistics of the herring trade in the Hebrides in the 17th century, I could perhaps deal with that in a way that was purely neutral. But it seems impossible, and undesirable, to create a morally neutral history regarding events where people are suffering or inflicting pain on others.<\/p>\n The adoption of neutral terms in these contexts can be deliberately misleading. For example, as the writer Britni Danielle has highlighted, a recent textbook for Texas\u2019s social studies curriculum dubbed enslaved Africans as \u201cworkers\u201d, reflecting a tradition in the American south of labelling slavery with euphemisms like \u201cwarranteeism\u201d or \u201cpatriarchalism\u201d.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Danielle also raises the case of the third US president, Thomas Jefferson, and Sally Hemings, the enslaved woman he owned and with whom he had a longstanding sexual relationship. In this instance, the issue is not pseudo-neutrality but rather the question of positive versus negative evaluations. Hemings is frequently described in romanticising terms as Jefferson\u2019s \u201cmistress\u201d, which obscures the fact that she was his property to do with as he wished, sexually and otherwise.<\/p>\n At the other end of the scale from individual word choices, a work of history gives an overall impression and this can be a moral impression. That can be a product of the explicit argument as, say, when a historian of empire sets out to marshal evidence in support of the case that the project was after all driven by good intentions rather than selfishness. It can also be a product of accumulated descriptions and explanations of historical outcomes, causes, intentions, experiences, and so forth.<\/p>\n The 20th-century British historian Herbert Butterfield once wrote that \u201chistorical explaining does not condemn; neither does it excuse\u2026 it is neither more nor less than the process of seeing things in their context\u201d. And context is crucial in this discussion. Understanding different circumstances and ways of life is one of the historian\u2019s chief virtues, and a guard against anachronism.<\/p>\n However, all that varies with historical context is the content<\/em> of standards \u2013 not whether they exist or not. The common refrain that we should take historical actors on their own terms is actually imbued with a moral philosophy \u2013 call it moral contextualism. The logic of the position is that one judges in accordance with the appropriate standards, not that one does not judge. Concluding that power was wielded legitimately or illegitimately according to the standards of a past time is just to imply a judgment relative to those standards. So long as we understand the different social expectations and values, we are equipped and entitled to describe the Homeric Greek warrior\u2019s shying from battle as \u201ccowardly\u201d, just as we might criticise someone who fails to defend a junior work colleague against a bullying line-manager.<\/p>\n One implication of moral contextualism is that it would be bizarre to criticise people in the past for failing to act in accordance with 21st-century norms. I agree with this. But there is more to say on the matter. Moral contextualism produces a form of \u201cinternal\u201d evaluation, working only in relation to the menu of options available to historical actors. However we can also make \u201cexternal\u201d judgments, which have a different character and focus.<\/p>\n One reason we tend to make external judgments is that, whether we are looking at bygone worlds or the diverse worlds of today, our evaluations are not just linked to actors\u2019 motives and justifications but to outcomes. In the past (as now) those outcomes included harmful or helpful effects on other people \u2013 sometimes, of course, people who did not share the values of the actors who caused the effects. So we need to distinguish between the dubious practice of telling dead people that they should have thought differently, and the practice of external judgment, which involves evaluating particular practices in the past and the values that mandated those practices.<\/p>\n This idea of evaluating practices and values in foreign countries, or ones in the past, also raises the question of moral relativism. But I believe this is a non-problem. Relativisms tend to begin with the claim that value-systems are diverse, being created within different human groups with different ways of justifying the good and the right, rather than being given to all people by a deity or found woven into the objective fabric of the world. One form of relativism goes on to say that it is wrong to judge the values of other groups \u2013 but this argument actually undermines itself. It proposes a group-transcending, universal moral standard about the wrongness of judging across group boundaries, while denying the existence of such group-transcending moral standards.<\/p>\n The strongest variety of relativism claims that it is impossible to objectively establish the superiority of one moral system over others. Whatever the strengths of this sort of relativism, it is not relevant to this discussion. It does not constitute a case against judging across the borders of foreign countries \u2013 it would only deny that such judgments would be compelling to those whose practices are being judged. And indeed such judgments can be unavoidable.<\/p>\n To dig a little further into this matter, let\u2019s say that in my research I encounter some practice that seems to bring happiness or suffering to some member or members of a past society. My immediate reaction is to think how pleasant or unpleasant it seems. Anyone who tells me I ought not have that initial gut reaction is whistling in the wind.<\/p>\n What if I choose not to make a more careful judgment? In that case my understanding would not be improved by contextualisation of the foreign practice, comprehension of its social function, or the attitudes of various parties to it. My gut reaction will remain, unadulterated. And that gut reaction will continue to shape my opinion of the past practices. It is still a judgment.<\/p>\n But what if I allow myself to think further about it but not make a final evaluation? This will not work either. Even without making a formal verdict, my greater understanding will either reverse, negate, dilute, or reinforce my gut reaction. Crucially, I am still forming a view of the past practice \u2013 and that produces a judgment.<\/p>\n In all three scenarios, judgment exists. The question is how I convey this to my audience. And this is where the content and organisation of my historical account is crucial.<\/p>\n Earlier in this piece I mentioned how a historical work can provide an overall moral impression. In their writing, historians regularly \u201cgo behind\u201d the outlooks of historical figures, contextualising in ways that might not have been familiar to them, as well as introducing other voices to the scenario being examined. Historians of Hitler<\/a>, for instance, do not just reproduce, far less adopt, the views expressed in Mein Kampf<\/em>. Rather, they explain what personal experiences and cultural tendencies led Hitler to hold these views.<\/p>\n Equally, as historians explain the significance or consequences of what people did, they may harness the perspectives of people affected by those actions, or provide additional descriptions of these events. Think how strange it would be to \u201csee\u201d Stalin\u2019s attack on \u201cKulaks\u201d (the comparatively wealthy peasants who suffered greatly under his rule) solely through his eyes. And there is no reason that these other perspectives would align with the outlook of the people instigating the events \u2013 consider the different views and experiences of slaves and slaveholders, for example. If historians\u2019 own accounts of actions and effects do end up reflecting the values of the instigators, that tells us more about the historians than about \u201cproper\u201d historical procedure.<\/p>\n It is impossible to remove judgments from historical accounts. Historians need to recognise this, take responsibility for their judgments, and judge consistently <\/blockquote> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>\n<\/div>
Relativism proposes a universal moral standard about the wrongness of judging across group boundaries, while denying the existence of such universal standards <\/blockquote> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>\n<\/div>