Constructing History
| Historians have before them various relics left over from the past. There are government documents, newspapers, the natural landscape, paintings, tools and utensils, books, items of clothing, films, and the like. All these relics were made into what they are by processes which began in the past even if they have not yet ended. Historians study these relics in order to obtain an understanding of the past from which they derive. Historians cannot have direct access to the past, in the way we can to the present, simply because it has gone. Instead they must begin by recreating, or perhaps creating, the past from relics available to them in the present. A newspaper article exists as a relic from the past, and historians use it to identify as a historical object an action that was performed or an event that did occur in the past. A ruin exists as a relic from the past, and historians use it to identify as a historical object a building as it was in the past. A ship's logbook exists as a relic from the past, and historians use it to identify as a historical object a voyage made in the past. A tumulus exists as a relic from the past, and historians use it to identify as a historical object a human encampment that existed in the past. Historians study relics from the past. They use them to reconstruct historical objects, or, perhaps we should say, to construct historical objects.tudy relics from the past in order to recover historical meanings. They seek to reconstruct ideas or meanings from the past. This account of the history of ideas would meet with widespread acceptance provided we defined the concept of a relic broadly so as to include things like paintings and utensils as well as books, and provided we did not give substantial content to the concept of a historical meaning. We can adopt a suitably wide definition of a relic from the past without much difficulty. Historians are free to study whatever artefacts they want. Although other historians may question the importance of a chosen artefact, they are unlikely to object as a matter of principle to its being studied. Everyone will agree that innumerable types of artefacts can act as evidence from which to postulate a meaning as a historical object. To devise a suitably broad concept of historical meaning is a much more problematic task. Not only do historians disagree about the importance of different sorts of meaning, they also have incompatible views about what constitutes a historical meaning. There is no consensus as to the nature of the meanings we identify as historical objects through our studies of relics from the past. Indeed, one historian might argue that the objects other historians take as their subject matter are not only unimportant but also non-existent. Disputes about the nature of historical meaning often represent disagreements about the very nature of the history of ideas. Before we can consider what forms of justification and explanation are appropriate to the history of ideas, therefore, we must be clear about the nature of the discipline. We must define the nature of the objects it postulates. We must analyse the concept of historical meaning as it appears in our everyday descriptions and scholarly accounts. What, we must ask, is the nature of a historical meaning? |
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