John Lukacs: Human knowledge is personal and participant–placing us at the center of the universe
[John Lukacs is the author of more than 25 books including Last Rites.]
Un mauvais quart d’heure, the French say, of those painful 15 minutes when a son must tell his father that he failed in school or that he stole, or when a man thinks he now must tell his woman that he will leave her. They have to tell the truth: a truth.
Now, near the end of my career as a historian, I have a truth to tell. So, for 15 minutes, please bear with me.
Iwas still very young when I saw that historians, or indeed scholars and scientists and human beings of all kinds, are not objective. Many who wished to impress the world thought that they were objective. And there are still many historians and even more scientists of that kind, men with gray ice on their faces.
But isn’t objectivity an ideal? No: because the purpose of human knowledge—indeed, of human life itself—is not accuracy, and not even certainty; it is understanding.
An illustration. To attempt to be objective about Hitler or Stalin is one thing; to attempt to understand them is another; and the second is not inferior to the ?rst. Can we expect anyone to be objective about someone who did him harm? Can we expect a Jewish man to be objective about Hitler? Perhaps not. Yet we may expect him or anyone to attempt to understand. And that attempt must depend on thehow, on the very quality of his participation, on the approach of his own mind, including at least a modicum of understanding of his own self. After all, Hitler and Stalin were human beings, so they were not entirely or essentially different from any other person now thinking about them.
History involves the knowledge of human beings of other human beings. This knowledge differs from other kinds, since human beings are the most complex organisms in the entire universe.
The ideal of objectivity is the antiseptic separation of the knower from the known. Understanding involves an approach to bring the two closer. But there is, there can be, no essential separation of the knower from the known.
We are human beings with inevitable limitations. We think in words, especially when it comes to history, which has no language of its own, no scienti?c terminology: we speak and write and teach history in words. Besides, words and language have their own histories. One pertinent example: four or ?ve hundred years ago the very words objective, subjective, and fact meant not what they now mean or pretend to mean. Words are not ?nite categories but meanings—what they mean to us. They have their own histories and lives and deaths, their magical powers and limits....
Read entire article at American Scholar (winter 2009) accessed: 3-3-09
Un mauvais quart d’heure, the French say, of those painful 15 minutes when a son must tell his father that he failed in school or that he stole, or when a man thinks he now must tell his woman that he will leave her. They have to tell the truth: a truth.
Now, near the end of my career as a historian, I have a truth to tell. So, for 15 minutes, please bear with me.
Iwas still very young when I saw that historians, or indeed scholars and scientists and human beings of all kinds, are not objective. Many who wished to impress the world thought that they were objective. And there are still many historians and even more scientists of that kind, men with gray ice on their faces.
But isn’t objectivity an ideal? No: because the purpose of human knowledge—indeed, of human life itself—is not accuracy, and not even certainty; it is understanding.
An illustration. To attempt to be objective about Hitler or Stalin is one thing; to attempt to understand them is another; and the second is not inferior to the ?rst. Can we expect anyone to be objective about someone who did him harm? Can we expect a Jewish man to be objective about Hitler? Perhaps not. Yet we may expect him or anyone to attempt to understand. And that attempt must depend on thehow, on the very quality of his participation, on the approach of his own mind, including at least a modicum of understanding of his own self. After all, Hitler and Stalin were human beings, so they were not entirely or essentially different from any other person now thinking about them.
History involves the knowledge of human beings of other human beings. This knowledge differs from other kinds, since human beings are the most complex organisms in the entire universe.
The ideal of objectivity is the antiseptic separation of the knower from the known. Understanding involves an approach to bring the two closer. But there is, there can be, no essential separation of the knower from the known.
We are human beings with inevitable limitations. We think in words, especially when it comes to history, which has no language of its own, no scienti?c terminology: we speak and write and teach history in words. Besides, words and language have their own histories. One pertinent example: four or ?ve hundred years ago the very words objective, subjective, and fact meant not what they now mean or pretend to mean. Words are not ?nite categories but meanings—what they mean to us. They have their own histories and lives and deaths, their magical powers and limits....