Is history always subjective?
>>39638
proper history is always objective
to liberals no
to everyone else yes
>>39638
Yes. Partisans were at the time known as brigands and thieves. Now they're heroes to those nations.
History is a story that is told. It is not only the events that make history change, but the way these events are told. Make no mistake, your idea of what happened in the past is nevertheless an idea and it is subject to the time and place in which you are inserted.
Yeah, even the definition of the word agrees with it
>Facts are objective, but opinions are subjective
we can all without any bigger debate agree that history is always written by biased individuals
Facts are objective
History is subjective
history is art
>>39638
Yes, like economics it is purely subjective.
This is where having knowledge comes in. Being able to synthesize different schools of thoughts gives you a more objective picture of the subjective.
>>39668
Go away G. R. Elton, you don't belong here.
>>39638
Yes. History is the product of historians. The past is what the historian chooses to write about.
Even the simple fact that a historian chooses what subject material to use in a historical study means that ideology and subjectivity are inherent and fundamental.
That's about the most basic problem of modernist history I can think of.
Depends on what you mean.
There are certainly objective facts, like saying the English beat the French at Agincourt, for example.
Other times, things are more, if not entirely, subjective, like determining which nation/ culture/ ethnicity/ whatever has a "superior" history, or whether a certain individual was an evil megalomaniac or a benevolent dictator, or whether certain events, like colonization, communist revolution, etc, are good or bad in retrospect.
There is an objective historical past.
Our understanding of it is subjective.
You are not insane for thinking their is an objective truth on what events did happen. Oceania was at war with East Asia.
>>39638
Considering that the wave function collapses once observed and the state it collapses to depends on the consciousness observing it, the entire reality is subjective.
>>40002
Too deep desu senpai. Finding an objective 'truth' in history is problematic way before you reach metaphysics and philosophy like that.
>the past is what happened
>history is what historians say happened
>even with every single historical source possible, a historian cannot provide an objectively 'true' account of the past (that would only be possible by literally recreating it)
>historians are always influenced by ideology and therefore the sources they choose make objectivity impossible (and the influence of ideology is so inherent it is not possible to mitigate or avoid)
>even primary sources themselves cannot truly be objective, since they capture only a certain frame of the past (thereby omitting other parts of the past)
Think of a photograph of a battleship listing in a battle. Now imagine that outside of that frame, the photographer could also have included a number of other ships listing, or even a studio where it was being faked. It is the job of a historian to use that photograph, compare it with other equally problematic accounts and sources (even a statistical source such as an inventory for something can omit details or be influenced by the writer), and produce a history to educate people about what happened in that past event. Objectivity is not even close to being possible.
>>39914
I want to kiri her giris
>>40224
That is not metaphysics. That is empirically verified quantum mechanics.
>>39638
Objectivity doesn't exist for humans, it's impossible for a human to be objective.
>>39904
I used to think this in my undergard years; then I've come to realize I got it ass backwards to what really happens and has been happening all this time: the best tellers of narrative create their own school of thought to legitimise their chosen subject. The most successful ones convince a critical mass of their peers into buying their schema, thereafter elevating it into a 'school' of ideology. The primacy of the subject remain unassaulted.
>>39638
Why history has difficulty being objective:
>primary sources that are propaganda, morality tales, and lies
>many primary sources just didn't survive
>personal biases and taboos
>broader sociocultural biases and taboos
>generally focuses on macro-level interactions instead of micro-level interactions
>events in living memory (Holocaust, Civil Rights Movement, Vietnam, McCarthy and HUAC) are extremely polarizing and are not easily re-examined
