The Compassionate Historian
America and Western societies today have a troubled relationship with the past. History has become a weapon to be wielded in political battle, rather than a source of edification and inspiration. Historiographical debates have transformed from learned arguments among professional historians to public skirmishes between left and right.
Some public riots of recent years have involved what might be called "acts of historiography" committed in service of particular historiographical movements. By vandalizing national monuments commemorating the founders, Abraham Lincoln, Catholic missionaries, and many other figures and events, rioters have expressed their support for the narratives of revisionist historians of the West and attempted to reshape the national historical self-image.
On one level, this is not surprising. We live in an age of history, just as much as one of progress and innovation. Nineteenth-century French philosopher Ernest Renan, an early theorist of nationalism, famously identified this:
A nation is a soul, a spiritual principle. Two things that, in truth, are but one constitute this soul, this spiritual principle. One is in the past, the other in the present. One is the possession in common of a rich legacy of memories; the other is present consent, the desire to live together, the will to perpetuate the value of the heritage that one has received in an undivided form.
Our national histories not only shape our nations' identities; they are inextricably linked to our consent to a common future and that future's character. It is small wonder, then, that the past has become the battleground of the present in the fight to shape our common future.
Public debates on the topic of history and historiography have largely been of two natures: disputes about historical facts, and arguments regarding the place of revisionist history in public education. In other words, most writers on the topic have focused on the histories themselves: whether the narratives presented were truthful (e.g., was 1776 really the American experiment's year of origin?) and their places in our countries' education systems (e.g., should British imperialism be a central topic in high-school history lessons in the United Kingdom?).
In both kinds of debates, the New York Times's 1619 Project — an initiative that began as an interactive newspaper feature and has since been developed into a Hulu miniseries, a bestselling anthology, and school curricula, among other things — is a lightning rod. First launched in August 2019, the 400th anniversary of the beginning of American slavery, the project "aims to reframe the country's history by placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of [America's] national narrative." In short, it seeks to revise the fact pattern underlying the traditional narrative about America's founding, and to disseminate this new alternative narrative in American public schools and universities.
Conservatives responded forcefully, in part by critiquing the 1619 Project's methods and claims, and also by attempting to shore up more traditional accounts of the founding. While this response has been important, it has not paid much attention to the underlying intellectual currents shaping much of the historiographical enterprise in recent decades. And in opposing itself to progressive activist historiography, some of it has run the risk of falling into a different, but equally problematic trap, by treating revisionist histories as coordinated conspiracies seeking to falsify Western history.
In our polarized political environment, it can be difficult to draw a clear line between the activists and the more serious revisionist scholars — and, of course, some political bias might be detected in even the best scholarly works. But in assessing the state of historiography, open bias is not actually the deepest problem. There is good reason to assume good faith among the painstaking researchers — including many of my colleagues in the academy — who are devoted to their craft. Plenty of revisionist historians strive to reflect their findings with accuracy and precision; they almost certainly have no interest in deliberately misleading readers or distorting the public understanding of historical events. Many do, however, reflect a widespread and hugely influential intellectual trend, which I propose calling "suspicious historiography."
Suspicious historiography approaches historical events as one would a crime scene. Accordingly, historians are tasked with dividing participants into binary categories of aggressors and victims. More fundamentally, they are called to embrace a suspicious disposition toward their subject matter to uncover hidden, nefarious motives — as criminal investigations so often require. This intellectual tendency toward "unmasking" informs countless historiographical products, from popular YouTube videos to academic works laden with footnotes.
Suspicious historiography is not a particularly useful lens through which to research the past. Analytically, it is reductive and harmful to our efforts to understand historical events and personalities. More practically, it is quite rare that historical realities can be reduced to simple binaries of villains and heroes, or historical personalities to either conniving malefactors or hapless victims. Yet many times, this is the picture suspicious historiography draws.
This trend and its intellectual foundations surely deserve our attention. Turning to Renan once again, a nation's present is shaped not only by the facts of history, but by the way its people approach their shared past. Renan assumed that nations tend to understand themselves as sharing "a rich legacy of memories" or "common glories." What sort of future awaits a nation that sees its inheritance as shameful, marked by common ignobility? What sort of future is there for a community that, almost by default, treats its ancestors with disdain and a sense of superiority?
These are the attitudes we have come to embrace when we look to our past, particularly when crafting historical narratives of importance to national and civilizational self-perception. Describing this approach and identifying its intellectual sources will help us understand a fundamental aspect of our attitude toward the past and its effect on our present.
In our polarized societies, arguments about historical facts have devolved into yet another sphere in which partisan affiliation dictates one's beliefs and assumptions. Delving deeper into the underlying foundations of current historiography might help us rise above political partisanship, both when debating such topics and when seeking to construct a shared narrative of our past.
THE THREE HORSEMEN OF SUSPICION
The work of the late Paul Ricœur, a French philosopher and a central figure in 20th-century hermeneutics, offers an invaluable guide for uncovering the intellectual foundations of suspicion. Ricœur coined the term "hermeneutics of suspicion" to describe an approach to interpretation championed by three of modernity's giants: Karl Marx, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Sigmund Freud. While differing in areas of interest and philosophical positions, Ricœur pointed out that they shared a "decision to look upon the whole of consciousness primarily as 'false consciousness.'" In short, each of these thinkers posited that our own consciousness was fooling us with illusions, and thus hiding from us our own true beliefs, motivations, and intentions.
If we, as individuals or societies, are not aware of the true content of our own psyches, those peering at us from without must also fail to grasp our true selves. What follows from this is that the role of interpretation — be it of texts, actions, ideologies, or other products of human activity — is precisely to disillusion, or to unmask and demystify, to use Ricœur's terms, and thus, to expose the true contours of human reality.
Two central pretensions of all three thinkers must be pointed out: First, their project is not one of destruction, but of liberation. They each sought to educate, to free through enlightenment and exposure. Second, as Ricœur put it, "all three attempted...to make their 'conscious' methods of deciphering coincide with the 'unconscious' work of ciphering," the latter of which they attributed to various forces, be they class interests or the psychoanalytic unconscious. In other words, through their methods of interpretation and analysis, they aspired to (at long last) decode the true meanings of human thoughts and actions. Whether each of the three claimed to have provided humanity with the ultimate cipher is arguable, but their followers and students are sure they did.
Each of these men suggested a different cipher to the human psyche, and thus contributed differently to the development of suspicious historiography. Perhaps the most obviously relevant to the topic of historiography is Marx, whose theory of historical materialism supplied generations of historians, Marxist and otherwise, with a framework through which to interpret the past. Marx posited that what truly characterizes a historical period are the dominant "modes of production" of the time, or the nature of economic value production in a given society, as well as its rules of ownership. Social, political, and cultural elements in a society are an illusory outer layer — a "superstructure," in Marxist parlance, that reflect material realities and serve to justify the economic status quo. At a certain point, technological and material developments — new modes of production that rival the hegemony — arise and yield historical change.
Thus, to truly understand historical realities, motives, and causative links, historians and others must direct their attention to material considerations and economic interests. Ideas and beliefs, the statements of historical actors regarding their motivations and intentions, all are irrelevant — or at best, secondary. As Marx wrote:
Just as our opinion of an individual is not based on what he thinks of himself, so can we not judge of such a period of transformation by its own consciousness; on the contrary, this consciousness must be explained rather from the contradictions of material life, from the existing conflict between the social productive forces and the relations of production.
The inherently suspicious nature of this approach is clear: Whether consciously or not, historical subjects are enveloped in misleading layers of irrelevant verbiage. One must cut to the core and grasp an actor's economic interests. Only then can true historical comprehension be achieved.
Friedrich Nietzsche, for his part, could perhaps be characterized as the great priest of modern suspicion. Throughout several decades of activity, Nietzsche waged fierce war on many of the foundational cultural elements of Western civilization, and his success is such that his revolutionary ideas can now be heard in everyday conversations, quoted as clichés and truisms. Among the cultural phenomena marked by the German philosopher for attack, the notions of moral objectivism and objective truth rank highly, and his attacks on both have been influential in the growth of suspicious historiography.
Nietzsche's convincing assault on morality as an objective and constant truth has done more than contribute to the school of moral relativism. His analysis of society purported to reveal its ingrained hypocrisy, the idea that moral discourse is in fact a thin veneer hiding a maneuver for power. This instilled a deep suspicion of all attempts to act or speak in the name of morality, but it has rarely generated critical self-assessment. Instead, it has taught many in the West to view those who claim to act from moral conviction at best with wry amusement (because they lack our sophisticated awareness of the absence of moral virtue), but more often with sneering skepticism.
Consequently, historical subjects who write of their moral motives, aspirations, and qualms can be treated with nothing but suspicion: Either they themselves are not aware of the forces truly driving their actions, or they are intentionally hiding their goals and motivations. As with the Marxian emphasis on material interests, power is seen as the core motivator of human actors, and it is this unseemly lust for power that must be exposed to establish a true understanding of their historic actions.
His attack on objective truth also influenced historiography in a more straightforward manner. If the historiography of Nietzsche's time claimed to relate history "as it actually was," to quote the 19th-century German historian Leopold von Ranke, Nietzsche exposed the unavoidable subjectivity of all cultural products — including histories. Thus, all claims of historians to reflect reality faithfully should be disregarded, and all historical writing must be read skeptically; it is not a question of whether one is reading a narrative that hides some important truths, but a question of which truths are hidden.
Here, as with the Nietzschean critique of moral objectivism, critical awareness of historiography's narrational nature morphs into suspicion; deceit and nefarious motives are assumed. And here as well, a common characteristic of such critiques is that Nietzsche's views are not applied reflexively; this distance, in which the critic avoids reflecting on his own biases while purporting to expose those of another, creates a dynamic not unlike that between a police detective and a criminal. In both cases, a categorical difference is in effect, and the former enjoys a position of epistemic and moral superiority over the latter.
The last horseman of suspicion, Sigmund Freud, is regarded as the father of psychoanalysis and modern psychologistic discourse; he is perhaps least associated with history and historiography in the popular imagination. Yet of the three, his theories and terminology appear to have permeated our culture most widely. While Marxian terms such as "false consciousness" and "superstructures" are rarely heard outside the halls of academia and far-left activist groups, the unconscious and the ego, to give two examples, have become mainstays in our day-to-day conversations. Moreover, as Freud's theories purported to supply us with a new anthropology — and, as a part of this, explain our own thoughts, emotions, and actions to ourselves — they have had a profound effect on our perspectives on man as man. They inform our views on human patterns of thought and action, and so naturally shape the ways in which we read the past.
The implications of Freud's ideas for the individual are truly radical and revolutionary, though their enduring pervasiveness might make them seem passé. In essence, Freud asserted that, contrary to our strong sense of our own agency and intentional conduct, we are each influenced by the black depths of our impenetrable psyche. Not only that, but "the unconscious is the true psychic reality," as he wrote in The Interpretation of Dreams. It is there that our motivations, our fears and desires, and subsequently our actions, are born. So, while Marx and Nietzsche unraveled the foundations of trust in society and culture, Freud's ideas undermined our ability to trust our own minds, not to mention those of others.
Two of Freud's elementary suppositions are at play in historiography. The first is that one should forgo a straightforward understanding of past words and actions. If the true motivations of relevant actors are tucked away deep in their unconscious, the work of the historian becomes one of uncovering the truth of their psychological processes, needs, and desires.
The second of Freud's suppositions is no less influential. He famously directed our attention to "slips of the tongue" and other such minor human oddities, citing them as keys to our unconscious machinations. In historiography, this common inquiry method has led to attributing immense importance to the minor and seemingly insignificant, as it is precisely there that a person reveals his true self.
No doubt other thinkers of the 20th century could be mentioned here and linked to this suspicious reading of history. Antonio Gramsci, Louis Althusser, and Michel Foucault come to mind as influential philosophers and cultural critics who directed their attention to societies' intellectual production. And yet, the three masters of suspicion highlighted by Ricœur provide us not only with the intellectual roots of suspicious historiography, but also with some of its methodological characteristics.
THE SANCTIFICATION OF PROGRESS
If embraced fully, the works of Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud should breed suspicion not only of one's subjects of study, but of one's own mind. Applying these systems reflexively should inevitably lead to suspicion of one's own perspective, and so, to epistemic humility. Therefore, we should be careful in championing our interpretations, including those that are suspicious in nature. This, however, does not sit well with the judgmental sense of superiority so intrinsic to most products of suspicious historiography.
A crucial additional ingredient that explains this lack of humility is the notion of progress. A linear and salvific view of history is not a modern innovation, but today's notion of progress — that we are constantly marching forward and that, if not from day to day or year to year, then definitely from decade to decade, we will see noticeable progress in our quality of life — decidedly is. Indeed, the sanctification of progress as a social good has become one of the defining characteristics of the modern mindset. This perception, that tomorrow will always be better than today, also means that today is always better than yesterday. We know today what we did not know yesterday, and we know better today than we did yesterday.
This relationship to the past alienates us from our forefathers and instills in us a sense of superiority toward all things historic. The resulting alienation is in essence an act of dehumanization, as it places historical actors in a fundamentally distinct category from us. Through the transformative power of progress, we have definitively solved the questions that troubled them and have thus advanced our malleable human nature to one of superior wisdom. The human condition, then, is the existential experience of our own time, and the blundering and meandering of past generations can almost be characterized as the actions of a distinctly different species.
From this act of dehumanization to suspicious and reductive historiography, the path is short. Human beings are multi-faceted, including within them both light and shadow, but once alienated, it becomes easy to treat the past as the abode of one-dimensional creatures, either malicious criminals or agency-lacking victims. This all naturally limits what we can learn from the past, and compels us to sit in judgment, creating black-and-white narratives that hardly resemble the past or the present.
This disassociation from the past, affected by suspicious historiography in general, shapes our societies in other profound ways. For one, our alienation appears to have bred societies that act as though they are the first on earth. Or, to put it differently, they act as firstborn children to abusive parents, both individually and collectively. We do not have forebears to rely on, experiences to learn from, and historical lessons to imbue, because those individuals were either lying and rapacious criminals, weak victims, or blundering buffoons, unaware of their true motivations. These intellectual trends have strengthened over decades, ultimately breeding a sense that we are the first truly conscious generation in human history, because we are the first to be aware of the illusory nature of our consciousness.
Our supposed superiority also reinforces a solipsistic tendency in our time. It is not just literature that helps one learn to step into another's shoes, that teaches complexity and nuance: Good history should also allow perspective on the present. It should place moral questions in larger temporal frameworks, and undermine philosophical and political certainties in the face of historical developments, at times calling our assumptions and beliefs into question. Severing our connection with the past and raising a barrier between ourselves and historical personalities, by contrast, forces us into a temporally contained epistemic bubble.
Today's suspicious mindset claims to grapple with the evil past, but its disassociation from what came before stops us from facing our national and civilizational histories, warts and all, and learning from them. The past acts as a foundation for moralizing and preaching; it becomes a battleground for current political camps, or a source for dehumanized and decontextualized symbols. It is everything but the nuanced story of people no different from us and the choices they made in the face of dilemmas not so different from our own.
In this way, instead of being a path to greater social cohesion and unity, history becomes yet another force for division. Not only do historiographical controversies deepen social fissures, they become yet another conduit for the simplistic ethical system that has taken hold of our politics — one of oppressors, oppressed, and the initiated able to uncover the true nature of reality.
THE PAST AS A CRIME SCENE
One can perhaps begin to trace the influence of suspicion and the oppressor-oppressed binary in the histories of the 1960s, but it apparently became a wider cultural phenomenon in the 1990s, with such popular works as the 1995 book Lies My Teacher Told Me by historian James Loewen. In the realm of academia, a successful example of this approach was historian Michel-Rolph Trouillot's 1995 book Silencing the Past. Subtitled "Power and the Production of History," the book purported to expose the ways in which power "silences" historical realities. To achieve these convenient silences, the powers that be corrupt historical sources at their moment of creation, shape historical narratives, and willfully emphasize the historical significance of some narratives at the expense of others.
On some level, of course, these assertions are true. Critical evaluation of historical facts and narratives is an essential part of the writing of history. In our current cultural moment, however, an overly critical approach toward certain historical narratives has become the bedrock of our historiography. This approach colors our perception of historical writing and the past it claims to bring within our grasp. Instead of respectful wariness of sources, we embrace a sneering suspicion of the lies told by the rich and powerful (as well as their lackeys, historians of former generations). The contemporary historian's job is to unmask, reveal, and expose "true" history. It so happens that history is an ongoing tale of criminals and their victims, and the historian is charged with uncovering crimes and revealing malicious motivations.
The recent debate about Winston Churchill's legacy provides an illustrative example of suspicious historiography's approach and influence. On all accounts, the British leader had a voracious appetite for life. A soldier, politician, journalist, novelist, historian, and painter at different periods, or at one and the same time, Churchill's awe-inspiring, rich, and diverse record defies attempts to box him into a single category. This is true, to no lesser degree, ideologically and politically: Churchill was at once an imperialist and a colonialist as well as a champion of liberty and disenfranchised peoples. Humans are able to encapsulate such complexities, and any good history of this unique personality would at least attempt to paint a colorful picture, one of both light and shadow. Suspicious historiography, however, with its reductive tendencies toward binary, black-and-white narratives, fails to do precisely that.
Consider the words of British-Pakistani writer Tariq Ali, in his recent book Winston Churchill: His Times, His Crimes: "Who and what was Churchill? Was he anything more than a plump carp happy to swim in the foulest of ponds as long as his own career and the needs of the Empire (in his own mind there was no difference between the two) were fulfilled? A little more perhaps, but not too much." Ali goes on to write that "[i]mperialism was Churchill's true religion" and that "[v]irtually any reactionary cause that emerged could rely on him for support."
How does one collapse a figure like Winston Churchill into such diminutive boxes? Suspicious historians do so by carefully selecting quotes, such as the small number of inarguably racist, offensive remarks made by Churchill over a lifetime, and using them to characterize him. They minimize his achievements, ignore his words when inconvenient, and amplify those of his detractors. To his credit, Ali tells us that those are his intentions; he writes in his preface that his book seeks to highlight "the story of a defiant opposition (weak or strong)" and engage "with a working-class history and colonial rebellions in a dialectical relation with the worshipful texts." Evidently, a complex image of Churchill is not on the agenda at all.
Why would a historian choose to do this? Again, Ali explains his intentions in the preface: His book is to be "an irruption...into a historical-political order that appears hegemonic but remains vulnerable." It is not meant to be a straightforward work of scholarship, but a political product. It seeks to undermine a "hegemonic" narrative by exposing the "real" story, one of hidden truths and silenced voices. Specifically, it aims to unveil the "real" Churchill through cherry-picked quotes and decisions. Thus, Churchill's racist statements cannot constitute a few ugly moments in an immense repertoire of self-expression. Rather, they reflect the true Churchill — the blackness of his soul having risen from the dark depths of his psyche.
TOWARD COMPASSIONATE HISTORIOGRAPHY
America and the West deserve an alternative historiography, one not marked by suspicion, dehumanization of the past, and political division, but rather compassion and nuance. To sketch such an alternative, the approach of such foundational historians as Leopold von Ranke, mentioned above, provides a good starting point. Ranke is considered one of the founding fathers of modern historiography. Indeed, he was once called the "father of scientific history." The German historian earned this title by pioneering critical historiography, or the writing of history in which historical documents are critically evaluated for their authenticity, and secondary sources for their successful use of such documents.
While 19th-century historians were not the first to develop a critical methodology, it is in this period that history was transformed into an academic professional vocation, a "science" with its own standards and correct practices. These historians aspired to supply their readers with the most truthful and objective rendition of the past they could. While it has become fashionable — as part of our suspicious approach to the past — to ridicule and deride these "old white men" and their work, if we allow their words to speak for them, there seems to be no reason to doubt that these truly were their goals. As Ranke asserted in an early work, the "strict presentation of the facts, no matter how conditional and unattractive they might be is undoubtedly the supreme law."
Their realization of these goals left much to be desired, as is often the case with early practitioners of a complex craft. And yet, the aims themselves — namely the critical research of history through the careful analysis of historical remnants to create an objective representation of the past — appear as relevant today as they were during the first half of the 19th century. Yes, historical writing is in essence a creation of narrative, an ordered sequence of events causally linked by the historian, and so some events and personalities will be left out of the narrative, at the historian's discretion. And yes, bias and prejudice are intrinsic aspects of human consciousness, and they will leave their imprint on historical narratives. This, however, does not mean we should forsake these aspirations to uncover the truth. They set us on a path, asymptotic in nature, in which we draw closer to describing the past "as it really was." Setting this goal aside condemns our societies to dividing into increasingly entrenched epistemic bubbles of bias, lacking a shared language for debate.
Creating an alternative to suspicious historiography does not entail ignoring the "unattractive" facts of history, and it certainly does not mean we should suspend our critical judgment of documents — a truth espoused by Ranke and others. The alternative, which I call "compassionate historiography," does not prescribe chauvinism and complacency, but rather human understanding and empathy when researching our subjects. Here again, Ricœur's work in hermeneutics is of assistance, specifically the approach he contrasted to the hermeneutics of suspicion: the "hermeneutics of faith."
According to Ricœur, this branch of hermeneutics seeks "the manifestation and restoration of a meaning addressed to me in the manner of a message, a proclamation, or as is sometimes said, a kerygma." If suspicious interpretation strives to uncover hidden, sublimated meanings in a text, this faithful approach wishes to restore to it the meaning of its author, to make manifest his intention. Drawing on the phenomenology of religion to describe this approach, Ricœur notes that the intention in phenomenology generally is "to describe and not to reduce. One reduces by explaining through causes (psychological, social, etc.), through genesis (individual, historical, etc.), through function (affective, ideological, etc.)."
Ricœur's use of "reduce" is particularly valuable because it points to an essential aspect of suspicious historiography (and hermeneutics of suspicion more generally): By (supposedly) explaining historical personalities and actions, such historiography aims to reduce their value to their most base (alleged) element. An action loses its positive consequence once its material motivations are exposed; a person's record of humane statements is forgotten once his "true" colors are revealed through a handful of decontextualized quotes.
The hermeneutics of faith, by contrast, attempt not to reduce an action, statement, or personality to supposedly underlying causes or functions, but to describe it. In like manner, compassionate historiography seeks to "listen" to historical actors, to comprehend their point of view and their motivations as they perceived them, and to convey these to its readers. It aims not to expose or judge the past, but to understand it on its own terms — to restore to the past its meaning, as perceived by its inhabitants. As its name indicates, compassionate historiography is shaped by an awareness of human fallibility, of our limited capacity to predict or control world-historical events. It can therefore set aside the criminal investigation for perpetrators and victims, and instead seek to comprehend historical participants as they experienced their times and decisions.
While taking into account the effect of historical circumstance on human character and perception, compassionate historiography stresses our ability to relate to people in the past based on shared essential features of the human condition. It looks to history not in search of grandeur or for the sources of the present's ills, but as one might read a novel, as a means to study the unfurling tapestry of human lives. Ultimately, it is a humanistic study of history, one that promises above all else to contribute to one's self-understanding.
CHARITY AND HUMANITY
As with our efforts to establish history "as it really was," compassionate historiography is more than a historiographical methodology: It is a matter of attitude and approach. It is a mindset that scholars can embrace, a foundation for framing historical questions. Though this makes it difficult to boil down into a precise prescription, we can sketch guidelines to assist us in applying the approach while avoiding the pitfalls of suspicious historiography.
The first guideline is based on the "Principle of Charity," a concept associated with 20th-century North American philosophers Neil Wilson, Willard Van Orman Quine, and Donald Davidson. Put simply, the principle calls on us to interpret another person's statement in the best light possible: to attribute to it rational coherence and truthfulness, and to assume that it was uttered in good faith, so long as this is possible. On an interpersonal level, the principle of charity is descriptive, not normative: Communication is most often only possible because we assume that the people we talk to are, for the most part, rational and truthful. The necessity of this principle for day-to-day communication should alert us to its importance when seeking to understand the "communications" of the past.
No less than in our daily lives, assuming that historical statements and actions are those of irrational, unaware, or deceitful actors leads to an unraveling of the structure of meaning (their civilization, belief system, ideology, etc.) in which they acted. Assuming their rationality, by contrast, places historical actors and events in a matrix of meaning of their own time. Not only is this a better path to understanding historical perceptions, it also aligns with the goal of historical research: to identify and comprehend these historical epistemologies.
The difference between a chronicler and a historian is that the first simply lists historical events within a certain chronological frame of reference, while the latter seeks to integrate them into an explanatory narrative. How is this to be achieved if we refuse to attribute to past actors a comprehensive value system that gave meaning and justification to their actions, just as we ourselves act in accordance with such systems without knowing if future developments will mark us as terrible malefactors? In line with this truth, and especially in a contemporary age of regression to puritanical moralizing, we would also do well to attribute to our subjects of research a self-perception of righteousness and virtue equivalent to the one we ourselves hold.
In interpreting historical texts and actions, therefore, the compassionate historian will assume that his subjects of study made sense to people at the time — that they were the conscious products of rational beings no different than ourselves. This does not mean ignoring past wrongs, but it does mean that one should seek to comprehend what served to justify these wrongs — not as a detective establishes motives, but as one fallible human works to understand the actions of another.
To the principle of charity we should add a complementary concept, the "Principle of Humanity" — an idea developed by American philosopher Richard Grandy. Grandy's principle states that when we try to understand another human being's statement, the best interpretation "is that which makes the pattern of connections between stimulations and desires as similar to our own as possible."
Grandy here makes a descriptive claim, asserting that when we try to understand the words of others, we assume that the relationship between the world, their beliefs, and their statements are as similar as possible to such a relationship in our minds, were we to express ourselves in like manner. Of central importance is what we attribute to a person's presumed knowledge when we interpret his sayings. Even if there is good reason to assume another's ignorance because of his past, a charitable interpretation might encourage us to assume that he is in the know.
Grandy, however, highlights the obvious: In daily communication, when it is more commonsensical to assume another's ignorance, we interpret his statements accordingly. Transplanted into the field of historiography as a normative principle, this provides a guideline that limits the possible excesses of charity.
While charity encourages us to assume rational coherence and, as I have suggested, self-perceived righteousness, the principle of humanity instructs us to view people as coherent entities. In the context of history, this means that one should interpret historical persons and their actions as an integrated whole — not as a monochromatic tapestry, or one devoid of disharmony and contradiction, but as one unified tapestry nonetheless. Approaching a subject in this manner means that a negatively perceived statement cannot be enough to characterize a person or his view on a given question. At the same time, it stops us from sinking into the swamp of simpering, bottomless sympathy; placing a person's statements and actions within his entire historical record helps to maintain perspective when interpreting him. It also gives us room to consider the context of historical figures' actions or statements. Naturally, there are instances in which total candor should not be assumed (diplomatic exchanges, for example). Charitable does not mean gullible, and the humanistic principle helps mark the border between the two.
As Grandy suggests, holding a person's past (and in a historiographical context, at times, his future) in view when seeking to understand his actions is crucial; it gives him the correct tone or "coloring." In fact, one can argue that charity brought to its logical conclusion requires such analysis, as only when viewing actors as integrated wholes can one do justice to their perspectives. To use a relatively simple example, when analyzing and portraying the historical character of Adolf Hitler, one cannot and should not interpret his views in favor of animal rights without placing them in the wider context of his actions and statements. A reading of Hitler that truly seeks to comprehend the man as he saw himself, and as he was seen by his contemporaries, would not isolate his statements in favor of animals from the rest of his "repertoire" and characterize him based on them alone. That would not be a "compassionate reading," with the principles of charity and humanity in mind. In like manner, one cannot accurately portray Churchill based on a small selection of statements in isolation from their larger biographical context.
For historiographical work, the value of this balance of compassion and clear-eyed analysis is readily apparent, especially when compared to the reductive nature of suspicious historiography. If employed systematically, it should help mitigate positive bias while encouraging historians to empathize with subjects toward whom they may be indifferent or even hostile. Rather than insisting on reducing a person to one figure or another, it opens the door to recognizing and recording the varied personae that all humans have and project.
Furthermore, it views the performative actions of people not as disguises hiding their true selves, but as part and parcel of their character, a result of socialization and their conscious projection of themselves for the view of others. While this might sound absurd to point out, doesn't what we choose to say about ourselves and our beliefs constitute the most important acts of self-definition? Should not historical personalities enjoy the same level of agency, when at all possible?
A LINK TO THE PAST
Beyond the promise of compassionate historiography to depict a more accurate and humanistic view of the past, the social value of such an approach is no less significant. For the ongoing "history wars" in our societies, it might provide a middle road that bridges political divides. For one, compassionate historiography does not proscribe criticism, research of unpleasant national events, or public discussions of such events. In fact, these are all required as part of its emphasis on coherence. Thus, it extends a hand to many proponents of suspicious historiography who might recognize its faults but give it their support in the interest of historical criticism.
And whether we admit this or not, the different sides in the "history wars" all have biases: We all have our historical heroes who deserve protection and villains whom we are only too happy to inspect with a magnifying glass. Churchill, as seen above, might be a favorite punching bag of leftist historians, but right-leaning writers are only too happy to do the same to figures like Marx. In effect, compassionate historiography instructs all sides to lay down their (scribal) arms to the degree possible, admitting that some bias is unavoidable. Instead of besmirching our opponents' heroes within our epistemic bubbles, doing no more than convincing those already convinced, writing with empathy about history can provide a basis for shared conversations and fruitful debates about our societies' past and future.
It also offers a way forward for public discussions of history that neither supporters of suspicious histories nor their detractors present. Arguing against suspicious historiography has so far attempted either to disprove or sideline its claims. Underlying these methods lies an assumption that a "first historical naïveté" can be reconstituted in the public arena. Western history is more than a centuries-long parade of racism and oppression, but the idea that we'll be able to return to a simpler time, in which we all share comfortably splendid historical narratives about our forefathers, is also a dead end.
Arguing about controversial topics and facts related to them will only take us so far. Moreover, the current suspicion of expertise-based epistemic authority means that any kind of naïveté is off the table. The hold of suspicious hermeneutics on our culture more generally also bars the way to advocating for a "naïve" approach to interpretation of any kind. Only "airing" historical questions, guided by the compassionate attitude outlined above, can pave the way to healthier historical debates and a better relationship with our past.
Contrary to the alienation created by suspicion, compassionate historiography promises to reintegrate modern man into the flow of history, placing him further along on the same historical road his forefathers walked. By linking us with our predecessors, it should improve our ability as societies to empathize with the past and learn from it. Perhaps it can even help us avoid some of the mistakes of not-so-distant generations.
