The Object of History

 

the object of history.pdf

 

 

The Object of History

 

Abstract

 

The phrase ‘the object of history’ may mean all sorts of things. In this article, a distinction is made between object1, the object of study for historians, and object2, the goal or purpose of the study of history.

Within object2, a distinction is made between a goal intrinsic to the study of history (object2in) and an extrinsic goal (object2ex), the latter being what the study of history should contribute to society (or anything else outside itself). The main point of the article, which is illustrated by a discussion of the work of R. G. Collingwood, E. H. Carr, and G. R. Elton, is that in the work of historians and philosophers of history, these kinds of ‘object of history’ are usually (closely) connected. If they are not, something is wrong. That does not mean, however, that historians or even philosophers of history arealways aware of these connections. For that reason, the distinctions made in this article provide a useful analytical tool for historians and theorists of history alike.

 

 

1. Introduction

 

The meaning of the phrase ‘the object of history’ is not self-evident. There are two obvious reasons for this: firstly, the terms ‘object’ and ‘history’ may both be used in a number of ways, and secondly, if the way in which they are used is explicated, the terms may still be endowed with several meanings. The term ‘history’, for instance, may be used to refer to the past or the historical process, to the study (in particular the scienctific study) of history, or to written history or the practice of writing history. once it is explicated that the term is used to denote the study of history, it is by no means clear what exact meaning this carries for the person in question. We still do not know what is meant by ‘the study of history’ – what it is supposed to involve – partly because the meaning of ‘the study of history’ is dependent on that of ‘history’ in the sense of the past, or the historical process.

In this article, I will be concerned with two senses of the phrase ‘the object of history’:

1) the object of study of the historical science – I say ‘the historical science’ here to avoid speaking of ‘the object of study of the study of history’;

2) the aim or goal of the study of history. of this article, I take ‘history’ in the phrase ‘the object of history’ to mean ‘the study of history’ (or ‘the historical science’, ‘the science of history’), and I distinguish between two senses of ‘object’:object as that which the historian studies, and object as goal (or aim, or purpose).

2 The point made in this article is that these two kinds of ‘object of history’ tend to be connected in historical writing, and in the philosophy of history.

3 Writers who take a certain view of the object of study for historians (object1), will have a view of the aim of the study of history (object2) that somehow corresponds to that. The same goes the other way around. Some historians or philosophers of history may start out (more) at the one end, and move from there to the other, while some may move from the other end, in the opposite direction. An historian who takes object1 to be ‘historical Essays in Philosophy facts’, for instance, is more likely to view object2 as ‘the adequate description of the past’ than an

historian who holds object1 to be ‘events’ or ‘processes’. The latter historian will more readily

think of object2 along the lines of ‘understanding the connections between events’, or perhaps

‘explaining certain developments and occurrences’. This is a simplification of course, but it serves

to clarify the basic principle.

Object1 can be taken quite concretely as the object under study in one particular research project, or

more abstractly, as the final object of study to which all historical research pertains (e.g. past

actions, or past events). It is the latter sense in which I speak of object1 in this article. Finally, a

distinction has to be made between two kinds of object2. We may call them the first-order goal and

the second-order goal of the study of history. The first-order goal tends to be most closely

connected to object1. The above examples of objects2 are examples of first-order goals. These goals

are intrinsic to the study of history. Second-order goals are primarily connected to first-order goals,

and via them, so indirectly, to objects1. A second-order goal might be: to help people make

political decisions, by informing them of the antecedents of existing situations. Second-order goals

are extrinsic to the study of history. Hence, we may speak of object2in and object2ex.

In the following sections, I will illustrate how, in the work of a small number of historians and

philosophers of history, object1 is related to object2, and how within object2 object2in is in turn

connected to object2ex. This will entail a close reading of these texts, for which it will be necessary

to let them ‘speak for themselves’ somewhat more than one would ordinarily do. We will see that it

is the contents of the different types of object that differs between authors, rather than the nature of

the relations between them. The relation between object1 and object2in is always of such a kind that

the latter entails doing something with the former. That is, object2in might be to understand object1,

to explain object1, and so on. The connection between object2in and object2ex is of another nature.

The former is a precondition of the latter; the intrinsic goal allows and disallows certain extrinsic

goals. But the extrinsic goal may be primary in the mind of an historian, and object2in may then be

formulated with a view to object2ex. Below, I will start out with a section on Collingwood. This

will be followed by a section on (the debate between) Carr and Elton; then, I will briefly discuss the

relation between the various kinds of object of history and their subject (by which I mean the

historian), after which I will end with an evaluation of what is or can be gained by making the

distinctions between various ‘objects of history’ the way I do.

2. R. G. Collingwood on ‘the object of history’

Collingwood hardly needs an introduction, I suppose. He was an historian, archaeologist, and

philosopher. His best-known works in that last capacity include The Principles of Art, An Essay on

Philosophical Method, An Essay on Metaphysics, and The Idea of History, which is a posthumously

published part of a project that was originally intended to culminate in The Principles of History. It

is The Idea of History in which we find Collingwood’s views on ‘the object of history’.5 As one

author remarks, “his account of the character of the object of history is less frequently discussed

[than his account of historical knowledge]”.6 Although my purpose here is to use Collingwood’s

work as an illustration of the connection between object1 and object2 in the work of historians and

philosophers of history, it is a welcome bonus that doing so will also help (if only a little) to fill in

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a perceived gap in the discussion of Collingwood’s work.

The second section of the introduction of The Idea of History is devoted to ‘History’s Nature,

Object, Method, and Value’. It is here that we find Collingwood’s first (well-known) statement of

‘the object of history’ – the relevant paragraph bears this name. He takes the question as to the

object of history to mean: “What kind of things does history find out?” (By ‘history’ he obviously

means the study of history.)

“I answer, res gestae: actions of human beings that have been done in the past. (...)

[H]istory is the science of res gestae...”7

At first sight, it seems that this statement of object1 could not be clearer. But this is, indeed, only at

first sight. one page further, Collingwood asks: “what is history for?” His answer is again quite

resolute:

“[H]istory is ‘for’ human self-knowledge. (...) Knowing yourself means knowing what

you can do; and since nobody knows what he can do until he tries, the only clue to what

man can do is what man has done. The value of history, then, is that it teaches us what

man has done and thus what man is.”8

So here is a first statement of object2, and one that immediately shows the connection between

object1 and object2. But to come to a real understanding of this connection, we have to look, first,

at Collingwood’s elaboration of object1, and subsequently at his idea of progress as created by

historical thinking.

In the course of The Idea of History, it becomes clear that Collingwood’s statement that the study

of history is concerned with res gestae does not speak for itself. He distinguishes between history

and nature. Both have a processual character, but the basic components of the natural process are

events, whereas those of the historical process are actions. What distinguishes actions from events is

that the latter have only an outside, whereas the former also have an inside. “[A]n action is the

unity of the outside and inside of an event.”9 With the outside of an event, Collingwood means

“everything belonging to it which can be described in terms of bodies and their movements”. The

inside of an event is “that in it which can only be described in terms of thought”.10 The

combination of Collingwood’s first statement of object1 and this conception of actions leads to the

conclusion that

“all history is the history of thought. In so far as human actions are mere events, the

historian cannot understand them; strictly, he cannot even ascertain that they have

happened. They are only knowable to him as the outward ｅxpression of inward

thoughts.”11

This has important implications for the historian’s method. It is the task of the historian to use his

knowledge of the outside of events (that are actions) to penetrate to the inside, so that he can

recreate in his own mind the thought of historical agents:

“[H]ow does the historian discern the thoughts which he is trying to discover? There is

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only one way in which it can be done: by re-thinking them in his own mind. The

historian of philosophy, reading Plato, is trying to know what Plato thought when he

expressed himself in certain words. The only way in which he can do this is by thinking

it for himself. This, in fact, is what we mean when we speak of ‘understanding’ the

words. (...) The history of thought, and therefore all history, is the re-enactment of past

thought in the historian’s own mind.”12

Object1, then, is amended in such a way that Collingwood can say that “at bottom, [the historian] is

concerned with thoughts alone”.13 The historian method is to use the outward ｅxpression of past

thoughts to rethink them in her/his own mind. To do so, to re-enact past experience in his own

mind, so as to discover what historical agents thought, can be said to be the intrinsic goal of the

study of history. History ‘teaches us what man has done’, Collingwood wrote, but what man has

done is nothing else, essentially, than what man has thought; it is this that distinguishes action from

‘mere’ events. So object1 is past thought, and object2in, closely connected to this, is to discover

past thought by rethinking it. As a corollary of this, a (preliminary) extrinsic goal of the study of

history is to come to know ‘what man is’. Even if for Collingwood, ‘to know what man has done’

and ‘to know what man is’, are two statements of substantially the same thing, (which is doubtful),

they are logically not the same – that is, the phrases have intensionality: even if they refer to the

same knowledge, the meaning of each phrase is different.14 Hence, I do not take coming to know

what man is as an intrinsic goal of the study of history, but as a (preliminary) extrinsic goal, that

connects object2in with the primary object2ex.

It is time to consider the latter, which is best done by looking at Collingwood’s idea of progress.

Collingwood rejects the idea of a ‘law of progress’, according to which history inevitably

progresses in a fashion similar to the way nature was by many in the nineteenth century supposed to

progress. He then asks what a sensible meaning of the phrase ‘historical progress’ might be.15 He

suggests that “the idea of historical progress (...), if it refers to anything, refers to the coming into

existence not merely of new actions or thoughts or situations belonging to the same specific type,

but of new specific types.”16 These novelties need also to be regarded as improvements. But

improvements are always improvements from a certain point of view.17 What is needed is a

comparison between the two historical phases, the one before the novelty, and the one after its

coming into existence. People are rarely able to make a true comparison of this kind, and tend to

perceive what they do not know (either what went before, or the new) as bad in comparison to what

they know. What is needed, then, is to have real knowledge of both historical phases, of what life

was or is like in both. What is needed is historical knowledge:

“[T]he revolutionary can only regard his revolution as a progress in so far as he is also

an historian, genuinely re-enacting in his own historical thought the life he nevertheless

rejects.”18

Historical knowledge is necessary to be able to judge whether progress has been made or not. But

when an historian asks whether a certain change was progress, “what exactly is he asking?”

“There is only one genuine meaning for this question. If thought in its first phase, after

solving the initial problems of that phase, is then, through solving these, brought up

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against others which defeat it; and if the second solves these further problems without

losing its hold on the solution of the first, so that there is gain without any

corresponding loss, then there is progress.”19

This way, there can be moral progress, economic progress, philosophical progress, and so on.20

“In such senses and in such cases as these, progress is possible. Whether it has actually

occurred, and where and when and in what ways, are questions for historical thought to

answer. But there is one other thing for historical thought to do: namely to create this

progress itself. For progress is not a mere fact to be discovered by historical thinking: it

is only through historical thinking that it comes about at all.”21

Here we have ended up with Collingwood’s statement of the (primary) extrinsic goal of the study of

history. Object2ex is to bring about progress. The reason why it can only be brought about by

historical knowledge is that for progress we need historical knowledge, human self-knowledge, “the

retention in the mind, at one phase, of what was achieved in the preceding phase”.22 To bring about

something better than what exists, we need to understand what exists, and retain this understanding,

“as a knowledge of the past conditioning our creation of the future”.23

Now that we know how to understand object1, object2in, and object2ex in Collingwood’s work, the

connections between them ought also to be clear. Object1 is past thought; the intrinsic goal of the

study of history is to come to know and understand past thought. This comes down to gaining self-
knowledge, knowledge of man. It is only through the attainment and retainment of self-knowledge

that we can achieve progress, which is to find (more) adequate solutions for our (new) problems

without forgetting past (adequate) solutions. Thus, I hope to have illuminated very briefly some

aspects of the connections that Helgeby devoted his book to: those between the object of history,

the theory of historical knowledge, and the “moral and civilising importance of historical

practices”.24

3. E. H. Carr and G. R. Elton on ‘the object of history’

E. H. Carr is well-known for his popular What is History?25 In this collection of lectures, Carr

discusses (among others) questions as to the relations between the historian and his facts, between

(the study of) history and society, and between history and other disciplines, and of course the

question which gave the collection its title. In dealing with these matters, he makes a number of

clear statements regarding the object of history, in all senses relevant to this article. What is

History? is a collection of work in the philosophy of history, both speculative and critical – or, as

some authors would rather have it, in the philosophy of history and the philosophy of

historiography.26 But Carr was also (and foremost) an historian. His reflections on ‘the object of

history, then, are informed by his own experience as an historian.

The same goes for G. R. Elton, although he is the more practically-minded of the two, more ‘your

typical historian’, if I may be so bold – which does not mean, by the way, that he is wary of

making bold philosophical statements; the contrary is true, as we shall see. Elton’s The Practice of

History was very much written in opposition to Carr. This makes it all the more interesting to look

at his ideas on ‘the object of history’ (again, in its various senses relevant to this article). In so far

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as Carr’s and Elton’s views contrast, what they deem to be the object(s) of history will show itself

more clearly; in so far as they converge, it will force us to look for the subtle differences, and their

implications for the connection between object1, object2in, and object2ex. To get at the connection

between the different kinds of object of history is the primary goal of this exercise, but I believe the

comparison between Carr and Elton is interesting in itself, as it shows us where exactly the

important differences lie between these ‘rivals’, and where they do not lie – contrary to what they

may themselves believe. So, as a secondary goal, this section illuminates a small fragment of the

recent history of British historical theory and historiography.

3.1. E. H. Carr on ‘the object of history’

Carr’s view of what history (as a science) is depends very much on his view of the historical

process. The first answer he gives to the question ‘What is history?’ already highlights this

connection:

“My first answer (...) to the question ‘What is history?’ is that it is a continuous process

of interaction between the historian and his facts, an unending dialogue between the

present and the past.”27

The study of history is itself situated at a particular point in the historical process. This cannot but

show itself in the history that is written at that time and place. The historian is part of society, and

part of the historical ‘procession’, in which he is ‘just another dim figure trudging along’. “The

point in the procession at which he finds himself determines his angle of vision over the past.”28

So the historian studies the past, from his particular vantage point in the historical process(ion). But

we want to know what the historian studies much more precisely than this. In his lecture “History,

Science, and Morality”, Carr remarks that “[i]t is scarcely necessary today to argue that the

historian is not required to pass moral judgements on the private life of the characters in his story”,

which is why a lot of ‘facts’ about people are not of interest to the historian: “Pasteur and Einstein

were, one is told, men of exemplary, even saintly, private lives. But, suppose they had been

unfaithful husbands, cruel fathers, and unscrupulous colleagues, would their historical achievements

have been any the less? And it is these which preoccupy the historian.”29 So the historical

achievements of people are part of what the historian studies, but people’s private lives and their

character are only part of object1 in so far as they ‘affected historical events’.30

The object of history (object1), then, is not simply all of the past; it is the relevant past, and what

the relevant past is, depends on the present. This brings us to two passages, in the first of which

this relation is stressed and the connection between object1 and object2 made, and in the second of

which that connection is clarified by a more precise statement of object1:

“History, then, in both senses of the word – meaning both the inquiry conducted by the

historian and the facts of the past into which he inquires – is a social process, in which

individuals are engaged as social beings (...). The reciprocal process of interaction

between the historian and his facts, what I have called the dialogue between present and

past, is a dialogue not between abstract and isolated individuals, but between the society

of today and the society of yesterday. (...) The past is intelligible to us only in the light

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of the present; and we can fully understand the present only in the light of the past. To

enable man to understand the society of the past, and to increase his mastery over the

society of the present, is the dual function of history.”31

Here, object1 (‘the facts of the past’) is still rather vague. If we accept the concept of a fact, we will

probably have to admit that there are simply too many facts to be able to say that ‘facts’ of the past,

without further qualification, are what the historian studies. We have seen above that not all facts

are relevant. The second passage provides at least some criterion of selection:

“Scientists, social scientists, and historians are all engaged in different branches of the

same study: the study of man and his environment, of the effects of man on his

environment and of his environment on man. The object of the study is the same: to

increase man’s understanding of, and mastery over, his environment. (...) [H]istorian and

physical scientist are united in the fundamental purpose of seeking to explain, and in the

fundamental procedure of question and answer. The historian, like any other scientist, is

an animal who incessantly asks the question ‘Why?’”32

For Carr, then, object1 is ‘the facts of the past’, in so far as they pertain to ‘man and his

environment’ and ‘the effects of man on his environment and of his environment on man’.

Both passages are explicit about object2, and in both we see the distinction between object2in and

object2ex – in the first passage this comes under the heading of ‘the dual function of history’. The

latter (object2ex) is clear enough: ‘to increase [man’s] mastery over the society of the present’, or, in

the second passage, ‘to increase man’s mastery over his environment’. The former (object2in) is not

as easily identifiable as it may seem to be at first sight. It is tempting to treat ‘to understand the

society of the past’ and ‘to increase man’s understanding of his environment’ as being on a par with

each other. There is an important difference, however. The second phrase omits any reference to the

past. Carr’s assumption seems to be that an understanding of past societies and, presumably, of

man’s relation to the environment of his day, will also increase our understanding of our present

environment and our relation to it. But then the second phrase seems to occupy an intermediary

position between the first and object2ex. An understanding of past societies in relation to their

environment leads to increased understanding of present societies in relation to their environment,

which, for those societies, in turn leads to an enhanced mastery over themselves and their

environment. Given that the phrase ‘to increase man’s understanding of his environment’ does not

mention the past, it can hardly be seen as a goal intrinsic to the study of history, but should instead

be taken as an extrinsic goal, necessary for the realization of what was already identified as

object2ex, namely ‘increased mastery’ over society and/or the environment.

With respect to object2in, Carr also speaks of the ‘fundamental purpose of seeking to explain’. For

Carr, understanding apparently entails explanation. To be able to answer the question ‘Why?’ is

both to understand and to be able to explain.

The connection between object1 and object2in is clear: it makes sense to say that the study of past

societies (in relation to their environment, as Carr intends) should have the intrinsic goal of coming

to understand them and the ways they related to their environment. The connection between

object and object is equally strong, especially because of the intermediate extrinsic goal

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identified above. We can also see that the formulation of object1 is already such as to allow an easy

transition to object2ex. Let us now turn to Elton’s ideas on the subject.

3.2. G. R. Elton on ‘the object of history’

Elton devotes the first part of The Practice of History to a discussion of the purpose of history (both

in the sense of the study of the past and in the sense of the historical process). It is here that we find

his clearest statements on ‘the object of history’, in all presently relevant senses. The first statement

of interest regarding object1 is the following:

2in 2ex

“The study of history comprehends everything that men have said, thought, done or

suffered. That much is commonplace, but also not quite true; some reservations have to

be made. In the first place, not all the past is recoverable (...). (...) Historical study is not

the study of the past but the study of present traces of the past (...).”33

Here, Elton makes his first approach to object1: ‘everything that men have said, thought, done or

suffered’. In his qualification of this statement, however, he confuses object1 with the sources –

thus misinterpreting the question: “What does the historian study?” The study of history uses

sources; in one sense of the word, it studies them. But they are not what the study of history is

concerned with; they are not what it is about. We might say that we are looking for the intentional

object of the study of history – and that is not in principle limited by the scarcity of sources, though

they may block the study of this object in practice. Elton’s mistake does not carry over to all the

rest of his discussion. He continues as follows:

“Secondly, the definition given is in a way too wide because history is not the only form

of enquiry which deals with man’s past life. All the so-called social sciences (...) attend

to man, and all of them can concern themselves with his past as well as his present. (...)

We must therefore ask how history differs from other studies of man (...). The answer

lies in three habits peculiar to history: its concern with events, its concern with change,

and its concern with the particular.”34

So, what object1 is, is qualified by this statement, that history (as a science) is concerned with

events, change, and the particular. Elton elaborates this point:

“History deals in events, not states; it investigates things that happen and not things that

are.”35

The historian, “if he is to understand historically and practise historical writing”, “will have to

concentrate on understanding change, which is the essential content of historical analysis and

description.”36

“History treats fundamentally of the transformation of things (people, institutions, ideas,

and so on) from one state into another, and the event is its concern as well as its

instrument.”37

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For Elton, object1 is basically everything relating to man, seen as part of a process (or processes) of

change, of transformation. The object of study is not something static, but something that is in flux.

Hence, returning to his first statement of what the study of history is concerned with, Elton says:

“We can now rephrase the earlier definition of history. It is concerned with all those

human sayings, thoughts, deeds and sufferings which occurred in the past and have left

present deposit; and it deals with them from the point of view of happening, change, and

the particular.”38

Here, Elton’s earlier mistake slips in once again: ‘...and have left present deposit’. This ought to

have been left out. If we ignore this confusion, we have a useful statement of object1 that is in line

with the previous quotations. It should be emphasized, in case the last passage has caused some

confusion in this respect, that the aspect of change is very much part of object1, and not something

that is merely added by the historian’s perspective. Or, we might also say that object1 includes a

certain idea of the historian’s perspective – simply because what an object is, is defined by its

subject, in the sense that what counts as an object depends on what counts as a subject (and the

other way around). But this phrasing would probably reek too much of subjectivity and relativism

for Elton, even if these are not necessarily implied.

A first statement regarding object2in has already passed: the historian, Elton said, “will have to

concentrate on understanding change”, change being essential to object1. As in Carr’s case, then,

object2in is first of all to understand. Interpreting Elton’s statement in a somewhat more general

fashion, we might say that for him, the intrinsic goal of the study of history is to understand object1

– not at all an unreasonable suggestion, I would think.

As I said in the beginning of this subsection, Elton distinguishes between two meanings of ‘the

purpose of history’. They are ‘the purpose of the historical process’ and ‘the purpose to be served

by the historian in studying it’.39 only the second relates to object2. He does not distinguish

between an intrinsic and an extrinsic goal here. Elton clarifies his views on the purpose (goal, aim,

end) of the study of history by opposing them to those of E. H. Carr and J. H. Plumb:

“...Mr Carr as well as Professor J. H. Plumb have recently entered eloquent pleas for a

return to the allegedly discredited notion of progress, the notion that things get better in

sum, however much the detail may get worse at times. They both want historians to

write to this purpose because they seem to regard it as the scholar’s function not only to

describe change but also to advocate it (...).”40

Whereas Carr and Plumb, in Elton’s view, ‘seem to regard it as the scholar’s function not only to

describe change but also to advocate it’, Elton himself wishes to remain on the value-free side, so

to speak, by limiting himself to description. He does so, partly because he deems it impossible for

us to discern a purpose in the process of history, so that there is nothing for historians to further,

and partly because “[h]istorians who adhere to a belief in progress are always liable to lapse from

description into approval” – or disapproval of course.41 In contrasting his own views with those of

Carr and Plumb, then, Elton makes a shift from ‘understanding’ towards ‘description’ as the

intrinsic goal of the study of history. The remainder of this part of the book, however, suggests that

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he means more or less the same thing by these terms; to describe is not less than to understand, and

to understand is not more than to describe, in the sense that it does not add a value judgement to it.

Both terms are to denote professional neutrality. That entails that the historian should refrain from

declaring any views on the overall purpose or pattern of the historical process: “[P]rogress and

necessity are doctrines which cannot be derived from, can only be superimposed upon, the study

history.”42 Such things are matters of interpretation, and the result of a subjective selection from the

events of history. Elton then asks whether this means that “there is no very positive purpose in

studying history, that it really is only a matter of the student’s private satisfaction?” And also: “Are

there no standards by which one may call historians good or bad, adequate or inadequate, right or

wrong?”43 His answer is important in the context of this article:

“I think there are, but they cannot be discovered if the purpose of history is approached

from outside the discipline itself. (...) We must first explain in what manner the past can

truly be studied – that is, we must accept the despised tenet that the past must be studied

for its own sake – and then enquire whether this study has any contribution to make to

the present.”44

This statement entails that there is, after all, a distinction between an intrinsic and an extrinsic goal

of the study of history, and that the intrinsic goal is primary, and the extrinsic goal secondary, or

derived. Elton explicates this as follows:

“[W]e are once again faced with the autonomy of history: the study of history is

legitimate in itself, and any use of it for another purpose is secondary. That secondary

use will be laudable or deplorable in proportion as the autonomous purpose has been

served well or ill.”45

There is a strong connection, then, between object2in and object2ex. The latter can only be laudable

to the extent that the former is accomplished. Elton is clearly thinking of the possibility of the

abuse of history for political purposes, for example in the form of propaganda. In his view, such

abuse can only occur if the historian did not do his job (as historian) well; that is, if he did not

accomplish object2in. The intrinsic goal of the study of history is to acquire as adequate an

understanding of the past, and to give as faithful a representation of the past, as the evidence allows.

The latter is what it means to write good history. Against Carr, who emphasizes the dialogue

between the present and the past, Elton says:

“The task of history is to understand the past, and if the past is to be understood it must

be given full respect in its own right. And unless it is properly understood, any use of it

in the present must be suspect and can be dangerous.”46

Once more Elton emphasizes that object2in is to understand the past, which implies value-neutrality.

The historian is only concerned with the present “in so far as it throws light on the part of the past

he is studying. It is the cardinal error to reverse this process and study the past for the light it

throws on the present.”47

Then follow a number of considerations regarding object2in and object2ex, in which it becomes

clear to what extent these are connected – sometimes even overlapping – for Elton. Immediately

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after the last quotation I gave, Elton says:

“However, it does not in the least follow from this that the study of history, treated as

autonomous and justified within itself, has no contribution to make beyond its frontiers.

In the first place, let it be remembered that this pursuit of history in its own right is not

only morally just but also agreeable. A good many people simply want to know about

the past, for emotional or intellectual satisfaction, and the professional historian fulfils a

useful ‘social’ function when he helps them know better. He is also, of course, satisfying

his own desire for knowledge (...) This might be supposed to reduce the historian to a

mere entertainer, but in fact it gives him a cultural role: he contributes to a complex of

non-practical activities which make up the culture of a society. (...) When he stimulates

and satisfies the imagination he does not differ essentially from the poet or artist (...).

There is an emotional satisfaction of a high order to be gained from extending the

comprehending intelligence to include the past.”48

Without blurring the distinction between object2in and object2ex, Elton points out that the

attainment of the former, that is, the realization of the intrinsic goal of the study of history, is ‘also

agreeable’. Hence, it serves an extrinsic purpose as well. This object2ex can only be attained

through object2in. Elton gives various names to this extrinsic goal: ‘emotional or intellectual

satisfaction’, ‘contributing to culture’, ‘stimulating and satisfying the imagination’. The first can

also be reached by amateurs who have undertaken the study of history; the other two are mainly

reserved for the professional historian.

But next to this ‘emotional’ goal, there is another (‘practical’) extrinsic goal:

“Next, it would certainly be untrue to suppose that history can teach no practical lessons.

(...) [A] sound acquaintance with the prehistory of a situation or problem does illumine

them and does assist in making present decisions; and though history cannot prophecy, it

can make reasonable predictions. Historical knowledge gives solidity to the

understanding of the present and may suggest guiding lines for the future.”49

As in the case of the first extrinsic goal, the success in reaching this extrinsic goal depends on the

degree in which the intrinsic goal is attained. If one’s understanding of the past is inadequate, it

will be difficult and risky to abstract practical lessons from it, not to speak of making predictions

for the future on its basis.

Elton then sets out to qualify the above statements:

“Yet these emotional and practical uses of history are not its main contribution to the

purpose of man. The study of history is an intellectual pursuit, an activity of the

reasoning mind, and, as one should expect, its main service lies in its essence. Like all

sciences, history, to be worthy of itself and beyond itself, must concentrate on one thing:

the search for truth.”50

Surprisingly, all of a sudden there appears to be something like ‘the purpose of man’. After all his

criticism of ideas regarding an overall purpose of or direction in history, Elton feels no scruples

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speaking of ‘the purpose of man’ – the latter apparently being a much less debatable matter than the

former. The explanation for this seeming incongruity will be discussed in the following subsection.

What is most relevant here is that in the above passage, the main object2ex turns out to lie in

object2in. The primary extrinsic goal of the study of history lies in ‘its essence’ as ‘an intellectual

pursuit’: ‘the search for truth’. Again, this does not dissolve the distinction between an extrinsic and

an intrinsic goal. It merely means that the extrinsic goal can only be reached by focusing on the

intrinsic goal, the way fun can only be had by doing something that is ‘fun’ to do. ‘The search for

truth’ is the statement of both object2in and object2ex (though in the first case it concerns only the

truth about the past); hence ‘to be worthy of itself and beyond itself’. Elton’s final statement on the

subject is the following:

“Its real value as a social activity lies in the training it provides, the standards it sets, in

this singularly human concern. Reason distinguishes man from the rest of creation, and

the study of history justifies itself in so far as it assists reason to work and improve

itself. Like all rational activities, the study of history, regarded as an autonomous

enterprise, contributes to the improvement of man, and it does so by seeking the truth

within the confines of its particular province, which happens to be the rational

reconstruction of the past.”51

The real practical goal or purpose of history (providing training and setting standards for the search

for truth) is subservient to the primary extrinsic goal of the study of history, which coincides with

the intrinsic goal of the study of history. Of a further extrinsic goal, ‘the improvement of man’, it is

unclear whether this is to be achieved through the attainment of truth, or whether the latter is

instrumental to the former, i.e. whether the former is something apart from the attainment of truth.

To sum up: object1, for Elton, is the events and transformative processes of the past in so far as

these consist in or relate to human action, thought and feeling. Object2in is, concretely, to describe

and understand these events and changes to the extent that the evidence allows. More abstractly,

object2in is the search for and the attainment of truth (regarding the past). This is also the primary

object2ex of the study of history, and beyond that, object2ex is ‘the improvement of man’. Finally,

there are practical and emotional goals. The main practical goal lies in the provision of training and

the setting of standards for the search for truth. A further practical object2ex is to draw practical

lessons from history. Emotional goals are ‘emotional and intellectual satisfaction’, ‘contributing to

culture’, and ‘stimulating and satisfying the imagination’.

3.3. Carr and Elton compared Now that we have an idea, for both authors, of what they regard as

object1, object2in and object2ex of the study of history, it should be possible to compare their

views. At first glance it seems that, despite Elton’s polemical tone and his use of the method of

contrast in expounding his views, Carr and Elton are not that far apart at all. Though Carr places

more emphasis on action, stressing ‘mastery’ over society and environment, and though Elton lays

more stress on the processual character of the object of study (which is not at all at odds with

Carr’s view of history), they have similar views regarding the intrinsic goal of the study of history.

Moreover, both turn out to be equally moved by the idea of progress, though Carr looks for it in

mastery over society and the environment, and Elton (more vaguely) in the improvement of man

through the search for truth. It is quite remarkable, after all Elton’s criticism of the presence and

influence of the idea of progress in Carr’s work, to see that in the end Elton sings a similar song.

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And yet there is an important difference. This is partly revealed in the fact that Elton phrases

object2in not only in terms of understanding, but also in terms of description. This is related to

Elton’s critique of the idea of progress. For another part, it shows itself in the difference between

Carr’s statement of object2ex and Elton’s own idea of ‘the improvement of man’, which fits the

discourse of progress equally well. The difference centres around the concept of ‘objectivity’.

For Carr, ‘objectivity’ is not the same everywhere and always. Instead, it depends on a relation to a

subject: “The facts speak only when the historian calls on them: it is he who decides to which facts

to give the floor, and in what order or context.”52 Carr states clearly that “the social sciences as a

whole, since they involve man as both subject and object, (...) are incompatible with any theory of

knowledge which pronounces a rigid divorce between subject and object.”53 Though it is certainly

not the historian’s job to pronounce moral judgement on people from the past, it is inevitable that

moral judgement is inherent in what the historian writes. This does not presuppose a

‘superhistorical standard of value’, though.54 Moral concepts acquire substance in their historical

context; hence, the substance changes throughout history. Objectivity, for Carr, can only lie in the

historian’s understanding of his necessary lack of it. The more objective historian is the one who

understands himself as a partner in a dialogue between present and past, “the historian who

penetrates most deeply into this reciprocal process”.55 Herein lies the possibility of progress: in a

deeper understanding of the relationship between present and past, and in a projection of one’s

vision of the historical process into the future. These are the two meanings of the objectivity of

historians:

“First of all, we mean that he has a capacity to rise above the limited vision of his own

situation in society and history – a capacity which (...) is partly dependent on his

capacity to recognize the extent of his involvement in that situation (...). Secondly, we

mean that he has the capacity to project his vision into the future in such a way as to

give him a more profound and more lasting insight into the past than can be attained by

those historians whose outlook is entirely bounded by their own immediate situation.”56

Elton could not disagree more. For him, objectivity means neutrality. This means, first of all, that

the historian should not pronounce moral judgement on the past. It means, secondly, that the

historian should refrain from making any statement on the overall purpose or pattern of the past – it

is beyond his competence to know this. Elton discusses the idea that history is a less ‘hard’ science

than the natural sciences, due to the fact that in history, there is no equivalent for the repeatable

experiment, and thus no possibility of verification or falsification by such means. His reply is that

this gives history a greater objectivity, in the sense that whereas natural scientists construct (in their

laboratories) the reality they study, historians have to conform to an objective, unalterable reality,

that they did not construct.57 Indeed, “[t]he historian cannot verify; he can only discover and

explain”.58 After he has made his initial choice of his area of study, “he becomes the servant of his

evidence” and “opens his mind to the evidence both passively (listening) and actively (asking)”.59

The questions the mind comes up with are “suggested by the evidence”.60 The ‘proper practice of

scholarship and research’ drastically reduce the effect of the historian’s lack of knowledge,

subjectivity, and fallibility; his method “reduces the effects of human frailty and creates a

formidable foundation of certainty beneath the errors and disputes which will never cease”.61 It is

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exactly because Elton has this very different idea of objectivity than Carr has, that he can come up

with his idea of ‘the improvement of man’. This is not inconsistent with what Elton takes to be the

proper historical attitude; on the contrary, both for the writing of history and for the improvement of

man there are universal, objective criteria. Behind Elton’s work is an idea of a fixed, universal truth

– a truth about man and a truth about history. His position is in this respect diametrically opposed

to Carr’s, with his idea of a progressive (in two senses) criterion of truth.

What does this mean for both men’s views on ‘the object of history’? It does not mean that the

statements of the various kinds of object of history themselves change. But while they remain the

same, our understanding of them changes. Carr’s object1 is something that moves along, as it were,

with the historian, as time passes. They are both part of the ‘historical procession’. That means that

the historian does not simply try to find out how things once were regarding man in relation to his

environment, where these terms have fixed meanings. Historians in different times understand

‘man’, ‘environment’ and the relation between them differently, depending on their own perspective

in time. In a sense, they do not study the same thing as previous historians, even if the abstract

statement of object1 remains the same. Object2in and object2ex are similarly coloured by Carr’s idea

of history as an ‘unending dialogue between present and past’. The connections between the object

of study and the goals of the study of history, and between the intrinsic and the extrinsic goal, are

all constituted by Carr’s view of history as a moving (progressive) process, in which both subject

and object (in both senses) have their place. For Elton, what is the object of study for historians

now will be their object of study in the future. Historian’s find out the truth about the past, in so far

as the evidence allows; the study of history is a cumulative process of truth-gathering. This practice

has its main value in itself, and this value is not dependent on variable circumstances or standards.

Hence, the connections between object1 and object2, and within the latter between object2in and

object2ex, are governed by an unchanging criterion of objectivity.

Positivism and progress were once thought to be two sides of the same coin.62 Seeing the difference

between Carr and Elton, it turns out to be possible to divorce these two notions. Carr denounces

positivism, but believes in progress; Elton, though he borrows from the discourse of progress,

denounces the idea, and he does so as a result of an attitude that can only be called positivist.

Elton’s understanding of object2in does not allow a belief in progress (‘the notion that things get

better in sum’), because the latter entails a value judgement concerning the past; as objective truth-
finding, it does allow ‘the improvement of man’. Carr does not believe in such a separation between

object(ivity) and subject(ivity), and herein lies the reason that there can always be progress: as

man’s understanding of his environment changes, so also what constitutes mastery over it.

4. The historian as subject of the object(s) of history

What any historian sees as object1 and object2in may depend on the object2ex he has in view, or

vice versa. This raises the question whether there can ever be a ‘pure’ intrinsic goal of the study of

history, untainted, so to speak, by considerations of extrinsic utility of some kind. If not, the next

question is whether this jeopardizes the reliability and the legitimacy of historical research. The

answer to the first question is: no, we will never find a ‘pure’ intrinsic goal of the study of history.

Intrinsic and extrinsic goals will in practice always be mixed to a certain extent – which, however,

does not vitiate the usefulness of distinguishing between the two, if only because this may prevent

them from becoming entangled to an unacceptable degree.63 As to the next question, it does not

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seem to me that historical research is generally unreliable, or that the study of history is a discipline

without legitimacy. Object2in should not be dominated by object2ex, but that is not the same as

demanding purity. Besides, one can imagine a ‘pure’ object2in – pure because there is no object2ex

– without this resulting in an epistemologically reliable historical practice. Say, for instance, that

some historian sees no extrinsic goal for what he does whatsoever; he practices l’histoire pour

l’histoire; how does this guarantee that he goes about his job properly?

Moreover, it seems that such an historian would be unable to do anything at all, for how would he

select his material? Without entering relativistic waters, we can admit that history (the past) does

not select itself for us. Selection (or: importance) depends on interest, on a perspective.64 Hence the

object(s) of history depend(s) on the subject of history, by which I here mean the historian. The

dependency is twofold: first of all, the meaning given to ‘object1’, ‘object2in’, and ‘object2ex’

depends on the subject (the historian); he defines the object of study, as well as the goals of the

study of history (though often not in a reflectively conscious act). Secondly, the subject determines

(or at least may determine) object1 and object2in through object2ex. It is most interesting to analyze

the relation between the historian and what he takes to be the various objects of history when he

starts out at this end, that is, from an extrinsic goal.

That the object(s) of history depend(s) on their subject is not just evident from the differences

between individual historians working in the same period, but also from historical trends in

historiography. The subject (in a broader sense) changes with the time; his convictions and

preoccupations change with social, political, economical circumstances. New kinds of

historiography, even if they replace older ones, do not generally do so because the former were

unreliable; nor do they constitute a step back in reliability. They mirror changes in the subject,

changes in interest; if older historiography is condemned, it is generally for its one-sidedness. A

new subject of history means a change of aspect.

However dependent on the subject (his religion, his political beliefs, his anthropology, et cetera) the

objects of history may be, there are limits to what anyone can define as the object of study of the

science of history, or the intrinsic goal of the study of history. There is not just one correct way of

practicing history, but there are limits to how one can define object1 and object2in, if the practice is

still to be recognized or considered as scientific history. Within these limits, epistemological

reliability (which is something very different from ‘complete truth’) may be attained in different

ways. The past can be viewed under different aspects, which means that there is room for different

understandings of object1 and object2in (and hence of object2ex). That different historians subscribe

to different views of object1, object2in, and object2ex does not lead to sheer relativism. What it does

mean, is that historians should try to be explicit about their understanding of the object(s) of

history. 65

5. Evaluation

I have distinguished between various meanings of ‘the object of history’: object1 is the object of

study, object2in the intrinsic goal of the study of history, and object2ex the extrinsic goal of the

same. What have we gained by the explication of this distinction? It seems to me that the gain is a

valuable analytical tool – provided it be used correctly. It is a valuable tool, because it highlights

the inevitable connections between what an historian takes to be his or her object of study, and what

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he or she takes to be the goal (intrinsic as well as extrinsic) of the study of history. In some cases, it

will be possible to point out what the historian’s point of departure was; in other words, to say

whether his or her view of object1 was mainly formed under the influence of his idea of object2, or

the other way around. It might be that in Collingwood’s case, the former holds true, but I dare not

positively confirm this. In other cases (as with Carr and Elton) the two will go together. on the

level of individual historians, especially where object2ex is dominant, it would be interesting to

expand the analysis of ‘the object(s) of history’ with one of ‘the subject(s) of history’. Such an

analysis will generally be informative from a comparative historiographical perspective.

The provision that the analytical tool be used correctly is meant as a warning that statements of the

object of history (in whatever sense) cannot simply be taken at face value. We have seen in the case

of Carr and Elton that this can give the impression that people who differ profoundly on certain

issues are actually more or less in agreement on them. So a correct application of the analytical tool

I have provided here entails a close reading of authors, in which one tries not only to find those

authors’ statements on the object of history, but also to understand them in the broader context of

their theoretical positions.

Finally, it seems valuable to explicate the different meanings of ‘the object of history’ I have

distinguished between, simply because it makes explicit what often remains implicit in the work of

historians. It cannot but be of value to historians if they articulate their own views about the object

of history in its various senses, and come to see the connections between them.

Anders Schinkel

Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam

Notes

1. I should add that ‘the study of history’ need not necessarily be the study of history by

professional historians; I do take it to imply a certain level of professionality.

2. one regularly encounters both uses of the term ‘object’, but it happens just as often that the term

is not used at all, and that other words are used to convey both meanings. As to the authors

discussed in this article: Collingwood uses the term ‘object’ for object1, Carr (at least once) for

object2, and Elton, I believe, does not use the term in either sense.

3. I say ‘tend to’, because it is not necessarily the case. They can be incompatible, in which case

there is something wrong, or they can be merely compatible, without there being a strong relation

between the two. In the latter case, however, the one kind of object still poses limits for what the

other kind of object may be.

4. Object1 is often implicit in the definition of object2in, but it would be a mistake not to

distinguish between the two. Firstly, the same object1 may be combined with different intrinsic

goals of the study of history. For example, when object1 is taken to be ‘past actions (of human

beings)’, object2in may be to describe these actions, to explain them, to construct an intelligible

narrative around them, or something else, or a combination of such things. When we know what an

historian’s object1 is, we do not yet know anything about object2in. The other way around, things

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are a bit different. If an historian gives us a full statement of what he sees as object2in, this includes

object1. However, such complete statements are seldom given. It is more common to find isolated

statements of object2in, without explicit reference to object1. For instance, an historian might say

that history is concerned with explanation (as opposed to description), or perhaps with

representation (as opposed to both explanation and description), while stating somewhere else that it

is concerned with past actions of human beings – thus divorcing object1 and object2in from each

other, even while the former is implicit in the latter. Secondly, to say what one takes to be object1

is simply an answer to a different question than to explain what one sees as object2in. An historian,

if asked what it is that he studies, may answer that question (initially, at least) without reference to

object2in. Thirdly, it is possible that object2in and object1 are inconsistently defined by some

historian. In case of such incompatibility, it is useful to be able to distinguish between both kinds

of object.

5. R. G. Collingwood, The Idea of History, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1986 [1946].

6. Stein Helgeby, Action as History: The Historical Thought of R. G. Collingwood, Imprint

Academic, Exeter, 2004, 7.

7. Collingwood, 9.

8. Ibid., 10.

9. Ibid., 213.

10. Idem.

11. Ibid., 115.

12. Ibid., 215. See also 39 and 97.

13. Ibid., 217.

14. It may be that for Collingwood ‘to know what man has done’ and ‘to know what man is’ do not

completely amount to the same knowledge, that their overlap is incomplete. For Collingwood says

that “knowing yourself means knowing what you can do; and since nobody knows what he can do

until he tries, the only clue to what man can do is what man has done.” There is a difference in

meaning between ‘what man has tried’ and ‘what man could try’, between ‘what man has done’,

and ‘what man can do’; whether there is a factual difference, the future will have to tell. As yet, we

do not know whether man can do anything he has not already done – assuming we are not talking

about the possibilities of technology and other such matters. Furthermore, Collingwood’s own ideas

about the logic of question and answer suggest that ‘to know what man has done’ and ‘to know

what man is’ are different in the sense that imply (or at least can do so) answers to different

questions. (See especially R. G. Collingwood, An Autobiography, Oxford University Press, Oxford,

1978, chapter V.)

15. Ibid., 323-324.

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16. Ibid., 324.

17. Ibid., 325.

18. Ibid., 326.

19. Ibid., 329.

20. As to moral progress, see Helgeby, 205: “As our conceptions of choice and action develop and

become more self-conscious, our acts and answers become more adequate to our problems. We can

articulate more adequately the choices we face. We answer our questions with acts that we choose

from reason, rather than capriciously. Our decisions can be made from duty rather than mere utility

or right.”

21. Collingwood, 333.

22. Idem. Concerning self-knowledge, see also Collingwood, An Autobiography, chapter X.

23. Ibid., 334.

24. Helgeby, 219.

25. E. H. Carr, What is History? , Penguin Books, Harmondsworth, 1990 (ed. by R. W. Davies).

26. David Bebbington, for instance, prefers the latter distinction. David Bebbington, Patterns in

History, Inter-Varsity Press, Leicester, 1979, 141.

27. Carr, 30.

28. Ibid., 36.

29. Ibid., 75.

30. Idem.

31. Ibid., 55.

32. Ibid., 86.

33. Elton, 20.

34. Ibid., 21.

35. Ibid., 22.

36. Idem.

37. Ibid., 22-23.

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38. Ibid., 24.

39. Ibid., 56.

40. Ibid., 58.

41. Ibid., 62.

42. Ibid., 64.

43. Ibid., 65.

44. Idem.

45. Ibid., 66.

46. Idem.

47. Idem.

48. Ibid., 66-67.

49. Ibid., 67.

50. Ibid., 67-68.

51. Ibid., 68.

52. Carr, 11.

53. Ibid., 73.

54. Ibid., 82.

55. Ibid., 131.

56. Ibid., 123.

57. Elton, 72-73.

58. Ibid., 74.

59. Ibid., 83.

60. Ibid., 60.

61. Ibid., 84-85.

62. I understand ‘positivism’ here as an approach to science that seeks to impose what are seen as

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the methods of the natural sciences on science in general, that stresses ‘objectivity’, the ‘fact’ that

science deals with ‘facts’, and so on. In the beginning of the twentieth century, the thought that

science in this sense would bring progress (this being a cumulative knowledge and understanding of

the external world and of man itself, leading to a greater – technological – control over and a

decreased dependency on the world, greater material well-being, et cetera) was still widespread.

63. I cannot go into the question what would constitute an ‘unacceptable degree’ here, but it seems

to me that we can often tell when an extrinsic goal has dominated the intrinsic goal; this usually

means (as Elton would also say) that the intrinsic goal is in fact not reached. No true understanding,

no adequate description, or whatever was taken to be the intrinsic goal of the study of history, will

have been accomplished.

64. For Whitehead, importance and interest were two sides of the same coin; see Alfred North

Whitehead, Modes of Thought, The Free Press (Macmillan), New York, 1968 (1938), 8.

65. Collingwood was quite explicit about this, and using his autobiography – for the sake of

convenience assuming its reliability – I can very briefly illustrate the relation between the subject

and objects of history. For Collingwood, object1 was res gestae, actions of human beings in the

past, but only insofar as they were actions. He was concerned with the inside of these events, that

is: with thought. The historian tries to discover past thought, to think what historical actors thought

– this is the only way to understand them. To do so constitutes object2in. The extrinsic goal of

history, finally, was to bring about progress through human self-knowledge. Historians nowadays

would probably place less emphasis on ‘thought’ than Collingwood did, but in his autobiography he

shows that the preoccupation with thought, with understanding other minds, was there from early

childhood on. He describes the discovery, as a nine-year-old, of a seventeenth-century book

(perhaps Descartes’ Principia) as the first lesson in ‘the history of thought’ (Collingwood,

Autobiography, 1). His ‘logic of question and answer’, the basis of Collingwood’s hermeneutics,

goes back (to Collingwood’s mind, anyway) to his parents’ artistic painting. He “learned to think of

a picture not as a finished product exposed for the admiration of virtuosi, but as the visible record,

lying about the house, of an attempt to solve a definite problem in painting” (2). This way of

thinking was later stimulated by his archaeological fieldwork (23ff.). This ‘bent of mind’ and his

views about the difference between human actions and ‘mere’ events (as studied by the natural

sciences), led him to think of history as concerned with ‘purposive activity’, and finally as the ‘self-
knowledge of mind’ (109, 114-115).

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