Peace, Force & Joy

| Prologue | Chapter One | Chapter Two | Chapter Three |

CHAPTER ONE

The Past Viewed from the Present

1. The Deformation of Mediate History

Preparatorily, it is fitting to explain some defects that do not help in clarifying the fundamental problems of Historiology. These defects are numerous, but the consideration of some of them will help in eliminating a mode of treating the themes, a mode that brings about concrete historical obscurity, which stand out not because of the absence of data, but because the historian's particular interference on the data.

With the Father of History2, the interest certainly is to draw the difference between his people and the barbarians; with Titus Livy the account is transformed into a contrast between the excellencies of the old republic and the epoch of the Empire where he lives in.3 That intended form of presenting the facts and customs is not far from that of Eastern and Western historians who, since the beginning of written accounts, constructed a particular history from their epochal landscape. Although compromised to their time, many of them do not manipulate facts maliciously; on the contrary, they consider that their work consists in restoring the "historical truth" that has been repressed or banished by those in power.4

There are many ways of introducing one;s present landscape in the description of the past. Sometimes, through a legend or with the excuse of literary production, history is made or attempts to be influenced by them. One of the clearest cases mentioned is Virgil's Aeneid.5

Religious literature often shows deformations of interpolation, expurgation and translation. When these errors are produced intentionally, we have the case of alteration of past situations, justified by the "zeal" imposed by the historian's landscape. When the errors have been slipped in simply for some other motive, we still are at the mercy of facts that only historiological experts (can and) must clear up.6

There exists, moreover, the manipulation of source-text, where historical commentary is contributed posteriorly, done with the intention of imposing a certain thesis. Systematic frauds of this kind are common in the production of present-day daily news.7

On the other hand, over simplification and stereo-typing are not minor defects and they even count on the advantage of saving effort by providing a global and definite interpretation of facts, accepted or discarded according to an approximately accepted model. What is serious in this procedure is that it allows the construction of "histories" by substituting data with "rumours" or second-hand information.

Thus, numerous deformations abound, but certainly the least evident (but the most decisive) does not lie in the pen of the historian but in the head of the historian's reader, who accepts or discards, according to whether the description follows his particular beliefs and interests, or to the beliefs and interests of a group, people or culture in a precise historical moment. This sort of personal or collective "censorship" cannot be discussed, because it is taken as though it were reality itself, and only events that clash with that is believed as reality could finally sweep away the prejudices accepted up to that moment. Of course, when we speak of "beliefs" we refer to those sorts of pre-predicative formulations of Husseri, used in daily life as well as in Science. It does not matter whether a belief has a mythical or scientific root, since in all cases beliefs are pre-

predicates, implanted before any rational judgement.8 Historians of different epochs are embittered by the difficulties that must be settled in obtaining data that were practically eliminated because they were considered irrelevant, and precisely those facts that were abandoned or disqualified because of "good sense" were the ones that provoked a fundamental overturning in Historiology.9

We have seen four defects in the treatment of historical facts, which we wanted to mention summarily so as not to return to them as far as possible and to discard all work that is immersed in that particular way of handling themes. A case is the intended form of introducing the moment in which the historian lives, in tales as well as in myth, in religion and literature; another is the manipulation of sources; still another, simplification and stereotyping; and, finally, "censorship" through epochal pre-predicates. Nevertheless, if someone would make the unavoidability of such errors explicit or manifest, it could be considered with interest in as much as his presentation is reflexive and can help him rationally in his development. Fortunately, that case is frequent and it allows us to do a copious discussion.10

2. The Deformation of Immediate History

Any autobiography, any account of one's own life (which seems to be the most indubitable, immediate and known by oneself) suffers undeniable distortions and is remote from the facts that occurred. We discount designs of bad faith, if these were possible, and suppose that the account mentioned is for oneself, not for an external public. Easily we could have a personal "diary", but when we read it again, we would note: 1) that the "facts", written almost at the time of their occurrence, were emphasized in certain junctions, important at that time but irrelevant today (the author could now think that he must have recorded other aspects, but if he were to rewrite his "diary", he would do it very differently); 2) that the description bears the character of a re-elaboration of the event as a structuring of a temporal perspective different from that of the present; 3) that the valuations of the facts correspond to a scale (of values) very different from that of this moment; 4) that mixed and sometimes compulsive psychological phenomena under the pretext of an account have strongly colored the descriptions to the point of embarrassing the reader by the author whom he was previously (because of the candidness, forced perspicuity, disproportionate praise, or unjustified criticism, the deformation of personal historical fact. Who has not thought of describing historical events (not lived by us) previously interpreted by others? Thus, historical reflection is done from the perspective of the historical moment of the person reflecting, and then he goes back to and modify the event.11

In the line of thinking developed earlier, a certain skepticism about the fidelity of historical description seems to have been emphasized. But the intention is not focused on this point, as we have already admitted, since the beginning of this writing, the intellectual construction that operates in the historian's task. What moves us to put things this way is the need to point out that the temporality and perspective of the historian himself are unavoidable themes of historiological consideration. Because why is there a big gap between the fact and the statement? Why does the statement itself change as time goes by? Why do facts pass outside consciousness? And what degree of relation exists between existential temporality and the temporality of the world about which we opine and sustain our viewpoints? These are some of the questions that must be answered if one wants to thoroughly ground not a historiology consecrated as science but the possibility for historiology to exist as science. One can argue that in fact Historiology (or Historiography) already exists. Doubtless, but being so, it has the characteristics more of a knowledge than a science.12

Chapter Two

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