The Burden of History

For better than a century many historians have found it useful to employ a Fabian tactic against critics in related fields of intellectual endeavor. The tactic works like this: when criticized by social scientists for the softness of his method, the crudity of his organizing metaphors, or the ambiguity of his sociological and psychological presuppositions, the historian responds that history has never claimed the status of a pure science, that it depends as much upon intuitive as upon analytical methods, and that historical judgments should not therefore be evaluated by critical standards properly applied only in the mathematical and experimental disciplines. All of which suggests that history is a kind of art. But when reproached by literary artists for his failure to probe the more arcane strata of human consciousness and his unwillingness to utilize contemporary modes of literary representation, the historian falls back upon the view that history is after all a semi-science, that historical data do not lend themselves to free artistic manipulation, and that the form of his narratives is not a matter of choice, but is required by the nature of historical materials themselves. This tactic has a long record of success in disarming critics of history; and it has allowed historians to claim occupancy of an epistemologically neutral middle ground that supposedly exists between art and science. Thus, historians sometimes argue that it is only in history that art and science meet in harmonious synthesis. According to this view, the historian not only mediates between past and present; he also has the special task of joining together two modes of comprehending the world that would normally be unalterably separated. But there is mounting evidence that this Fabian tactic has outlived its usefulness, and that the position which it had formerly secured for the historian among the various intellectual disciplines has been placed in serious jeopardy. Among contemporary historians one senses a growing suspicion that the tactic functions primarily to block serious consideration of the more significant advances in literature, social science, and philosophy in the twentieth century. And the opinion seems to be growing among non-historians that, far from