Julius Ceasar, Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan and many more…
These people had beliefs and worldviews that were so horribly, by today’s standards, that calling them fascist would be huge understatement. And they followed through by committing a lot of evil.
Aren’t we basically glorifying the Hitlers of centuries past?
I know, historians always say that one should not judge historical figures by contemporary moral standards. But there’s a difference between objectively studying history and actually glorifying these figures.
A lack of absolute certainty does not equate to a lack of objectivity. You’re right that history is necessarily written by individuals who have biases. But it is also written by many individuals from different perspectives and correlated with a variety of other sources of knowledge, such as archeology, geology, etc.
They are conflicting on some things, but they also agree on many things. For instance, I’m sure we can agree that the Greeks and Persians existed, controlled large empires, fought wars against each other, etc. Historians are trained to analyze all of the documents available from all perspectives and arrive at the most objective conclusion that they can muster.
I strongly oppose the postmodern attitude that everything is subjective. It’s good to remember the limits of our knowledge, but to completely discard an academic field such as history as entirely subjective is quite absurd.
Its not really, history doesnt have a central paradigm of provable statements, it cannot be objective. Yes, they may have had armies, someone may have also went back and fucked with all the records of the armies numbers, compisitions etc after the fact.
Writing and mental production have been controlled till very recently by the upper classes, the written record was usually the thoughts of the upper class, or those they allowed to write.
You know the study of history isnt just taking one account and believing it, right?
You build as much evidence as you can from multiple sources so you can account for and remove those biases. Obviously, the further back you go, the harder it is to find evidence but that doesn’t mean you work from one source.
If this is your definition of “objective”, something you can say about the books in the Bible, sure bro I guess. To me objective means it can be empirically proven: 2+2=4. Earth is the third planet from the Sun. Water at sea level boils at 100c. Etc.
If you think the one of many competing, historical narratives that you or your culture chose are “objective truth”, sure bro, that’s how politics works.
Seriously? What a ridiculous, intellectually dishonest false equivalency. Why not respond to the remainder of my argument? Do you actually doubt whether the Ancient Greeks existed?
Pure empiricism is pure nonsense. Objective truths exist independently of individual minds, while subjective truths exist within minds.
History is composed of a series of events that physically occurred on Planet Earth within the past ~5k years, and were recorded in written form by human beings. Human beings were born, did certain things, wrote them down, and died. We can dig up their remains and verify many of the things they wrote via empirical, scientific methodologies. You can choose to doubt various interpretations of the facts, but your delusions cannot change the inherent reality that lies within.
Your choice to contest the validity of history is demonstrative of a profoundly irrational mindset, because you are rejecting verifiable information in favor of your own subjective assumptions. You would prefer that history not be objective, because you wish to believe your own subjective version of history as an emotional coping mechanism.
Lol. Cope.
Ok I didn’t realize you were just a troll. Good luck with that.