Politics of the past: the use and abuse of history - Socialists ...

Beyond History and Politics
The Need for Conceptual
and Ethical Dialogue
71
Pierre Hassner
Can history be objective? Is there such a thing as historical truth?
These questions have fuelled debates in Europe among scholars
but also the public at large, particularly during the age of national
and ideological revolutions. They concern the distinction between
memory and history, and the relation or separation between history
and politics. What the contributions to this book confirm is that
these questions are too serious to be left to historians and politicians
alone, or rather that any meaningful answer requires the
scholar and the witness, as well as the statesman and the citizen to
recognise a number of epistemological and ethical criteria which
alone can avoid the intellectual danger of confusion and the moral
danger of hypocrisy. Critical self-examination and peaceful debate
are equally necessary among historians as well as within and
between political communities.
The influence of politics upon historical interpretations and viceversa
can be seen at three levels. It is important to distinguish between
these levels even though they often merge into each other
and borderline cases are frequent.
The first is that of the founding myth or of the narrative identity of a
people. The second is the political exploitation or manipulation of
history by one political faction against others. The third is the totalitarian
creation and imposition of an all-encompassing historical
myth which is forced upon the whole of society and upon the
teaching and the writing of history as an official truth, the negation
or criticism of which is considered treason.
Pierre Hassner is a French specialist of international relations. He is
Research Director emeritus at the Centre d´Etudes de Recherches
Nationales and of the Fondation Nationale de Sciences Politiques. He
teaches at the Johns-Hopkins University in Bologna. In 2003 Hassner
received the prestigious Prix Alexis de Tocqueville which is given to
those who promote humanism and civil liberties.