What is History / by Edward Hallett Carr - Universal History Library

WHAT IS HISTORY
quoted and much misunderstood dictum in the introduction to the Philosophy of Right that
'what is rational is real, and what is real is rational'.
Let us return for a moment to the causes of Robinson's death. We had no difficulty in
recognising that some of the causes were rational and 'real' and that others were irrational
and accidental. But by what criterion did we make the distinction? The faculty of reason is
normally exercised for some purpose. Intellectuals may sometimes reason, or think that
they reason, for fun. But, broadly speaking, human beings reason to an end. And when we
recognised certain explanations as rational, and other explanations as not rational, we
were, I suggest, distinguishing between explanations which served some end and
explanations which did not. In the case under discussion it made sense to suppose that the
curbing of alcoholic indulgence in drivers, or a stricter control over the condition of
brakes, or an improvement in the siting of roads, might serve the end of reducing the
number of traffic fatalities. But it made no sense at all to suppose that the number of traffic
fatalities could be reduced by preventing people from smoking cigarettes. This was the
criterion by which we made our distinction. And the same goes for our attitude to causes
in history. There, too, we distinguish between rational and accidental causes. The former,
since they are potentially applicable to other countries, other periods, and other conditions,
lead to fruitful generalisations, and lessons can be learned from them; they serve the end
of broadening and deepening our understanding. Accidental causes cannot be generalised;
and, since they are in the fullest sense of the word unique, they teach no lessons and lead
to no conclusions. But here I must make another point. It is precisely this notion of an end
in view which provides the key to our treatment of causation in history; and this
necessarily involves value judgements. Interpretation in history is, as we saw in the last
lecture, always bound up with value judgements, and causality is bound up with
interpretation. In the words of Meinecke - the great Meinecke, the Meinecke of the 1920s -
'the search for causalities in history is impossible without reference to values ... behind the
search for causalities there always lies, directly or indirectly, the search for values'. And
this recalls what I said earlier, about the dual and reciprocal function of history - to
promote our understanding of the past in the light of the present and of the present in the
light of the past. Anything which, like Antony's infatuation with Cleopatra's nose, fails to
contribute to this dual purpose is from the point of view of the historian dead and barren.
At this juncture, it is time for me to confess to a rather shabby trick which I have played
on you, though, since you will have had no difficulty in seeing through it, and since it has
enabled me on several occasions to shorten and simplify what I had to say, you will
perhaps have been indulgent enough to treat it as a convenient piece of shorthand. I have
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