Historical Knowledge and the Moral Lessons

Extract

History is implied in the object, the same as in researches; it is that which partly creates it. The choice of the questions that arise à propos of long historical periods is neither fortuitous nor chaotic. One can discern tendencies that explain themselves on both the historical and sociological planes. In formulating his questions the historian adopts a point of view having itself a certain historic dimension. The different methodologies on the subject of the relative value attributable to such and such a type of problem do not only anticipate numerous aspects assumed by the historical processes of the past. They depend equally on the way in which history and the historian are wedged into contemporary life. The problems of history, the questions themselves that arise constitute a fragment of the history that makes them. History depends then on the future; on the specific correlations established between the present, the contemporary historical reality and the functions that history assumes at the moment, on the one hand, and the knowledge of the past, on the other hand.