The Historian's Brain

The best analogy of a Historian's brain I have heard is of it being like a dung heap in that, if you leave it long enough it is likely something will grow. If we believe, as Marx maintained, that our being in society determines or consciousness then wolly thinking of the worst sort in the arts and social sciences is invariably going to be the order of the day as upbringing, preconceived ideas, prejudices, bias and personal interests are all going to be influential in shaping what you say and in some cases when the deductive research that has been undertaken allows the Historian to stumble onto some sort of objectivity that objectivity might even be put aside in favour of blatant opportunism. Now, I do believe that our being in society determines our consciousness but I also hope that some sort of objectivity is possible.

Perhaps, the nature of the research undertaken by Norman Finkelstein can justify such hope. His methods are certainly more credible than the "falsificationist" approach I tried to adopt as an undergraduate in the wake of my reading Karl Popper; too much academic hedging and a very limited hypothesis were the results of this limited methodology. Having now read a lot of what Dr.Finkelstein (a little attempt to introduce a bit of humour into a somewhat serious post) has written the only criticism I can levy at his "forensic scientist" approach is that it requires hard work and detailed analysis on the reader's part. Not always something that lazy old me is up to. Nevertheless, we should prevail because it is only by prevailing that we won't succumb to the absurd prejudices and assumptions of the wooly thinkers. Here I am thinking of, among others, Daniel Jonah Goldhagen who in his book, "Hitler's willing executioners" seems to see certain nasty qualities as being unique to Germans. The death camps at Auschwitz-Birkenau, Treblinka, Sobibor and elsewhere were a reality and they are a very real indictment of man's inhumanity to man. However, it is nonsense to assume that such inhumanity is monopolised by Germans. The real absurdity is that Goldhagen in his somewhat personal debate with Finkelstein accuses the latter of being politically motivated. This is "argumentum ad hominem" and when I look at Goldhagen's upbringing, preconceived ideas, prejudices, bias and personal interests and, yes, blatant opportunism, this really is a case of the pot calling the kettle black.

The picture above is of the cover to Finkelstein's book, 'Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History' .