Lynn Hunt

“What historians do best,” argue Joyce Appleby, Lynn Hunt, and Margaret Jacob in their 1995 book Telling the Truth About History, “is make connections with the past in order to illuminate the problems of the present and the potential of the future.” Yet, the very legitimacy of history as an academic discipline has been questioned in the post-World War II era, and, according to the authors, “needs defending today from two broad attacks.” Skillfully negotiating between the show more relativistic nihilism of the postmodernists and the cloying nostalgia of historical traditionalism, Appleby, Hunt, and Jacob offer a pragmatic vision for the future of history. Without rejecting outright either relativism or narrative, the authors propose a via media designed to facilitate a “rigorous search for truth usable by all peoples.”
Inspired by the breathtaking advances of Newtonian science, the scholars of the Enlightenment came to believe that all knowledge could by systemized. The study of history was wrestled away from “pious monks poring over ancient fragments” in the eighteenth century and became the domain of secular philosophes eager to apply the principles of heroic science to historical inquiry. Hermeneutics – the critical analysis of historical texts – took on a new significance as Enlightenment historians sought to uncover scientific truth in the relics of the past. A century later German professor Leopold von Ranke built on this scientific tradition, trekking to far-flung libraries and archives, tirelessly combing through thousands of dusty documents, all to reveal the absolute truth of “how things really were.” Ranke’s invention of the teaching seminar insured that a generation of historians would follow his exacting, methodological example.
As the nineteenth century wore on, however, “how things really were” seemed to become far less certain. Karl Marx’s mid-century thunderbolts depicting all of history as class struggle wobbled accepted notions about historical truth. The ensuing decades brought even more uncertainty. In 1913, Charles Beard’s depiction of the Founding Fathers as self-serving men on the make shattered the mythologized American narrative and released a host of American historians “from the vow of silence imposed by patriotism.” In Europe, the “total history” model articulated by the Annales School deemphasized the significance of political and intellectual issues in favor of social and environmental phenomena and created a new paradigm for the study of the past.
In the 1960s historical truth, and, in fact, truth itself, came under renewed assault. The postmodernists “argued vehemently against any research into origins,” claiming that “paucity and manipulation characterize truth-seeking,” and therefore all knowledge is subjective and hollow. Postmodern relativism, while rejected by traditionalist defenders of the American narrative, has dealt a body blow to empirical historiography. The question posed by the authors gets to the core of the postmodernist challenge: “If truth depends on the observer’s standpoint, how can there be any transcendent, universal, or absolute truth?”
Appleby, Hunt, and Jacob acknowledge the impact of postmodernism on the study of history, and credit the movement for “dragging out from the shadowy world of unexamined assumptions the discrete propositions undergirding the objectivity of science.” They are not, however, willing to cede the historical battlefield to the forces of nihilism. “We are arguing here,” the authors insist, “that truths about the past are possible, even if they are not absolute, and hence are worth struggling for.” They call for a middle ground of historical inquiry that recognizes the impossibility of the kind of absolute truth once promised by the purveyors of heroic science, yet does not wallow in despondency and skepticism.
The authors’ pragmatic approach, their “qualified objectivity . . . disentangled from the scientific model of objectivity,” embraces modern multiculturalism. The “meta-narrative” of American achievement and progress began to give way in the latter half of the twentieth century to a multicultural flood of interpretations and perspectives. Women, racial and ethnic minorities, gays, and other interest groups lobbied for a place at the table long denied them by the traditionalist approach. The authors contend that this “democratization” of history is a healthy development. “Knowledge of the culture of others,” they argue, “in no way obliterates the power or authenticity of one’s own culture.” They do, however, caution against allowing vibrant multiculturalism to devolve into political correctness, which deters “open dissent” and “threatens the very democratic practices that affirmative action was created to serve.”
Telling the Truth About History is a wise and thoughtful study about the nature of history and the value of historiography. Refreshingly candid and practical, the authors take on some of the most vexing issues facing their field of study, and acquit themselves with grace and aplomb. Keats famously wrote that, “Beauty is truth, truth beauty – that is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.” But, beauty, Mr. Keats, is in the eye of the beholder; and, truth, as Appleby, Hunt, and Jacob make clear, can be a coy mistress, indeed. show less

This was a fascinating alternative historical perspective on how "human rights" came to shape the American and French Revolutions. Of particular interest to me, was Hunt's convincing argument in Chapter One that 18th century epistolary novels helped create a sense of "inner-self," in readers, thus promoting empathy for "other" that extended to strangers and previously undervalued citizens. The chapter on torture was also fascinating, as Hunt argued that awareness of inner self led to a show more belief that our bodies are our own and only we have the right to our own bodies - which created a concrete turn of public opinion toward notions of discipline and torture.

In all, I really loved the perspectives offered in this book and loved how each point was tied to historical fact. Even if you don't agree with the conclusions Hunt draws from those facts, I highly recommend mulling the entire book over! show less

I feel as if I have to justify this enthusiastic rating. With the admission that I'm no scholar of the era, I'll just go ahead and say the book was incredibly interesting, informative, and accessible. Thoroughly enjoyed it, if one can "enjoy" learning about all the ways in which liberté and égalité only applied to half the population.

The first half of the book, which is full of intriguing ideas, deep research and on-point examples, deserves at least 4 stars. The second half, however, is much weaker, and while still interesting, lacks the same spark of original insight so much on display in the first section. I found her discussion of the foundations of human rights in the emerging ability of humans to empathize, formed by the new genre of the epistolary novels.