Carr and the Thesis Essay Example for Free

Carr and the Thesis Essay Edward Carr begins What is History? By saying what he thinks history is not†¦by being negative. In Carr’s words, what history is not, or should not be, is a way of constructing historical accounts that are obsessed with both the facts and the documents which are said to contain them. Carr believes that by doing this the profoundly important shaping power of the historian will surely be downplayed. Carr goes on to argue – in his first chapter- that this downgrading of historiography arose because mainstream historians combined three things: first, a simple but very strong assertion that the proper function of the historian was to show the past as ‘it really was’; second, a positivist stress on inductive method, where you first get the facts and then draw conclusions from them; and third – and this especially in Great Britain – a dominant empiricist rationale. Together, these constituted for Carr what still stood for the ‘commonsense’ view of history: The empirical theory of knowledge presupposes a complete separation between subject and object. Facts, like sense-impressions, impinge on the observer from outside and are independent of his consciousness. The process of reception is passive: having received the data, he then acts on them†¦This consists of a corpus of ascertained facts†¦First get your facts straight, then plunge at your peril into the shifting sands of interpretation – that is the ultimate wisdom of the empirical, commonsense school of history. 2 Clearly, however, commonsense doesn’t work for Mr.Carr. For he sees this as precisely the view one has to reject. Unfortunately things begin to get a little complicated when Carr tries to show the light, since while it seems he has three philosophical ways of going about his studies one being epistemological and two ideological his prioritizing of the epistemological over the ideological makes history a science too complex for comprehension to anyone other than himself. Carr’s epistemological argument states that not all the ‘facts of the past’ are actually ‘historical facts. Furthermore, there are vital distinctions to be drawn between the ‘events’ of the past, the ‘facts’ of the past and the ‘historical’ facts. That ‘historical facts’ only become this way is by being branded so by recognized historians. Carr develops this argument as follows: What is a historical fact? †¦According to the commonsense view, there are certain basic facts which are the same for all historians and which form, so to speak, the backbone of history the fact, for example, that the battle of Hastings was fought in 1066. But this view calls for two observations. In the first place, it is not with facts like these that the historian is primarily concerned. It is no doubt important to know that the great battle was fought in 1066 and not 1065 or 1067†¦The historian must not get these things wrong. But when points of this kind are raised, I am reminded of Housman’s remark that ‘accuracy is a duty, not a virtue’. To praise a historian for his accuracy is like praising an architect for using well-seasoned timber. It is a necessary condition of his work, but not his essential function. It is precisely for matters of this kind that the historian is entitled to rely on what have been called the ‘auxiliary sciences’ of history archaeology, epigraphy, numismatics, chronology, and so-forth. 3 Carr thinks that the insertion of such facts into a historical account, and the significance which they will have relative to other selected facts, depends not on any quality intrinsic to the facts ‘in and for themselves,’ but on the reading of events the historian chooses to give: It used to be said that facts speak for themselves. This is, of course, untrue. The facts speak only when the historian calls on them: it is he who decides to which facts to give the floor, and in what order or context†¦The only reason why we are interested to know that the battle was fought at Hastings in 1066 is that historians regard it as a major historical event. It is the historian who has decided for his own reasons that Caesar’s crossing of that petty stream, the Rubicon, is a fact of history, whereas the crossings of the Rubicon by millions of other people†¦interests nobody at all†¦The historian is [therefore] necessarily selective. The belief in a hard core of historical facts existing objectively and independently of the historian is a preposterous fallacy, but one which it is very hard to eradicate. 4 Following on from this, Carr ends his argument with an illustration of the process by which a slight event from the past is transformed into a ‘historical fact’. At Stalybridge Wakes, in 1850, Carr tells us about a gingerbread seller being beaten to death by an angry mob; this is a well documented and authentic ‘fact from the past. But for it to become a ‘historical fact,’ Carr argues that it needed to be taken up by historians and inserted by them into their interpretations, thence becoming part of our historical memory. In other words concludes Carr: Its status as a historical fact will turn on a question of interpretation. This element of interpretation enters into every fact of history. 5 This is the substance of Carr’s first argument and the first ‘positionâ€⠄¢ that is easily taken away after a quick read his work. Thereby initially surmising that Carr thinks that all history is just interpretation and there are really no such things as facts. This could be an easily mislead conclusion if one ceases to read any further. If the interpretation of Carr stops at this point, then not only are we left with a strong impression that his whole argument about the nature of history, and the status of historical knowledge, is effectively epistemological and skeptical, but we are also not in a good position to see why. It’s not until a few pages past the Stalybridge example that Carr rejects that there was too skeptical a relativism of Collingwood, and begins a few pages after that to reinstate ‘the facts’ in a rather unproblematical way, which eventually leads him towards his own version of objectivity. Carr’s other two arguments are therefore crucial to follow, and not because they are explicitly ideological. The first of the two arguments is a perfectly reasonable one, in which Carr is opposed to the obsession of facts, because of the resulting common sense view of history that turns into an ideological expression of liberalism. Carr’s argument runs as follows. The classical, liberal idea of progress was that individuals would, in exercising their freedom in ways which took ‘account’ of the competing claims of others somehow and without too much intervention, move towards a harmony of interests resulting in a greater, freer harmony for all. Carr thinks that this idea was then extended into the argument for a sort of general intellectual laissez-faire, and then more particularly into history. For Carr, the fundamental idea supporting liberal historiography was that historians, all going about their work in different ways but mindful of the ways of others, would be able to collect the facts and allow the ‘free-play’ of such facts, thereby securing that they were in harmony with the events of the past which were now truthfully represented. As Carr puts this: The nineteenth century was, for the intellectuals of Western Europe, a comfortable period exuding confidence and optimism. The facts were on the whole satisfactory; and the inclination to ask and answer awkward questions about them correspondingly weak†¦The liberal†¦view of history had a close affinity with the economic doctrine of laissez-faire – also the product of a serene and self-confident outlook on the world. Let everyone get on with his particular job, and the hidden hand would take care of the universal harmony. The facts of history were themselves a demonstration of the supreme fact of a beneficent and apparently infinite progress towards higher things. 6 Carr’s second argument is therefore both straightforward and ideological. His point is that the idea of the freedom of the facts to speak for themselves arose from the happy coincidence that they just happened to speak liberal. But of course Carr did not. Thereby knowing that in the history he wrote the facts had to be made to speak in a way other than liberal (i. e. in a Marxist type of way) then his own experience of making ‘the facts’, his facts, is universalized to become everyone’s experience. Historians, including liberals, have to transform the ‘facts of the past’ into ‘historical facts’ by their positioned intervention. And so, Carr’s second argument against ‘commonsense’ history is ideological. For that matter, so is the third. But if the second of Carr’s arguments is easy to see, his third and final one is not. This argument needs a little ironing out. In the first two critiques of ‘commonsense’ history, Carr has effectively argued that the facts have no ‘intrinsic’ value, but that they’ve only gained their ‘relative’ value when historians put them into their accounts after all the other facts were under consideration. The conclusion Carr drew is that the facts only speak when the historian calls upon them to do so. However, it was part of Carr’s position that liberals had not recognized the shaping power of the historian because of the ‘cult of the fact’ and that, because of the dominance of liberal ideology, their view had become commonsense, not only for themselves, but for practically all historiography. It appeared to Carr that historians seemed to subscribe to the position that they ought to act as the channel through which ‘the facts of the past for their own sake’ were allowed self-expression. But Carr, not wanting to go the route of his fellow historians, nor wanting to succumb to the intellectual complaints about the demise of the experience of originality, says: In the following pages I shall try to distance myself from prevailing trends among Western intellectuals†¦to show how and why I think they have gone astray and to stake out a claim, if not for an optimistic, at any rate for a saner and more balanced outlook on the future. 7 It is therefore this very pointed position which stands behind and gives most, if not all, of the reason for Carr’s writing What is History? Carr himself seems to be quite clear that the real motive behind his text was the ideological necessity to re-think and re-articulate the idea of continued historical progress among the ‘conditions’ and the doubters of his own ‘skeptical days’. Carr’s ‘real’ concern was ‘the fact’ that he thought the future of the whole modern world was at stake. Carr’s own optimism cannot be supported by ‘the facts’, so that his own position is just his opinion, as equally without foundation as those held by optimistic liberals. Consequently, the only conclusion that can arguably be drawn is that ‘the past’ doesn’t actually enter into historiography, except rhetorically. In actuality there should be no nostalgia for the loss of a ‘real’ past, no sentimental memory of a more certain time, nor a panic that there are no foundations for knowledge other than rhetorical conversation.

Metaphysical Conceit Essay -- English Literature

Metaphysical Conceit Metaphysical Conceita highly ingenious kind of conceit widely used by the metaphysical poets, who explored all areas of knowledge to find, in the startlingly esoteric or the shockingly commonplace, telling and unusual analogies for their ideas. Metaphysical conceits often exploit verbal logic to the point of the grotesque and sometimes achieve such extravagant turns on meaning that they become absurd (e.g. Richard Crashaw's description of Mary Magdalene's eyes as "Two walking baths; two weeping motions,/Portable and compendious oceans"). These conceits work best when the reader is given a perception of a real but previously unsuspected similarity that is enlightening; then they may speak to our minds and emotions with force. Examples of potential metaphysical conceits->love is like an oil change; love is like a postage stamp; love is like a pair of compasses; the soul of a sinner is like a damaged pot. As you can see, the temptation to be merely clever must be hard to resist, while the difficulty in making such a conceit truly effective is quite considerable. The Flea 1. Background: Étienne Pasquier and Catherine Desroches, 1579. Pseudo-Ovidian flea poems in which the lover wishes to become a flea in order to gain enhanced access to the beloved's charms; theme is often bestialization of the lover by his own passion. 2. Plot is simple: a) speaker points to a flea that has jumped from him to the woman and bites both; b) she has hunted down and caught the flea; speaker tries to dissuade her from killing it; c) she disregards his pleas and kills it. N.B. all the action occurs between the stanzas. Elaboration: he has argued that their being bitten by the flea is tantamount to ha... ...en the most moronic of women-unless she were as desirous of being convinced as the speaker is of convincing her-and this one is far from moronic. She is clearly not bewildered or dazzled by these arguments. The whole poem has the air of a little intellectual game indulged in by these two, both of them knowing what the outcome will be even if they don't quite know how the conclusion will be reached, and both enjoying the game for its own sake, rather than that of a serious attempt to lead someone astray. If the poem is read this way, the fact that the argument is false, is pure sophistry, is at least beside the point and can even become a strength-it is the interaction between the participants that is central. Donne (also Spenser, see 28, 29, 75, 54) frequently uses argument as a form of love-play and posits a woman who is an intellectual match for the man.

Colleges and graduate schools

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Sports Culture s Influence On Rape And Violence - 1803 Words

Sport Culture s Influence on Rape and Violence Many cases of athletes committing sexual assault have been present in the media, especially throughout the past 5 years. For example, Steubenville High School football in 2012, Vanderbilt football in 2013, and a Florida State athlete in 2014. Sports team members make up less than two percent of most campus populations, but the comprise about 20.2 percent of the men involved in sexual assault or attempted sexual assault (Flood Dyson). These cases and statistics raise the question, Is sport culture negatively affecting athletes to commit acts of rape and violence? To discover the answer to that question it is important to analyze several sources that psychoanalyze both athletes and†¦show more content†¦Overall, the main factors that affect rape and violence are a person’s involvement in violent subculture, the acceptance of rape myths, beliefs about gender roles, and overall lifestyle. Other factors that have been identif ied are the percent of people residing in a standard metropolitan statistical area, economic inequality and the percent of the unemployment. One in five women and one in seventy-one men will experience rape at some point in their life (McMahon). Several studies suggest that college athletes, and the jock culture they are a part of, are not only involved in campus violence, but play a significant role in the genesis of rape and violence. College, professional, and high school sports can highly competitive. The environments athletes play in can be very aggressive and violent, especially in contact sports such as football, basketball, and hockey. Results from one study suggest that the participation in aggressive high school sports is one of the multiple developmental pathways leading to relationship violence (Forbes). Contact sports teach athletes physical aggression and dominance, extreme competitiveness, physical endurance and strength, insensitivity to others’ pain, and a to lerance for pain. Through sports athletes are taught to use force to settle conflicts. Many sports have become more violent due to advances in safety equipment. In some sports, after a violent play that helps the team gain an advantage in the