"Idea of History"

Sir,—Dr. Munz has recognised that natural science is subjective in the sense that "the object to be explained, e.g., a stone, can only be explained in terms of the observer, for the stone never thinks about itself and cannot explain its behaviour in any terms at all." He says next that history can, accordingly, he objective—since "history deals with human begins who have minds and who can therefore explain their behaviour to themselves."

Now, does this mean that the historical understanding of a historical figure is to be, if it is to be objective, the same as that figure's understanding of himself? Surely, such a history would be no more objective in its understanding of historical figures than were those figures in their understanding of themselves—and people are notoriously lacking in objectivity in regard to themselves.

On the other hand, does Dr. Munz really mean that history can be objective only if it "can ultimately explain a person in the way in which that person might have explained himself" If he had been able to be objective about himself? In other words, is the historian to make himself the vehicle for the "objective" self of the historical person? This would seem to be what Dr. Munz does intend—but surely such a history could still be no more objective than the historian concerned.

Any discipline which seeks to understand and explain things sets up those things as "objects" of study and sets up itself as the "subject" conducting the study. The understanding and the explanation are accordingly always "subjective" to some extent, though they always aim at "objectivity." This seems to be Dr. Munz's own meaning for the word "subjective": the peculiar thing is that he should have tried to set history apart from other disciplines, claiming "real objectivity" for history but denying it to science.

The logic of the case is singularly clear: no explanation can be objective without being to some extent subjective, because all explanations of objects must issue from the subject who is doing the explaining. We think Dr. Munz would agree with this logic and with its premisses—why then does he still try to expel altogether from historical explanations that very same subjectivity which he finds inexpungable from science?

Moreover, our perplexity increases when we remember that Dr. Munz wants us to accept and use "our disillusionment and our scepticism," instead of running away from the fact that "the world does not look the same from two different peoples' standpoints and that whatever one believed in it was always dependent on one's particular point of view." To say that "no judgment is true beyond the boundaries of the one particular world in which it originated," is simply to say that all judgments are to some extent subjective. Why does Dr. Munz himself try to expunge subjectivity from history?

Such subjectivity cannot be expunged by saying, 'I will "explain a person in the way in which that person might have explained himself" if he could speak to me today'- this is merely substituting that person's subjectivity for your own. Nor can it be expunged by saying, 'I will "explain a person in the way in which that person might have explained himself" if he had known the objective truth about himself'—for this still leaves us with the subjectivity of the historian who is doing the explaining.

In fact, subjectivity can never be expunged, and "real objectivity" is a misleading ideal. Dr. Munz seems to know this fact: he asks us to accept it and use it: why then does he himself try to do away with it ?