Cherchez La Femme!
The celebrated opening line of Nietzsche’s Jenseits is: “Supposing truth is a woman-- what then?” I feel the urge to paraphrase it like this: “Supposing history is a woman--- what then?” In view of my approach to history, this is not much of a stretch.-- Supposing history is… truth?
…There can be no understanding of Russia without understanding her history. But history exists in different versions. As Comrade Stalin used to say, “History is a class concept.” ...So, what is truth?
“No Way To Treat A Lady.”
History is in fact a very delicate lady, and I say that she has been rather shamefully treated and is in dire need of getting her honor back. Her worst woe is that she is being kept, gagged and bound, in a dark cellar, while some impudent impostors have been successfully impersonating her. How is it possible? you may ask, as presumably history deals with facts, and “facts are stubborn things.”
How naïve is that last phrase! Facts are, indeed, stubborn things, except that in all ages and generations the things, which we have accepted as “facts,” have usually been not. A Chinese wisdom says that “when one man says a lie, it is still a lie, until a hundred men repeat it, when it becomes the truth.” Thus is all history made, and thus fakes acquire the name of facts!
Nietzsche makes exactly the same point in the following two passages:
“All things are subject to interpretation,” he says. “Whichever interpretation prevails at a given time is a function of power, and not truth.” And this one, too: “There are no facts, only interpretations.”
This is a virtually identical thought to Stalin’s “history is a class concept,” but his is of course dressed up in Marxian clothing. My frequent recourse to Stalin's dictum must be appreciated by anybody who makes history, especially political history, the object of their lifelong study. The meaning of this phrase reaches beyond the Marxist idiom, going straight to Nietzsche, bringing up the critical philosophical point that what we call “history” holds no objectivity in it at all, but mainly deals with subjective interpretations, production and repackaging of fact. Its output is normally fiction, or what Nietzsche calls “monumental history.” (In fact, Nietzsche justifiably argues that the best history is always mythology at heart…)
As a matter of fact, I think that we ought to redefine the term “fact” as something which we either honestly believe or deliberately propose to be true at the given time. All "facts" are made of pure subjectivity dressed up as objectivity? Incidentally, is it at all possible for anybody or anything to liberate the real lady history from her bondage? I don't think so! At least, such a possibility is contrary to what I have discovered my personal experience.
Besides, no one can claim that they know history, even if they may have been "eyewitness" to it. Things aren’t always what they seem to be, even to an eyewitness! But what we surely can and must do, in order to restore the lady’s honor, is to tell posterity what we know, and what we think we know, about the important things which happened on our watch, or to which we have had an inside track, with just one caveat, that we are not passing off our story as gospel truth, but only as what we think may have been the truth, with a full recognition of our limitations, and courageously allowing for the possibility of a possible self-deception.
The celebrated opening line of Nietzsche’s Jenseits is: “Supposing truth is a woman-- what then?” I feel the urge to paraphrase it like this: “Supposing history is a woman--- what then?” In view of my approach to history, this is not much of a stretch.-- Supposing history is… truth?
…There can be no understanding of Russia without understanding her history. But history exists in different versions. As Comrade Stalin used to say, “History is a class concept.” ...So, what is truth?
Coming back to my Nietzschean paraphrase: “Supposing history is a woman-- what then?” I can think of only one worthy answer---
"Cherchez La Femme!"“No Way To Treat A Lady.”
History is in fact a very delicate lady, and I say that she has been rather shamefully treated and is in dire need of getting her honor back. Her worst woe is that she is being kept, gagged and bound, in a dark cellar, while some impudent impostors have been successfully impersonating her. How is it possible? you may ask, as presumably history deals with facts, and “facts are stubborn things.”
How naïve is that last phrase! Facts are, indeed, stubborn things, except that in all ages and generations the things, which we have accepted as “facts,” have usually been not. A Chinese wisdom says that “when one man says a lie, it is still a lie, until a hundred men repeat it, when it becomes the truth.” Thus is all history made, and thus fakes acquire the name of facts!
Nietzsche makes exactly the same point in the following two passages:
“All things are subject to interpretation,” he says. “Whichever interpretation prevails at a given time is a function of power, and not truth.” And this one, too: “There are no facts, only interpretations.”
This is a virtually identical thought to Stalin’s “history is a class concept,” but his is of course dressed up in Marxian clothing. My frequent recourse to Stalin's dictum must be appreciated by anybody who makes history, especially political history, the object of their lifelong study. The meaning of this phrase reaches beyond the Marxist idiom, going straight to Nietzsche, bringing up the critical philosophical point that what we call “history” holds no objectivity in it at all, but mainly deals with subjective interpretations, production and repackaging of fact. Its output is normally fiction, or what Nietzsche calls “monumental history.” (In fact, Nietzsche justifiably argues that the best history is always mythology at heart…)
As a matter of fact, I think that we ought to redefine the term “fact” as something which we either honestly believe or deliberately propose to be true at the given time. All "facts" are made of pure subjectivity dressed up as objectivity? Incidentally, is it at all possible for anybody or anything to liberate the real lady history from her bondage? I don't think so! At least, such a possibility is contrary to what I have discovered my personal experience.
Besides, no one can claim that they know history, even if they may have been "eyewitness" to it. Things aren’t always what they seem to be, even to an eyewitness! But what we surely can and must do, in order to restore the lady’s honor, is to tell posterity what we know, and what we think we know, about the important things which happened on our watch, or to which we have had an inside track, with just one caveat, that we are not passing off our story as gospel truth, but only as what we think may have been the truth, with a full recognition of our limitations, and courageously allowing for the possibility of a possible self-deception.
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