Horizon

Though I'm always suspicious, at least initially, of appeals to neutrality, I do especially like this passage which I read in passing from Butterfield's introduction:

"But if the historian can rear himself up like a god and judge, or stand as the official avenger of the crimes of the past, then one can require that he shall be still more godlike and regard himself rather as the reconciler than as the avenger; taking it that his aim is to achieve the understanding of the men and parties and causes of the past, and that in this understanding, if it can be complete, all things will ultimately be reconciled."

C. S. Lewis tried to do this for Medieval culture in The Discarded Image. No one thanks him for it these days, but the ultimately doomed project of trying to see a culture the way it saw itself (if that even means anything, maybe it doesn't) is a worthwhile exercise.

Butterfield's view of values is a complex one, I think. In Chapter 5 he addresses this point about 'neutrality' in somewhat different terms:

"Impartiality in a historian stands condemned if it means the intellect in a state of indifference and every passion at rest. We go to the past to discover not facts only but significances. It is necessary that we should go with instinct and sympathy alive and all our humanity awake. It is necessary that we should call up from the resources of our nature all the things which deflect the thought of the scientist but combine to enrich the poet’s ...

"The whig historian is an example of the emotional drive that is necessary to make us question conclusions that seem foregone. He is an example of the fact that prejudice and passion itself can make a contribution to historical understanding. But it has happened that Protestants have been able to search their minds for a defence and an understanding of the persecution that Luther favoured, and have not realized that the very arguments they were using were part of the armoury of defence which Papal persecution has had at its command. The case against the whig historian lies in the fact that he brings the effort of understanding to a halt. He stops the work of imaginative sympathy at a point that could almost be fixed by a formula. It would not be untrue to say that, apart from specialist work of recent date, much greater ingenuity and a much higher imaginative endeavour have been brought into play upon the whigs, progressives and even revolutionaries of the past, than have been exercised upon the elucidation of tories and conservatives and reactionaries. The whig historian withdraws the effort in the case of the men who are most in need of it."

What I think he is saying is that a historian shouldn't suspend his ethical beliefs, but he should recognize that they are ultimately his beliefs and that they are the starting point of investigation, not the end point. So, for example, it is perfectly legitimate for a historian to regard slavery as wicked; but that in itself is not going to help him understand it as a historical phenemenon. His attitude may be commendable; but it is not perhaps very interesting or useful from a technical point of view.

Can you tell me more about the C.S. Lewis book?

(BTW, I tried to insert html tags into this comment but it didn't work. Any idea how to activate them?)

Looks like he's suggesting that the effort of understanding which he attributes to the "whig" historian is appropriate; the problem, then, is that they extend this effort to certain people or causes, but not to others?

C. S. Lewis published two fairly famous introductions to medieval literature: The Allegory of Love and The Discarded Image. He tries to bring just this sort of historical understanding (if I understand Butterfield rightly) to medieval literature, and I think he does a brilliant job.

The Allegory of Love provides an interpretation of medieval culture in order to defend allegory as a viable and meaningful art form. He may have been wrong in some details (it was published in the 30s), but on the whole it's convincing and, as far as I know, unique. The Discarded Image works along similar lines, but it was cobbled together from lecture notes so it isn't as coherent as The Allegory of Love.

I haven't read a lot of Lewis's Christian apologetics, but I get the impression that he liked being the champion of unpopular causes. In the case of his work on medieval literature his genius for it (whatever you think of the other stuff) really shows.

Looks like he's suggesting that the effort of understanding which he attributes to the "whig" historian is appropriate; the problem, then, is that they extend this effort to certain people or causes, but not to others?

Yes, I think that's part of it, although the argument (which is well worth reading in full if you ever get the time) is also partly about the distortion that 'generalists' tend to bring to the historical field through corrugation and selection of facts in their search for big themes. Interestingly enough I looked up the Journal of Modern History's original 1932 review of the book, and it critiques exactly the point you made:

"Mr. Butterfield is quite aware that the facts do not speak for themselves. Complete impartiality he thinks undesirable even if it were possible ... if, then, the historian is not to select, to abridge, and by selection and abridgement to emphasize what he deems important (as the whig historians do), and if he is not to relate everything and then suffocate the mind in a mass of undiscriminated detail, what is he to do? It seems that the historian must attain to "something like a creative act of the historical imagination". He is "something more than the mere external spectator ... by imaginative sympathy he makes the past intelligible to the present". If the whig historian retorts: "That is just what I have done", Mr. Butterfield in effect replies: "Yes, up to a certain point; but you limit your imaginative sympathy to Luther and the Protestants, and refuse to exercise it in dealing with their opponents". There is much to be said for a more catholic imaginative sympathy than Macaulay, or even Lord Acton, could attain to: but considering Mr. Butterfield's persistent reference to Luther and the Protestant Reformation for illustrating and enforcing his contentions, one wonders whether, after all, his quarrel with the whig interpretation does not come down to the commonplace fact that the kind of "imaginative sympathy" employed by Protestant-Whig historians is distasteful to him. His little book is full of admirable passages which historians may well read and ponder; but I have a feeling that the impulse to which we owe it was not so much intellectual curiosity about the nature of history and the function of historical writing as it was an emotional revulsion against the deification of Martin Luther and the glorification of 'modern progress.'"

(Not entirely fair, but Butterfield would have spared himself this kind of criticism if he had broadened the scope of his argument somewhat. He does bang on about the Protestants a bit too much).

I'll have to see if I can get hold of a copy of the Allegory of Love.

Orlet's article is superficial and uninformed. Particularly silly is the insinuation, unsupported by evidence, that Abelard was castrated because he defended Jews, not because he outraged a virgin's honor.