Theory of Knowledge - Course Companion for Students Marija Uzunova Dang Arvin Singh Uzunov Dang

IV. Ethics
is filld with xtraordinary figurs who
History
onsidrd grat y th standards of thir
wr
ut whos gratnss has not agd wll.
tim,
y th fforts of thial historians, in
Promptd
last fw dads thr hav n a numr
th
rvisd judgmnts that ast on-grat
of
figurs into a ngativ light. That list
historial
asualtis, or rprhnsil popl, dpnding
of
your politis, inluds Winston Churhill,
on
Rhods and many othrs on a long list of
Cil
whit mn. By ontmporary standards
mostly
figurs would judgd untnaly raist
ths
sxist—that is rarly opn to qustion—
or
th dat raiss som vry important
ut
qustions. What ar th impliations
knowldg
judging popl in th past y th prsnt?
of
do w diffrntiat twn individual and
How
rsponsiility?
olltiv
9
IV.3 Judging the past by the standards
Empirical historians had long seen a central aw
in their nineteenth-century forebears’ method as
of the present
being their desire to promote certain moral and
ideological causes in the course of the production
of history. The classic example of this entanglement
came in Whig histories of nineteenth-century Britain
in which valorisations of parliamentary democracy
and modern progress were also understood to be
coded references to the moral superiority of the
modern West and the place of Britain at the apex of
this benecent civilisation. It was, however, only the
retrospective judgement of subsequent generations
of historians which saw the Whigs cast in this light,
for the Victorians themselves had viewed their
practices as exemplifying the traditions of neutrality
which emerged with the empirical method. If the
Whigs were thus blinded as to the moral values they
smuggled into their histories, were later historians
any more self-aware, especially given the charged
political environments of the twentieth century and
the adoption of Marxist, conservative, feminist and
other ideological positions and methods?
(Gallois quoted in Dunn, Faire 2012)
Figure 9.7
Following pressure by the “Rhodes Must Fall” movement, the Cecil Rhodes statue is removed at the University of Cape Town,
South Africa, in 2015
276