Comment by coffeeblack
3 years ago
Correct.
History in an ideal world tries to record what happened.
But realistically, history is a tool for politics.
But judging by the heavy downvotes of your comment, that fact doesn’t seem to be popular.
3 years ago
Correct.
History in an ideal world tries to record what happened.
But realistically, history is a tool for politics.
But judging by the heavy downvotes of your comment, that fact doesn’t seem to be popular.
Even a biased account of history is a record of history, in some ways even more interesting when you have other biased accounts to compare with.
Goofy as his methods are, Herodotus is a very compelling read specifically because it's not one coherent narrative, but a collection of points-of-view (none of which may be entirely correct, but reflect what people claimed at least).
> that fact doesn’t seem to be popular.
No its because he question to concept of truth itself. Literally everybody knows history writing is manipulated for many reasons.
But in my observation, however in my view historiography is often far more complex then reflecting simply political desires.
I don't question "concept of truth." Ironically, the truth is corrupted already.
To answer the question "is there any other kind" would be enough to provide one [just one] example of a truthful history book (it is ok if it is imprecise in details as long as it is accurate overall--think physics theories within their application domain--we are far far away from history resembling hard sciences).
The example would demonstrate falsehoods you believe in.