Carr's What is History? A Critical Analysis

Introduction to Carr's Philosophy of History

Edward Carr's What is History? is a philosophical examination of what makes historians historians. It examines the way we think about history and challenges us to reconsider the way we think about ourselves. Most importantly, it suggests that history is not static but rather an unending discourse between ourselves and the past—a discourse in which the past is constantly revealing itself and we in turn are constantly questioning our own place. The book is definitely worth reading for any student of history. Though it ventures at times into lengthy, tangential discussions of amusing philosophical questions that can become tiresome, overall Carr's witty juxtaposition of scholarly knowledge and irreverence ("historical farts," for instance) makes the book a humorous and enlightening journey through the mind of an old teacher of the craft.

There are "facts" and then there are "historical facts," according to Edward Carr. Accuracy is the duty of the historian, not the criterion by which his work is to be judged. This is a rational argument, as Carr likens the writing of history to an architect who designs a great building: it is the architect's responsibility to use good materials, but it is his particular genius that allows him to turn these materials into something majestic, like a cathedral. The same may be said of the historian, who must know names, dates, and places because without them he cannot construct a solid structure of events. But they are only the framework or foundation. It is the interpretation, the understanding, the overall vision of history that makes the historian who he is. It is the arrangement of facts that tells the story.

Facts versus Historical Facts

The idea that "the facts speak for themselves" is untrue, states Carr. In fact, it is the historian who decides which facts are worth remembering and why. This statement alone makes one appreciate this book because what Carr is saying is sheer common sense. He is asserting the primary function of the historian, which is to know why history is meaningful. Dickens satirized the notion that "facts" are all one needs (and not common sense, vision, or sense of greater philosophical or even theological meaning), which Carr notes as well. This observation alone makes the book worth recommending.

Carr's book gets off to a great start and improves progressively. He challenges the idea that historians are merely gatekeepers of facts—the 19th century view of history in which no judgment is to be made. What Carr affirms is quite the contrary: "The historian is necessarily selective." In other words, any historian worth his salt will know which points to emphasize and which to ignore, much the same way a great writer of fiction will know how to arrange the plot points of his story with a beginning, middle, and end.

Furthermore, the "historical facts" of the historian's profession are those which have both received public acknowledgment from other historians and are also of some importance. The kicking to death of a street vendor, for instance, is a "historical fart" if multiple historians find it worth mentioning in footnotes. It is not of the same significance, however, as Caesar's crossing of the Rubicon, which is a "historical fact." This brilliant observation makes Carr's book both enlightening and fun to read. Only a man with a great sense of history and a keen sense of humor could call something a "historical fart" and get away with it.

The Historian as Interpreter and Selector

Carr is also polite in his writing. Before beginning a brief personal narrative, he asks the reader: "May I be allowed a personal reminiscence?" The question is unnecessary, of course, because the reader by this point is sure to allow Carr whatever he wants. Yet the fact that Carr asks makes him even more endearing, as though in spite of having the reader eating out of his palm, he still wants to make sure the reader is quite comfortable.

However, the enthusiasm with which one is reading soon turns to confusion as Carr begins to suggest that all history is a "historical fart"—that is, it is mostly composed of judgments written by a select few individuals, which have been accepted over time as "historical fact," when really they are nothing more than the personal opinions of a particular perspective. If this is the case, one must ask: Is Carr suggesting that the idea of "historical fact" is somewhat ludicrous? The reader must continue to make sense of his point.

Upon further reading, one is mollified by Carr's ingenious wit and ability to turn a phrase: "The nineteenth-century fetishism of facts was completed and justified by a fetishism of documents. The documents were the Ark of the Covenant in the temple of fact." Here, Carr touches on the overwhelming and often debilitating technique of modern academia, which is to make empirical research the only kind worth doing. Carr appears to mock this approach, though one cannot be entirely certain of which approach he is advocating.

The Problem of Historical Authenticity

Carr uses an anecdote about Stresemann and Bernhard to convey the notion that authenticity is hard to deliver when it comes to preserving history. Bernhard mostly told the story of Stresemann's successes in dealing with the West. When that story was later abbreviated and condensed, the history of Stresemann became even less authentic than before—yet this is how most individuals' "histories" are remembered by historians, according to Carr. This appears to be a troubling point for Carr. While it is a valid observation, it is one that he labors over, and the point seems to have been made sufficiently.

Carr quickly moves to his central point: farts and fetishisms do not a history make. Yet what else is there? Carr suggests that every historian is writing from a unique perspective—Augustine from that of an early Christian, Gibbon from that of an eighteenth-century Englishman. He also admits that such a view is "total skepticism." He concludes by asserting that the first answer to what is history is this: it is an unending dialogue between the historian and his "facts," between the past and the present.

Causation and the Meaning of History

From this point on, Carr embarks on a more theoretical approach to the question and in doing so raises a number of questions which seem tangential. For example, which came first, society or the individual? It has never occurred to many readers to ask this question and there is not much interest in it. In fact, there is not even much interest in asking "Why?" as Carr notes is the fundamental question of the historian. However, what does interest readers is the way that Carr believes the historian attempts to answer that question. In one way, he suggests, the attempt is made by discerning the "cause" of men's actions. This makes sense as a reasonable way of answering the "why": it is what Herodotus and Montesquieu did.

But what the historian does is to arrange the causes, which in turn makes him an interpreter of history. Every historian arranges the causes of events (if he is any good) in a way that he believes best reflects the reality of their priority. That is what writing history is all about, says Carr. This is a logical argument and one can easily give consent to it, although one may not necessarily agree with the causes Carr lists or arranges in his discussion of what led to the Russian Revolution. But each reader, of course, has his own perspective, and that is Carr's point.

Carr goes on to discuss a variety of philosophies that affect the way historians view history, often juxtaposing historians from the nineteenth century with those of modern times to show how their views of what is important change. However, Carr's discussion of causation in history becomes a little too pedantic. It is as if at times Carr loses the thread of his own thoughts and gleefully provides anecdotes that are, no doubt, appealing to him but tedious for the reader. Carr's book begins with a nice mix of inoffensive charm and intellectual pursuit. The charm tends to give way to the pursuit by the middle of the book, and that is when it begins to feel as though Carr is laboring over a point—and one is not even certain what the point is.

That historians view history differently? Understood. But when Carr begins a lengthy discourse on determinism, one is very nearly tempted to put the book down. These questions may be important to some, but they feel tangential. Perhaps it is because there is little meaning in high-minded phrases such as, "The entire historical process is a refraction of historical law through the accidental." It sounds nice, but one is not convinced that it means anything. "Historical fart" carried more meaning than this sentence. Perhaps that is an indication of something about the reader.

Conclusion: The Ongoing Historical Dialogue

By the conclusion of the book, after Carr's several lectures have allowed him to touch at length on different historical subjects and give the opinions of different historians and show how those opinions were formulated, Carr finally arrives back at his favorite subject—the difference between the nineteenth-century historian and the twentieth-century historian. Carr discusses the differences between conservative and liberal interpretations of history and laments that intellectuals are, in his day and age, subordinating the use of their reason to the "order of things" at the time in which they live.