Herman Paul

Relations to the past: a research agenda for historical theorists

What are current tendencies in historical theory, judging by the inaugural conference (2013) of the International Network for Theory of History? In this article, I note two tendencies: an interest in history beyond the academy and a desire to overcome the theoretical polarization that has characterized the field in past decades. Subsequently, I argue that these tendencies can be seen as reflecting a single research agenda, which, in turn, can be described in terms of ‘relations to the past.’ I unpack this notion, borrowed from Mark Day, in some detail, explain what sort of questions it helps address, and offer two examples from in and outside the historical discipline. If I am right in arguing that this research agenda captures much of what is currently being offered under the flag of historical theory, then historical theory seems on its way to become a field of expertise on the ways in which both historians and others relate to the past.

A sun that lost its shine: the Reformation in Dutch Protestant memory culture, 1817-1917

This essay is a first exploration of nineteenth-century Dutch Protestant memory culture. Using Reformation commemorations as our case study, we show that the appropriation of Luther and Calvin for group identity purposes underwent a twofold transition in the century between 1817 and 1917. Whereas the unity of Dutch Protestantism was a dominant theme during the first decades of the nineteenth century, the Reformation became increasingly used as an instrument for justifying subgroup identities. Simultaneously, a past-oriented discourse (the Reformation as “origin”) was gradually abandoned in favour of a future-oriented discourse (Reformation “principles” that ought to be obeyed and applied). This, we argue, distinguished Dutch Protestant memory culture both from national commemorative discourse and from Protestant memory cultures abroad.

Hercules at the Crossroads: Confirmation as a Rite of Passage in the Nineteenth-Century Netherlands Reformed Church

What did it mean for eighteen- to twenty-year-old men and women in the nineteenth-century Netherlands to be confirmed—that is, to sit in the front row of the church, dressed in Sunday dress, and be accepted into full church membership? Previous scholarship on confirmation in the Netherlands Reformed Church has mostly focused on theological controversies surrounding the wording of the so-called confirmation questions (three questions about Christian doctrine and morals that confirmants had to answer during the service), treating these controversies as markers of growing struggles between ‘wings’ or ‘parties’ in nineteenth-century Dutch Protestantism. Important as these theological controversies were, this article nonetheless approaches confirmation from a different, less frequently explored angle, arguing that confirmation was also, and perhaps especially, a social rite of passage, which symbolically marked transition into a new stage of life, with adult responsibilities in church and society. Drawing on a rich array of published as well as unpublished sources (sermons, booklets, letters, and diaries), the article examines what kind of meanings were associated with this rite of passage, by both clergy and confirmants, and to what extent these meanings changed over the course of the century. It shows that Protestants throughout the nineteenth century tried to hold together, in one way or another, what one may call the ‘inward’ and the ‘outward’ aspects of the ritual (expressions of personal conviction and conformation to societal standards of morality). Although they insisted that professions of faith must be made “from the bottom of the heart,” they simultaneously equated confirmation with a promise to a virtuous life. Also, while accepting sighs and tears as testifying to the sincerity of a confirmant’s profession, many authors explicitly warned against strong emotions that could carry newly confirmed church members away from the narrow path of virtue.

Weak Historicism: On Hierarchies of Intellectual Virtues and Goods

Abstract This article seeks to reconcile a historicist sensitivity to how intellectually virtuous behavior is shaped by historical contexts with a non-relativist account of historical scholarship. To that end, it distinguishes between hierarchies of intellectual virtues and hierarchies of intellectual goods. The first hierarchy rejects a one-size-fits-all model of historical virtuousness in favor of a model that allows for significant varieties between the relative weight that historians must assign to intellectual virtues in order to acquire justified historical understanding. It grounds such differences, not on the historians’ interests or preferences, but on their historiographical situations, so that hierarchies of virtues are a function of the demands that historiographical situations (defined as interplays of genre, research question, and state of scholarship) make upon historians. Likewise, the second hierarchy allows for the pursuit of various intellectual goods, but banishes the specter of relativism by treating historical understanding as an intellectual good that is constitutive of historical scholarship and therefore deserves priority over alternative goods. The position that emerges from this is classified as a form of weak historicism.

The Scientific Self: Reclaiming Its Place in the History of Research Ethics

How can the history of research ethics be expanded beyond the standard narrative of codification—a story that does not reach back beyond World War II—without becoming so broad as to lose all distinctiveness? This article proposes a history of research ethics focused on the “scientific self,” that is, the role-specific identity of scientists as typically described in terms of skills, competencies, qualities, or dispositions. Drawing on three agenda-setting texts from nineteenth-century history, biology, and sociology, the article argues that the “revolutions” these books sought to unleash were, among other things, revolts against inherited conceptions of scientific selfhood. They tried to redefine the scientific self in their respective fields of inquiry by advocating particular catalogs of virtues or character traits. These ideals of selfhood, their contested nature notwithstanding, translated into practice in so far as they influenced hiring and selection policies and found their way into educational systems. The project of reclaiming the scientific self as an important subject of study in the history of research ethics is not an antiquarian pursuit, but related to an ethical question faced by scientists today: How are their scientific selves being shaped by funding schemes, research evaluation protocols, and academic hiring policies?

Scholarly Vices: Boundary Work in Nineteenth-Century Orientalism

What are epistemic vices? Drawing on the cases of two mid-nineteenth-century Orientalists, both of whom were accused of serious vices, this chapter argues that dispositions perceived as detrimental to scholarly work were often difficult to distinguish from social or religious vices. Indeed, when Heinrich Ewald (1803–1875) and Reinhart Dozy (1820–1883) were blamed for “dogmatism” and “rashness,” these were epistemic as much as social and religious vices. This chapter therefore proposes to exchange the concept of epistemic vices for the more inclusive category of scholarly vices. What this alternative phrase seeks to convey is that, for at least some nineteenth-century academics, the pursuit of epistemic aims was inseparable from meeting social expectations, engaging in political projects, and fulfilling religious duties. The relative importance of these various aims, however, was contested. Accordingly, criticism of Dozy and Ewald was part of a broader debate on the scholarly vocation and not seldom amounted to a form of “boundary work” between competing conceptions of Orientalist scholarship.

Weber, Wöhler, and Waitz: Virtue Language in Late Nineteenth-Century Physics, Chemistry, and History

This paper compares the occurrence and use of virtue language among physicists, chemists, and historians in late nineteenth-century Germany, with a special focus on obituaries written for the Gottingen professors Wilhelm Weber, Friedrich Wohler, and Georg Waitz. Although virtue language was far more prevalent in Waitz’s necrologies than in those commemorating Wohler and Weber, historians, chemists, and physicists resembled each other in that they invoked epistemic virtues if and only if they felt that defining features of what it took to be a scholar were at stake. For all of them, epistemic virtues were shorthand for scholarly personae that they invoked at moments when they perceived those personae as being under pressure. More concretely, categories of virtue and vice served as means for taking sides in debates about such fundamental issues as the proper relation between academy and industry or the relative importance of source criticism in relation to writing – aspects of scientific work that made different demands on scientists in terms of the virtues or dispositions they required.

Introduction: Epistemic Virtues in the Sciences and the Humanities

Epistemic virtues offer a promising angle for studying interaction between fields of research conventionally classified under the “sciences” and the “humanities.” Given that virtues like objectivity, honesty, and accuracy are not confined to specific disciplines, they allow for comparative historical research between scientific fields as well as for histories of transfer, borrowing, and adaptation between disciplines. Such research, however, requires ample attention to what scientists in specific settings understood epistemic virtues to mean. Although the adjective refers to their role in facilitating the pursuit of epistemic aims (knowledge and understanding of reality), epistemic virtues are often imbued with moral, social, religious, and/or political meaning. If virtues specify the character traits marking a “scientific self,” then scientific selfhood is never exclusively defined in epistemic terms.

What Could It Mean for Historians to Maintain a Dialogue With the Past

When historians claim to maintain a “dialogue with the past,” this metaphor is usually interpreted in epistemological terms. Although this is not necessarily wrong, the present article presents a broader reading of the metaphor by arguing that the imperative to engage in “dialogue with the past” can be understood as an ethical claim to scholarly integrity. This argument proceeds from the assumption that historians are usually engaged in multiple “relations with the past” as well as in multiple relations with present-day instances, varying from colleagues and readers to publishers and university administrators. These different relations, in turn, can be seen at least in part as corresponding to a range of different I-positions, some of which tend more towards the monologic than towards the dialogic. Maintaining a dialogue with the past, then, means that the I-position of what this article calls an “inquisitive listener,” characterized by dialogic virtues such as curiosity, imagination, openness, attentiveness, and humility, is cultivated and, if necessary, protected against other, more dominant I-positions, such as the “ground-breaking scholar” and the “best-selling author.” In sum, this article reinterprets the metaphor of a dialogue with the past to such effect that historians are encouraged to critical self-reflection: how dominant or recessive are their respective I-positions and to what extent should they, for integrity’s sake, be challenged or supported?

In Dialogue with the Past: Reflections on a Metaphor

Once upon a time, it was not uncommon for historians to describe their engagement with relics from the past – medieval charters unearthed in a badly lit archive, or hand-written letters barely rescued from the moist of a smelly town hall cellar – in truly anthropomorphic terms. No one less than Leopold von Ranke, for instance, wrote the Countess of Arnim in 1828 that amidst his medieval source material in Italy, he met “many princesses, possibly beautiful, all under a curse and needing to be saved.” In almost erotic language, he referred to “virgins” and “objects of love” in Italian archives, whom he longed to meet in the hope of producing “a beautiful Roman-German prodigy.”1 In equally anthropomorphic terms, the French historian Jules Michelet expressed his desire to bring the past to life again. Surrounded by ancient papers and parchments, Michelet addressed these relics as if they were dead bodies waiting for some miraculous resurrection: “Softly my dear friends, let us proceed in order if you please . . . [A]s I breathed their dust, I saw them rise up. They rose from the sepulcher . . . as in the Last Judgment of Michelangelo or in the Dance of Death.”2 It is not merely the exalted prose of these romantic historians that makes us, modern philosophers of history, smile. Its epistemological subtext, too, differs significantly from how we have come to understand the historian’s attempt