Historicism justifiably culminates in universal history. Nowhere does the materialist writing of history distance itself from it more clearly than in terms of method. The former has no theoretical armature. Its method is additive: it offers a mass of facts, in order to fill up a homogenous and empty time. The materialist writing of history for its part is based on a constructive principle. Thinking involves not only the movement of thoughts but also their zero-hour [Stillstellung]. Where thinking suddenly halts in a constellation overflowing with tensions, there it yields a shock to the same, through which it crystallizes as a monad. The historical materialist approaches a historical object solely and alone where he encounters it as a monad. In this structure he cognizes the sign of a messianic zero-hour [Stillstellung] of events, or put differently, a revolutionary chance in the struggle for the suppressed past. He perceives it, in order to explode a specific epoch out of the homogenous course of history; thus exploding a specific life out of the epoch, or a specific work out of the life-work. The net gain of this procedure consists of this: that the life-work is preserved and sublated in the work, the epoch in the life-work, and the entire course of history in the epoch. The nourishing fruit of what is historically conceptualized has time as its core, its precious but flavorless seed.
-XVII
The question is what do I do with this? Here I have a whole host of historians disagreeing with each other. I'm not so much asking what the ontological status of history is as what attitude to take towards it. The easiest thing to do would be to remain sceptical of all views, but that seems like a cop out.
I'm sure people will take the opportunity to write their own opinions of the bombing, which is fine and interesting in itself. I'm more interested in a general attitude towards historical events, especially ones which involve so much contention. — shmik
This doesn't just apply to historical events but to current affairs too. I had a similar problem in looking for reliable information about the recent Ukraine conflict. — Baden
Hey Shevek nice post, the problem is that it describes our actions. With certain issues my worldview is ill-formed and somewhat sceptical. I'm not necessarily concerned with an objective past, more what the hell do I do with the information. Read a bunch and assume it will culminate into a story that appeals to me?In short, there is no 'objective frame' from which one can approach narrativizing history, but one is always re-appropriating the past along with one's ideological baggage, and the baggage of the present. — Shevek
Yes unfortunately many of the interesting issue are politically charged. And it's not like the ones that are not have never been, it's just that we have settled on a narrative for them.The solution is here to understand when some part of history is politically charged, too close to some actor pushing an agenda and inviting some historians to promote this view, and when it's really only historians debating history without much other interests. — ssu
Voter turnout in Australia is ~93% it's still the same stuff. You get one of the 2 major parties, they make the decisions.Perhaps a thread on the ramifications of 100% voter turnout. — Monitor
A lot of the historians in the article are arguing that the narrative of the trade off between land invasion and atom bomb is just political spin.There were tradeoffs to be made in the decision to invade, or not (from our side) and the decision to surrender, or not (from the Japanese side). No one could be sure at the time which course would be most favorable. — Bitter Crank
They fit into 3 broad camps, the traditional view which is stated above, the revisionist view which is sceptical of the traditional one and thinks there were alternative reasons for dropping the bombs and also the middle view which stands somewhere between them. — shmik
A lot of the historians in the article are arguing that the narrative of the trade off between land invasion and atom bomb is just political spin. — shmik
History doesn't have a pre-ordained destination, but it quite often leaves pretty clear tire marks in the sand.It is possible that there was a devious plot to use the already enormous expenditures of WWII to pull off the very expensive effort to develop nuclear weapons, which the devious plotters knew would be really handy for World War III once WWII was over. Always one war ahead of the game. The weapon had to be demonstrated so that the Communist Menace would know we could fry them if they got in our way, and Japan merely offered a convenient place to do the demonstration. Nobody liked the Japs anyway, just then. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were therefore not bombed so there would be some nice fresh targets to incinerate, the better to scare the Communists with.
Truman faked any angst he would be expected to have had, had he needed to decide between atomic bombing or invasion. Roosevelt and Truman, of course, knew from the get go that Japan would fold and there would be no invasion. The invasion business was just spin. Part of The Plan. All this had been worked out by the White House, CIA, the Pentagon, and several slimy public relations firms in 1939. — Flat Out Fiction
But one has again simply not be ignorant of the history itself when somebody intreprets these tire marks.History doesn't have a pre-ordained destination, but it quite often leaves pretty clear tire marks in the sand. — Bitter Crank
Get involved in philosophical discussions about knowledge, truth, language, consciousness, science, politics, religion, logic and mathematics, art, history, and lots more. No ads, no clutter, and very little agreement — just fascinating conversations.