Dire la verità: una missione impossibile per la storiografia? Revista História do Direito
Author(s)
Ricardo Marcelo Fonseca
FERREIRA BELÚCIO NOGUEIRA, RAUL
Date Issued
2020
Type
article
Volume
1
Issue
1
Start Page
251
End Page
273
ISSN
2675-9284
Journal
Abstract
Historicism has been the horizon for western cultural formation for at least the past two centuries. Therefore, it should be relatively simple to understand how historiography presents its own objects. However, reasoning styles that seem obvious and guaranteed are in reality full of uncertainties, aporias, and unanswered questions by the experts in this field. Thus, we can ask whether is it possible to claim the “truth” about the past from historiography or if this claim is the result of an illusion that has already been overcome. The purpose of this intervention is to draw attention to the epistemological (and perhaps, ethical-political) importance of these questions, albeit aware of the difficulties of reaching univocal and satisfactory solutions. Therefore, this investigation analyses the Rankean aspiration of only showing what actually happened and addresses the impacts of the linguistic turn, the hermeneutic tradition and the controversy over the narrative role of history between White and authors like Momigliano and Ginzburg. Eventually, based on the similarity between the tasks of the judge and the historian, this research addresses “negationism” to highlight the difficult challenge of historiography, which can acquire not only a cognitive but also a “civil” value.
Key words: Truth in Historiography, Negationism; Historiography Civil role