(The Death of) The Ethics of Historical Practice (and Why i am not in Mourning)

Abstract

The ethics of professional historical practice in the United States, as traditionally understood, rested on a consensus about the purpose of historical scholarship, central to which were assumptions about the nature of historical facts, the relationship between facts and truth, and the social functions that factual and truthful historical accounts would perform. Over the past generation, these assumptions have come to be widely questioned, which has entailed the collapse of the consensus that sustained the traditional ethics of historical practice. The author suggests that rather than being deplorable, this represents a welcome development, making possible a more realistic understanding of the nature of historical scholarship.