This is a good question.
My first inclination was yes, at least for practitioners, followed by whether there was ever a time when this was true, at least among society at large. But, then, I see doing history as a discursive process in the present, so can it ever be uncoupled from the present?
The pursuit of knowledge about the past can (and imo should) be the principle concern, and some types of scholarship are more out of time than others, but can any of it be solely about the past in its own right? I am skeptical, as a methodological principle.
Yes, though I don't spend a lot of time thinking about things from this perspective.
My training was full of reading through the wreckage of Marxist class-based interpretations, & I've retained a skepticism about historians' abilities to place ourselves in our own world.
I am not sure who “we” is, but I think we probably have to believe this if we want to argue that the study premodern history is a good use of cultural resources.
yes and no? Knowledge of the past a) has an intrinsic value analogous to writing a novel b) has potential instrumental value which best bears fruit if not pressed to eventuate, analogous to basic/pure research in the sciences, and c) is the situated/context-specific product of a person in time.
I agree with all three propositions.
My question was prompted by an increasing sense that ancient historians (my field) aren't doing (b) carefully enough. But fleshing that out is way beyond a post on here...
I think in part we are driven to b) because it is politically necessary now in a way it maybe wasn’t in the amorphous ‘before’. I also think it’s one of those things (like Impact) that some people are better at than others and the way academia is going with prioritise those people.
Not because that had more intrinsic (or extrinsic) value, but because it is increasingly politically (and Politically) necessary.
I also think that Classics will, in some ways, be shielded from the worst of it by our ‘reputation’.
I'm a historian of the late 19th and early 20th century US and personally imho my subfield gets the balance of 'we think about the past open endedly' and 'thinking about the past is straightforwardly about the present' basically right but could be tilted just slightly more toward the former (not to
say my subfield is perfect, far from it, I just think we get this in particular alright, there's big issues about limits in geographic scope, lack of comparison, issues of theme/analytical categories, etc)
Idk your field so I can't comment there, don't want to presume! I was fumbling before, I meant to say I think growing awareness of c) probly remakes the meaning of a). like, someone with no sense of c) probly just goes 'I know the past in itself, period' and thinks awareness of c) is a distraction
Surely it comes down to who's paying. If you are independently wealthy or approach it as a hobby, you don't have to scrutinise your own interest. But if someone else is paying you, you need to understand why they are paying you
