It’s not often that I read a book that’s written by a character in a movie, but I did so when I read Sir Richard Evans’s In Defense of History (1998). But this, again, is glib, because even is this was Evans intention, he certainly did not stick to that. The fundamental view taken by In Defence of History is that all history-writing faces is the regrettable little difficulty that the past is not actually 'felt and experienced by our senses' in the present. It is still an important read for history students and is frequently assigned, while still being very accessible to the general reader.

I wish I hadMetodologi sejarah, baik tradisional yang bertumpu kepada manusia-manusia Agung, ataupun saintifik yang bertumpu kepada sampel yang besar -sepertinya institusi, komuniti, bangsa- takkan sesekali mampu menggarap hal yang sedemikian. Yang membuatkan satu-satu fakta silam diberikan perhatian manusia kontemporari adalah kerana ia diulang-sebut pada masa kini oleh sang sejarahwan. The “manipulation and distortion of the historical record” by Irving is key to understanding the importance Evans placed on a grounding of history in facts. The copyright to all contents of this site is held either by Granta or by the individual authors, and none of the material may be used elsewhere without written permission.

Evans is an expert on modern German history, and he wrote a three-volume history of the Third Reich. They are limited by the facts and by the words a document contains, words which are not, contrary to what postmodernists claim, capable of an infinity of meaning. Muka surat-muka surat seterusnya menyaksikan Evans bergerak melabrak racun-racun yang telah diusung ke dalam bidang penulisan sejarah lewat faham-faham pasca-modenisme. These works serve as the basis of the central dichotomy of the book as well as what Evans considers the central dichotomy of the study of history: empiricism versus relativism . From 2008 to 2014 he was Regius Professor of History at Cambridge University, and from 2020 to 2017 President of Wolfson College, Cambridge.

Put into this context, the work is a repudiation of the hyper-relativist belief that “There is no ‘true truth’…only experiences…only preferences” . Rebekka Habermas, 'Wenn Klio (ein kleines bisschen) dichtet', in Frankfurter Rundschau, 7 October 1998. Such an uncritical stance in no way prevents the book from adopting that blunt, Hobbesian, man-of-the-world aggressive tone which in many circles of history-writing seems to pass for machismo (for example, the sarcastic remark that when Patrick Joyce referred to 'the intellectual history of our own times' what he 'really meant was his own ideas', p. Het is geen eenzijdige aanval op het postmodernisme, maar veeleer een brede overweging van de geschieddiscipline in haar geheel.

Menduga dalamnya lautan Kebenaran dengan kail panjang sejengkal - aku kira, begitulah sumpah bagi manusia-manusia yang menghabiskan sisa hidupnya menyiasat perihal Kemanusiaan. Evans, like other critics of postmodernism (Ken Wilber pops to mind), do not argue that they’re all wrong, but that they take some fundamental insights and run them to an extreme that collapses under the weight of logic.This would be inadequate even if Evans only intended to discuss the influence of postmodernism of historiography instead of postmodernism itself, because Foucault's influence on the writing of history has been (as I understand it from discussions with people who know more about it than I) quite direct and significant.