History Is A Set Of Commonly Agreed Lies
HISTORY TERM PAPER
"History is a set of commonly agreed lies.' - Voltaire
Madiha Ashraf Shekhani
"History is a set of commonly agreed lies.' Says one of the great minds of the 18[th] century, Voltaire the well known optimist, ironically displays a bevy of pessimism in this quote. What is history? Some believe history is what determines the future and is absolutely essential for generations; "A nation which does not know what it was yesterday, does not know what it is today, nor what it is trying to do" - Woodrow Wilson. Some feel the exact opposite;" "The past is useless. That explains why it is past."- Wright Morris. Although if Voltaire stated, that history is a set of commonly ...
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the writer or the narrator of the event objectively reports the facts about an event. However, this is an ideal situation, only a theoretical model. A British historian named Lawrence Stone said that previously, history was such that events were chronologically listed, they were more narrative and descriptive than analytical, This situation would be ideal because one could trust that the historian merely listed the facts about events with great detail, without any personal opinion or perspective. However, Lawrence Stone also stated that more and more of the 'new historians' tried to discover what was going on inside people's heads in the past, and what it was like to live in the past. This was a shift towards the analytical. When one analyses, a personal opinion, bias, or perspective is bound to lurk under the words.
The definition given in paragraph two states history is the selection of details from `authentic' materials. For an instance, if we do agree that any piece of ...
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reconstructive hypothesis that states that a person's brain receives two types of information, one at the time of the event and one after, over time these memories seem to amalgamate and a false memory is produced. These memories are also affected by the situation. For example, a peasant from the French Revolution who was repressed and who lost land and loved ones to the revolution will remember the event very differently from a monarch. However, this is only a psychological perspective and if stated alone it is a very simplistic explanation. Coupled with these factors, social, behavioral and surrounding factors also play an essential role; similarly, a liberal French philosopher such as ...
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"History Is A Set Of Commonly Agreed Lies." Essayworld.com. December 1, 2012. Accessed December 23, 2024. http://www.essayworld.com/essays/History-Is-Set-Commonly-Agreed-Lies/102056.
"History Is A Set Of Commonly Agreed Lies." Essayworld.com. December 1, 2012. Accessed December 23, 2024. http://www.essayworld.com/essays/History-Is-Set-Commonly-Agreed-Lies/102056.
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