problem of knowledge and interpretation in history

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Problem of Knowledge and Interpretation in History(A Paper on Historiography)

by

Victor R. Aguilan

May 24,2002

1. Introduction

2. A Review of Recent Philippine Historiography

3. Historical Sources A Problem of Reliability

4. Meaning in Past A Problem of Interpretation

5. Conclusion - The Significance of Historiography

I. Introduction

This paper is an attempt to identify trends and problems in the study of history. For

history is not just about the past or the study of past events. History is about narrating or

telling-stories of what happened in the past to the historians contemporaries. When a student

of history studies the past he studies the works of the historians. The particular field of

discipline in historical science is known as historiography. According to Dr. T. Valentino

Sitoy, Historiography means the craft of the historian. It tells how historians write history,

and lays down the principles of good history-writing what sources of information to use,

how to use such information, how to determine whether a document is genuine, and how to

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tell if a source is unauthentic, and what guidelines must one take in determining the internal

coherence of a document so that it can be regarded as a reliable source.1

Some Filipino historians have even claimed that history has been used as a tool to

subjugate the hearts and mind of the Filipino people. To quote the main proponent of this

view, the late Dr. Renato Constantino, who says that: History has been used to capture our

minds, if not by outright forgery and falsification, at least by the subtle distortion of certain

events. The tragic result is that our conquerors have been transformed into altruistic and self

sacrificing partners. This distorted history has been an important factor in the development

of our colonial consciousness because of the suppression of certain truths which would have

exposed the crass motivations of our colonizers and of those Filipino collaborators who lent

their efforts toward making colonization easy to accept.2

But there are those who question the partisan scholarship of Dr. Constantino. They

criticize Constantinos method as mere propaganda which comprises historical objectivity

and truth. A foremost critic of Constantinos historiography is an American scholar, Glenn

Anthony May, who says, but it violates virtually every canon of historical scholarship,

and rather than teaching students to think critically, it merely offers them a new dogma to

replace the old. The study of history has a great deal to offer among other things, a

methodology which emphasizes the critical use of sources and a healthy skepticism about

received wisdom.3

This paper is an attempt to discuss the problem raised in the two preceeding

paragraph namely: objectivity to the sources and evaluation of historical events. To attain this

1 T. Valentino S. Sitoy, ed., Sourcebook in Historiography (Dumaguete City: Central Visayas

Polytechnic College, 2001) p. vii.2 Renato Constantino, History and Partisan Scholarship (Quezon City: Foundation for Nationalist

Studies, ) pp.3 Glenn Anthony May, A Past Revisited, A Past Distorted in A Past Recovered (Quezon City: New

Day Publishers, 1988) pp. 23, 24.

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goal this paper is divided into four parts. The first part is a brief review of the state of

Philippine historiography since the Second World War. The second part deals with the

question of historical sources in history. The problem of hermeneutics or interpretation is

discussed in the third part of this paper, while the last part is on the significance of

historiography.

II. A Review of Recent Philippine Historiography

A review of the state of Philippine historiography since the Second World War,

written by the exponents of the new history, has identified three broad tendencies: 4

1) Classical colonial history focusing primarily on the motives and actions of

Western imperialists (Madrid and Washington) and in their colonial capital, Manila.5 In

terms of periodization, classical colonial historiography divides Philippine history into the

Spanish era, the Revolutionary period, the American regime, Japanese Occupation,

democratic tutelage, and Independence.

2) The nationalist trend in writing history that has focused on what the

Filipinos were doing, how their lives were changing and what they thought about it. In the

fifties and the sixties, nationalist historians rectified this state of affairs by focusing on what

Filipinos were doing, how their lives were changing and what they thought about it. One

form of nationalist historiography concentrates on the life and works of great Filipinos. An

example of this is Teodoro Agoncillos Revolt of the Masses (1960). Another form, more

4 Norman G. Owen, Trends and Directions of Research on Philippine History: An Informal

Essay, Asian Studies 12 (1974): 1-7, and Resil B. Mojares, Recent Philippine Historiography: AndEvaluative Review, Philippine Quarterly of Culture and Society (1981) .pp 309-319.; and Bernardita

Reyes Churchill, Historiography of 1898 and a Critical Bibliography in Florentino Radao and

Felice Noelle Rodriguez , editors , The Philippine Revolution of 1896: Ordinary Lives in

Extraordinary Times, (Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press, 2001) pp. 277-300.5 Norman, Owen, Ibid

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structural in approach, is exemplified in Renato and Letizia R. Constantinos best-selling

textbooks, The Philippines:A Past Revisited and The Continuing Past.

Central to nationalist historiography is a periodization that begins Filipino history

with 1872, the year that a national consciousness was born. According to this view,

proposed by the late Teodoro Agoncilo, resistance to the Spaniard was isolated, regional and

tribal; it was only after 1872 that an articulation of common Filipino experience emerged.

The fuller periodization of nationalist historiography follows: Golden Age (Pre-Hispariic

society), the Fall (conquest by Spain in the sixteenth century), Dark Age (seventeenth and

eighteenth centuries), Economic and Social Development (nineteenth century), the rise of

Nationalist Consciousness (post-1872), the birth of the nation (1898), and either suppressed

nationalism or democratic tutelage (post- 1901, American regime).

3) The third general trend is variously known as the social history approach or

Frontier theory, Socioeconomic framework or simply new history. This trend

proposes to transcend the definition of the Philippines as a story of Manila based elites to a

history of all Filipinos in the provincial towns, in the barrios and even in the hills.

New History is not a singular invisible college with a specific set of ideas. It includes

feminist historians, ethno-social historians (Asian, Black and Hispanic historians), neo-

Marxists, post-Marxists, psychoanalytical historians, discourse-oriented historians, and post-

modernists. This makes for a rather conflict-ridden family, which agrees on little other than

discontent with the old history. For example, the neo-Marxists criticize the post-modernists

for eliminating class and state from history. The feminists say New History forgets male

dominance.

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Alfred McCoy, in his introduction to a compilation of new history researches, sums

up this new approach: The Philippines is not simply the sum of its political systems nor is it

the prisoner of its anti-modern Philippine values. Instead of a village society bound by

cultural patterns and political rules, there emerges the image of an intensely dynamic society,

or series of societies, that has changed constantly throughout its four centuries of recorded

history in response to economic, demographic and technological stimuli. Instead of the

political image of Philippine society and the cultural image of a Filipino folk resistant to

change, we can substitute data indicating a society whose merchants and peasants were

skilled innovators. The only tradition is that of change, and the only enduring values are

those of an essential rationality. Nor is the countrys historical underdevelopment a simple

function of imperial exploitation but very much a collaborative enterprise between the

indigenous elite and foreign interests.6

But the real departure of new history from other forms of Philippine historiography is

its removal of the individual from center stage. New History locates meaning in the social. It

focuses on the ordinary, what is taken for granted, daily life, all that is. Petite Histoire. 7 It

is populist, emphasizing ordinary people rather than the elite; it privileges the point of view

of the victims rather than the victimizers.8 Sometimes it is oriented to the margins. New

History makes no claim to special truth; it erases the difference between history and fiction

and holds that there is as much to be learned about life from the one as from the other.9

6 Alfred W. McCoy and Ed. C. de Jesus, Philippine Social History : Global Trade and LocalTransformations (Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press, 1982), p. 3

7 Ihab Hassan, The Postmodern Turn (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1987) p 91-

92).8 See Reynaldo C. Ileto, Rizal and the Underside of Philippine History. In Filipinos and

their Revolution: Event, Discourse and Historiography. (Ateneo del Manila University Press:1998)

and his Pasyon and Revolution, (Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila, 1979)9 Michel Foucault, Power/Knowledge, Ed. C. Gordon; trans. C. Gordon, L. Marshall, J.

Mephan, and K. Sopher (New York: Pantheon Books, 1980) p. 193)

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As can be expected, the periodization of the social history approach differs markedly

from the two previous tendencies. Using world commerce and frontier as key for

periodization, social historians divide Philippine history into three phases:

I. The period from 1750 to the second decade of the nineteenth century when the

Philippines moved haltingly into the world economic orbit;

II. The second era from then through the second decade of the twentieth century, when the

interiors of the Christian lowlands became largely settled; and

III. The third phase from that time to the present when Filipinos had to start coping with

changing world markets and the gradual closing of their frontiers (Larkin).

This brief review of Philippine historiography provides us with a glimpse of the

emerging inter-disciplinary approach in the study and writing of Philippine history. Whatever

the tendency or school one chooses, a student of history must deal with 2 perennial problems

in writing history namely (1) the problem of sources and (2) the problem of interpretation.

II. Historical Sources A Problem of Reliability

Can we have knowledge of past events? The answer to that question is more complex

than one might imagine. When we discuss events in the past it is assumed that we are not

directly aware of the events. To know an event implies that I am actually observing it. 10 In

what sense, then, can I be said to know an event which is in principle unobservable, having

disappeared behind the mysterious frontier which divides the present from the past? And how

can we be certain that anything ever really happened in the past at all, that the whole story is

not a mere fiction or an elaborate fabrication. Philosophers of history have always assumed

10 Roderick M. Chisholm, Theory of Knowledge ( New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1966)

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that there is something suspicious about statements referring to the past.11 Yet we do, and

apparently must, make them.

The problem of knowledge of the past is also related to the nature of historical

evidence or sources. The minute we say that history is what happened it begins to dissolve

between our fingers, because we no longer have what happened. All we have are scattered

traces left by what happened or people who were involved in what happened. From those

traces we then construct something that we call history, which is no longer so much what

happened as the way we construct connections between the surviving traces. The work of

the historian is enormously difficult given that the connections between the traces are the

points at which meaning is inferred whether it is meaning for us or meaning for whatever

happened in the past. And yet, those are precisely the points that do not appear in the traces

of historical evidences.

These gaps in the traces of evidence have led sometimes students of history to assume

that the recent past is more accessible than the distant past, and this viewpoint is grounded in

the common belief that the passage of time makes understanding more difficult. But a case

can be made for the opposite viewpoint as well. The ancient or early modern world may be

studied more objectively because we have a greater distance from those periods of time. On

the other hand, the study of past cultures raises the question of the unfamiliarity of the habits

and customs of those cultures, and hence a heightened inability to understand them because

of a greater distance between the observer and the thing observed.

The tension we find between our too facile understanding of the familiar, on the one

hand, and the objectivity associated with our attempts to understand the unfamiliar, on the

11 Paul Ricouer, History and Truth (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1965) pp.21-77.

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other, probably means that it is easier to study reasonably distant history than very distant

history or very recent history If the events are too recent, although the documentation may be

easy to come by because either written evidence or the oral reports are still accessible,

nonetheless the level of personal involvement in the events may be so great that it is difficult

to step back toward objective interpretation. In fact, the level of ones own involvement may

be so great that stepping back is impossible. If the event is too far distant, not only have we

lost an enormous amount of material about the event, but the social, political, intellectual,

and spiritual context may be so far from our own approach that we have difficulty

understanding and reconstructing what happened. In the middle it becomes much easier,

granting that patterns of thought and patterns of society are not altogether different. Biases,

particularly our own involvement in the issues, are reduced. In addition, there is a reasonably

large amount of material still surviving.

Historical research assumes both the value and significance of sources. For historical

study consists in the examination and evaluation of sources. They contain the traces of

human story in all of its remaining detail. Historians have classified sources or evidences in

term of primary and secondary sources. Distinction must be drawn between primary and

secondary sources. According to Cantor and Schneider, A primary source is a work that was

written at a time that is contemporary or nearly contemporary with the period or subject

being studiedSecondary sources can similarly be identified in terms of their time

relationship to the subject being studied; a secondary work for a subject is one that discusses

the subject but is written after the time contemporary with it... Primary sources are the basic

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material that provide the raw data and information for the historian. Secondary sources are

the works that contain the explications of, and judgments on, this primary material.12

The primary source is a document, datum, or artifact that belongs to the era under

examination and that offers the most direct access to the person or issues being studied. The

historian uses primary sources to produce a secondary source. Hence, a historian using

primary materials requires a critical attitude. It is the historians task to eliminate errors and

deceptions. There are numerous forgeries and impostures available to befuddle the historian.

The Kalantiaw Code is one example of an artifact that was proven to be a fake. Historians

have relied on the secondary material claiming the reliability and factuality of the Kalantiaw

code which perpetuated the myth. It took an anthropologist-historian, the late William Henry

Scott, to establish the unreliability and falsity of the source material using literary and textual

analysis.13

Another controversy, which hounds Philippine history, is about the life of Andres

Bonifacio. An American historian, Glenn Anthony May, question the works of Filipino

historians on the life of Andres Bonifacio on the ground that the sources used were

secondary, thus not originally. Furthermore Glenn May doubts the reliability of the primary

sources used by Teodoro Agoncillo and Jose P. Santos unless the original copies of the

primary sources become accessible to all historians.

However it is also the historians proper task to understand the document thoroughly,

grasp exactly what they reveal directly or indirectly, and so use them intelligently.14

Nonetheless, the critical historian must recognize that documents can and sometimes will

12 Norman F. Cantor and Richard Schneider, How to Study History ( New York: Thomas Y.

Crowell Company, 1967) pp. 23-24.13 William Henry Scott, Kalantiaw: The Code that Never Was in Looking for the Prehispanic

Filipino (Quezon City: New Day Publishers, 1992) pp. 159-17014 Collingwood, Idea of History, pp. 247, 259, f; Becker, Detachment, pp. 46 f.

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intentionally or unintentionally stand in the way of a clear understanding of their authors

mind. There are numerous problems inherent in the document that demand critical reading

and analysis and, most importantly, the document itself may point only indirectly toward the

event or action that inspired it. The document, in other words, is not an event but a trace, a

result from which the historian attempts to identify and describe a historical occurrence. A

series of documents and other traces is, then, not like a neat row of matched bricks that fit

together with precision. Each document or trace may well be unique and replete with

distinctive problems.

But the information they yield is, as a general rule, not historical knowledge but

historical experience. It follows that the facts ascertained in the critical process are, not

historical facts, but just data for the discovery of historical facts. The critical process has to

be followed by an interpretative process, in which the historian pieces together the fragments

of information that he has gathered and critically evaluated. Only when this interpretative

process of reconstruction is terminated do there emerge what may properly be called the

historical facts.

In a celebrated address, read twice before learned societies in 1926but published only

posthumously, Carl Becker recalled that an eminent and honored historian had told him that a

historian had nothing to do but present all the facts and let them speak for themselves. He

then proceeded to repeat what he had been teaching for twenty years that this notion is

preposterous; first, because it is impossible to present all the facts; and second, because even

if you could present all the facts the miserable things wouldnt say anything, would just say

nothing at all.15

15 Carl Becker, Detachment and the Writing of History, Essays and Letters edited by PhilSnyder, Ithaca N.Y.: Cornell, 1958, p. 54.

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Becker was not content to attack what he considered one of the fondest illusions of

the nineteenth-century historians.16 Sixteen years previously, in an article in the Atlantic

Monthly for October, 1910, he had described with considerable skill the process that has to

occur if the card cases, containing the results of historical criticism are to lead the historian to

an apprehension of the historical course of events.

As he goes over his cards, some aspects of the reality recorded there interest him

more, others less; some are retained, others forgotten; some have power to start a new

train of thought; some appear to be causally connected; some logically connected; some

are without perceptible connection of any sort. And the reason is simple; some facts

strike the mind as interesting or suggestive, have a meaning of some sort, lead to some

desirable end, because they associate themselves with ideas already in mind; they fit in

somehow to the ordered experience of the historian. This original synthesisnot to be

confused with the making of a book for the printer, a very different matteris only half

deliberate. It is accomplished almost automatically. The mind willselect and discriminate

from the very beginning. It is the whole apperceiving mass that does the business,

seizing upon this or that new impression and building it up into its own growing content.

As new facts are taken in, the old ideas and concepts, it is true, are modified,

distinguished, destroyed even; but the modified ideas become new centers of attraction.

And so the process is continued, for years it may be. The final synthesis is doubtless

composed of facts unique, causally connected, revealing unique change; but the unique

16 Carl Becker, Detachment and the Writing of History, Essays and Letters edited by PhilSnyder, Ithaca N.Y.: Cornell, 1958, p. 53.

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fact, selected because of its importance, was in every case selected because of its

importance for some idea already in possession of the field.17

I have quoted this rather long passage because in ita historian reveals the activities

that occur subsequently to the tasks of historical criticism and prior to the work of historical

composition. A student of history must always maintain a healthy skepticism concerning the

factual quality of historical data. However, he should balance it with some confidence

concerning what can be learned about the past through the sources one must rely on.

The past, in other words, cannot mean what we want it to mean its ideas cannot be

forced, certainly not as an initial stage of interpretation, into our contemporary context of

meaning. The present-day use of the materials of the past requires a clear sense of the

difference and distinction between the setting of the document and the contemporary setting,

as well as a knowledge of the historical path that connects the document with the present and

that, in addition to enabling it to speak with a continued relevance to our situation, accounts

for the differences between the perspective of the document and our present-day perspective.

In those cases when the contents of a document are totally or nearly totally strange to us, the

cultural context of the document in its social, religious, political, and linguistic particularity

will most certainly provide the best, if not the only, corridor of access to the meaning and

implication of the document. Without a grasp of that context, the contents of the document

will either remain utterly puzzling to us or they will be assimilated to, and therefore

misinterpreted by, our own cultural and intellectual milieu.

17 Carl Becker, Detachment and the Writing of History, Essays and Letters edited by PhilSnyder, Ithaca N.Y.: Cornell, 1958, p. 24 f.

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III. Meaning in Past A Problem of Interpretation

The relationship of present-day account to past event raises the question of the

meaning of history. The term history itself is ambiguous. But it requires little reflection

to realize that even this is an oversimplification, because the past is never simply the past.

The past does not exist, and all we have is a set of surviving traces of the past. All traces of

evidence already reflect some level of interpretation perhaps in the character of the

documentation, the style, or the design. When we talk about the past, for example, we

inevitably project our present perspectives into the past. Historians cannot simply block off

the past and study it objectively as if it were an object under the microscope, because we

ourselves are a product of that past. There is thus a complex, ambiguous boundary between

past events, our present circumstance resulting in part as a product of the past, and our

interpretation of the event.

Historians interpretations of past events have lead to the problem of plurality

interpretations or even conflicting interpretations. The following excerpts show the varying

interpretations of the motives of Spanish colonialism of the Philippines by five Filipino

historians.

A. from Philippine Political and.

Cultural Histor3., Vol. 1

by Gregorio F. Zaide (Manila:

Phil. Education Company, c 1949), pp. 158159.

The first and most outstanding aim of Spanish colonization was to spread

Christianity. As affirmed by Catholic historians and confirmed by nonCatholic

scholars, Spain crossed the seas and colonized heathen lands because of her zeal to

serve the cause of God. Economic wealth and political grandeur, although coveted by

the Spanish kings and conquistadores, were to Spain secondary colonial aims.

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Spanish colonization in the Phi1ippines, thus declared Dr. Rafael Palma,

eminent Filipino non-Catholic scholar, was characterized by the chief policy of

converting the natives to Christianity. Its motive, therefore, was not to exploit the

Islands but to save the souls of their inhabitants. (Our History, Manila, 1929, p.5)

The distinguished German authority on Spanish colonization, Dr.Wilhelm

Roscher, similarly asserted that the principal aim of Spanish colonization was the

conversion of the heathen peoples to Christianity. (The Spanish Colonial System,

N.Y., 1904, p.7)

. . . what made her stay in the Philippines for over 300 years (15651898),

spending so much for the maintenance of her suzerainty and receiving scarcely any

material return, was decidedly not her desire for economic profits but rather her sense

of religious obligation to God.

As President Taft, former Civil Governor of the Philippines, said: The

coLonization of the Philippines had its motive not in gain but in the desire to extend

Christian religion. (Speech at the University of Notre Dame, 5 Oct 1904)

B. from The Philippines: A Past Revisitedby Renato Constantino

with the collaboration of Letizia R. Constantino

(Manila: 1975), pp. 5558.

Although initially there were high expectations that the new Colony would

yield for the Crown financial gains as beautiful as those extracted from America,

these hopes were soon dissipated. The Spaniards did not find the same rich mines as

they did in South America; there were no temples of Montezuma, nor edifices that

housed vessels of gold; nor did they find an abundance of spices. In fact, as early as

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the year of Legaspis arrival in Cebu, the abandonment of the archipelago was already

being proposed.

The colony was retained despite its lack of economic promise because the

religious were able to convince the royal court that the Philippines would be a

valuable stepping stone to China and Japan. Besides being a prospective staging

ground for missionary efforts in Asia, the islands were also useful as an outpost of

empire. (De la Costa, Readings in Philippine History p. 37; William Lytle Schurz,

The Manila Galleon, N.Y.1959, p.30)

Spain was then engaged in continuous wars with the Dutch, the English and

the Portuguese. With ships built and manned by natives, the Spanish fleet sailed out

of the islands to do battle in defense of the empire. However, eager to duplicate their

feat in the new world, the Spaniards entertained dreams of carving out an Oriental

empire. The Philippines was to be the base for the conquest of neighboring nations.

. . . as on previous occasions, the most powerful advocate of retention was

the Church which by then had, besides its missionary undertakings, substantial

material interests in the archipelago.

C: from An Introduction to Philippine History,

2nd edition, Enlarged. by Jose S. Arcilla, S.J.

(Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press, c 1973) p.13, 18.

In 1559, Philip II, the new King of Spain, ordered another expedition to the

islands which was now known as the Phi1ippine Islands... Miguel Lopez de

Legaspi was named to head the fleet...

Legazpis instructions read in part: ... to bring to the inhabitants of those

places over Holy Catholic Faith and to discover the return route to his New Spain to

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the credit and patrimony of the Royal Crown of Castille, through trade and barter and

through other legitimate ways, which with a clear conscience should be carried on to

bring back some spices and some of the wealth found in those places.

Before he died, Legazpi wrote that the best way to conquer the Philippines

was by good treatment and the display of kindness . He warned that fighting the

natives would only make them lose both friends and foes,

King Philip II of Spain agreed. He considered the conquest of the Philippines

a task of pacification. When a galleon sailed for the islands, it was invariably

accompanied by missionaries on a mission to evangelize the country.

D: from Political and Cultural Historyof the Philippines. Vol. 1 by Eufronio M. Alip (Manila:

Alip & Brion Publications, c 1950) pp. 161162.

... Philip II was the champion of Catholicism. To this King, more than to

anybody else, the conquest of the Philippines was largely due. Abandoned by Charles

I in favor of Portugal, the Philippines came under the rule of Spain at the expressed

wish of Philip II. His preference of religion to any other consideration appears to have

been the greatest reason why Spain was able to extend Spanish rule over the country.

An illustration will bear out this statement: During his rule, his council for the

overseas possessions advised him to give up the Philippines an account of the heavy

expenses they entailed, yielding nothing in return. In response, he issued the

injunction that the colonization of this country should be maintained because they

were not colonized for commerce but for the propagation of the Gospel. The entire

wealth of my kingdom is worth the salvation of a single soul so this king was

reported as having remarked. Thus the Philippines continued as a colony of Spain.

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D. from History of the Filipino People

by Teodoro A. Agoncillo and Milagros C. Guerrero

(Quezon City: R.P. Garcia Publishing Co., c 1973) p. 75.

For the rest of western Europe therefore, the idea of keeping the Venetian

monopoly in the exceedingly profitable trade with the Orient by finding a new trade

route to the East was a fairly obvious one. But to Spain and Portugal, which lay in the

distant Iberian Peninsula, for the old trade routes and with little or no profit at all

from the trade, the idea was further encouraged by two more factors. Blocked in the

Mediterranean, the two countries looked into the unoccupied Atlantic. Their location

made it easier to meet the challenge of maritime expansion than the rest of Western

Europe. Moreover, while the commercial motive took precedence over all other

motives, the search for a new trade route was accompanied by a strong missionary

impulse. In 1b92 the reconquista, or the movement to destroy Muslim power and

influence in the Iberian Peninsula, ended with the capture of Granada. The spirit of

the reconquista, however, was to live on the attempts of Spain and Portugal to

discover and connect heathen lands for Christianity. In later centuries, when even the

profit motive had completely eclip5ed all other motives, civil officials and priests

were want to assert the missionary spirit as the guiding eight in the preservation of the

Spanish Empire.

Which interpretation is correct? Which interpretation is true? The problem of

plurality or conflicting interpretations is not just related to the questions of correctness of

interpretation; it is also related to the question of objectivity and subjectivity of history.

We expect history to have certain objectivity. Objectivity should be taken here in its

strict epistemological sense: accurate understanding of the past. It arises out of a willingness

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to let the materials of history speak in their own terms whole the historian at the same time,

exercise a combination of critical judgment and self-restraint in injecting his own

understanding. His objectivity is not measured by a canon of absolute truth; it arises as a

standard of the relationship between data and its interpretation.18

The issue of objectivity can be understood, in terms of fidelity to the sources or

evidences available. Objectivity of historical study means letting the evidence speaks for

itself recognizing that what happened in the past is independent of our present thinking about

it. There is a distance between the historian and the sources. We encounter sources. And we

have biases why we like or dislike the evidences, however the issue is to try to transcend that

basic problem of biases or prejudices, and in many ways to use the biases to understand the

materials. Biases can never be completely suspended, and modern historiography has

properly concluded that the issue of interpretation begins the moment we think about the

past.

In specific cases, historians today may attain to a more objective, accurate

understanding of the past than either the individual participants in history or earlier

historians, but the question naturally arises, is entire objectivity ever attainable, and, more

importantly, how may we approach it methodologically? There are, in the first place, several

barriers to total objectivity or what might be called impartiality. Renier correctly notes, that

absence of bias is not the same thing as secure knowledge, granting that the historians

narrative cannot possibly be a faithful and total reproduction of a section of the past.19 The

selective nature both of the traces and of the historians reconstruction stands in the way of

total reproduction, and selectivity whatever its source, stands in the way of totally secure

18 Edward H. Carr, What is History? (New York: Vintage Books, 1961) pp. 158-59.19 G. J. Renier, History: Its Purpose and Method (New York: Harper & Row, 1950), p 249

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findings. History is continually being rewritten through the use of newly discovered or

previously neglected sources; it is of the very essence of sound historiography that it be

selective. Renier observes: no story can be told till a selection has been made among

available events, and . .. the selection of facts is a judgment passed upon their importance? 20

With selection and individual judgment comes partiality.

Objectivity in historical study does not, and cannot, exist if it is define as an absence

of involvement with or opinion about the materials. Instead, historical objectivity results

from a methodological control of the evidence, of the various interpretations both inherent in

and related to the evidence, and of ones own biases and opinions concerning the evidence

and the various interpretations.

For example, a historian may initially study Andres Bonifacio in order to understand

more about his tradition. But the student should not ask whether or not Bonifacio is

ultimately politically right or wrong. Rather, the question is, Why does he say what he says?

One can find out many things why he says what he says by comparing his thinking to the

illustrados thinking of his day, and then asking the objectivizing questions, What is the

reason that he moves in one particular direction as opposed to another: What is going on in

his mind that leads him in this other direction These questions raise the further what is fact

and what is interpretation. Several elements of the written record are data and fact. We have

(1) Bonifacios own writings, plus (2) the comments of his supporters and colleagues, and (3)

the comments, observation, reports of his adversaries. The result is a Bonifacio who is very

different from the Bonifacio that his admirers have wanted to find, and very different from

the image that his enemies have created during the revolution. One finds an urbanized

20 Renier, History, p.250

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undergraduate Tagalog who did indeed can read and write the Spanish and English

languages and who was not your typical ignorant masa.21

The historian, thus, always has to deal with the questions of interpretation that are

lodged in the sources themselves, questions of interpretation that are present in the writings

about these materials, and a hard core of data in which there is already interpretation, all of

which provide the historian with clues for directions in his or her own thinking. On the one

hand, we do not want ever to say that there are facts, or a past, without interpretation. On the

other hand, we do want to say that there really are hard data that have some level of

interpretations already in them that have to be critically examined, but data nonetheless.

Interpretation becomes a significant activity of the historian.

The art and science of interpretation is called hermeneutics.22 Its province extends as

far as do meaning and the need to understand it. Like the other varieties of critical thought,

hermeneutics is not limited in scope solely or even primarily to literary interpretation.

Moreover, hermeneutics names neither a particular method of interpretation nor a systematic

body of theory. Rather, hermeneutics is best understood as a family resemblance persisting

over many generations, as a historical tradition of which the theory and practice of literary

interpretation are themselves part.

Hermeneutics has its origins in the allegorical interpretation of Homer, beginning in

the sixth century B.C., and also in rabbinic interpretation of the Talmud and Midrashim.

Influenced by both, Christian hermeneutics is commonly dated from Philo Judaeus in the first

century, whose methodized interpretation of the Bible influenced not only Origen, Augustine,

21 see Glenn Anthony May, Inventing a Hero: The Posthumous Re-creation of Andres

Bonifacio (Quezon City: New Day Publishers, 1997) and Bernardita Reyes Churchill, editor,

Determining the Truth: The Story of Andress Bonifacio (Quezon City: New Day Publishers 1997)22 Jean Grodin, Introduction to Philosophical Hermeneutics, trans. Joel Weinsheimer (New

Haven: Yale University Press, 1994) pp. 17-44

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and many others before the Reformation but also Dilthey and Betti long afterward.

Hermeneutics begins, then, with the interpretation of canonical texts, including the Homeric

epics, and even in our time it has not entirely lost sight of the aim that motivates all scriptural

interpretation: to disclose not just fact but truth. Yet now, hermeneutics reaches well beyond

theology - into sociology, aesthetics, law, and historiography.23

In this regard, postmodern hermeneutical theory provides new insight and has

profound implications for historical method. Catherine Belsey, a postmodern theorist

dedicated to literary criticism and critical practice suggests that there is no unmediated

experience of the world and what is intelligible and therefore realistic is made so because

it is recognizable from within the conf1uence of the discourses of the observer. 24 Or, to put it

in Lyotards language, Nothing can be said about reality that does not presuppose it.25 The

notion of an objective observer removing every trace of the arbitrariness with which they

read meaningful signs on a cultural landscape is, within the framework of postmodem

thought, untenable.

26

Therefore the chronicles, the reports, the letters sources we use as

primary data are considered to be narrations or constructions of events, created in the

context of telling, using the categories and the laws of the symbolic order that are both

historically contingent and culturally configured,27 From this position, the printed text is

merely a documentary reality created using the signifiers from within the discourses of the

23 Jean Grodin, Introduction to Philosophical Hermeneutics, trans. Joel Weinsheimer (NewHaven: Yale University Press, 1994) pp. 17-44

24 Catherine Belsey, Critical Practice (London and New York: Routledge, 1980) p. 4525 Francois Lyotard, The Differend: Phrases in Dispute, trans. George Van Den Abbelle

(Manchester University Press, c1988), p. 3226 Jean Comaroff and John Comaroff, Ethnography and The Historical Imagination (Boulder:

Westview Press, 1992) p. 8. See also Belsey, Critical Practice, especially Chapter 2, pp. 37-55.27 Jean Comaroff and John Comaroff, Ethnography and The Historical Imagination (Boulder:

Westview Press, 1992) p. 9.

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author.28 Using literary and discourse analysis then, it is not possible for the text, whether it

be a printed page, a picture, a religious ritual, a sermon, a myth, or anything else observable,

to be a transparent window to the past. The text, instead, reflects what is intelligible back at

the reader and historian, and because there are contradictions within each narrative, the

cracks and fissures provide space through which new readings can emerge. In this way, each

historian/reader is actively involved in the production of just one of the multiplicity of

readings available. Gayatri Spivak has challenged historians and social scientists to dispense

with notions of objectivity, instead implementing a double vision, a simultaneous focus on

both the researcher and the researched, and the dual problem of one representing the

other.29

Hans-Georg Gadamer in his book, Truth and Method30, thinks of interpreting as

playing a game instead of an objective or subjective act. In playing we do not stand outside

the game but participate in it. A player who does not fully involve himself in the game we

call a spoilsport because toying with a game spoils it. By contrast, taking a game seriously

involves belonging to it, and this belonging in turn precludes treating the game as an object

separate from oneself. Moreover, in the same process of playing that prevents objectifying

the game, the player loses his status as a subject. As part of the game, the participant plays a

part that is not merely himself, for he has been assigned a role to perform. Thus, playing is a

performance of what is no object by what is no subject. And if interpreting is like playing, as

28 Dorothy Smith, The Social Construction of Documentary Reality, Social Inquiry, 44, 4 .

p 257-68.29 Gayatri Chakovorty Spivak, French Feminism in an International Frame, Feminist

Readings French Texts, American Contexts, Yale French Studies, ed. Collete Guadin et al., (New

Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 62:1981) 179.30 Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method, ed. Garett Barden and John Cumming (New

York: Seabury Press, 1975)

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Gadamer argues, then it always involves something like performing a drama, for the player

who takes the play seriously interprets it from within, by belonging to and playing a part in it.

The larger drama in which we must play is history. Since human beings exist

historically, interpreting historical tradition from within is inevitable. To assert the contrary

that at some point interpretation of tradition is unnecessaryis to assert that at some point

consciousness is nonhistorical and self-grounding. Understanding always begins within and

returns to an already given horizon of understanding. The hermeneutical circle is distinct

from linear induction because not only do the parts lead to understanding the whole but also

there must be an understanding of the whole prior to examining the parts. This prior

understanding of the whole Gadamer calls a prejudice, a judgment that precedes inquiry.

The necessity of such prejudgment indicates that understanding is possible only insofar as

understanding has always already begun. To understand tradition from within tradition means

to be prejudiced. But if prejudice is the condition of interpretation, and if true interpretation

is nevertheless possible, then though not all prejudices are true, they are not all ipso facto

false, either. The function of conscientious interpretation is not to eradicate all prejudices,

then, but rather to sort out the true from the false ones; this discrimination can be performed

not at the outset, by an act of will, but only in the very process of projection and revision that

is interpretation itself.

The problem of interpretation in history is a question of the subjectivity of the

interpreter in his attempt to reconstruct past events. However hermeneutics has shown that

the problem lies not in the subjectivity of the interpreter but in the denial of that subjectivity,

which could never be separated from the works of the interpreter. The historians

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interpretation of past events would always include his own subjectivity or prejudices. A true

interpretation is a process which involves discrimination discrimination of false from true

prejudices (i.e., those unconfirmed from those confirmed by the text). However, true

interpretation nevertheless remains within the horizon of prejudice that is the interpreters

world. That world horizon is not fixed and immutable, however, like a circle in which the

interpreter is forever circumscribed. Rather, the horizon of understanding is no less capable

of changing than the visual horizon. Gadamer images the process by which the interpreters

horizon is broadened as a dialectical fusion of horizonsa dialogue in which, as the

interpreter puts questions to the text, the text puts questions to the interpreter. This dialogue

is always possible because both the author of the text and its interpreter speak a language,

even if a different one. Not only for the author but for the interpreter also, to understand is to

find a language to express that understanding. Interpreting, like translation, consists in

finding, within the resources of the interpreters language, a common language that can say

both what the text means and what the interpreter understands of it. Interpretation is the

process by which the horizon of ones own language is fused with that of another and thereby

expanded. In dialogue, a common language is formed that makes understanding possible.31

Conclusion - The Significance of Historiography

Having presented the two major problems in writing history, now I would like to

present the significance of historiography or the historian craft. Let me begin by pointing out

that the overall thrust of the discussion contained in this paper is to show that writing history

31 Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method, ed. Garett Barden and John Cumming (New

York: Seabury Press, 1975)

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must be done historiographically and that when done in that way the science of

historiography is intrinsically helpful to the historian.

The importance of history lies instead in the realm of the identification and definition

of issues and of the cultivation of critical hermeneutical approach in the use and

interpretation of the sources. The significance of historiography is closely allied to the culture

in which it is produced, and, therefore, the study of historiography helps us free ourselves

from conceptual provincialism, facilitating the understanding of our own ideas and their

limitations. The study of historiography has a liberating effect on history, helping it to pursue

a more objective and balance course.

Historians must reappraise decisions of the past relying on available sources and

evidences. And when they do so it is on the basis of evidence drawn from the past, not on the

basis of present-day assumptions. The importance of historiography, therefore, can be found

both in the importance of the remains of times past and in the importance of the cultivation of

an objective approach to the materials. History provides, on the one hand, a source of

breadth for contemporary human knowledge inasmuch as its vast resources of ideas and

perspectives manifest a variety and a range of insight quite beyond the reach of an individual

mind or of a community of minds at a particular time. When approached by means of a

balanced and objective historical method, these resources, simply by reason of their breadth

and of their cultural and intellectual relation to our present, lend a certain balance and

objectivity to our own discourse.

The importance of objectively recounted history lies, therefore, both in the task itself

and in the use of its result. From the task itself not only is there gained a knowledge that has

its own value as knowledge, but also the mind of the investigator is trained in an approach to

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materials that yields balance and solidity of judgment as well as clearer self-understanding.

From the result of objective historical investigation comes an indispensable tool for the

exercise of critical judgment and for the formulation of ideas in the present. Human

understanding have profited immensely from the revolution in historical thinking.

However historians must remain aware that there are gaps in their works of writing

history. Historians do not have access to the past. For the historians do not encounter the past

directly; they have access to those ideas only through sources whether documents or artifacts.

So we must understand the nature of sources and how they reveal to us past events.

Hermeneutically analysis of the sources or evidences becomes necessary to bridge the

historically gap between a source on the one hand and the historian and their contemporary

audiences on the other

The need for an interpretation to bridge the historical gap between a source and a

contemporary audience brings out again the fundamentally hermeneutical character of the

task of the historian. For interpretations require judgments founded on evaluations and those

judgments can be made only on the basis of hermeneutical criteria. It also helps us see how

the issue we have raised is of fundamental importance, not only for those who see the history

as their primary vocation, but also for all who are students of history, because students of

history depend on documents for communication.

From the consideration of documents and their interpretation, then, we come to the

same conclusion reached earlier, namely, that the writing of history must be done

hermeneutically, and this means that it must be interpretative and evaluative. But the writing

of history must also be objective, since its aim is the understanding of past events or ideas as

they were understood, both by those who proposed them and by their contemporaneous

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audiences, and not as we may capriciously wish to understand them. So we may ask, how can

these two seemingly conflicting aims be reconciled?

I have already argued that the aim of documentary interpretation is not, as many

think, the understanding of a document as separate from its historical locus. It is rather the

understanding of the meaning of a document as understood by its author and its

contemporaneous audience. Our task is to determine how this can be achieved and the kind

of method the historian should follow that will balance interpretation and objectivity. And if

this seems difficult, more difficult still seems the reconciling of objectivity with evaluation.

In short, the problem boils down to the question of how to do hermeneutic in historiography

without sacrificing historical objectivity and accuracy. This is the challenge that the

historians of day must face.

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problem of knowledge and interpretation in history

Documents