Ranke, the father of the modern historical profession, famously argued that the job of the historian is to seek to find out 'wie es eigentlich gewesen' ('what actually happened'), and while this is an inherently unrealistic goal when approached literally there is something to it when thought of in terms of perspective. That is to say that the right perspective to both study and to teach history is something not far off that advocated for the appreciation of natural phenomena by Ranke's contemporary Emerson: the famous 'transparent eyeball' that observes and takes in information from the position of a spectator, rather than an actor. True detachment and true objectivity may not be possible, but nevertheless as the point of the study of History is the establishment of the truth (both in terms of fact and meaning) there are moral duties and pragmatic reasons to try to get as close to both as possible, and this position allows for that well enough without falling prey to the delusion that an impossible standard is achievable or has been reached.
Since the 'cultural turn' of the 1970s Rankeian empiricism has been pretty much abandoned in the historical profession
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