The Historian as Judge

T H E J E W I S H QUA R T E R LY RE V I E W, Vol. 94, No. 2 (Spring 2004) 376–385 The Historian as Judge G AV R I E L D. RO S E N F E L D IN THE YEAR 1824, the patriarch of the modern Western historical profession , Leopold von Ranke, became embroiled in a famous debate with another historian, Heinrich Leo, over a profound matter of historical methodology. Ranke had just published his first book, the Histories of the Romanic and Germanic Peoples from 1494 to 1514, in which he made the bold declaration that the controversial political philosophy of Nicolò Machiavelli , as set forth in his famous book The Prince, should not so much be condemned as understood as the product of its particular historical circumstances . As Ranke declared in a remark that was to become a maxim of modern historical scholarship, the task of the historian was not to ‘‘judge the past,’’ but ‘‘merely to show what happened’’ (‘‘wie es eigentlich gewesen [ist]’’).1 Heinrich Leo disagreed, and in a critical review of Ranke’s book argued that Machiavelli needed to be seen as an amoral individual who had flirted with evil ideas and who should be viewed from an ethical perspective in order to appreciate his status as a figure of world historical importance. It was not sufficient merely to show what happened in the past, Leo concluded, the historian also had to judge it.2 As is well known, Leo’s criticism of Ranke did little to prevent the latter from going on to become one of the giants of Western historiography . But the basic issue at the core of the debate between the two scholars has become fundamental to all subsequent historical writing in the modern era: is the historian’s primary task historical explanation or historical judgment? Both strategies possess merits, of course, but they also entail various risks. Historians who set out to explain the past pride themselves on adhering to certain norms of scholarly objectivity; but they frequently end up producing sterile histories lacking in both moral resonance and relevance for present-day society. By the same token, historians who set 1. Cited in Georg Iggers, The German Conception of History: The National Tradition of Historical Thought from Herder to the Present (Hanover, N.H., 1983), 67. 2. For a brief discussion, see Iggers, The German Conception of History, 65–69. The Jewish Quarterly Review (Spring 2004) Copyright 䉷 2004 Center for Advanced Judaic Studies. All rights reserved. THE HISTORIAN AS JUDGE—ROSENFELD 377 out to judge the past may self-righteously believe in their present-day relevance, but they can easily end up distorting and misunderstanding the historical record by anachronistically applying contemporary moral standards to it. Most historians, of course, attempt to avoid the twin pitfalls of objectively neutering the past and subjectively caricaturing it by pursuing a careful brand of balanced scholarship. Then again, there are always exceptions. The title alone of Daniel Goldhagen’s new book, A Moral Reckoning: The Role of the Catholic Church in the Holocaust and Its Unfulfilled Duty of Repair, leaves little doubt as to where he stands on the question of the historian’s primary duty.3 Like his first book, the controversial 1996 bestseller, Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust, A Moral Reckoning is full of passionate indictments and moral judgments.4 It does not so much provide a description of the Catholic Church’s complicity in the Nazi genocide of the Jews (and its difficult struggle after 1945 to atone for it) as offer an elaborately constructed analytical framework for subjecting the Church’s actions and inactions to moral evaluation. This enterprise is an ambitious and, in certain ways, admirable one. Yet Goldhagen’s lopsided focus on ethical judgment at the expense of historical explanation ultimately makes his work fail. Indeed, after completing A Moral Reckoning, many readers will emerge more confused than ever about how to understand —let alone judge—the Catholic Church’s role in the Holocaust. Right from the beginning of A Moral Reckoning, Goldhagen’s moralistic approach reveals a pronounced tendency toward distortion...