The View From Everywhere: Impartiality, Objectivity and Other Ideals

I’m grateful to Pat McCullough for drawing my attention to recent posts on the blog In The Corner With Matt. Among other interesting things, I found a quote from a recent book by Rodney Stark about history and evidence that paralleled some of my own thoughts over the past couple of days.

The “postmodern” challenge against “objectivity” and “impartiality” is helpful inasmuch as it leads us to humbly acknowledge that we have not achieved objectivity or impartiality ourselves. But those who go further, and who denigrate the very notion that it is worth trying to be objective or impartial, go too far, to an extreme that in any other area would be dismissed as ridiculous. Imagine if someone claimed that, because a nation’s criminal justice system fails to achieve real justice for all, and because notions of justice differ from country to country, therefore there is no point in having a criminal justice system at all. I doubt many would follow them in calling for the elimination of the police forces and the courts.

When it comes to historical study, we do consistently fail to achieve objectivity. There is no way we can ever view the evidence “from nowhere”, much less “from a God’s eye perspective”. But that no more makes the ideal inappropriate to aim for, than does our failure to love perfectly, or even to attain our precise weight-loss aims. Indeed, that last example has been known to illustrate, in the experience of many, just how dangerous the line of thinking is that says “I failed to achieve my goal, therefore I will stop trying”. The quest to attain a goal is often valuable, even if the goal is never in fact obtained.

Certain sorts of “postmodern” thought (usually of a popular rather than a philosophical or methodologically sophisticated sort), by rejecting the value of seeking to have one’s views challenged by an “objective reality” (or simply by the perspectives of others on a matter), help to reinforce the very certainties and hegemonies they supposedly wish to undermine. Instead of “certain because it corresponds to evidence”, we are left with the feeling of certainty about my own and my group or culture’s own narrative and perspective. There is value in challenging the “tyranny” of dominant narratives and perspectives, but an approach to truth that allows each his or her own “truth” in fact does nothing to address the competing truth claims of the tyrannical, of the bigoted, of the torturers. If claims to objectivity have been used to dominate, claims to radical and absolute uncertainty leave only power to decide who wins, and that does not represent progress. Nor does the pop-pomo perspective offer help to those who, inevitably being deluded, might deeply desire to become less so, even if they can never hope to be entirely free from the constraints of that old adage, “to err is human”.

The alternative is to quest for absolute truth, or at least for objectivity or impartiality, while humbly acknowledging that our own understanding will inevitably not correspond perfectly to the way things really are (or were, for those of us working in historical studies). If there is no “view from nowhere”, and the “view from anywhere” leaves little room for anything other than contentment for each of us in our own isolated ignorance, what we need is the “view from everywhere” – or at least, the view from as many places as possible. It is through the adoption of critical realism, and an openness to hearing the stories and perspectives of others without assuming beforehand either that theirs is good for them and mine is good for me, or that I am right and they are wrong, that will allow us to continue to learn and grow in understanding, while avoiding the shortcomings and pitfalls of the approach characteristic of modernity.

Of course, that’s just my perspective on this subject. But past experience leads me to think that it is possible not only to change one’s mind, but to learn, by which I mean improving one’s knowledge about the way things really are, and not simply adding the delusions of others to one’s own collection.