Should Objectivity Be The Primary Goal Of The Historian

History is the root of social science, political science, philosophy and all topics that are debated using examples and references of the past. Whether a topic is discussed on the world political stage, a bar stool or the kitchen table, if it includes a comparison or a learned topic of the past, there were historians who initially documented the event. History is in fact ubiquitous in our lives and without it many disciplines would be toothless in substance and limited to non-researchable theories.

Should objectivity be a primary goal of the Historian? The Historian should take all steps to limit the pressures that skew or influence their objectivity. The accuracy of the documentation of past cultures, facts, rituals, and timeline of events

The ethical responsibility of Historians is to document all the events of time through as many perspectives, sources, and methods that are available. The most difficult thing for anyone to do is to decide what is important or relevant to remember. The situation that historians must struggle with is that what is important may not be known for decades if not centuries later and the methods for review maybe hidden in the culture of the time. Therefore, they have an ethical responsibility to include everything, research all sources, understand all perspectives for inclusion and avoid only documenting what was important to themselves. Historians should be on a never-ending quest of documentation and elucidation of historiographical methods and primary sources of information. The ethical responsibility is owed to history itself. If we fail history as a discipline then we ultimately fail all of ?Man?. In the philosophy of Aristotle, when a historian fails to do what they know they should have done, then they are not acting as a historian but as ?a man?. [footnoteRef:2] [2: . Gorman, Jonathan. 2004. ?Historians and Their Duties?. History and Theory 43 (4). Wiley: 104-105. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3590638.