To what extent can historians be objective?

The first 200 words of this essay...

To what extent can historians be objective?

'You have reckoned that history ought to judge the past and to instruct the contemporary world as to the future. The present attempt does not yield to that high office. It will merely tell you how it really was' - Leopold Von Ranke

'There are no facts, only interpretations' - Nietzsche

Here we encounter two diametrically opposed views concerning objectivity. It can be argued that "true" objectivity cannot exist, as history is more exposed to differing interpretations than any other discipline and to be "factual", dispassionate or truly objective would be at best unrealistic and at worst impossible. Historians, in their selective analysis of the past on the basis of surviving historical records and evidence, draw conclusions, which must necessarily be subject to their own individual interpretations - interpretations that are in turn subject to the historians' own individual ideologies. The fact that history is constantly being rewritten is testimony to the impossibility of attaining "true" objectivity.

On the other hand, "true" subjectivity would constitute a threat to history itself as a discipline - the logical outcome of this would be to grant every