Gaddis believes that history is what we’ve extracted from the past. He thinks that history can be known but the past can only be known with our accessible information. We only can learn about the future by using the past, and our knowledge of it. Gaddis thinks that the past is entirely inaccessible and we must use the recorded history to determine future events and possible obstacles. Moreover, Gaddis believes that we can represent the past with our recorded history. He says that the past is the actual events that occurred while our history is what the historian’s record and decide to share or not share depending on the historian. This shows Gaddis’ idea of inaccurate history because historians are bias and have some power of what they describe from the past.
Brecht has a view on history that differs in some aspects. He believes that the recorded history is very different than the raw history. He thinks that raw history is another way of saying the past because it is unchanged. Historians can write history with their own opinions included, which obviously changes history. Brecht believes that history is more general and depicts only main events that should be passed on. He also thinks that history is limited because of faulty historians. Textbooks are written by many historians and even though history cannot drastically change without being noticed, the historians can alter facts throughout history. Our full knowledge of history is limited to the facts and faults of historians. Furthermore, in Brecht’s eyes the past is rather unknown partially due to the fact that historians described events in history with single names, like Caesar defeating the Gauls.
Lastly, Hobsbawm believes that a definitive history is unobtainable. Due to the large array of historians who have written about the past, or who have written history, the subject has become very debatable. History is subject to beliefs because of the lack of information we have regarding the past, and also the abundance of information. Historians can endlessly discuss events in history that haven’t been recorded and Hobsbawm believes that even after all of this debate, we will never know the past. Also, he says that because of all the untouched information we still have regarding the past it is unlikely we will be able to decipher all of it accurately. Otherwise, he thinks the past is unknown to us and the best we can do is try and piece together an accurate history with the recorded information we have.
These historians believe that our history can be known to an extent. The past is the overall group in which history falls into. Gaddis believes that our past will be represented by the history we’ve written. Then, Brecht believes that our history is general and doesn’t accurately depict our past. Last of all, Hobsbawm thinks that history will always be indefinite because of our lack of accurate information and our inability to retrieve it.
