Marc Bloch embodies a model of intellectual who has not had many successors until today because he applies to himself the criticisms that intellectuals generally reserve for others. In The Strange Defeattext written on the spot during the summer of 1940 to explain the reasons for the collapse of the IIIe Republic, he writes: “I belong to a generation with a guilty conscience. » Then, while evoking the French people, he questions : “What have we done to provide him with the minimum of clear and reliable information, without which no rational conduct is possible? Nothing in truth (…). We preferred to confine ourselves to the fearful tranquility of our workshops. May our cadets forgive us the blood that is on our hands. »
We must bear in mind the feeling of guilt that Marc Bloch felt the day after the defeat of June 1940 to understand the reasons which pushed him to write – between 1941 and 1943 – the pages published after his death under the title Apology for history or the profession of historian. The main aim of this book is to fill a gap for which he feels partly responsible, by providing French citizens “the minimum of clear and reliable information” on what history is, understood as a scientific discipline. “It’s up to the reader to decide, then, if this profession is worth pursuing”he adds.
This concern for justification explains why the work begins with a question asked by a child (his own son): “Dad, tell me what the story is about. » After a few indications which summarize what we call the “historical method”, Marc Bloch insists on two essential points which distinguish historical science from other discourses on the past. The first concerns “problem history” that he helped develop with Lucien Febvre in the Annalesthe magazine founded in 1929. To explain the past, the historian must develop his own questions, and these cannot be confused with those of the journalist or political activist. The second point that Marc Bloch insists on concerns the difference between scientific explanation and value judgment. For too long, he writes, “the historian has passed for a sort of judge of the Underworld, responsible for distributing praise or blame to the dead heroes”. At a time when the French Revolution is still at the center of memorial controversies, he deplores the place occupied by these value judgments in the public debate. “The hollow indictments are followed by so many vain rehabilitations. Robespierrists, anti-Robespierrists, we cry out to you for mercy: for pity’s sake, just tell us who Robespierre was. »
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