"A surprising feature of The Practice of History is that Elton makes no attempt to respond to these arguments by seeking to vindicate the social value or cultural significance of his own very different kind of research. He could surely have attempted – as several of his admiring obituarists did – to convey some sense of why the study of administrative and constitutional history might still be thought to matter even in a postimperial culture dominated by the social sciences. It is true that, a couple of years later, he made some gestures in this direction in his first inaugural lecture. But it is striking that he almost instantly stopped short, apologising for starting to speak in such a ‘very vague and rather vapoury’ way. Faced with the question of how a knowledge of history might help the world, he preferred to advise historians to ‘abandon and resign’ such aspirations altogether."
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Jews from the United KingdomJews from GermanyPhilosophers from GermanyHistorians from GermanyEducators from Germany
Original Language: English
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Quentin Skinner, "The practice of history and the cult of the fact", Visions of Politics (2002)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Geoffrey_Elton
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Geoffrey Elton
Sir Geoffrey Rudolph Elton FBA (born Gottfried Rudolf Otto Ehrenberg; 17 August 1921 – 4 December 1994) was a German-born British political and constitutional historian who specialised in the Tudor period. He taught at Clare College, Cambridge, and was the Regius Professor of Modern History there from 1983 to 1988.
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