HISTORY MAKING AND ETHICS—AN INTEGRAL RELATIONSHIP?

Stefan Berger

Review of Big and Little Histories: Sizing Up Ethics in Historiography, by Marnie Hughes-Warrington with Anne Martin.

History and Theory 62, no. 1 (2023)

In this review essay, I examine the arguments made by Marnie Hughes-Warrington, with Anne Martin, in Big and Little Histories: Sizing Up Ethics in Historiography. While I find much to praise in this history, I also ask critical questions about the impact of non-Western ethics on historical writing, the role of ethics in historical writing generally, the need to further investigate the everyday lifeworlds of history makers in order to fully understand their ethical dispositions, and the relationship between the ethics of history making and engaged forms of historical writing. I conclude this review essay by offering some reflections on the interrelationship between history and memory and the ethics involved in both.