History and Pain

Anyone who endeavors to study the human sciences must be vigilant lest his standpoint regarding the material being studied (and what a contemptuous term to use when the material is the sum of all the intensities of the researcher's experience, compressed into the abstracted, momentary existence of a human being as datum, multiplied by the innumerable individuals covered by the most casual historical speculation - this 'material' far exceeds the researcher on all accounts) cause him to lose sight of the reality of historical experience. Just as bad as an unproblematic attachment to the material, to personal sympathies and the selection of one side against another is the attitude of superior detachment, bolstered by a few dismissive platitudes about the human condition and a skillful compartmentalization of professional and personal experience. Anyone committed to the human sciences must remain unreconciled with the object of study. He must also resign himself to the impossibility of assuming a proper attitude toward the pain which wells up from every fissure which thought forces in the hardened material of forgotten history.