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Sunday, May 29, 2005
MEMORIAL DAY POST… …in memory of Marc Bloch, intellectual, war hero. From The Historian’s Craft: "What is it, exactly, that constitutes the legitimacy of an intellectual endeavor? No one today, I believe, would dare to say, with the orthodox positivists, that the value of a line of research is to be measured by its ability to promote action. Experience has surely taught us that it is impossible to decide in advance whether even the most abstract speculations may not eventually prove extraordinarily helpful in practice. It would inflict a strange mutilation upon humanity to deny it a right to appease its intellectual appetites apart from all consideration of its material welfare. Even were history obliged to be eternally indifferent to homo faber or to homo politicus, it would be sufficiently justified by its necessity for the full flowering of homo sapiens." From D.W. Brogan: "I remember vividly the day on which the news of Marc Bloch's death reached us in Cambridge, and how eagerly we pounced on the rumour — false, alas! — that he had escaped. When we learned beyond doubt that he was dead, we felt that a blow had been dealt to the whole world of learning." From Bloch's Testament, March 18, 1941: "During my entire life, I have, to the best of my ability, striven towards a total sincerity of expression and spirit. I hold the indulgence of lies - regardless of the pretexts it may adorn itself with - as the worst plague of the soul. …I would readily have my tombstone read no other motto than these simple words: Dilexit veritatem." |