Objectivity and the First Law of History Writing

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Long before the emergence of Donald Trump as the main symbol of what has suitably been called a "post-truth" political culture, I've been thinking on a very trivial thing: why as a rule do we condemn deliberate falsehood in politics, journalism, the academia, and other fields? In posing this question, I wasn't intending to validate the kind of relativism that says "the distinction between lying and telling the truth doesn't matter". My insight was rather that the analysis of practices that claim respect for truth and truthfulness could well start with an exploration of the ways they reject lies and other means of deception. I've focused on the role of the condemnation of lying in history writing, because this is the only field I'm really familiar with. I've tried to catch up with some very interesting philosophical and literary discussions, and to connect them to the old problem of historical objectivity. I ended up attracted to the ethical issues that normally remain in the background of the arguments in favor of and against objectivity. But what if those issues are pushed into the foreground? What if objectivity is more about ethics than epistemology or methodology? These are the problems I've attempted to unpack in the text.

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