La politique de l'histoire : Thucydide historien du présent

Thucydides, Historian of the Present. While relating the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides elaborates primarily on the basis of the case of Athens—a representation of political activity from a threefold vantage point: the analysis of facts, debate and action. This was an eminently critical representation which grounded his explanation of Athenes' defeat and traced out the right way to politically think and act. Now it seems that, in both his principal intellectual operations and his practical aims, his activity as historian claims to be and is conceived as political activity. The only difference between them is that Thucydides' history affirms itself as a completed form of politics, exempt from the perversions of which Athenes provided examples during the Peloponnesian War. But neither politics nor history is able, however, to ground in truth its claim to apprehend facts and determine what is useful.Darbo-Peschanski Catherine. La politique de l'histoire : Thucydide historien du présent. In: Annales. Économies, Sociétés, Civilisations. 44ᵉ année, N. 3, 1989. pp. 653-675