: This article revisits the debate over presentism in historical writing touched off by American Historical Association President James Sweet in an August 2022 column for the Association’s newsletter. Sweet’s statement, expressing concern that historians motivated by today’s political concerns sometimes distort historical evidence, sparked a flurry of responses, mostly from detractors in public and supporters in private. Leaders in the profession and writers in the popular press articulated in response a mainstream compromise position: present-day concerns are an entirely legitimate point of departure for historians but must be held in check by respect for research integrity. This article challenges the rhetorical binary between presentism and strict empiricism, arguing that framing the issue in this way downplays the most important characteristic of ‘good history’, interpretive originality. Neither political passion nor scrupulous research suffice to produce great works of history which typically originate in creatively counter-intuitive thinking.

中文翻译：

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当下主义与历史政治：重访 2022 年詹姆斯·斯威特事件


：本文回顾了美国历史协会主席詹姆斯·斯威特 （James Sweet） 在 2022 年 8 月为该协会时事通讯撰写的专栏中引发的关于历史写作中当下主义的辩论。斯威特的声明表达了对历史学家受当今政治担忧驱使有时会歪曲历史证据的担忧，这引发了一连串的回应，其中大部分来自公开的批评者和私下的支持者。作为回应，该行业的领导者和大众媒体的作家阐明了一个主流的妥协立场：当今的担忧是历史学家完全合法的出发点，但必须通过尊重研究诚信来加以遏制。本文挑战了当下主义和严格的经验主义之间的修辞二元论，认为以这种方式构建问题会淡化“好历史”最重要的特征，即解释的原创性。无论是政治激情还是一丝不苟的研究都不足以产生伟大的历史著作，这些著作通常起源于创造性的反直觉思维。