Juízo e verdade histórica no discurso historiográfico

Abstract

The article discusses the relationship between History and Justice, more precisely the comparison between the role of the historian and that of the judge in the process of knowing particular cases. Historiography is approached at various times, from Classical Antiquity to the present, analyzing Herodotus, Thucydides, Saint Augustin, Antônio Vieira and others. In this panoramic view, the focus is on the dilemma between value judgment and critical judgment, which leads us to the analysis of Historicism and the Annales movement, with an emphasis on the reflections of Lucien Febvre and Marc Bloch. The historian's judicial procedure in the field of events is valued, in contrast to historians, philosophers or linguists who reduce historical evidence to the domain of representations or versions of the same fact, doubting the veracity of actual events. We deepened this discussion in the approach of three major judgments: the Dreyfus case, in the 1890s, the Eichmann case, in 1960, and the Sofri case, in the 1990s. In this sense, we analyze critical texts of great importance, such those written by the dreyfusards, by Hanna Arendt and by Carlo Ginzburg in face of the cited judicial proceedings.