ABSTRACT
The double task of historiography has been analysed from different aspects. To sum this up again: on the one hand, past-present ages have to be understood in terms of their own systems of values embedded in institutions and in the consciousness of actors socialized by these institutions; on the other, we have to communicate with the actors of all past-present ages on equal terms, as human beings with human beings. There is a particular aspect of this double task left unexamined up until now: the problem of moral judgment. The question I am going to explore in the following discussion is that of the possibility or impossibility, the desirability or undesirability, of passing moral judgments on actors or actions of the past. It has to be mentioned at the beginning that not all works of historiography are confronted with this problem to the same extent.
