ABSTRACT
Why are no two histories the same? This chapter argues that the difference between histories is largely a matter of ethics. It highlights the focus in contemporary explanations of the ethics of history on the responsibility of individual historians towards people from the past. Taking a different view, this chapter returns to Aristotle’s views on ethics and highlights the importance of treating ethics as practical and as imprecise. Building on that view, it argues that ethics of history is practical, of our own making and varying over time. It concludes that the ethics of history is ethos, the effort of history making across the globe and across time.
