Philosophy Dictionary of ArgumentsHome
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| Historiography: Historiography is the study of the writing of history. It examines how historians have interpreted historical events and trends, and how their interpretations have changed over time. Historiography also explores the different methods and theories that historians use to study the past. See also History, Historism._____________Annotation: The above characterizations of concepts are neither definitions nor exhausting presentations of problems related to them. Instead, they are intended to give a short introduction to the contributions below. – Lexicon of Arguments. | |||
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Hans-Georg Gadamer on Historiography - Dictionary of Arguments
I 10 Historiography/Science/Gadamer: Whatever science may mean here, and even if in all historical knowledge the application of general experience to the respective object of research is included - historical knowledge nevertheless does not strive to grasp the concrete phenomenon as the case of a general rule. The individual does not simply serve to confirm a lawfulness from which predictions can be made in practical terms. Its ideal is rather to understand the phenomenon itself in its unique and historical concreteness. No matter how much general experience may become effective: the aim is not to confirm and expand these general experiences in order to arrive at the knowledge of a law, for example, how people, peoples, or states develop in general, but to understand how this person, this people, this state is, what it has become - in general terms: how it could come to be that way. >Humanities/Gadamer, >Humanities/Dilthey, >Historiography/Droysen. I 340 Historiography/Gadamer: The historian behaves differently [than the hermeneutician] to handed-down texts in that he or she strives to see a piece of the past through them. I 341 The historian feels it to be the philologist's weakness that he sees his text as a work of art. A work of art is a whole world that is sufficient in itself. But the historical interest does not know such self-sufficiency. DiltheyVsSchleiermacher: This is how Dilthey felt about Schleiermacher: "Philology would like to see a rounded existence everywhere"(1). Gadamer: If a handed-down poem makes an impression on the historian, it will nevertheless have no hermeneutical meaning for him or her. The historian cannot, in principle, see him- or herself as the addressee of the text and assume the claim of a text. Rather, he or she questions the text with regard to something that the text does not want to give away of its own accord. I 400 Historiography/Gadamer: (...) the historian usually chooses terms to describe the historical uniqueness of his or her objects, without explicit reflection on their origin and justification. He or she follows only his or her own material interest and does not give any account of the fact that the descriptive suitability he or she finds in the terms the historian chooses can be highly disastrous for his or her own intention, as long as it adapts the historically foreign to the familiar and thus, even with an unbiased view, has already subjected the otherness of the object to his or her own anticipation. Unless the historian admits his or her naivety to this, he or she undoubtedly misses the level of reflection required by the object. The historian's naivety becomes truly abysmal, however, when he or she begins to become aware of the problem of the same and demands, for example, that in historical understanding one should leave one's own concepts aside and think only in terms of the epoch to be understood. This demand, which sounds like a consistent implementation of historical consciousness, reveals itself to every thinking reader as a naive illusion. The demand to leave aside the concepts of the present does not mean a naive transposition into the past. Rather, it is an essentially relative demand, which only has any meaning at all in relation to its own terms. The historical consciousness misjudges itself when, in order to understand, wants to ex- I 401 clude what alone makes understanding possible. >Meaning change, >Concepts/Gadamer. Historical Consciousness/Gadamer: To think historically means in truth to carry out the implementation that happens to the concepts of the past when we try to think in them. Historical thinking always contains a mediation between those terms and our own thinking. To want to avoid one's own terms when interpreting them is not only impossible, but obvious nonsense. 1. Clara Misch: Der junge Dilthey. Ein Lebensbild in Briefen und Tagebüchern 1852–1870. Leipzig 1933; Stuttgart/Göttingen 1960, S. 94._____________Explanation of symbols: Roman numerals indicate the source, arabic numerals indicate the page number. The corresponding books are indicated on the right hand side. ((s)…): Comment by the sender of the contribution. Translations: Dictionary of Arguments The note [Concept/Author], [Author1]Vs[Author2] or [Author]Vs[term] resp. "problem:"/"solution:", "old:"/"new:" and "thesis:" is an addition from the Dictionary of Arguments. If a German edition is specified, the page numbers refer to this edition. |
Gadamer I Hans-Georg Gadamer Wahrheit und Methode. Grundzüge einer philosophischen Hermeneutik 7. durchgesehene Auflage Tübingen 1960/2010 Gadamer II H. G. Gadamer The Relevance of the Beautiful, London 1986 German Edition: Die Aktualität des Schönen: Kunst als Spiel, Symbol und Fest Stuttgart 1977 |
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Ed. Martin Schulz, access date 2024-04-18