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Samenvatting rethinking history 2
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Lecture 1What is the philosophy of history?
What are the humanities?
• History
• Philosophy
• Ideas
How can we, and what does it mean to understand history?
Speculative and analytical philosophy of History are two schools of history.
,Speculative history ask: what is the meaning of history? (not necessary historians, also philosophers)
Historicism: the academic study of history. (von Ranke)
Postmodern: what happens when we represent the past in writings? -> linguistic turn
The concept analytical philosophy of history has a twofold meaning. It is the name of a branch in
Anglo-American history, but at the same time within the philosophy of history it also has a broader
meaning.
What are the humanities?
,A set of academic disciplines. The common denominator in these subjects is: it is about human
sciences, it is about human actions (to a certain extent). It is more about human ideas. Languages is
also a common denominator.
History meant doing research into what people did in the past all the way up into the present. For
Herodotus history was also what happened yesterday, not only of what happened million years ago.
History meant research.
,Res gestae: things that people have done. It is about what people did, not about nature.
Historia rerum gestarum: the concept they used in order to explain the research about what people
did. It is a story about what people did.
Try to uncover the essence of history through your study of the past. That is what meta-reflection of
res gestea would mean.
Questions about the essence of the past and questions about how we should study the past.
,Ontology: what would an ontological question about the past be? It is about historical existence.
Where is the past?
,1. studies history meaning res gestea, tries to uncover the essence of the historical process
2. studies history in the meaning of historia rerum gestarum. It studies our study/understanding of
the past. It asks questions such as: can we know the meaning of the past.
,1. very often are philosophers, oswald sprenger is an example. Philosopher trying to uncover the
essence of the past
2. very often skeptical of speculative philosophy. How can we know the essence of the past? They ask
epistemological questions.
Old-fashioned, but there are arguments to make it popular again (climate change). They try to find
patterns that unfolds in certain periodization. Very often have a goal, history moves towards a
certain end.
,How do we choose selecting sources. How do we make or should we make certain conclusions. What
is truth?
,We subconsciously assume that history is a process, apparently we imagine history to be some kind
of line, a process of development.
, Cyclical -> they believed there were certain patterns. Humans were bound to make certain errors
over and over again. -> not about physical recurrence, but timeless essence of human nature. How
forms of government follow up on another.
Mythology was the oldest way in which humans tried to explain the world. They did so in a tradition
of oral messages.
These mythologies tried to explain the world in a sense in where the Gods were not depicted to life
in a different realm, but in the same world. They were different but had the same ontological
character.
Increased criticism in the Axial Age.
Myths became more of moral lessons. You see an increased rationalization in this period. Reaching
spiritual periodization.
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