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Summary Lectures Theory II
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Lectures Theory II: World History. Notes are completely in English.
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Lecture 1: Greek HistoriographyRik Peters
What is the purpose of this course?
A global overview of the most important Western historiographical traditions from Herodotus
to the beginning of the twentieth century and being able to reproduce names, works, dates and
apply concepts and theories. Being able to reflect on the context of historiographical traditions.
History is not done in vacuo, but relates to real life. Being able to assess the value of various
historiographical traditions in their mutual relationship. History is an discussion without an end.
A concept is a gift
- Substantialism: the doctrine that behind phenomena there are substantial realities; the
assumption of a constant human nature
- Eschatology: the part of theology concerned with death, judgement, and the final destiny
of the soul and of humankind (the concept is commonly referred to as the ‘end of the world’
or the ‘end of times’.
- Cunning of reason: according to Hegel and Marx, universal history is the realization of
the idea of reason in a succession of ‘national spirits’, these are manifested in the deeds
of heroes, or world-historical heroes, such as Alexander the Great, Caesar and Napoleon.
Hegel holds that history fulfils its ulterior rational designs in an indirect manner. It does so
by calling into play the irrational element in human nature: the passions.
- Longue durée: an expression used by the French Annales School of historical writing to
designate their approach to the study of history. It gives priority to long-term historical
structures over ‘event history’ (histoire événementielle). The crux of the idea is to examine
extended periods of time and draw conclusions from historical trends and patterns.
Format exam: 6 questions from which 4 must be answered. Most important material for the exam
are the PowerPoints, however, the primary sources may be asked about in the exam.
Introduction
- What is history of history? → historiography
- Relation to historical practice
- The four questions:
(1) Inquiry/discovery
(2) Subject of history: story of the thoughts and deeds of human beings
(3) Distinct method: evidence
(4) Purpose: discovering the truth about important events
- What is world history?
- What is the history of world history?
What is the history of history?
- (1) The historical process, a parte objecti (2) historical thinking and writing
(historiography), a parte subiecti
- Historiography: the history of historical writing (Gr. grafein = to write)
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, - Better definition: history of historical practice, i.e. historical research (geschiedvorsing) and
historical writing (geschiedschrijving)
Why is historiography important?
(1) The argument from the knowability of the past (Popkin): the past can only be known
in historiography → in order to learn more about the past (research) historians must know
historiography (however, we also ‘know’ the past in other ways e.g. memory, historical
experience, monuments etc.; there is more to history than historiography; historiography
is not sufficient to know the past)
- Question: what is knowledge about the past? Does memory provide us with
‘knowledge’?
(2) The argument from immanence: the realization that historical practice itself is part of
history; it is immanent (intrinsic to) in history → historians must know their place in history
in order to study it
- Concretely: if historians want to ask new, sharp questions about the past, they
must know which questions have been asked before and why? Historians must
understand their own place in the historical context (status questionis)
- Historical practice develops in a historical way → in order to understand your own
historical questions, you must know the questions of previous historians
(3) The argument from practice: historical practice itself is a part of history, it is an activity
with real effects, making a difference in history → if historians want to make a difference
in historical reality, they must know their own place in history and historiography
- Concretely: if you want to ask sharp questions which also make a practical
difference, you must know your own place as a historian in history
Why world history?
- Argument from particularly and universality: Leibniz: ‘a grain of sand reflects the
whole universe’ → every particular history, presupposes all of history (cf. the argument
from immanence) → the whole universe reflects the grain of sand → conclusion: universal
history comprises all particular histories.
- Perspective: world is reality, world history: the way in which humans try to understand
their world, history of world history: the history about the ways humans tried to
understand their reality or world, and ‘tried’: principle of fallibilism: fallibilism is the
philosophical doctrine that absolute certainty about knowledge is impossible, or at least
that all claims to knowledge could, in principle, be mistaken; there is no God’s eye view,
so no one can understand all of reality → all answers are provisional, or hypothetical and
fallible → new questions can always be asked
The practice of historiography
- ‘History is a discussion without an end’ (Pieter Geyl; 1887-1966); Geyl is best known as
a critic of the British historian Arnold Toynbee, who maintained that he had discovered
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, ‘laws’ of history that proved how civilizations rise and fall. Geyl considered Toynbee’s
theory to be simplistic, ignoring the full complexity of the past.
- History is a debate about real issues, leading to questions which historians try to answer
by claims supported by arguments and based on presuppositions, so it is about:
- debate: for and against (pro/contra)
- questions: looking at issues; historians raise questions
- claims: the answer to a question
Why theory?
- Theory is the study of presuppositions (the underlying concepts of historical practice)
- Transcendental assumption: ‘history’ is a transcendental (presupposed in and
necessary to experience, a priori) concept; a necessary presupposition of the human
mind → humans have always thought historically in the sense of making order in time, for
example, clocks in Babylon, hieroglyphs → everyone is a historian
Collingwood: 4 Characteristics of History
Question 4 characteristics Answer
What is history? Nature Inquiry
What is it about? Object Res gestae actions
What is its method? Method Based on evidence
What is it for? Value Self-knowledge
Self-knowledge
- “Knowing yourself means knowing, first, what it is to be a person; secondly, knowing what
it is to be the kind of person you are; and thirdly, knowing what it is to be the person you
are and nobody else is. Knowing yourself means knowing what you can do; and since
nobody knows what they can do until they try, the only clue to what man can do is what
man has done. The value of history, then, is that it teaches us what man has done and
thus what man is.” (Collingwood, p. 10)
- Self-knowledge is an old topic (Socrates, Plato): ‘all knowledge starts with self-knowledge’
- Collingwood: explicitly relates self-knowledge to history
- Self-knowledge: who are you as a unique person in world history? As a historian? As a
‘grain of sand’? The answer comes from world history, as described by Collingwood
O Fortuna
Example (translation from Latin)
O Fortune,
like the moon
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,you are changeable,
ever waxing
ever waning;
hateful life
first oppresses
and then soothes
playing with mental clarity;
poverty
and power
it melts them like ice.
Fate – monstrous
and empty,
you whirling wheel,
you are malevolent,
well-being is vain
and always fades to nothing,
shadowed
and veiled
you plague me too;
now through the game
I bring my bare back
to your villainy.
“O Fortuna” is a medieval Latin Goliardic (the goliards were a group of, generally young, clergy
in Europe who wrote satirical Latin poetry in the 12th and 13th c. of the Middle Ages) poem, written
early in the 13th c. it is a complaint about the goddess Fortuna, the inexorable fate that rules
both gods and mortals in Roman and Greek mythology, so it is a complaint about the inescapable
power of fate.
Fortuna was the Roman goddess of fortune and the personification of luck in Roman religion
who, largely thanks to the Late Antique author Boethius, remained popular through the Middle
Ages until at least the Renaissance. Fortuna might bring good or bad luck. Fortuna came to
represent life’s capriciousness.
The world at the times of Herodotus (485-420 BC) and Thucydides (460-400 BC)
oikoumene: the inhabited world, androphagi: cannibals hyperborea: above the north
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,Popkin and Collingwood on Herodotus and Thucydides
- Popkin: ‘Western historiography began in the Greek polis’, before the Greeks there were
descriptions of events (Babylon, Egypt, China), but the Greeks did something new
(Popkin, p. 27)
- The four questions: (1) Inquiry/discovery (2) Subject of history: story of the thoughts
and deeds of human beings (3) Distinct method: evidence (4) Purpose: discovering the
truth about important events
- Collingwood: ‘creation of history’ by Herodotus (father of history), before ‘history there
was quasi-history’: (1) Theocratic ‘history’ (2) Myth (3) Theogony (4) Logographoi
(Greek historiographers and chroniclers before Herodotus)
- The four questions: (1) inquiry (NB. historiè = research), (2) deeds done in the past (3)
method based on evidence (4) human self-knowledge
Collingwood on Herodotus and Thucydides
Pro (Collingwood, p. 18)
- Not legendary, but based on inquiry → question and answer
- Not theocratic, but humanistic → not mythical, but events are dated in the past
- Not based on tradition or authority, but on evidence
- Not revelation of a mythic world, but the self-revelation of humans
Contra (Collingwood, p. 25-28)
- Short term perspective
- Historians could not choose subjects
- A general history is impossible
- Mythical remnants (p. 18)
Conclusion: “The point of Herodotus and Thucydides is not that the remote past is for them still
outside the scope of scientific history, but that the recent past is within that scope” (Collingwood,
p. 26)
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,Peripeteia (Collingwood, p. 22-23)
- Peripeteia: catastrophic changes; a reversal of circumstances, or turning point
- From one state to an opposite state, e.g. from pride to humiliation
- There is no knowledge about peripeteia, but opinion can be useful
- Peripeteia shows cycles and patterns
- Practice: ‘Be warned!’ (if you don’t see the pattern you are blind, and you miss the goal;
Hamartia (a fatal flaw leading to the downfall of a tragic hero or heroine; fault, failure in
Ancient Greek tragedy), (Collingwood, p. 24)
- NB: this type of thinking is not causal, but cyclical; this type is not deterministic, but ordered
by fate: Tyche (Greek goddess of fortune), Fatum (fate; prophetic declaration, oracle or
destiny), Fortuna (Roman goddess of fortune)
Living past
- The metaphysics of ‘being’ lives on in modern thinking, e.g. in the idea of a fixed human
nature, or a fixed nationality
- Implication: for substantialism historical events appear as sudden revolts
(discontinuity), such as crises, global warming, a switch to the left or the right
- What kind of thinking do we need to comprehend events in complex situations?
Herodotus
- He is known for having written the book Histories (written between, c. 430-420 BC), a
detailed record of his ‘inquiry’ on the origins of the Greco-Persian Wars.
- He is widely considered to have been the first writer to have treated historical subjects
using a method of systematic investigation – specifically, by collecting his materials
and then critically arranging them into an historiographic narrative. On account of this, he
is often referred to as the father of history
- NB. these ‘histories’ were contemporary histories
- The first work of prose of that length, the ‘competitor’ was Homer’s Odyssey
- Histories consists of nine books filled with: history, myths, ethnography (study of Egypt),
geography (descriptions of places)
- Content: prehistory (context), Ionic uprising (499-493 BC), Persian Invasions (Books
6-9, Marathon, 490 BC, Salamis, 480 BC)
Examples from Herodotus
Herodotus: “This is the Showing forth of the Inquiry of Herodotus of Halicarnassus, to the
end that neither the deeds of men may be forgotten by lapse of time, nor the works great
and marvellous, which have been produced some by Hellenes and some by Barbarians,
may lose their renown; and especially that the causes may be remembered for which
these waged war with one another.”
Those of the Persians who have knowledge of history declare that the Phoenicians first began
the quarrel. Presupposes an independent researcher: Herodotus. The purpose: not forgetting the
deeds of Greeks and Barbarians. Cause: not deterministic, but in terms of ‘guilt’. The answer to
the question can be found by consulting sources from all sides.
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, Herodotus: “These are the tales told by the Persians and the Phoenicians severally: and
concerning these things I am not going to say that they happened thus or thus, but when
I have pointed to the man who first within my own knowledge began to commit wrong
against the Hellenes, I shall go forward further with the story. (...) giving an account of the
cities of men, small as well as great: for those which in old times were great have for the
most part become small, while those that were in my own time great used in former times
to be small: so then, since I know that human prosperity never continues steadfast, I shall
make mention of both indifferently.”
Herodotus comes to his own conclusions. Idea of fate: reversal into opposites.
Herodotus Conclusion
Pro (according to the four questions)
- Herodotus was the first who carried out independent research of this scope
- Herodotus’ world was a complex whole of actions which lead to unintended
consequences
- Herodotus combined several methods on the basis of many kinds of evidence:
eyewitnesses, myths and artefacts etc. (however how reliable is a myth?)
- Aim: to comprehend an enormous unintended event (war) in terms of intentions
Contra
- Remnants of myths either as ‘evidence’ or copied wholesale
- The idea of ‘fate’
- Uncritical copying of sources
Underlying concept: in the world of becoming motive or intention = cause
Thucydides
- Thucydides was an Athenian historian and general. His History of the Peloponnesian
War recounts the 5th BC war between Sparta and Athens until the year 411 BC and was
also written during the Peloponnesian War (431-404 BC)
- NB. Historiè was contemporary history!
- Consists of eight books filled with: history until 411 BC, ‘Archeologie’ = background,
methodological account and 141 speeches.
- Highlights: “Thucydides, an Athenian, wrote the history of the war between the
Peloponnesians and the Athenians, beginning at the moment that it broke out, and
believing that it would be a great war and more worthy of relation than any that had
preceded it. This belief was not without its grounds”. → again: independent inquirer,
makes a difference in (un)important events and there are reasons for evaluating the
importance of events.
- Thucydides also developed an understanding of human nature to explain behaviour in
such crises as plagues, massacres and civil war
Thucydides: Critical Method
- Aim: finding truth for eternity (ktèma es aiei) a possession for all time
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, - Based on evidence ‘we can rest satisfied with having proceeded upon the clearest data,
and having arrived at conclusions as exact as can be expected in matters of such antiquity’
- Critical evaluation of evidence compares the reasons of all parties, distinguishing
explicit reasons and implicit like hate, jealousy etc. (difference with Herodotus who just
copied other work)
- Thucydides compares events, such as the Persian War and Peloponnesian War
Thucydides: Speeches
Collingwood is highly critical about the speeches: claiming that Thucydides is not the successor
to Herodotus, however Collingwood recognizes that:
- Thucydides is conscious that he could not remember all details
- He reconstructs what someone had to say in given circumstances: based on Kairos (the
right moment in the medical and rhetorical world; Ancient Greek word meaning the right,
critical or opportune moment)
- Underlying presupposition: time develops in patterns
Thucydides: Conclusion
- Like Herodotus, Thucydides conducted independent research with a large scope
- The historical world consists of a complex whole which lead to unintended
consequences
- Combined several methods on the basis of many kinds of evidence eyewitnesses,
myths, artefacts etc.
- To comprehend an enormous unintended event (war) in terms of intentions
- Underlying metaphysics
- In the world of becoming motives are causes
- Time develops in patterns
- Extra: (with regard to Herodotus): Thucydides, following the example of medicine, applied
his methods more consciously that Herodotus (less use of myths, more diagnosis of
events)
- Contra: Collingwood condemns Thucydides for his substantialism, the assumption of a
constant human nature, but that is due to his idea of Kairos
Final Verdict
Herodotus and Thucydides developed a mental model that could cope with the complexities of
their world by developing both historical inquiry and historical writing; they developed a form of
writing by which they could answer the questions of their world in a new, convincing way.
Herodotus and Thucydides
- Herodotus and Thucydides got a grip on their world through historical exploration
(historia) and historiography, so through a new way of dealing with the past, which we call
practicing history (geschiedbeoefening)
- Historiography is focused on the polis, in particular Athens
- Distinct method of telling the story of the past, historical truth
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, - Warfare, politics and human beings are central; Collingwood makes the case that it is a
history of humanity, humans are put at the centre.
- Is there a difference between Herodotus and Thucydides?
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