Summary Theory II

Theory II
HC 1
- Program HC
 What is history of hist.?
 Relation to historical practice
 The 4 q’s
 The concept of time/space
 What is world hist?
 What is the hist. of world hist.?
 Application: Greek historiography (how the 4 q’s apply)

- History 1: a parte obiecti: the historical process = series of events
- History 2: a parte subiecti: historical thinking/writing
 Sometimes also historiography
- Historiography (formal): the history how history is written/spoken/thought about
over several millennia and cultures (History 2: history a parte subiecti)

- Woolf: the wider set of form of engagements with the past:
 Memory ( remember)
 Trauma  experience
 Identity  personal, national, etc.
 Practical  use past to make arguments
 Entertainment
 Historical experience  the moment you feel the past being present. For ex. An
old song of the 20th century
 Knowledge  a.k.a. the historical discipline from the 19th century

- Argument from practice = historical practice (historical research and writing) is itself
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, then they must
know their own place in history and historiography
 In other words: if you want to ask sharp questions, that practically will make a
difference, then, as a historian, you must know your own place in history
 You must know the questions that have already been asked by other historians

- Argument from particularity and universality (particularism vs. universalism)
 Leibniz (17th cent.): “a grain of sand reflects the whole universe.”
 Implications:
1) Every particular history presupposes the whole of history
 Focus on ‘particularities’, a very small history
 Danger: you know everything of nothing
2) The whole universe reflect the ‘grain of sand’.
 Making history more and more universalistic

,  Danger universalism: you know nothing of everything; eventually you
know nothing  Endless regress
 Universal history comprises all particular histories, and vice versa
- Principle of fallibilism: 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

- World history:
 World = reality develops through time
 World history = the way in which humans try to understand their world as it
develops in time
 Time and place: most important concepts!
- History of world history = the history about the ways humans tried to understand
their reality/world as it developed in time

- Pieter Geijl 1887-1966: “History is a discussion without an end.”
 Historians are never isolated writers, they know what the question is, they are
involved into the debate
 ‘Debate’: so for and against, pro-contra
 ‘Questions’: looking at issues, historians raise questions
 ‘Claim’: the answer to an answer
 ‘Question: every question has a presupposition
 They raise further questions; every questions has a presupposition
(vooronderstelling)
 Theory = a study of presuppositions of questions and answers
 (the underlying concepts of historical practice)
 (note: historiography is not theory!)

- Why theory?
 Theory = the study of presuppositions (the underlying concepts of historical
practice)
 N.b: historiography is not theory! That is what we offer you
 It can give you intelligence

- Theory: the 4 Questions/aspects (Woolf)
1) What is history? Nature (aard) Research
2) What is it about? Object Human action
3) What is the method? Method Rational (f.e. evidence)
4) What is it for? Value (self) knowledge
 Transcendental assumption: history is a transcendental concept: a necessary
presupposition of the human mind, humans have always thought historically in
the sense of making order in time
 Through time, people thought different about history (1 &2), it develops
through time, perspectives change

,- Claim: to understand a historical culture, you must understand it’s conception of time
(and space)
 VB: circular/linear; short term/long term; eternity/a-synchronic; clock
time/experienced time; acceleration of time
 Claim: every historical culture answers the 4 Q’s differently on the basis of its
space/time conception
 F. e. the weather is circular; also kings/dynasties
 Christianity, Greeks, Romans: linear
 Colonizers brought their clock time to the colonies; now they had to obey to clock
time
 Experience time: you don’t have clock time, you feel time
 The 4 q’s; claim: every historical culture answers the 4 q’s differently on the basis
of its space/time conception

- O Fortuna: like the moon, you’re changeable, it always changes
- History writing Egypt/Hittites/Sumeria/Assyria
 Kings’ list
 Annals: list of events (mostly wars)
 Chronicle: particular events. With date, in sequence
 Epic: partly mythological, partly historical
 All these artefacts refer to (past) events, but are they history?

- History according to Woolf: (are these artefacts history?)
 Yes:
1) All refer to past events
2) In chronicles even to particular events in sequence
3) Some from a contemporary perspective – maybe result of research?
 No:
1) They have no word for ‘history’
2) No clear distinction between mythical – historical
3) More lists of names and events
 But (all these artefacts):
 Have a sense of the past
 The Jewish Toledot & Divre Hayyamim (words of those days) come close to
history
 Woolf: ‘this is history, because it has a basis in fact’

- Jewish historical thought (according to Woolf):
 Yes:
 Tanakh has some ‘historicity’: it has a basis in fact
1) Describes times, persons, events
2) Possibly 1 writer, Deutolonomistic historian
3) There is external evidence (archeology, etc.)
 No:

,  Doesn’t aim at literal truth (vs. religious truth)
 Difficulty: at that time there was no distinction between literal and religious
truth
 All these historical cultures has a different conception of historical truth! For
them this was the truth
 Bibles has the same thing, why is it not history?

- The Greek:
 Oikoumene = the inhabited world = space
 Geographical word is expanding: they knew about Spain, about Assyria, Libya
 Androphagi = maneaters; hyperborean = above the North
 Their organized/structured time in their space, their space concepts
 The world in the polis: a sense of identity
 You see in artefacts: Barbarians and Greeks (barbarians: hyperborean);
barbarian/Greek distinction
- First forms of historiography (Greek)
1) Genealogy (mythography) f.e. Hesiod
2) Ethnography
3) Chronography
4) Horography
5) Contemporary history = history proper
 Continuous narrative
 Sequential events
 Causal connection
 One author
 History was contemporary history!! (only from the beginning of nations, people
started to look further back in the past) only their world
 The continuity of the narrative presupposes connections of events in space and
time = an ontology = the branch of metaphysics dealing with the nature of being.

- Philosophers vs. historians (Greeks)
 Philosophers: Socrates, Plato, Aristotle
 Historians: Herodotus, Thucydides
 Claim: Greek historians were the first to take time seriously = to seek truth in a
world of becoming, vs. philosophers who sought truth in a world of a constant
being
 Historians were rebels! Math doesn’t change in time; historians describe things
that pass away, no certain knowledge; telling stories; for Plato it’s almost a story
of lies.
 Philosophers: they believed truth is constant (truth is the same today &
tomorrow, etc. + at all places, everywhere truth)
 Historians: seeking truth in things that changed