On the Metaphysical Role of Historicity (original) (raw)
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A brief history of historicity
O que nos faz pensar [PUC-RJ], 2022
LINK | https://oquenosfazpensar.fil.puc-rio.br/oqnfp/article/view/832/703 I aim to clarify some characteristics of historicity as a technical term of historiography, as well as a philosophical concept. I would therefore like to present a brief account of the concept, focusing on the initial main moments of its conceptualization – specifically in the works of Hegel, Dilthey, Yorck von Wartenburg and Heidegger – while also proposing an analysis on its ontological applicability or metahistorical validity. Following the contributions of Heidegger regarding the understanding of historicity as an ontological structure of existence in general, I argue that this philosophical concept of historicity still has something to teach the historical-philosophical way of thinking. Finally, given this context, I briefly introduce the paradoxical nature of the idea of past as one important logical evidence of what is commonly called the historical or temporal condition of existence, which can be epitomized by the ontological term historicity.
The Meanings of Historicity—The End and the Beginning
Geschichtstheorie am Werk, 2022
LINK | https://gtw.hypotheses.org/7934 An elementary founding principle of modern thinking, which philosophy called historicity, combines three structural aspects of human consciousness about the features of reality: that we are not omnipresent, therefore, we are neither omniscient nor omnipotent, as our spiritual powers are restricted and finite. Considering human existence has always been subject to the yoke of finitude, we are permanently enmeshed in intervals fixed by death, the end, and, above all, by birth, the beginning. In this short essay, then, I will try to present an argument in favour of acknowledging how analysis of the meanings of historicity can disclose some unnoticeable metaphysical foundations of our understanding of what history is.
Hermeneutics, Historicism, and The Concept of History
2019
This essay offers a critical assessment of Dmitri Nikulin's effort to advance a theory of history that avoids the pitfalls of universalism, on the one hand, and historicism, on the other. I focus my attention upon the relationship between three key concepts in Nikulin's study; namely, the fabula, the historical, and logos. On my reading, Nikulin implicitly adopts an epistemological orientation, inherited from late nineteenth-century neo-Kantian philosophers who envisioned history as an object that must be thematized in order to be studied scientifically. As a result, Nikulin comes to characterize history in terms of an untenable schema/content dualism that almost entirely extricates the historical past (or, data) from the contemporary effort to understand (or, interpret) it. By contrasting Nikulin's view with those of Martin Heidegger and Hans-Georg Gadamer, I show that a hermeneutic conception of history offers a more convincing account of the dynamic relationship betwe...
Historicity as Effective History
Within the phenomenological tradition it is Heidegger who is the first to give the notion of historicity decisive importance. As Heidegger describes it, the historical is not only something from which one gets information, but is that which “we ourselves our.” When this notion is taken up by Gadamer in his philosophical hermeneutics he will use the expression Wirkungsgeschichte (effective history). For Gadamer this expression denotes more than the simple relation in which history is read from out of a condition of being in history. It is for him also that differentiating relation which limits the understanding of an historical tradition, in effect designating the historical in relation to a question or problem rather than to any historical totality. One finds a similar configuration in Foucault when he takes over from Nietzsche the term wirkliche Historie. For Foucault, the term l’historie effective conveys the systematic dismantling of any comprehensive view of history. As Foucault employs this term for his own use, it comes to express a practico-political concern that as such appears to be absent from Gadamer’s effective history. This paper explore the precise sense of “effective history” and draws out both the unity and difference of the term as we find it in Gadamer and Foucault. At issue is ultimately the character of critique that is employed in both versions, which, in turn, raises the further question of the degree of continuity or discontinuity that is brought about by effective history.
Oxford Research Encyclopedia, 2020
In the works of Kant, Hegel, and Marx, a philosophy of history developed to consider how thought and culture are historically situated and to present human civilization as an organizing force that subdues nature toward a form of progressive improvement. This new sense of being situated in history subsequently shaped philosophies of “historicity” in the writings of Dilthey, Heidegger, Gadamer, and others. It also led to less desirable political investments in collective fate and destiny. Against these teleological and culturally reductive forms of historicity, poststructuralist articulations of multiple historicities conceive of historical engagement as a cyclic or stratigraphic configuration of unlimited potential. Theorists such as Derrida, Deleuze, and Baudrillard provide more open, associative, and playful approaches to historical frameworks. An understanding of historicity requires the articulation of related terms such as historiography (the writing of history) and historicism (the analysis of culture through historical context). Historicity as a sense of historical development as well as of future potential is an important theme for discussions of di verse topics, including identity, community, empire, globalization, and the Anthropocene. Literary engagements with historicity range from the rejection of history to the interrogation of historicism as a series of competing and contradictory narratives. Historicity is a vital concept used by literary theorists to critique authoritative accounts of history, as well as a self-reflexive mode for considering institutional and disciplinary biases. The following article surveys different forms of historicity in philosophical and theoretical tradi tions, analyzes institutions that influence official accounts of history, and posits literary and imaginative engagements with the past as an important mode of social and cultural critique.
Time, History and Philosophy of History
Abstract In this paper, I intend to show that different ways of describing, representing or thinking about human affairs presuppose different types of consciousness of temporality. This proposal is embedded in the fruitful concept ‘régimes d´historicités’, which was coined by F. Hartog. Within this context and in regard to historiography and the philosophy of history, I will try to show that these disciplines and concepts, coined by these fields of study, are only possible in a temporal order governed by the future. Within this context, I will examine historiography, understood as the discipline which makes sense of human past and other disciplines, including the analytical or narrativist philosophies of history, which have yielded concepts such as the ‘historical past’, ‘historical consciousnesses’ and ‘historical time’. Keywords: regime of historicity-historiographical regime-historical past-historical present
Between Description and Interpretation: The Hermeneutic Turn in Phenomenology. By Andrzej Wiercinski Ed. Toronto: The Hermeneutic Press, 2005
Hans-Georg Gadamer, who fashioned his philosophical hermeneutics in Truth and Method on the foundations of the phenomenological insights of Heidegger and Husserl, has convincingly demonstrated that the concept of practical experience is already inherent in the sphere of the purest philosophical theory. It is another question, however, to ask whether philosophy, as a theory, is conscious of this and whether it takes this observation into account. In addition to this practical aspect, we could add that there is a poetic or creative dimension that is also inherent in philosophy.
The Critique of Historical Reason and the Challenge of Historicism
Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review/Revue canadienne de philosophie, 2022
This article examines Wilhelm Dilthey's project of a critique of historical reason and the reproach of historicism addressed by Heinrich Rickert. Through a comparative analysis of their respective attempts to establish a philosophical grounding for the human sciences, this article demonstrates that Dilthey and Rickert, despite their disagreement, converge toward a productive reinterpretation of the crisis of historicism and pave the way for a reconfiguration of the relationship between philosophy and history. The article focuses on three aspects of the historicist view: the importance of the particular, the historically situated character of the knowing subject, and the primacy of historical consciousness. Résumé Dans cet article, nous examinons le projet d'une critique de la raison historique mené par Wilhelm Dilthey et l'accusation d'historicisme portée contre lui par Heinrich Rickert. En comparant leurs tentatives respectives d'offrir un fondement philosophique aux sciences humaines, nous montrons que Dilthey et Rickert, en dépit de leurs divergences, convergent vers une réinterprétation productive de l'historicisme et conduisent à une reconfiguration de la relation entre philosophie et histoire. Cet article analyse trois implications théoriques et pratiques de l'historicisme : la mise en valeur du particulier, le caractère historiquement situé du sujet connaissant et la primauté de la conscience historique.
On the Very Possibility of Historiography
The familiar challenges to historiographical knowledge turn on epistemological concerns having to do with the unobservability of historical events, or with the problem of establishing a sufficiently strong inferential connection between evidence and the historiographical claim one wishes to convert from a true belief into knowledge. This paper argues that these challenges miss a deeper problem, viz., the lack of obvious truth-makers for historiographical claims. The metaphysical challenge to historiogra-phy is that reality does not appear to cooperate in our cognitive endeavours by providing truth-makers for claims about historical entities and events. Setting out this less familiar, but more fundamental, challenge to the very possibility of historiography is the first aim of this paper. The various ways in which this challenge might be met are then set out, including ontologically inflationary appeals to abstract objects of various kinds, or to " block " theories of time. The paper closes with the articulation of an ontologically parsimonious solution to the metaphysical challenge to historiography. The cost of this approach is a revision to standard theories of truth. The central claim here is that the standard theories of truth have mistaken distinct causes of truth for truth itself. This mistake leads to distorted expectations regarding truth-makers for historio-graphical claims. The truth-makers of historiographical claims are not so much the historical events themselves (for they do not exist) but atemporal modal facts about the order of things of which those events were a part. Keywords historiography – knowledge – truth – truth-makers – real relations – time – abstract objects