History: Art or Science? 19 th century

1. History: Art or Science?19th century Lecture 2 Historiography

2. What this module explores: 1. What did pioneering historians choose to focus on? (topic) 2. How did they analyse it? (methodology) 3. Why did they analyse it the way they did? • Their particular philosophy of history • The contextual factors prompting them to do so

3. Readings 1. Read the weekly overview; look at questions and gobbets 2. Read secondary sources (big picture) 3. Analyse the primary sources (key texts)

4. Enlightenment historiography • History reveals human nature and natural laws • Progress measured according to ‘universal’ benchmarks • Happiness • Morality, Virtue • Civility (refined manners) • Economic development • Chauvinism & nationalism masquerading as universalism • The French are snobs and the rest of Europe has drunk the ‘Kool-Aid’ and want to imitate them…

5. Johann Gottfried Herder (1744-1803) • Literary critic, philosopher • Annoyed by French cultural supremacy; celebrated German language and culture • Opposed to universal measures • One should examine societies on their own terms • Organic rather than universal progress

6. Johann Gottfried Herder (1744-1803) ‘Whoever has so far undertaken to trace the progression of the centuries usually brought along a favourite idea on his journey: “greater virtue” or “happiness”.’ ‘Should the general... philosophical tone of our century so generously bestow “our own ideal” of virtue’ on every remote nation? Yet another philosophy of history

7. Johann Gottfried Herder (1744-1803) Societies are unique and organic; they progress but by growing genetically, through their own experience, culture and contingent interactions with other societies. Only God knows where it all ends up. Pro: this approach critiques the hidden prejudices within universalism Con: could lead to moral relativism and entno-nationalism? ‘Prejudice is good in its time; it makes people happy.’ Another History…

8. The Professionalisation of History Leopold von Ranke 1795-1886

9. Ranke’s context • Reaction to French Enlightenment, Revolution and Napoleonic Empire • German Enlightenment compatible with faith • Not material freedom but spiritual freedom • Romanticism • German philology (study of language)

10. Germany – A nation, a people, a state in search of itself Germany under Bismark, 1871 Different colours indicate steps of unification in the 1860s and 1871 1648 – Treaty of Westphalia

11. Romanticism; Romantic period: intellectual, artistic, and literary movement in Europe towards end of 18th century - ca.1850. It was partly a reaction to the changes related to the Industrial Revolution (e.g. scientific rationalisation of nature) but also aimed against the social and political norms of the Enlightenment. The Romantic movement considered strong emotion – particularly in confronting nature - as an authentic source of aesthetic experience (e.g. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, The Sorrows of Young Werther, 1774) Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840)

12. Philology: is the study of language in written historical sources. It is a combination of literary criticism, history, and linguistics. It is more commonly defined as the study of literary texts and written records, the establishment of their authenticity and their original form, and the determination of their meaning; aims at ‘critical editions’. Berthold Georg Niebuhr( 1776-1831)

13. Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832)

14. ‘The strict presentation of facts, no matter how conditional and unattractive they might be is undoubtedly the supreme law of any historian.’ (1824)

15. Humboldt University, Berlin (ca. 1810) Bildung: engl. education/formation but different meaning; German tradition of self-cultivation, wherein philosophy and education are linked in a manner that refers to a process of both personal and cultural maturation. This maturation is understood as a harmonisation of the individual’s mind/spirit and heart and in a unification of selfhood with broader society (e.g. Bildungsbürger) Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767-1835)

16. History has had assigned to it the office of judging the past and of instructing the present to the benefit of future ages… to such high office the present work does not presume; it seeks to only show the past ‘how it essentially was’ (wieeseigentlichgewesen) (History of the Latin and Teutonic Peoples, 1824)

17. Error of translation into English eigentlich – as really instead of essentially

18. Geisteswissenschaft(en) (human science(s) – Naturwissenschaft(en) (natural sciences) both are Wissenschaft(en) science(s): any scholarship that follows a systematic methodology

19. Historismus (Historicism/Historism) ‘History is the way in which humanity becomes and is conscious of itself. The epochs of history are ... the stages of self-knowledge, its knowledge of the world, its knowledge of God ... History is humanity’s awareness of itself, its self-consciousness.’ Johann Gustav Droysen (1808-1884) :

20. Geist (spirit, sometimes also translated as mind) Georg Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831) "World history... represents the development of the spirit's consciousness of its own freedom and of the consequent realization of this freedom.” This realization is seen by studying the various cultures that have developed over the millennia, and trying to understand the way that freedom has worked itself out through them.

21. Positivism (which Ranke was NOT, despite misconceptions): Philosophy that considers the only authentic knowledge is knowledge that is based on actual sense experience. Such knowledge can only come from affirmation of theories through strict scientific method. Any metaphysical speculation is to be avoided.

22. An event is only partially visible in the world of the senses, the rest has to be added by intuition, inferences and guesswork. The manifestations of an advent are scattered, disjointed, isolated. What it is that gives unity to this patchwork, puts the isolated fragments into a proper perspective, and gives shape to the whole, remains removed from direct observation. It is the historian who must separate the necessary from the accidental, uncover its inner structure and make visible the truly activating forces. (Humboldt, On the Historian’s Task)

23. The past is united through God – therefore no progress in history ‘It is not necessary for us to prove at length that the eternal dwells in the individual. This is the religious foundation in which our efforts rest. We believe that there is nothing without God, and nothing lives except through God.’ ‘Every epoch is immediate to God and its worth is not at all based on what derives from it but rests in its own existence, in its own self’ ‘Every human being, something eternal, comes from God, and this is a vital principle.’

24. Ranke and the State • ‘A nation must feel independent in order to develop freely… It is necessary for the state to organise all its international resources for the purpose of self-preservation.’ • Domestic politics subordinated to foreign policy • War: a test of ethical forces

25. Ranke: Impartiality of the historian • Historians do not judge the past BUT: • ‘It would be impossible not to have one’s own opinion in the midst of all the struggles of power and of ideas which bear within them decisions of the greatest magnitude. Even so, the essence of impartiality can be preserved. For this consists merely in recognizing the positions occupied by the acting forces and in respecting the unique relationships, which characterize each of them. One observes how these forces appear in their distinctive identity, confront and struggle with one another; the events and the fates, which dominate the world, take place in this opposition. Objectivity is also always impartiality.’

26. Henry Thomas Buckle (1821-1862) • History of Civilisation in England (posthumous, 1864) • Purpose: to make history a science, not art/literature • Chance or Necessity; Free Will or Pre-destination? Neither! • All human action derives from causes (‘antecedents’), whose ‘movements’ are governed by natural laws. [Causal patterns]