History · Understanding · Meaning: Historiography

Author: Han Zhen
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2002-03-10
Features: Starting from the proposition that "all history is contemporary history," Croce also concluded that "history is becoming increasingly rich and profound." This is because the human spirit is constantly developing, and thus human historical understanding is continuously deepened. History is constantly being rewritten, becoming richer and more perfect through new interpretations and understandings. He said, "History, of course, should reform everything, and it is always striving to perfect itself. That is to say, it enriches itself and explores itself more deeply. No history can fully satisfy us, because any of our constructions will produce new facts and new problems, demanding new solutions. Therefore, the history of Rome, Greece, Christianity, the Reformation, the French Revolution, philosophy, literature, and all other subjects is always frequently rewritten, always rewritten differently. But when history innovates, it is still always history. Its developmental force lies precisely in its ability to continue in this way."
It is clear from this that Croce's historical thought has some similarities with the understanding of history in modern hermeneutics. The following passage shows that he was already clearly applying hermeneutical thinking: "The Divine Comedy is a poem that we meticulously recreate in our imagination as we read it. We understand it critically as a special determination of the spirit, and thus we give it and its entire context and all its relationships the historical status they deserve. However, when this thought and imagined reality comes to an end—that is, when the psychological process is completed—we can then analyze its various factors with a new spiritual activity."
We find that Croce's thought is more subjective than modern hermeneutics, because he fundamentally denies the existence of the "past," believing that history entirely exists within every individual. The present determines the past, while the past cannot determine the present. "History, like philosophy, has no historical beginning, only a conceptual or metaphysical beginning. If it is a thought activity, because thought activity is outside of time." Croce even claims that true history should not be based on factual evidence, because history based on factual evidence is external history, not fundamental or true history. True history can only be contemporary and current history.
Croce also asserts that human thought is always in its place. In contrast, modern hermeneutics generally still acknowledges that current thought is a legacy accumulated from the past, thereby affirming the historical significance of the present. It holds that people cannot carry out historical interpretation without the text, and understanding is the interaction between human thought and the text. Of course, it is correct to emphasize the importance of the present and the current in historical understanding, but it is wrong to replace the historical past with the present or contemporaneity. Similarly, it is not wrong to acknowledge the subjectivity in historical understanding, but it is wrong to elevate subjectivity to its place, even denying the primacy of the objective object of history.
Starting from the contemporaneity of history, Croce advocates strictly distinguishing between history and chronicles. He believes, "History is a living chronicle, while chronicles are the past history. History is primarily a thought activity, while chronicles are primarily a will activity. When all history is no longer thought but only recorded in abstract words, it becomes a chronicle, although those words were once concrete and expressive."
In Croce's view, the difference between history and chronicles does not lie in their different writing styles, but in their different spiritual attitudes. Without a spiritual activity, even chronicles would not exist. Although chronicles appear as hollow narratives in the present, they once contained historical thought, but this spirit is no longer of concern to people, making them chronicles. Therefore, only when the light of thought illuminates the chronicles do they revive as history. It is from this perspective that Croce says that chronicles do not come before history; rather, history comes before chronicles. If history itself is not a present existence, not an immediate presence, then where does history exist? We can only say that it once occurred within a space that experienced change, within a period that has already passed.
Regarding the ontology of history itself, while maintaining a materialist stance, we can only express such a belief. Engels' passage in The End of Classical German Philosophy appropriately expresses this belief: "The separation from Hegelian philosophy here also arises from returning to the materialist viewpoint. That is to say, people are determined to understand the real world (nature and history) as it appears before anyone with preconceived idealist fantasies. They are determined to ruthlessly discard all idealist fantasies that do not conform to the facts (grasping facts in terms of their own connections rather than imaginary connections). Apart from this, materialism has no other meaning. However, here for the first time, a truly serious attitude has been taken toward the materialist worldview, and it has been thoroughly (at least in the main aspects) applied to all fields of knowledge being studied."
A materialist belief in the ontology of history is a fundamental stance. Without such a stance and belief, historical understanding would into historical idealism. However, historical understanding cannot stop at such a belief. If it does, historical understanding can only reach the level of naive realism. After all, historical existence is not simply a material existence. The development of modern natural science shows that even in the study of natural science, subjective factors cannot be completely excluded, and human cognition needs confirmation. As a result of human practice, history naturally depends more on human cognition.
The basic relationship established by historical understanding is not between the historical understanding subject and historical existence, but between the historical understanding subject and the historical object. Therefore, it is very necessary to distinguish between historical existence or historical facts and historical objects. Historical existence, like natural existence, belongs to the human life world in space and coexists with human survival and activity in time, like an infinitely flowing river. We are in this historical river, we exist in history, and history flows in our existence. However, in our cognition, the continuity of history is broken. What we can understand is only a part of history, that is, only a part of historical facts enter our cognitive field, and the historical facts that enter the cognitive field become the object of cognition. As the object of cognition, they are no longer purely objective historical facts.
The relationship between the subject and object in historical research and historical understanding is different from that in the historical activity process. In the historical activity process, history is immediate and direct empirical fact, while in historical research and understanding, historical facts become absent and thus indirect empirical facts. The historical object is different from historical facts. It is a consciously constructed result of the historical understanding subject and a cognitive object that includes subjective factors.
Of course, the historical practice that produces historical facts also permeates the subjective consciousness of the practical subject, but this process is external to the historical understanding subject and has pure objectivity relative to the historical understanding subject. The object of historical understanding is different. Due to its absence, the "history" written by historians based on historical materials cannot be the same as the actual historical events.
Neo-Kantian and neo-Hegelian historians have challenged objective and positivist historical thought. They emphasize the active role of the historical understanding subject in historical understanding and examine more thoroughly how human historical understanding ability is possible, the difference between history and natural science, and how history can become a science. They correctly recognize that historical facts in historical understanding cannot exist independently of the historian's consciousness, but they mistakenly believe that historical facts are the product of the historian's subjective spirit. The views of Croce, Collingwood, and Bradley (F. H. Bradley), for example, clearly reflect such a thought.
The British historian Karl (E. Karl) believed that these thoughts would ultimately lead to a utilitarian outcome. He said, "If a historian must view the historical period he studies through the eyes of his own time, and if the problem of the past is the key to solving current problems, then he will fall into the trap of viewing facts from a purely utilitarian perspective, thereby advocating that the criterion of correct interpretation lies in whether it conforms to some current purpose." Karl's conclusion is very reasonable. In fact, idealist historical philosophy clearly has utilitarian tendencies, which is an inevitable consequence of inappropriately exaggerating the active role of the historical understanding subject.
The logic of narration can reflect historical changes, at least partially reflecting the framework characteristics of historical changes. For example, in the Post-Han History, it is recorded about Ban Chao: "Ban Chao, styled Zhongsheng, was from Pingling, Fengfu. He was the younger son of Xulin Biao. In the fifth year of Yongping, his brother Gu was summoned as a schoolbook official, and Ban Chao followed his mother to Luoyang." This passage from place to time can logically correspond to the actual events. Another example is the narration, "The Xinhai Revolution overthrew the rule of the Qing Dynasty." This narration reflects the changes before and after the revolutionary event. This narration emphasizes that the Xinhai Revolution was a process, a fact of change.
Next, consider the narrability of spatial characteristics. Thucydides' description of European geography: "Europe possesses very favorable natural resources. Most of Northern Europe is a vast plain, starting from the western end of the Pyrenees Mountains and extending eastward and northward, becoming wider as it extends, and finally forming an uninterrupted plain from the Black Sea to the Baltic Sea. The westerly prevailing wind blowing from the Atlantic directly crosses these plains spanning Europe and enters Russia. Therefore, the northern part of the Mediterranean basin has a milder climate, with long rainy seasons and fertile land, providing ideal conditions for agricultural production." Seeing this narrative fragment, it is difficult to say that it does not correspond to the actual geographical phenomena of Europe. However, historical narration should be a system, and only within the overall context can the interpretation of a partial narrative be relevant. It is meaningless to consider an isolated narration. For example, Thucydides' description of European geography itself is a systematic integration. Moreover, when this passage is placed in the context of Europe's rise in the modern era, the description of European geography takes on even deeper significance.
We already know that historical texts integrate historical materials into a coherent narrative according to certain story logic. In reality, historical materials themselves are also composed of narrative units organized in chronological order and logical relationships. "Once we decide which facts can be considered events, we can also describe the relationships connecting one event to another; the structure of a series of events."
Clearly, the relationship between narrative materials and the text is relative. Each material itself constitutes a text, but within a larger narrative system, it becomes a material; conversely, this is also true.
In the thought of Montesquieu, Voltaire, Rousseau, and Condorcet, the characteristics of French historical philosophy in understanding history are reflected. For example, in Montesquieu, he does not start by studying specific historical facts to summarize general laws of historical development. Instead, historical facts are merely means to prove his general principles. He deduces the laws of development by sacrificing the contingency of historical development, so the laws themselves are not historically formed but are instead deduced from general principles and laws. In the preface to The Spirit of the Laws, Montesquieu states: "I have established some principles. Individual cases conform to these principles, as if derived from them. The history of all nations is merely the result of these principles. Every individual law is connected to another, or dependent on a more general law."
It is clear that in Montesquieu, history has not achieved its own independent status; it is merely a appendage of his philosophical thought. The strengths and weaknesses of French philosophy in examining history are more prominent in Voltaire. Voltaire regarded all of human history as a struggle between reason and superstition, knowledge and ignorance. Reason is the main driving force of historical development, and at the same time, he also regarded reason as the standard for measuring historical materials and historical value. This historical view, on the one hand, negates the long-dominated theological historical view in Europe, demonstrating strong criticism and revolutionary spirit. On the other hand, he completely opposes reason and superstition, knowledge and ignorance, thereby erasing the historical significance of reason and knowledge. As a result, he must deny the historical value of myths and legends, establishing a historical view that favors the present over the past. In his eyes, ancient times have lost their former glory, leaving only shameful ignorance and barbarism.
But precisely for this reason, Voltaire established the view of historical progress. He believed that with the continuous development of rationality and the accumulation of knowledge, ignorance and barbarism would eventually be overcome, and the changes and development of human society would bring historical progress. Of course, this is a historical view of historical progress that is counter-historical. It extracts the connotation of the generation of reason, loses the content of historical development, and is an abstract, empty, and metaphysical view of historical progress.