What Is History For? - Johann Gustav Droysen and the Functions of Historiography

Zusatztext “Assis offers the reader a wide panorama of German historiography during the nineteenth century, centering on the debates about historicism, a dominant paradigm for German historical knowledge in the nineteenth century, and in the reformulation of pragmatic value for historiography. Arthur Assis' work is therefore not only directed at specialists or at researchers of Droysen's work, but at all those who study German and general historiography, intellectual history, and even political historiography, since it highlights the political influences of Droysen's thought.” · Revista Brasileira de História “…a work of deep erudition and a thorough historiographical investigation of the entire, although extremely vast, body of works by Droysen, as well as on the equally rich secondary literature… Assis’ monograph is extremely valuable, since, through a painstaking review of Droysen’s texts, it sheds light on the unsurpassable tension that can be found there between an epistemology of history, as an alternative model of any exemplary theory of history, and a historical-political thought that needed the examples of the past to find which actions had to be carried out in the present or the future.” · H-Soz-u-Kult “There is a great deal to admire about this study. The author is extraordinarily erudite: not only has he read carefully all of Droysen's work and mastered the secondary literature about him, he moves with ease across centuries of historiography… I learned a lot from the study about both Droysen and his place in modern historiography.” · James Sheehan , Stanford University “This is a thorough, original, and well-researched study of a major nineteenth-century historical thinker…Assis demonstrates with great clarity that Droysen saw no incompatibility between ‘studying history’, ‘thinking historically’, and ‘making history’. By situating the German historian both in his own time and in a long tradition of reflection on the uses and abuses of history, Assis’s book makes a welcome contribution to intellectual history, history of historiography, and historical theory.” · Herman Paul , Leiden University Informationen zum Autor Arthur Alfaix Assisis Assistant Professor of the Theory and Methodology of History at the University of Brasília. Klappentext Johann Gustav Droysen's historical theory is a central reference for everyone who attempts to understand 19th century philosophy of the human sciences. Until now, Droysen's work remains widely understudied outside Germany. English readers who seek to get in touch with Droysen's works could hitherto resort to only a small number of publications. This book aims at filling this gap. German literature on Droysen's historical theory, in turn, does not dwell on the issue which is central to the book; namely that of the function/justification of historiography. Focuses on examining the kind of justifications that replaced the exemplar theory of history from the 19th century on. Zusammenfassung A scholar of Hellenistic and Prussian history, Droysen developed a historical theory that at the time was unprecedented in range and depth, and which remains to the present day a valuable key for understanding history as both an idea and a professional practice. Arthur Alfaix Assis interprets Droysen’s theoretical project as an attempt to redefine the function of historiography within the context of a rising criticism of exemplar theories of history, and focuses on Droysen’s claim that the goal underlying historical writing and reading should be the development of the subjective capacity to think historically. In addition, Assis examines the connections and disconnections between Droysen’s theory of historical thinking, his practice of historical thought, and his political activism. U...

List of contents

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Chapter 1. Functions of Historiography until the Mid-Nineteenth Century: A Short History of the Problem

Chapter 2. The Theoretical Design of a New Justification

Chapter 3. Historical Thinking and the Genealogy of the Present

Chapter 4. The Politics of Historical Thinking and the Limits of the New Function

Concluding Remarks

Appendix: Droysen and his Theory of History

Bibliography

Product details

• Authors: Arthur Alfaix Assis
• Publisher: BERGHAHN BOOKS, INC
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 01.07.2016
• EAN: 9781785333347
• ISBN: 978-1-78533-334-7
• No. of pages: 242
• Series: Making Sense of History
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > History > General, dictionaries; Non-fiction book > History > Miscellaneous; History: 18th/19th Century