Leopold von Ranke and the ‘Science’ of History Dr Claudia Stein

/feb/19/author-author-antony-beevor

Leopold von Ranke ( )

Caspar David Friedrich ( ) Romanticism; Romantic period): intellectual, artistic, and literary movement in Europe towards end of 18 th century - ca.1850).It was partly a reaction to the changes related to the Industrial Revolution (e.g. scientific rationalisation of nature) but also a turning 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)

Barthold Georg Niebuhr( ) 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’

Sir Walter Scott ( )

The strict presentation of facts, no matter how condition and unattractive they might be is undoubtedly the supreme law of any historian.’

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

… to such high office the present work does not presume; it seeks to only show the past ‘how it essentially was’ (wie es eigentlich gewesen) (History of the Latin and Teutonic Peoples, 1824) Error of translation: eigentlich – really eigentlich -- essentially

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

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 ( ) :

Georg Friedrich Hegel ( ) "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. Geist (spirit, sometimes also translated as mind)

Positivism: 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.

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 Historians Task)

‘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.’ The past is united through God- therefore no progress in history:

Ranke’s obsession with ‘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.’ 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.’

‘ The historians task, however, is at once art and science (in the sense of Wissenschaft not natural science!). It has to fulfil all the demands of criticism and scholarship to the same degree as a philosophical work; but at the same time it is supposed to give the same pleasure to the educated mind as the most perfect literary creation.’

‘Objective’ accounts are, according to the philosopher of science, attempts to capture the nature of the object studied in a way that does not depend on any features of the particular subject who studies it. An objective account is, in this sense, impartial, one, which could ideally be accepted by any subject, because it does not draw on any assumptions, prejudices, or values of particular subjects’. Stephen Gaukroger, in: N. J. Smelse and P. B. Baltes, P. B. (eds.) International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences (Oxford, 2001), pp