Abstract

In his preface Thucydides claims that historical knowledge is possible only insofar as facts can be compared with similar facts. Analogy is thus essential in "finding" them. This conception has been important in subsequent historians and philosophers of history. In Droysen's Historik analogy is perhaps the most important heuristic for the historian. Dilthey, in his attempt to make a critique of historical reason, points to the importance of analogical thinking in historical judgment, but leaves the nature of analogical association as a vehicle of historical comprehension as an open question. Analogy is a kind of a priori form of historical knowledge; different analogies will naturally arise in different historical circumstances, and only subsequent events can determine which are the most useful ones