Abstract

I undertake to investigate the fundamental problem for a critical philosophy of history, the clarification of the task of historiography, by attempting to illuminate the nature of the historical past. I consider the claim of historical realism that the historical past is fixed prior to historical inquiry and argue that historical realism does not resolve this problem because it fails to recognize that the historical past is to some extent a construction of historiography. I then present Hayden White's defense of historical irony, the view that there is no adequate theoretical basis for asserting that any particular conception of the historical past is the legitimate one. White's defense fails because it employs an empty conception of the historical past. ;I proceed to examine the hermeneutically oriented conceptions of history articulated by Dilthey, Heigegger, and Gadamer to determine whether any manages to overcome historical irony. These thinkers do provide a basis for overcoming irony by establishing that the historian is woven into a common realm of intelligibility, i.e., that the historian possesses a shared understanding of human life. However, none of these thinkers manages finally to overcome historical irony because the conceptions of the historical past which they develop on the basis of this understanding are essentially incomplete and thus are unable to constitute the legitimate conception for historiography. ;In the final chapter I build on these conceptions by formulating a view of the subject matter of historiography which is the common ground of this debate, then arguing that it implies a conception of the historical past as universal history, the teleologically unified happening of a people. Although the fundamental task of historiography is the construction of a universal history, I show that this task necessitates two others, the explanation of the historical past in terms of causal and part/whole relations. If my essentially Heideggerian conception of historiography is correct, historians should strive to disclose past life from the perspective of the futurity of a living people, as a transmission and transformation of human possibilities which is moving towards some end