Geschichte als leitende Orientierungswissenschaft im 19. Jahrhundert

Abstract

The nineteenth century has sometimes been dubbed "the age of historical science", taking account of the hegemonic position occupied by historiography vis-;2-wis the natural sciences and also its fellow humanities. The "historical method was widely adopted by all kinds of Kulturwisserischdften. Moreover, public interest focussed on historiography to a quite exceptional degree since it combined scholarly inquiry and the purposes of general education and personal cultivation. Historiography reached the peak of its influence during the two decades leading up to the revolution of 1848. During this period, the ideas of historians on the national state, on the social order and on cultural affairs carried considerable weight. In the second half of the nineteenth century, historiography gradually lost its position of a "pilot discipline". Sciences such as economics and sociology were better equipped to respond to the needs of German society in the age of industrialization.

Beneath and Beyond the Fragments: The Charms of Simmel’s Philosophical Path for Contemporary Subjectivities

“…This stance, partly couched in national terms, also translated onto the field of affirmation and struggle of the historical sciences against the natural sciences and against the application of their abstraction to the understanding of human processes, as positivism pretended to do. The 'concrete', the 'living', the 'singular' were emphasised by the historical (as well as the historicising) sciences both as object of analysis and as goal (for the fostering of self-awareness -Selbstbesinnung -and the construction of the personality in its singularity) (Hennis, 2000: 126;Hübinger, 1988).…”

“…Perhaps it is preferable, then, to go back to a notion that was always on the brink of Deleted: This stance, partly couched in national terms, also translated onto the field of affirmation and struggle of the historical sciences against the natural sciences and against the application of their abstraction to the understanding of human processes, as positivism pretended to do. The 'concrete', the 'living', the 'singular' were emphasised by the historical (as well as the historicising) sciences both as object of analysis and as goal (for the fostering of self-awareness -Selbstbesinnung -and the construction of the personality in its singularity) (Hennis 2000: 126;Hübinger 1988) (Hennis, 2000, p. 126;Hübinger, 1988) (Hennis, 2000: 126;Hübinger, 1988). ¶ In this connection it is useful to remember that, i [that] it seems valuable to us to know the individual persons and the individual events, with which the evolution of our race has counted (Simmel 1989a: 348-349) and which he ultimately came to ground, in his very last essays in the philosophy of history, in the pre-theoretical, pre-conceptual 'response of our total existence (Gesamtexistenz), drawn from much wider and very fundamental layers, to the existence (Dasein) of things ' (2000: 321-322), that is to say in Erlebnis (lived experience).…”