Writing History [antikvár]

Prologue What is history? Judging by what we hear around us, this is a question that needs to be asked again. "History, in this century, has understood that its real task was to explain"; "Such and such a phenomenon cannot be explained by soci-ology alone: wouldn't recourse to the historical explanation give us a better idea of it?" "Is history a science?" This is useless debate! "Isn't the collaboration of ail researchers desirable and alone fruitful?" "Shouldn't the historian apply himself to building up theories?" No. No, such history is not that in which historians deal. At the very most, it is that in which they think they deal or that they have been persuaded they ought to regret not having dealt with. No, it is not useless to know if history is a science, for "science" is not a lofty word, but a précisé term; and experience proves that indifférence to the debate about words is usually the accompaniment of a confusion of ideas on the matter. No, history has no method—just ask to be shown that method. No, it explains nothing at ail, if the word "explain" has any meaning; as for what it calls its theories, they need a closer examination. Let us understand each other properly. It is not enough to affirm once again that history speaks of "what will never be seen twice"; neither is there any question of claiming that it is subjective, a matter of perspective, that we query the past starting from our own system of values, that historical facts are not things, that man understands himself and does not explain himself, that of him there can be no science. In a word, there is no question of confusing being and knowing; human sciences exist and are good (or at least those of them that really deserve the name of science), and human physics is the hope of our century, as physics was that of the seventeenth century. But history is not that science, and never will