-Thoughts on Reading Theory and Practice of History

1, basic instruction

As for "all history is contemporary history", Collingwood once commented: "All history is contemporary history: but not in the ordinary sense of this word, that is, contemporary history refers to the recent past history, but in the strict sense, that is, people's awareness of their own activities when actually completing certain activities.

Therefore, history is the self-knowledge of the living mind. "

This passage aptly illustrates the important connotation of this proposition-contemporary history is the reappearance of self-knowledge in history.

To attribute this reappearance to history itself, the focus naturally falls on the comprehensive coverage of history by contemporary history, which requires a new interpretation of contemporary history: "The word' contemporary' can only refer to the history that appears immediately after an activity is created as a consciousness of that activity".

Contemporary is not only a concept of time, but also an ideological concept.

As Croce himself showed, "contemporary" is a state of mind when describing history.

This kind of thinking is undoubtedly the realization and historization of thought, and the true meaning of history is discovered through the historical flower of thought, that is, all history is contemporary history.

Here, the history as the subject and the contemporary history as the object are one, two and one. The reason why contemporary people can break through the shackles of death and define the whole connotation of history is because the external time and time series in the sense of chronicle derive the internal time of historical thinking, which is the same as thinking, and achieves the unity of philosophy and history through life and practical actions, or the unity of thought and history.

"History is by no means a history of death, but a history of life".

In Croce's view, history has revived, and it has become a legitimate history in the name of life with the help of the instantaneity of thought.

However, this kind of "life-related" contemporary history is easily misinterpreted and misread, especially after "all history is contemporary history" has become a well-known slogan, the misunderstanding is even deeper: it seems that the history of contemporary history means that historians have absolute rights to history, regardless of the birth certificate of this right; If history is only contemporary history, it seems that historians can still write history according to their own ideals and ambitions, because it is also contemporary history and absolutely certain history.

The opposite misunderstanding also exists. Historians with a sense of historical justice may take it for granted that "all history is contemporary history" obviously has obscene historical facts, which is a rash act that can never be tolerated; To take a step back, even if the misunderstanding of historical facts in contemporary history is only a small mistake, then the formulation of contemporary history lacks a sense of history, because according to the obvious literal interpretation, if history is only contemporary history, what is the historical progress and historical motivation?

For the above erroneous views, the author tries to analyze them from the following aspects:

2. Historical narrative right

Indeed, historians are free when they describe history in the name of ideas.

But this does not mean that history has no right to make its own demands on historians.

"There is no doubt that imagination is essential for historians: empty judgment, empty narrative, lack of consciousness or imagination are useless; ....., we demand that we should have vivid experiences about the events whose history we will describe, which means that these events should be distilled into intuition and imagination.

Without this imaginative reconstruction or synthesis, it is impossible to write history or read history or understand history. "

Simply put, a rich imagination is a necessary quality for historians, but imagination alone is not enough, and an intuition is needed. History is an "understanding of individual things" and an understanding of real history. "Intuition and logic together constitute a historical judgment.

In the study of history, the level of self-awareness has become an important measure of historians' ability to understand history. "

Croce thinks that chronicle is "false history" because it lacks the imagination and intuition of historians to construct current history. In short, it lacks "contemporary" or ideological existence.

Imagination and intuition together constitute the technical foundation of historical writing, but this foundation cannot guarantee the proper use of imagination and consciousness.

If historians imagine something out of thin air that can prove their claims, or let Croce call it "sentimental value", "our love, tears, contempt" and other values affect their thinking about history, then history will not be real history, and history will become a kind of "poetic history".

For example, if hatred against pagans, Jews or certain classes is integrated into historical narrative, the value of history is not the value of thought, and such history cannot be called history.

To write true history, "we must get rid of myths and idols, make clear our friends and lovers, pay full attention to historical issues, that is, spirit or value (if we like to talk about culture, civilization and progress with less philosophy and more popularity), and we must look at it with two eyes and one thinking eye."

The subjectivity of history is not the subjectivity of personal feelings, but only the subjectivity of thoughts. This subjectivity is not to publicize the love and hate of historians, but to achieve ideological consistency, which is the inherent consistency of history.

Another striking misunderstanding of "all history is contemporary history" is that since history is contemporary history, historians have the right to write history according to the needs of reality.

The so-called realistic needs can be political, such as patriotism; It can also be a personal purpose, such as quoting some opinions that are beneficial to you in order to convince others, and consciously or unconsciously ignoring historical facts that used to be facts.

Croce called these two kinds of history "the history of practice" and "the history of rhetoric" respectively.

"Practical history (but it is not history) is beyond reproach as a practical activity: each of us not only wants to explore history, but also wants to explore actions, in which we can make good use of this image or the memory of that image to promote our own work or that of others (with the same result).

The formulation of contemporary history is by no means for the present purpose, nor for the ideal of a historian as a politician. Practical history is affirmed by the author as a living application of historical achievements (note that it is not history itself) (so is rhetorical history).

This is not because the historical narrative purpose of this kind of history has historical value, but because its action itself conforms to the true meaning of history, that is, history is about "the history of life" Just as historians understand history through their own thoughts, practical history is only, and only as a current vision, and its practicality is affirmed by Croce. Besides, practical history has nothing to recommend it.

Similarly, "the history of rhetoric" is "of certain importance" and "we can't attack it, but only its theory", which means "taking history as the work of an orator, …, or as the education of the soul (if it is political), or as pleasant".

All these show that "the history of rhetoric is based on an existing history, at least a poetic history, and it is narrated with practical purposes".

These practical purposes are mainly educational purposes. However, "'history' will not only participate in the process of education in one form but also in all these forms.

But as far as history itself is concerned, it will only participate in the process of education in one form, which is not a purely abstract form of moral education, but a form of ideological education or development. "

Therefore, think about history in the name of moral education. There is no insight into history, because all these functions or purposes are outside history, such as the ideal and prediction of patriotic education, such as proving that a paradise is bound to come.

True history is internal, and it is through the development of ideas that the value and purpose of these ideas are naturally realized.

The development of this thought, like the development of history, never contains any external purpose and value of thought.

The vulgar view that contemporary history can be misinterpreted by historians is actually an insult to the true connotation of Croce's thought (or philosophy).

It is blasphemy to regard history as an outlet for personal feelings, or as a practical educational tool, or as a political means of politicians.

3. The authenticity of history.

Is history true? All views that question contemporary history are more or less that if history is contemporary history, the authenticity of history cannot be guaranteed.

Although Croce opposes the historical research of "scissors paste" (Collingwood German) for any practical purpose at present, contemporary history itself means that the objectivity of history cannot be guaranteed.

Croce first analyzed the truth of history from the perspective of agnosticism.

Agnosticism "does not absolutely deny the authenticity of history, but denies the complete authenticity of history."

Agnosticism holds that history cannot be completely true, at least the whole truth of history cannot be fully grasped by historians. In other words, agnosticism denies that history has true knowledge.

Agnosticism denies the truth of history, because it is impossible for history to achieve complete truth. However, if the numerous historical truth questions put forward by agnosticism in the face of history are solved, "if all the questions are answered satisfactorily, if we have all the answers, what should we do?" The road to infinity is as wide as the road to hell. If it doesn't lead to hell, it will lead to the madhouse. "

It is unnecessary to expect to solve all historical problems, and it is naive to feel distressed and disappointed because we can't solve these endless problems. Therefore, "even if all concrete infinite things in infinite history can satisfy our desires, all we have to do is to remove them from our hearts, forget them, and concentrate on adapting to a problem and forming a living and positive history, that is, a certain point in contemporary history."

The truth character of history lies not in insight into truth itself, but in thought itself.

Whether history is true or not is not the core of the problem.

Croce put aside the objectivity of history, and this issue also left Croce's field of vision.

Since the authenticity of history is not the core, how does Croce view the historical data problems that must be encountered in historical narrative? Croce has no common sense of respecting historical materials. He once commented on historical data workers: "Poor scholars, archivists and archaeologists are harmless, but they are useful little people."

Not only are these historical workers nobody, but he also thinks that "it is allowed to add imaginary details to real materials, although it is in the form of conjecture".

Of course, this kind of imagination is not "asking history to take them back to medieval castles and markets", but "recreating the past in imagination and reflecting on the past from the present, rather than separating themselves from the present and returning to the lifeless past".

Croce honestly exposed the hypocrisy peculiar to historians who flaunt authenticity as their first priority.

Since the authenticity of history is an unattainable ideal, the literary imagination of historians is also allowed. So, why do historians hide their weak imagination? Of course, Croce's indifference to historical materials is not ignorance of history. On the contrary, it is the internal logic of "all history is contemporary history".

"Evidence-based history, in the final analysis, is completely external history, not fundamental and true history, but contemporary and current".

Explaining history with evidence, instead of understanding history with thoughts, history degenerates into a chronicle, with no flesh and blood, no soul, no human consciousness, only a lifeless past.

"What happened in the past will never come back, and what happened in the past cannot be cancelled; Even if we restore an old idea, new opponents will make the defense new and the idea new.

"Although Croce has a decent respect for death, the core of history never lies in the past, but in the present.

Asking history to have complete historical authenticity is undoubtedly asking history to know everything about the past, which is neither possible nor necessary, because the real theme of history is the history guided by the spirit of the current era or personal mind.

4, the unity of philosophy and history.

Thought itself is constantly evolving, and history truly records the evolution of human consciousness, and history also obtains prescriptive content from thought or philosophy.

"Spirit is the world, it is the spirit of development, so it is both single and divergent, an eternal solution and an eternal problem; Spiritual self-consciousness is philosophy, and philosophy is its history, or history is its philosophy, which are essentially the same; Consciousness and self-awareness are the same, that is, consciousness and self-awareness are both different and the same, just like life and thought. "

Under such circumstances, is there any "development" of contemporary history with great historical consciousness?

"All history is contemporary history" cannot be regarded as a historical proposition with no development view and no sense of history.

In Croce's eyes, the immanence of history and thought shows the concept of historical progress.

Just as thoughts keep dialectical progress, so does history.

Croce insists on a development view since the 19th century, and firmly believes that human beings are constantly advancing.

When talking about the history of the dark Middle Ages, he also thought that there was progress in the Middle Ages. Not only that, "even the slander of absurd people and the disgusting wrong criticism of human conscience is a kind of progress."

History is developing continuously, which is undoubtedly logically included in the proposition that "all history is contemporary history". So, is there any motivation and purpose for this progress? For this problem, let's start with three historical consciousness that Croce's history must possess. "These three points are the integrity of historical events, the unity of narrative and literariness, and the immanence of development."

If history and philosophy are separated, the integrity of historical events will not be realized; Literature and narrative history are not unified, that is, thinking about history, and history is not history; The immanence of development shows that we can't look for historical development from outside history.

In the case of the separation of history and philosophy (or thought), historians only admit that the motivation of history can only be found from the facts themselves, collecting history first and then looking for reasons from the facts.

This seems fair and reliable, but Croce's "positivism" directly expels all kinds of vulgar and old ideas from the critical field. They "turned to the memory of reading, turned to the popular philosophical slogans at that time, and turned to people's daily feelings about politics, art and morality at that time", and let these concepts guide historians to make up a mediocre legend about historical reasons without scruple.

This seems to respect history, but in essence it is a hodgepodge of prejudice and misunderstanding.

When non-historical philosophy is combined with history, the situation is even worse.

For example, Hegel's absolute ideas, such as some objective laws, are knowledgeable and confident that history has the highest ultimate reason and an ultimate goal, which is outside history, such as heaven and communist society.

They artificially cut and even distort history according to their own needs, and then attach their own ideas with these so-called historical facts.

This practice is not much different from those commonly used methods to prove the existence of God in the world. They not only tarnished the reputation of philosophy, but also made history only serve as a footnote, even "treating the simple narrative history as waste outside, and the simple narrative history should be used as raw materials or scripts for moralists and politicians to preach and learn".

If so, history can be completely cancelled, and simple whimsy can replace historical narrative.

The ultimate reason for thinking like this is by no means historical motivation. Similarly, the inevitable trend of history is not the paradise that history longs for.

As can be seen from the above, Croce not only denies the method of seeking the cause of historical development simply from the facts themselves, but also opposes replacing and explaining the logic of history with the logic of ideas.

So, what is Crouch's historical motivation?

For this problem, we still have to start with the word "philosophy" defined by Croce.

Croce believes that true philosophy "can only be the methodological stage of historiography, that is, the elaboration of concepts that constitute historical judgments or guide historical interpretation".

No philosophy can leave the foundation of history. "People who generally study historical affairs should become conscious and trained philosophers, so ordinary philosophers, that is, pure philosophers, should not have a place in the specialization of knowledge."

From this definition, we can at least understand the following meanings: first, philosophy gives historical narrative meaning, without which history will not become history; Second, history gives philosophical reality a reason to exist. Without history, philosophy cannot be called philosophy.

Therefore, the motive force of historical development-if it can constitute a legitimate problem for Croce-can not be sought from pure philosophy outside history, nor from historical facts, but only from Croce's historical philosophy and philosophical history, that is, thought.

As Croce himself said, "Thought reorganizes history from the inside, and it is its own evidence. It does not recognize the unthinkable because it is unimaginable. "

5. Conclusion

"All history is contemporary history" appropriately shows Croce's historical thought, but we must not ignore its connotation and the conceptual presupposition behind it, let alone slogan this proposition.

Many wrong ideas come from a little knowledge. If we can't understand this proposition from Croce's overall thought itself, the proposition of contemporary history will have no value, let alone what new inspiration future generations can get from it, and the progress of thought will stop. As Croce said, "When people think that they can't study any more, when people are educated to be able to receive a better education, life will stop. They can't say that they are still alive, but they should say that they are dead."