The Limits of History

Constantin Fasolt

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780226101248, 9780226239101
• eBook ISBN: 9780226115641
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: European Medieval History
• Index: History

History casts a spell on our minds more powerful than science or religion. It does not root us in the past at all. It rather flatters us with the belief in our ability to recreate the world in our image. It is a form of self-assertion that brooks no opposition or dissent and shelters us from the experience of time.

So argues Constantin Fasolt in The Limits of History, an ambitious and pathbreaking study that conquers history's power by carrying the fight into the center of its domain. Fasolt considers the work of Hermann Conring (1606-81) and Bartolus of Sassoferrato (1313/14-57), two antipodes in early modern battles over the principles of European thought and action that ended with the triumph of historical consciousness. Proceeding according to the rules of normal historical analysis—gathering evidence, putting it in context, and analyzing its meaning—Fasolt uncovers limits that no kind of history can cross. He concludes that history is a ritual designed to maintain the modern faith in the autonomy of states and individuals. God wants it, the old crusaders would have said. The truth, Fasolt insists, only begins where that illusion ends.

With its probing look at the ideological underpinnings of historical practice, The Limits of History demonstrates that history presupposes highly political assumptions about free will, responsibility, and the relationship between the past and the present. A work of both intellectual history and historiography, it will prove invaluable to students of historical method, philosophy, political theory, and early modern European culture.

Index

absence. See history, and absence

Accursius, 48, 275n. 75

America, 25, 26, 164; United States of, 7, 35, 42

anachronism. See history, and anachronism

Annales, 35

Antichrist, 18, 122, 271n. 44

antiquity. See Conring, and antiquity; history, and antiquity

Apocalypse, 122–23, 148–49, 163–64

Aristotelianism, 23, 33, 54–57, 61, 183

Aristotle, 9, 23; Politics, 61, 72–73, 79, 88. See also Conring, and Aristotle

Arminians, 60–61, 63–64

Augsburg Confession, 63

August, duke of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel and Lüneburg, 54, 68–69, 78, 84, 106, 125

Augustine, Saint, 9, 29

Augustus, Emperor, 18, 75, 164. See also Luke, Gospel of

authenticity. See history, and authenticity

authority. See history, and authority

authorship, 43, 44, 104–5, 111–12, 150–53, 205–7; in dissertations, 71–72, 94–99, 145–46, 153. See also Conring, and authorship; dissertations

autonomy. See history, and autonomy; sovereignty

Babylon, 18, 122

Barclay, William, 269nn. 11, 12

Barlaeus, Caspar, 60–62, 64, 128

Baron, Hans, 33–34

Bartolus of Sassoferrato, 43–44, 45, 48–49, 165–99, 203–13, 216; and antiquity, 169, 181–85; and Conring, 117, 157–58, 176–77, 207–15; and context, 177–78, 189, 195–97, 204–6; on dominium, property, and lordship, 185–92, 198, 203–4; and facts, 169–73, 175–77, 208–9, 279n. 109; on foreign people, 169, 173, 176, 193–94; on French and English monarchies, 171–72, 174, 177, 192–96, 203–4; fundamental assumptions of, 183–84, 195–99, 203–14; and heresy, 156–58, 167, 171–72, 174, 185, 192–95, 208, 209–12; and hierarchy, 195–99, 204–7; and history, 204–7; on imperium, 178–85; on Italian city-states, 169–71, 174, 177, 181, 192–94, 204, 279n. 109; on jurisdiction, 178–81, 183–99; on legislation, 181, 184, 191–92; on noble and hired judges, 179–80; and obedience, 169–...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Copyright
• Title Page
• Epigraph
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• One. A Dangerous Form of Knowledge
• Two. The Subject: Hermann Conring
• Three. The Context: Discursus Novus
• Four. The Text: Bartolus of Sassoferrato
• Five. The Limits of History
• Notes
• Works Cited
• Index