The Theory and Practice of History

Edited with an introduction by Georg G. Iggers

Leopold von Ranke, Georg G. Iggers, Georg G. Iggers

• Verlag: Routledge
• Jahr: 2010
• ISBN:
  9781136882913
• Auflage: 1
• Thema: Geschichte
• Thema: Weltgeschichte

Leopold von Ranke, who was born in 1795, is considered to be one of the founders of the modern practice of writing history. This collection of his writings, edited and introduced by Georg G. Iggers, was first published in 1973 and remains the leading collection of Ranke's writings in the English language.

Now updated with the needs of current students in mind, this edition includes previously untranslated materials by the young Ranke, focusing particularly on the relationship between history and religion together with his inaugural lecture of 1836 'On the Relation and Difference between History and Politics'. Including pieces on historical science, and on the relationship between history and philosophy, as well as country specific histories, this book is essential reading for all students of historiography.

Part I
The Idealistic Theory of Historiography

Leopold von Ranke’s formulation

Unlike Humboldt in “On the Historian’s Task”, Ranke did not publish his theoretical views regarding the character of history and of historical knowledge in a separate essay or work. The partial exceptions are the three essays on his conception of the state, which we have published in Part II of this volume, which deal with aspects of his views on history. He did, however, begin many of his lecture courses with general theoretical observations. In the winter semester of 1831–1832 he devoted an entire course to “The Study of History”. His remarks on the theory of history and of historical knowledge are buried in the extensive lecture notes he left behind. We are here presenting five excerpts from those notes. In all five selections Ranke defends the autonomy of history against the claims of the philosophy of history.

Philosophy, he explains in Selection 2 (“On the Relations of History and Philosophy”), proceeds through abstraction and history through the perception of the particular. The philosopher fails to grasp the concrete living reality of the individuals who compose history, which can never be “characterized through only one idea or one word” or “circumscribed by a concept”. In contrast, the historian is filled with “a feeling for and a joy in the particular in and by itself”. But while concentrating on the “original genius” that expresses itself in each individual, the historian keeps “his eyes open for the general”. He will not approach the particular with preconceived ideas as would the philosopher. Rather, the particular itself will reveal the general to him because the external manifestations of every individuality (e.g., a state) rest on a spiritual basis and possess a spiritual content. In contrast to the philosopher, the historian thus keeps to the facts. But in Selection 4 (“The Pitfalls of a Philosophy of History”), Ranke rejects a purely fact-oriented method that “concentrates mainly on externals”. “The particular,” he suggests in Selection 6 (“The Role of the Particular and the General in the Study of Universal History”), “is always related to a larger context”. Critical method and broad synthesis can and must go together in historical inquiry and writing. “Without a general view research would become sterile.”

The methodological implications of Ranke’s position are spelled out in greater detail in Selection 3 (“On the Character of Historical Science”). The historian can approach the general through the particular because he “recognizes something infinite in every existence: in every condition, in every being, something eternal, coming from God”, which constitutes “its vital principle”. Like Humboldt, Ranke believes that the historian must go beyond the external manifestations of historical phenomena to grasp the essential principle that reveals itself to his critical contemplation. “In the last analysis every unity is a spiritual one (geistig),” and because it is spiritual it is capable of “spiritual apperception”. The road to this apperception begins with the critical confrontation of historical reality as revealed in the available documents. But it does not end there. Ranke calls upon the historian to have a broad “universal interest” in all aspects of social and intellectual life, not merely in politics and war, as too many historians have had in the past. The historian must seek the causal nexus (Zusammenhang) between events, taking care however not to project an extraneous image onto the past. The observation of the events themselves will reveal their inner connectedness. Objectivity means impartiality; that is, it requires us to recognize the parties in any historical struggle in their own terms, to “understand them before we judge them”. In the final analysis the task of history is the same as that of philosophy, namely understanding the ultimate things. “If philosophy were what it ought to be, if history were perfectly clear and complete, then they would fully coincide with each other.” But history approaches the problem of the coherence of universal history by confronting reality, not, as in philosophy, by subordinating it to a scheme. Unlike philosophy, it recognizes that the solution to the riddle of world history is known only to God: we can only divine it and approach it from a distance.

The emphasis on the individual as an irreducible entity runs through Ranke’s discussion of the process of history in Selection 5 (“On Progress in History”). Here, as in the other selections, Ranke rejects a philosophy of history that sees the epochs of history as stepping stones in a great cosmic process. As we saw in the Introduction: “Every epoch,” he asserts, “is immediate to God, and its worth is not at all based on what derives from it, but rests in its own existence, in its own self.” This emphasis on the objective equality of all epochs appears in contrast to Ranke’s assertion in Selection 2 (“On the Relation of History and Philosophy”) and in the preface to the Universal History (Selection 14) that only certain ages and nations deserve the historian’s attention. Both in Selection 5 (“On Progress in History”) and in Selection 6 (“The Role of the Particular and the General”) Ranke seeks to reconcile the stress on individual spontaneity and freedom with a recognition of the role of necessity in history. Certain “leading ideas” or “great tendencies” give continuity and coherence to history. But these tendencies “can only be described”; they “cannot be subsumed under one concept”. Unlike Hegel, Ranke sees the meaning of history not in a unified process but rather in the multiplicity of developments in which mankind expresses itself.

None of the following selections was published during Ranke’s life time, hence the titles in the present edition are our own. Selections 2 and 6 (respectively, “On the Relations of History and Philosophy” and “The Role of the Particular and the General in the Study of Universal History”), were first published by Alfred Dove in the introduction to Part IX, Section II, of the Weltgeschichte, Leipzig, 1888. Selection 5 (“On Progress in History”) is taken from the introductory lecture in the series of lectures that Ranke delivered in 1854 to King Maximilian II of Bavaria, entitled “On the Epochs of Modern History”. These lectures were posthumously reconstructed by Alfred Dove on the basis of stenographic notes and were published in Part IX, Section II, of the Weltgeschichte. Selections 3 and 4 (“On the Character of Historical Science” and “The Pitfalls of a Philosophy of History” respectively) were originally published by Eberhard Kessel in the Historische Zeitschrift, volume CLXXVIII (1954). A part of Selection 3 (“On the Character of Historical Science”) was first published by Erich Mulbe in his doctoral dissertation, “Selbstzeugnisse Rankes über seine historische Theorie und Methode im Zusammenhang der zeitgenössischen Geistesrichtungen”, Berlin, 1930.

The selections in the original 1973 edition were published with the permission of the Historische Zeitschrift and of Professor Kessel. Professor Walther Peter Fuchs, co-editor of Leopold von Ranke, Aus Werk und Nachlass, graciously made available to us his own readings of these two manuscripts. We have compared Professor Fuchs’s readings with Professor Kessel’s versions and have indicated the divergences in the readings that are relevant to the English translation. Professor Lothar Gall, the current editor of the Historische Zeitschrift, generously permitted us to reprint the selections in the present version. We decided to insert an additional selection before the five selections listed above, namely an early letter by Ranke to his brother Heinrich in which he states the topics that interest him, the emergence of the modern European world, and expresses his religious faith, both of which will accompany him throughout his life.

All six selections have been translated by Wilma A. Iggers for this volume.

1
The Young Ranke’s Vision of History and God

(Excerpts from a letter to his brother Heinrich from Frankfurt/Oder, end of March 1820)

Now the vacation is coming, I am looking forward to important work. I would like to learn something of the life of the nations in the fifteenth century, of the repeated opening up of all the sprouts which antiquity planted – as if now the old blossoms were gone, blown away, and the germ, long tended, was sprouting again. I know nothing about it yet. But I already know that this striving, forming, wanting did not remain with the literary nobility, but in a way was there with the common people. I know it from the Reformation. For although the Gospel was revealed originally to Luther by the grace of God, there are other reasons for the success of this message. Only dry wood goes up in flames immediately.

So I shall learn, I hope, or at least have an idea how the Empire and the Papacy died, and new life comes with a new breath and makes everything alive, just as certainly and generally as infected air poisons.

I think that Fichte already said that this love for a past life, namely its idea, this inner drive to learn about antiquity in its depth, leads to God. I have always had difficulty accepting what is said: “For he that takes communion and does not believe, eats and drinks to his damnation” (Compare I Corinthians, 11, 29). But is this not how it is? Those who take antiquity shallowly, superficially, indeed sinfully, contribute to their damnation: misery becomes ever deeper, life becomes shallower, and thinking becomes ever more rigid. As it happened back then in Italy, it now happens to so many. As if the immanent spirit were taking revenge because it is mocked.

In all of history God dwells, lives, can be recognized. Every deed gives testimony of Him, every moment preaches His name, but most of all, it seems to me, does so the connectedness of History (Zusammenhang der großen Geschichte). He stands there like a holy hieroglyph, understood and preserved in His most extreme manifestation (in seinem Äußersten aufgefaßt und bewahrt), perhaps in order that He is not lost to more perceptive future centuries.

Let us go on, let us go forward. No matter how it goes and succeeds, let us do our part to unveil this holy hieroglyph! In this way too we serve God, in this way we are also priests and teachers.

God be with you my brother.

(Translated by Wilma A. Iggers from Ausgewählte Briefe in SW, XLIII/XLIV, pp.89–90.)

2
On the Relations of History and Philosophy *

(A manuscript of the 1830s)

Often a certain conflict has been observed between an immature philosophy and history. By way of a priori thinking, conclusions were drawn about what must be. Without being aware that such ideas are exposed to many doubts, men went about trying to find these ideas again in the history of the world. Out of the infinite number of facts those were then chosen which seemed to confirm these ideas. This kind of historical writing has also been called philosophy of history.

One of the ideas with which philosophy again and again confronts history as an irrefutable claim is that mankind is on an uninterrupted road to progress, in a steady development toward perfection. Fichte, one of the foremost philosophers in this field, assumes five epochs, a world plan as he says – reason ruling through instinct, reason ruling through law, emancipation from the authority of reason, reason as science, and reason as art. If this or a similar scheme were to any extent true, then general history would have to follow the road of progress which the human race followed in the indicated direction from one age to the next. The sole subject matter of history would then be the development of such concepts as they appear and manifest themselves in the world of phenomena. But this is by no means the case. For one thing, the philosophers themselves have extraordinarily varied opinions about the nature and selection of these supposedly ruling ideas. But they very wisely focus only on a few peoples in world history while considering the lives of all the rest as nothing, as a mere supplement. Otherwise it could not be hidden for a moment that from the beginning to this day the peoples of the world have been in the most varied conditions.

There are two ways of acquiring knowledge about human affairs – through the perception of the particular and through abstraction. The one is the way of philosophy, the other that of history. There is no other way, and even revelation encompasses both abstract doctrines and history. These two sources of knowledge are therefore to be kept clearly distinguished. Nevertheless, equally mistaken are those historians who view all of history merely as an immense aggregate of facts to be committed to memory, meaning that particulars are strung to particulars and all of these held together only by a common moral principle. I am of the opinion, rather, that historical science at its best is both called upon and able to rise in its own way from the investi...