History and Hermeneutics

This Element analyzes themes in philosophical hermeneutics that influence the disciplines of philosophy of history and history proper.

This Element analyzes philosophical hermeneutics' impact on the humanities and social sciences, focusing on history. Topics include Dilthey's distinction between understanding and explanation, Heidegger's historicity, Gadamer's historical understanding, Ricoeur's view of historians, historical truth, and constructivism.Philosophical hermeneutics has shed a good deal of light both upon the methodological underpinnings of the humanities and social sciences generally and in particular upon some fundamental issues in the philosophy of history and history proper. The aim in this Element is to analyze those of its arguments that bear directly upon the latter fields. The principal topics taken up are Dilthey's distinction between understanding and explanation, the accent on meaning and experience, and the sense in which we may be said to belong to history. Heidegger's account of historicity and being-in-the-world, Gadamer's conceptions of historical understanding and belonging, and Ricoeur's view of historians as storytellers also come in for analysis. Other themes include the sense in which we may speak of a dialogue with the past, the notion of historical truth, and the problem of constructivism.