Theory of History (History track)

Course goals

At the end of this course, you are able to:

• Name and recognize the most important positions in the philosophy of history;
• Form a reasoned opinion about the aforementioned positions;
• To academically reflect on historical practice.

Content

Good historians know what they are doing. They are self-conscious historians who not only select and apply the correct forms of source criticism and the historical method, but can also provide justification for this; they contribute knowledge about the past and are able to say something sensible about the status and meaning of that knowledge; they participate in societal and historiographical debates from a clear idea of the role of historians in such debates.

That is why this course is an exercise in self-reflection: what do historians do, why do they do that and what makes that a scholarly, or maybe even a scientific activity? Translated into more concrete questions: how certain is historical knowledge? May historians be guided by their political preferences? Is objectivity an attainable ideal for historians? What do we actually mean by that, objectivity? How do historians shape the past and how does the past shape historians? In this course we discuss these and similar problems that belong to the philosophy of history. Not with the goal to solve those issues for once and for all, but as a means to come to our own position. The overarching course goal then is that students leave the course more self-consciously than they entered it, and that they know what historian they want to become. The readings, classes and assignments are no more than means to this end.