IDEA OF HISTORY FROM JOHANN DROYSEN TO ROBIN COLLINGWOOD – 2014-2

Part One: Johann Droysen and “Historica”

Summary

Gevorg S. Khudinyan

The article looks at the refinement process of new theoretical and methodological principles of history worked out by Droysen research while the crisis of objectivist epistemology was actual.

Separation and distinction of historiography from the undamental sciences, as well as the sciences of humanity was first held by Droysen in lectures which became the first expression of holistic theory of history. Their summary has been published under the name “Sketches on Historics” in 1858 and later, the monumental work of J. Droysen “Lectures on Encyclopedia and Methodology of history” was posthumously published.

Proceeding from the ideas of W. Wundt (the founder of psychology), Droysen probed that the main achievement of historian is not a simple reflection on “real” events of the past, but the establishment of their sign (Zeichen). Otherwise, it is not possible to cope with “the double subjectivism” of the author of the source which in its turn makes the historian to spread the principles of natural sciences on history.

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