Wilhelm Dilthey - Pattern and Meaning in Histors: Thoughts on History and Society

The importance of history and the equal importance of reflecting on its nature, method and influence is obvious and needs little justification. History is one of the forms of disciplined research by means of which the human mind satisfies its curiosity and orientates itself in the world. Its subject matter is the human past and the way the present has come about. The historian, to promote the advance of his discipline, mustlike other research workerstake stock of his subject periodically and reflect on the nature and methods of history. He must consider fresh developments of various kinds; the use of new types of evidenceof church registers, court proceedings or state archivesthe extension of subject matter, for instance, from diplomatic to social history, and the switch of interest from rulers and warriors to peasants and workers. He has to reflect on the use of techniques made available by the advance of different sciences: chemical tests to establish the genuineness of documents, or statistical methods to present economic trends. Finally, he must weigh the relevance to his research of generalizations which the progress of different disciplines such as psychology, economics, social anthropology and sociology provide. Faced with problems such as these the thoughtful historian is forced to step outside his daily routine to reconsider the nature of his subject and to redefine the scale on which he works and the aims he pursues.

But history is not a specialized subject of interest only to historians. It concerns us all. We look to it for an understanding of the world we live in, for an illumination of human nature unfolding its potentialities in the course of time and even for some hints about the future which may guide our actions. Indeed, throughout the ages human beings have felt that they received from history a revelation of the workings of destiny and its purposes with man. To the interpretation of this revelation they have brought their own points of view. Confident and optimistic spirits to whom, on the whole, life seemed good, saw, in the course of history, the forward march towards a splendid present and an even more splendid future. Saddened and oppressed minds saw only a futile meandering, or even a plunge towards disaster of which they tried to warn their contemporaries. Religious thinkers saw in history, dimly or clearly, the working of Gods purpose, liberals the spread of free institutions. Thus, in their views of history, individuals or whole ages have expressed their own conceptions of life. Because such conceptions govern not only what we select as relevant from the mass of facts, but also what forces we believe determine the course of events, they colour historical presentation. This presentation, in turn, is adduced to justify the original point of view. In short, our ideas of history reflect our philosophic, religious, moral and political attitudes, and, at the same time, reinforce them. Reflection on our idea of history, in consequence, confronts us with our own presuppositions and can lead to understanding of ourselves and the temper of our age. In this lies its importance for all of us and for the historian it is, in addition, an aid to detachment. Every age, therefore, which seeks to understand historical reality and to become alive to its own deeper impulses must examine its attitude to history afresh.