Wesleyan University

Vision as Bevision BanIe and lIe Beginning oJ Modevn Hislov

AulIov|s) J. B. Bvav
Bevieved vovI|s)
Souvce Hislov and TIeov, VoI. 46, No. 4, TIene Issue 46 Bevision in Hislov |Bec., 2007),
pp. 45-60
FuIIisIed I Blackwell Publishing Jov Wesleyan University
SlaIIe UBL http://www.jstor.org/stable/4502283 .
Accessed 17/01/2012 1335
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of
content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms
of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
Blackwell Publishing and Wesleyan University are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend
access to History and Theory.
http://www.jstor.org
History
and
Theory,
Theme Issue 46
(December 2007),
45-60 C
Wesleyan University
2007 ISSN: 0018-2656
VISION AS REVISION:
RANKE AND THE BEGINNING OF MODERN HISTORY
J. D. BRAW
ABSTRACT
It is
widely agreed
that a new
conception
of
history
was
developed
in the
early
nineteenth
century:
the
past
came to be seen in a new
light,
as did the
way
of
studying
the
past.
This
article discusses the nature of this collective
revision, focusing
on one of its first and most
important
manifestations: Ranke's 1824 Geschichten der romanischen und
germanischen
V6lker.
It
argues
that,
in Ranke's
case,
the
driving
force of the revision was
religious,
and
that,
subsequently,
an
understanding
of the nature of Ranke's
religious
attitude is vital to
any interpretation
of his historical revision.
Being aesthetic-experiential
rather than con-
ceptual
or
"positive,"
this
religious
element is reflected
throughout
Ranke's
enterprise,
in
source criticism and in historical
representation
no less than in the
conception
of cause and
effect in the historical
process.
These three levels or
aspects
of the historical
enterprise
cor-
respond
to the
experience
of the
past,
and are connected
by
the essence of the
experience:
visual
perception.
The
highly
individual character of the
enterprise,
its foundation in senti-
ments and
experiences
of little
persuasive
force that
only
with
difficulty
can be
brought
into
language
at
all,
explains
the
paradoxical
nature of the Rankean
heritage.
On the one
hand,
Ranke had a
great
and
lasting impact;
on the other
hand,
his
approach
was never
re-utilized as a
whole,
only
in its constituent
parts-which,
when not in the
relationship
Ranke had
envisioned,
took on a new and different character. This also
suggests
the dif-
ference between Ranke's revision and a new
paradigm:
whereas the latter is an
exemplary
solution
providing binding regulations,
the former is
unrepeatable.
I. GESCHICHTEN DER ROMANISCHEN UND GERMANISCHEN VOLKER AS REVISION
Among
historical revisions in
historiography, Leopold
von Ranke's Geschichten
der romanischen und
germanischen
Volker
has a
given place.
The author was a
self-conscious, radical,
and
far-reaching
revisionist: "The entire
history
of the
sixteenth
century
needs a
thorough
critical
revision,"
he wrote in an 1824 let-
ter to Barthold
Georg
Niebuhr.' Of this
complete
revision,
the Geschichten was
only
the first installment. Ranke also
repeatedly pointed
out the
originality
of his
approach,
both in the work itself and in its critical
appendix,
Zur Kritik neuerer
Geschichtsschreiber.2
Posterity
has
generally accepted
this
claim,
that
historiog-
1. Dietrich
Gerhard,
"Zur Geschichte der Historischen Schule: Drei Briefe von Ranke und
Heinrich
Leo,"
Historische
Zeitschrift
132
(1925),
102.
2.
See,
for
example, Leopold
von
Ranke,
Geschichten der
romanischen
und
germanischen Vilker
von 1494
bis 1514,
3rd ed.
(Stimmtliche
Werke,
vol.
33) (Leipzig:
Duncker &
Humblot, 1885),
VII
(hereafter
referred to as
Geschichten); Leopold
von
Ranke,
Zur Kritik neuerer
Geschichtsschreiber,
3rd ed.
(Stimmtliche
Werke,
vol.
34) (Leipzig:
Duncker &
Humblot, 1885),
IV
(hereafter
referred to
46 J. D. BRAW
raphy
took a new turn and
developed
a new character in and
through
Ranke's
Geschichten. A
modem history
of
historiography
that does not include the ideal
that Ranke
postulated
in contrast to
existing
historiography--to
write
history
"wie
es
eigentlich
gewesen"--is
more or less inconceivable.
Yet,
paradoxically,
there is little consensus as to the nature of this turn or
development. Although
Ranke's
reputation
as a
groundbreaking figure
in the his-
tory
of
historiography
is
uncontested,
the shift he
brought
about is
rarely
seen as
a
revision,
in the sense of a new
interpretation,
of a
given period
or
development.
Rather,
it
has, first,
been seen as a revision of the historian's
task,
and the
scope
and nature of historical
knowledge. Especially
in the
Anglo-American
historical
tradition,
it is
primarily methodological
innovations and scientific
aspirations
that
have been ascribed to
Ranke,
whereas Ranke's
conception
of the
past-when
noticed-has been
interpreted
as an unconscious reflection of his
political
and
religious
bias.3
According
to a second
interpretation,
it was
exactly
his
concep-
tion of the
past-eventually being
called historicism or historism-that was the
novelty
of
Ranke.4
Third,
albeit more
infrequently,
it has been
argued
that Ranke
was the first to make academic
historiography
not
only
a science but also a liter-
ary genre,
that
is,
critical and readable at the same
time;
this is
supposed
to have
been the essential
novelty
of the Rankean
revision.5
Contrary
to these
interpretations,
I will
argue
here that Ranke's revision was
based on an aesthetic and
religious experience
of the
past
that
subsequently
was
reflected at all levels of his historical
enterprise:
source
criticism,
representation,
and
interpretation
all
correspond
to this
experience
of visual
perception.
This
experience
thus
provides
the connection
among
these three
aspects
or levels of
historical
study,
and the reason for Ranke's insistence on the need for
history
to
be all these three
things simultaneously.
In his lecture on "the idea of universal
history"
from the
early
1830s,
Ranke
develops
this theme
by starting
with
"pure
love of
truth,"
proceeding
via the critical and
thorough study
of sources and the
interest in the universal to the
perception
of
totality.6 "Everything
is
connected,"
Ranke wrote in the introduction to his Analecten der
englischen Geschichte;
"critical
study
of the authentic
sources, impartial
observation,
objective repre-
sentation;-the
aim is the realization
[Vergegenwdrtigung]
of the
past."7
And
in
1873,
Ranke wrote that "the historical
method,
which
only
searches for the
as Zur
Kritik).
3. See
Georg
G.
Iggers,
"The
Image
of Ranke in American and German Historical
Thought,"
History
and
Theory
2
(1962),
17-27.
4.
Ibid.,
27-34.
5.
See,
for
example,
Ernst
Schulin,
"Rankes erstes
Buch,"
Historische
Zeitschrift
203
(1966), 584;
Rudolf
Vierhaus, "Leopold
von Ranke:
Geschichtsschreibung
zwischen Wissenschaft und
Kunst,"
Historische
Zeitschrift
244
(1987),
286-287.
6.
Leopold
von
Ranke,
Aus Werk und
Nachlass,
vol. IV:
Vorlesungseinleitungen,
ed. Volker
Dotterweich and Walther Peter Fuchs
(Munich
and Vienna: R.
Oldenbourg Verlag, 1975),
77-83.
Hereafter referred to as
Vorlesungseinleitungen.
7.
Leopold
von
Ranke, Englische
Geschichte vornehmlich im
siebzehnten Jahrhundert,
3rd ed.
(Siimmtliche Werke,
vol.
21) (Leipzig:
Duncker &
Humblot, 1879), 114;
cf.
Leopold
von
Ranke,
Franzdsische Geschichte vornehmlich im sechzehnten und siebzehnten Jahrhundert,
3rd ed.
(Siimmtliche
Werke,
vol.
12) (Leipzig:
Duncker &
Humblot, 1877),
5.
*
VISION AS REVISION 47
authentic and
true,
is
immediately
connected to the
highest questions
of the
human race."8
Although
it
might
be
argued
that Ranke's skill at
combining
and
balancing
these three
aspects
increased over
time,
and that different
aspects
came to assume
different
degrees
of
importance
as his career
proceeded,
the
conception
as such
was
present
in the first
work; indeed,
the
novelty
that Ranke
emphasized
in the
preface
to the Geschichten was
exactly
this coherence of the historical
practice.
Already
in the short
preface
to the
Geschichten,
Ranke deals with all three
ques-
tions as related and
mutually dependent.
He
begins
with the
large-scale concep-
tion of
history-the unity
of the Romanic and Germanic
nations;
then makes his
much-quoted
and much-misunderstood comment on the
purpose
of historical
representation:
"To
history
has been
assigned
the office of
judging
the
past,
of
instructing
the
contemporaries
for the benefit of the future: to such
high
offices
does the
present attempt
not
aspire;
it
only
wants to
show,
how it
actually
was."9
Ranke
goes
on to discuss the sources he has used:
"memoirs, diaries, letters,
legation reports,
and
original
accounts from
eyewitnesses,"
then returns to the
principles
of historical
representation
that follow from intention
[Absicht]
and
materials
[Stoff]: first,
the "strict
presentation
of the
fact"; second,
the
presenta-
tion of
every people
and
every power
first "when it
enters,
leading
and active"
the course of
events;
through
this
literary strategy,
"the
line,
which
they gener-
ally
adhere
to,
the
path,
which
they
take,
the
thought,
which moves them" be
grasped.'0
The
degree
to which Ranke
managed
to combine these
principles
in
his first work is of
comparatively
less
concern;
what is
important
is that Ranke
saw them as
interdependent,
one
following
from the
other,
and that he
attempted
to revise historical
practice
on all three levels
simultaneously.
What, then,
was the connection that Ranke envisioned
among
these
three,
seemingly quite different,
aspects?
In a letter to
Dilthey,
Count Yorck identifies
the
connection,
or
rather,
the
foundation,
of Ranke's
conception
of
history
and
historiography
as visual
perception
or
"ocularity.""
In Ranke's works and in his
correspondence,
terms related to visual
perception
are indeed used
again
and
again
to describe the historian's vocation and
practice.12
This
"ocularity"
is no
mere
superstructure,
and is not confined to the
later,
somewhat more
speculative
stages
of
historiography;
rather,
Count Yorck
argues,
even Ranke's critical
prin-
ciples
are of "ocular nature and
provenance."'3
8.
Leopold
von
Ranke,
Das
Briefwerk,
ed.
Walther
Peter Fuchs
(Hamburg:
Hoffmann und
Campe
Verlag, 1949),
519.
9.
Ranke, Geschichten,
VII. In the
original version,
Ranke wrote
"say" [sagen]
rather than "show"
[zeigen].
For a discussion of
why
this
change
was made in the second
edition,
see Thomas Martin
Buck,
"Zu Rankes Diktum von 1824: Eine vornehmlich textkritische
Studie,"
Historisches Jahrbuch
119
(1999),
159-185.
10.
Ranke, Geschichten,
V-VII.
11.
Briefwechsel
zwischen Wilhelm
Dilthey
und dem
Grafen
Paul Yorck v.
Wartenburg,
1877-
1897,
ed.
Sigrid
v. d.
Schulenburg (Halle: Verlag
Max
Niemayer, 1923),
59-60.
12.
See,
for
example,
Rudolf
Vierhaus, "Historiography
between Science and
Art,"
in
Leopold
von
Ranke and the
Shaping of
the Historical
Discipline,
ed.
Georg
G.
Iggers
and James Powell
(Syracuse,
NY:
Syracuse University Press, 1990), 64-65;
Leonard
Krieger,
Ranke: The
Meaning of History
(Chicago
and London:
University
of
Chicago Press, 1977),
79.
13.
Schulenburg,
ed., Briechwechsel zwischen
Wilhelm
Dilthey
und dem
Grafen
Paul Yorck v.
Wartenburg,
60.
48 J. D. BRAW
Here,
I will
interpret
Ranke's threefold revision of
history
in this
light;
but I
will also
attempt
to
go beyond
Yorck,
and reflect on
why ocularity
came to be
such a central concern in Ranke's
historiographical enterprise.
Several
examples
exist of how Ranke makes visual
perception
the end of histo-
riography.
The
young
Ranke stressed the close relation between historical science
(or scholarship)
and art: science
investigates
what has
happened;
art
gives shape
to
that which has
happened
and
brings
it before one's
eyes,
Ranke writes in a
frag-
ment from his
period
at
Leipzig (1814-1818).14
In
1827, Ranke,
who
by
then had
become assistant
professor
at the
University
of
Berlin,
makes the same
argument,
now in a lecture on the
history
of literature in the
eighteenth century:
"The aim of
history-writing [Historie]
is to
bring past
life before one's
eyes."15
History
should in other words be
seen;
and Ranke's insistence on this
prompt-
ed a return to the
past
with new
questions,
new
approaches,
and new
expectations.
This
aspiration
led, by
default,
to a
thoroughgoing
revision of the whole historical
enterprise:
in
opposition
to
existing history-writing,
Ranke
attempted
to found a
new historical
approach
that
rejected everything
that,
as
Hayden
White has writ-
ten,
"prevented
the historian from
seeing
the historical field in its
immediacy,
its
particularity,
and its
vividness."'6
This
meant,
in
practical
terms, first,
the search
for the most
genuine
and visual
source; second,
the
attempt
to write the most
vivid and lifelike
prose;
third,
the
development
of a
conception
of the
past
that
stressed its character of life and
individuality
in contradistinction to the barren
schemes of
philosophers
and
theologians.
This coherence of Ranke's historical
enterprise,
its
being
founded on visual
per-
ception,
is evident in his first
published
work. To
any
reader not blinded
by
the
notion of Ranke as a
"positivist"
or
proponent
of an
exclusively
scientific
para-
digm,
it is clear
already
in Geschichten that Ranke's revision of
historiography
was not limited to source
criticism,
and that even the use of the
sources,
being
based on the
principle
of visual
perception,
was
anything
but
positivist.
1. Ranke has often been credited with
having appropriated
the source criticism
used in Bible studies and classical
philology,
and for the first time
put
it to use in
modern
history.
As described
by
Blanke, Fleischer,
and
Rtisen,
"the new
quality
of source criticism consisted
mainly
in
understanding literary
traditions as
being
themselves a
product
of
history
and individual texts within a
given
tradition as
deriving
from sources which could be traced and which reflected
group
interests
and
motives."17
In Ranke's
case, however,
the method had an aesthetic and reli-
gious depth
that is not covered
by
this definition.
Only
in relation to this aesthetic
and
religious depth
can Ranke's decision to make source
criticism,
the "new
method," an
integral part
of his historical
enterprise,
be
explained.
14.
Leopold
von
Ranke,
Aus Werk und
Nachlass,
vol.
I: Tagebiicher,
ed.
Walther
Peter Fuchs
(Munich
and Vienna: R.
Oldenbourg Verlag, 1964),
103. Hereafter referred to as
Tagebiicher.
15.
Ranke, Vorlesungseinleitungen,
64.
16.
Hayden White, Metahistory:
The Historical
Imagination
in
Nineteenth-Century Europe
(Baltimore
and London: Johns
Hopkins University Press, 1975),
164.
17. Horst Walter
Blanke,
Dirk
Fleischer,
and Jorn
Rtisen,
"Theory
of
History
in Historical
Lectures: The German Tradition of
Historik, 1750-1900," History
and
Theory
23
(1984),
342.
**
VISION AS REVISION 49
At
times,
Ranke's
enterprise
has been described as a
process
in which the
parts
are
given qualitative
differences: source criticism
provides
the
ground
for his-
torical
representation,
which in turn leads to the
sought-for
"universal
sympathy
and
co-knowledge [Mitgefiihl, Mitwissenschaft
des
Alls]."'8
Source criticism
is,
in this
interpretation,
a
preparation,
a
laying
of foundations for the more artistic
and
speculative
activities of historical
representation
and
interpretation.
Yet in
practice
this was not the
way
in which the different
aspects
were connected: the
primacy
of visual
perception
was at work
already
in the
selecting
and
reading
of sources. Ranke as
practitioner
of the critical method
sought
to find the most
genuine,
most
congenial,
and most
receptive
observer of a
given
event,
in order
to come as close as
possible
to
seeing
the event itself. Sources were chosen on
the basis of their visual
quality,
their
Anschaulichkeit.19
Upon
the
publication
of
the
Geschichten,
his fellow historian Heinrich Leo wrote a review in which he
criticized Ranke
for,
among
other
things, building
his
representation
of a
given
sequence
on the unreliable Pirkheimer's
account20;
this was
particularly grave
as
Ranke himself
had,
in Zur
Kritik,
described Pirkheimer as a source
generally
not
to be
believed.21
Ranke
replied
that he had used
Pirkheimer,
in
spite
of his unreli-
ability,
first,
because there was in this
particular
case
support
from
other,
more
reliable, sources; second,
and more
importantly,
because Pirkheimer described
the event in
question
in a
"particularly
visual
way."22 Already
in Zur
Kritik,
Ranke had
praised
this
quality
of
Pirkheimer's,
its
"clarity,
life,
and
credibility"
and the
way
in which the historical
agents "appear
in their
special
nature and
particularity."23
The accounts written
by
Guicciardini, Giovio, Pirkheimer,
and so
forth were thus dealt with not as neutral and in themselves
uninteresting deposito-
ries of "facts" but as
experiences, literary
achievements,
and visions of events.
Ranke's
approach
was thus based on historical
experience
in both senses of
the
concept:
the
experience
of the
person
behind the source was to be
re-experi-
enced by the person reading the source.24
Hence the
search not only for authentic
accounts of
events,
but for
original, personal
observations of events: the more
vivid the
experience
of the
person
behind the source had
been,
the more visual
would the historian's
image
of the event become.
This search for
personality, originality,
and
perceptivity required
a kind of
reading
that transcended the
sphere
of mere
comparison
of accounts. As Ranke's
pupil
Heinrich von
Sybel pointed
out in his commemoration
speech
on his teach-
18.
Ranke, Tagebiicher,
240.
19. See
Schulin,
"Rankes erstes
Buch," 584,
594-595.
20. Heinrich
Leo,"[Review of]
Geschichten der romanischen und
germanischen Volker
von 1494
bis
1535,
von
Leopold Ranke,"
in
Ergdnzungsblditter
zur Jenaischen
Allgemeinen Literatur-Zeitung
17/18
(1828),
136. In his
reply
to
Leo,
Ranke writes: "Er hat liber meine
Forschung, Darstellung
und
Gesinnung
in einem
gleich wegwerfenden
Tone
geredet" ("He
has
spoken
in an
equally
dismis-
sive tone of
my research, my representation,
and
my disposition"). Leopold
von
Ranke,
Sdmmtliche
Werke,
vol. 53/54: Zur
eigenen Lebensgeschichte,
ed. Alfred Dove
(Leipzig:
Duncker &
Humblot,
1890),
659. Hereafter referred to as SW 53/54.
21.
Ranke,
Zur
Kritik,
119-120.
22.
Ranke,
SW
53/54,
661.
23.
Ranke,
Zur
Kritik,
120.
24. See Martin
Jay, Songs of Experience:
Modern American and
European
Variations on a
Universal Theme
(Berkeley: University
of California
Press, 2005),
218.
50 J. D. BRAW
er,
the historical method itself
implies,
in its reconstruction of the
perspectives
of the individuals who have written the accounts the historian uses as
sources,
creative and
sympathetic imagination:
the core of human
individuality "only
lets
itself be understood
through observing imagination [anschauende Phantasie],
that
is,
through
a
procedure
that is
through-and-through analogous
to the artistic
procedure."25
In the reconstruction of the author's
perspective,
the
personality
of the author
gained
an interest of its
own,
independent
of the
facticity
of the
account;
it
became,
as it
were,
an aesthetic-historical event in itself. In Zur
Kritik,
Ranke
demonstrated that Guicciardini based his work on other
representations,
the reli-
ability
of which were
subject
to
doubt;
yet
this did not lead Ranke to dismiss
Guicciardini
entirely,
as his
writings
had
originality
and were "full of
spirit."26
In
his
reply
to Heinrich Leo's critical
review,
Ranke
explains
this
principle:
"In the
critique
of
historians,"
he
writes,
"I have
only
searched where
originality,
indi-
vidual observation
[Anschauung],
fullness of life
may
be,
and I have not wanted
to be deceived. That is all."27
2. These
qualities -originality,
individual
observation,
and fullness of life-
are more or less the same as the ideals Ranke had set himself as a writer of
history.28
Indeed,
so close was the relation between sources and
representation
that Ranke in his first work came to imitate the
style
of the chronicles he had
been
studying.29
The concern with either Ranke's
methodological
innovations
or his historicist
conception
of the
past
has led to a certain
negligence among
commentators on the
literary qualities
of Ranke's historical
writings;
discussions
regarding
the
literary aspect
are a
relatively
recent addition to the literature on
Ranke.30
Yet from the most
particular
details to the most
general
observations,
Ranke's Geschichten was an exercise not
only
in
seeing history
but also in mak-
ing history
visible.31 To
be
sure,
Ranke and some of his
readers-among
them
Niebuhr--found
the result to be less than
successful,32
and
according
to
Leo,
lan-
guage
was "abused in the most dreadful
way"
on
every page33;
but
nevertheless,
Ranke's
intention,
to
bring
the
past
before the
eyes
of the
reader,
is
perceivable
throughout
the work.
Moreover,
the extent of the
literary
failure should not be
exaggerated:
Ranke's work also received some
approval
for its
ability
to make
the
past
come alive. "Think about Ranke's first
book,"
Jacob Burckhardt writes
25. Heinrich von
Sybel,
"Geddichtnisrede auf
Leopold
v.
Ranke, gehalten
in der
kgl. preuBischen
Akademie der Wissenschaften
zu Berlin am 1. Juli
1886,"
Historische
Zeitschrift
56
(1886),
475.
26.
Ranke,
Zur
Kritik,
37.
27.
Ranke,
SW
53/54,
663.
28.
See,
for
example,
Ranke,
Das
Briefwerk,
64.
29.
Ranke,
SW
53/54,
62.
30. See Hermann von der
Dunk,
"Die historische
Darstellung
bei Ranke: Literatur und Wissen-
schaft,"
in
Leopold
von Ranke
und
die moderne
Geschichtswissenschaft,
ed.
Wolfgang
J. Mommsen
(Stuttgart:
Klett-Cotta, 1988),
140. For a discussion of Ranke's
style,
see Peter
Gay, Style
in
History
(New
York: Basic
Books, 1974), 59-94;
see also
Jrn
Riisen,
"Rhetoric and Aesthetics of
History:
Leopold
von
Ranke," History
and
Theory
29
(1990),
190-204.
31. On the
style
of Ranke's first
published work,
see Hanno
Helbling, Leopold
von Ranke und der
historische Stil
(Affoltern
am Albis: Buchdruckerei Dr. J.
Weil3,
1953),
45-61.
32.
Ranke,
SW
53/54, 663;
Barthold
Georg
Niebuhr, Briefe.
Neue
Folge: 1816-1830,
vol. III:
Briefe
aus Bonn
(182--1830),
ed. Eduard Visher
(Bern
and Munich: Francke
Verlag, 1983),
446.
33.
Leo, "[Review of] Geschichten,"
130.
cuando dice hacer visible
el pasado, no se reere al
hecho mismo o fecha
exacta. La recuperacin
del testimonio del testigo
es vital, aunque no s que
tanto acepta el rollo de las
percepciones.
VISION AS REVISION 51
in an 1870 letter to Bernhard
Kugler,
"this fantastic and wonderful work" with its
"permanent
relation to the
truly living."34
In the review
published
in the Viennese
Jahrbiicher der Literatur
("Wiener Jahrbiicher")
in
1826,
Ranke's
literary capac-
ity
was
praised highly,
and his
style
was described as
having sharpness
and vital-
ity
[Lebendigkeit]35-the
very qualities
for which Ranke had aimed.
Ranke's
conception
of historical
representation
was directed
against
three
different
inadequate ways
of
seeing history, practiced by
three different
groups.
A first
group,
the
fragmenters,
buried themselves in details and isolated
facts,
and
thereby
lost track of the more
general
contexts and
developments.36
A sec-
ond
group,
the
poets
and
novelists,
saw in
history
whatever
they
wanted to
see;
thereby they simply
made the
past
a
projection
screen for their own
imagina-
tion-which was
very
limited in
comparison
with the
creativity
of the
past.37
Third were the
philosophers
and
theologians
of
history,
who indeed saw
plans,
developments,
and
general
structures but were blind to
everything
else,
including
historical life itself.38
Beginning
with the last of these three
misconceptions
of
history,
in fact little
evidence
suggests
that Ranke at this
early stage
was well
enough acquainted
with
philosophy
of
history
to react
against
it. This seems to have been a later
develop-
ment,
albeit seen as
following logically
from the
conception
of
history
reflected
in the Geschichten. In the debate between the "historical" and the
"philosophical"
school
going
on at Berlin at the time of his
appointment,
Ranke sided with the
former.
"Against
the
background
of
my
whole nature and
my
studies,
I could
only
belong
to the historical
school,"
Ranke said in an 1867
speech.39
The second
misrepresentation
has at times been
given
an
importance
it
hardly
can have had. Ranke's
disapproval
and ultimate
rejection
of Sir Walter Scott's
novel
Quentin Durward,
described in one of his
autobiographical
sketches,
has
become "canonical in the
historiographical profession's
credo of
orthodoxy."40
Yet this book was not
published
until
1823,
at which
stage
Ranke's interest in
modern
European history
had
already
been awakened: in an 1820
letter,
he men-
tions his intention to
study
"the life of the nations"
during
the fifteenth
century,
and in an 1822 letter he indeed describes the
history
of the Germanic nations as
"the
study
of
my
life."41 At
most,
it
seems,
the
comparison
between Scott's novel
and the authentic sources confirmed Ranke's idea that the latter
were,
as he writes
in one of his
autobiographical
sketches,
more beautiful and
interesting
than
any
product
of
purely literary imagination
and
representation.42
34. Jacob
Burckhardt, Briefe,
vol.
V,
ed. Max Burckhardt
(Basel
and
Stuttgart:
Schwabe &
Co.,
1963),
78.
35.
"[Review of]
Geschichten der
romanischen
und
germanischen
Volker
von 1494 bis
1535,
von
Leopold Ranke," Jahrbiicher
der Literatur 34
(1826),
40.
36.
See,
for
example, Ranke,
SW
53/54,
28.
37.
See,
for
example, Leopold Ranke,
"Zur Geschichte des Don
Carlos,"
Jahrbiicher
der Literatur
46
(1829),
244.
38.
See,
for
example, Ranke, Vorlesungseinleitungen,
74-75.
39.
Leopold
von
Ranke,
Sdmmtliche
Werke,
vol. 51/52:
Abhandlungen
und
Versuche,
third ed.
(Leipzig:
Duncker &
Humblot, 1888),
588.
40.
White, Metahistory,
163.
41. See
Ranke,
Das
Briefwerk, 17,
29.
42.
Ranke,
SW
53/54,
61.
52 J. D. BRAW
Remaining
is the first
option,
that of
unsatisfactory
historical
representations.
In a
fragment
that
Walther
Peter Fuchs has dated to
1816-1817,
Ranke writes that
"as
history
is an
empirical
science,
it
happens only
too
often,
that it
fragments
itself";
only
when the
empirical
is "wedded to the idea"
[mit
der Idee
vermdhlt]
can
history
attract the human
spirit.43
In
one
of his
autobiographical
sketches,
Ranke recounts how he had been
repelled by
his first
experience
of how
history
was studied and
taught
at the
university
level: the students were to learn "masses
of
unprocessed
facts" without
any
inner coherence or
leading
idea." This
way
of
representing history,
combined with
moralizing
and utilitarian strands of
thought,
was
fundamentally incapable
both of
doing
the historical-aesthetic
experience
justice
and of
leading
to a renewed
experience, "attracting
the
spirit."
Ranke now
attempted
to write
history
that combined all the elements he had found
wanting
in the
existing historiography:
fullness, richness,
authenticity, colorfulness,
and
unity;
the result was the Geschichten der romanischen und
germanischen
Vilker.
Ranke's
aspiration
had
stylistic
and structural as well as
methodological
con-
sequences.
In his
reply
to
Leo,
Ranke makes clear what his
stylistic principle
had been: "In and with the
event,
I have tried to
present
its course and
spirit,
and
have made an effort to discover its characteristic
features."45
This
principle
is,
Ranke
noted,
also the essential
aspect
of
poetic
and artistic
expressions;
"I have
thought
it
permitted,"
he
writes,
"to make such an
attempt
in the
writing
of his-
tory
as
well."46
Ranke went about this task in several
ways.
One of these
was,
as
has been
seen,
to search for the source in which the most vivid and
perceptive
account was
given.
Another
strategy frequently employed
is the use of
metaphors
and
analogies:
for
instance,
Julius found himself in a situation similar to that "of
the
picador,
when the death blow has
failed";
that
is,
the attacker had become
the attacked.47
Similarly,
Caesar was described as a
predator
that had come to an
agreement
with the
herdsmen.48
With the
help
of these and
similarly developed
analogies,
Ranke could in a few words
capture
the essence of and
point
about a
given
situation.
A third
strategy
is that of
illustrating
the situation with
contemporary
beliefs,
often of a
religious
kind. In
Udine,
Ranke
writes,
it was believed that two
angels
with
bloody
swords had been seen over the church.49
In another context,
Ranke
writes that "it was
said,
that an ancient book had been found" that
according
to
popular
belief
prophesied
the decline of the Ferrante
family.50
Ranke treats these
beliefs
precisely
as
beliefs,
and does not
go
into the
question
of their
facticity;
they
do not serve as
facts,
but as colorful strokes
adding
to the vividness of the
representation.
A fourth
strategy,
which
gives
the
representation
its
energy
and
direction,
is
that of bold
introductory
or
concluding statements; with the
help
of these, Ranke
43.
Ranke, Tagebiicher,
233.
44.
Ranke,
SW
53/54,
28.
45.
Ibid.,
665.
46. Ibid.
47.
Ranke, Geschichten,
255.
48.
Ibid.,
139.
49.
Ibid.,
236.
50.
Ibid.,
23.
VISION AS REVISION 53
could tell the reader that a
new,
and
different,
"moment" had entered and what
the nature of this moment was. For
instance,
Ranke writes on the decline of
Venetian
power:
"Venice could not become more than it had
already
become;
but
that which had come into
being
still could assert
itself."5'
At
times,
the conclu-
sions could be
quite
drastic: on
Philip
I of
Castile,
Ranke concludes that "he had
come not to live as a
king,
but to die as
one."52
Generally, however,
these state-
ments and conclusions
sought
to locate the event within the
larger
context of the
entangled history
Ranke
attempted
to write: for
instance,
"it is
remarkable,
how
closely
the inner situation of
Germany
is related to French war and
peace."53
These are
just
a few of the
literary strategies
Ranke used.
Throughout
his first
work he also chose
quotations
that were
particularly
colorful54 and included little
insignificant
details with no real
importance
for the narrative.55 What the strate-
gies
all had in common was their
capacity
to create a lifelike
picture
of the
past,
a
picture
as
colorful, rich, complex,
and dramatic as the
experience
of the
past
itself;
in other
words,
an
image
of the
past
"as it
actually
was."
3. The ambition to write this kind of
history
can
only
be understood
against
the
background
of Ranke's
conception
of the
past,
his
"philosophical
and reli-
gious
interests"
that,
as he
said,
"led me to
history."56
These
religious
interests
had
already
come
up
for discussion in the debate on the Geschichten.
Leo,
in his
review,
seized on Ranke's somewhat
ambiguous
statement of belief in an inter-
vening
God. But whereas Leo
merely
mentioned the lack of
clarity
of the state-
ment,
Ranke
responded
with a serious
explanation
of his
thought
on the matter.
From this
explanation,
it is clear how
deeply
Ranke was influenced
by
the classi-
cal world of his educational
background,
and how far he was from the Lutheran
motives
(for example,
the idea of deus
absconditus)
that have been ascribed to his
conception
of
history.57
First,
he writes of an alternative view of
history,
that of
"an
ancient
theology
and
tragedy,"
which
"subjected everything
to
fate"; second,
he writes that he has followed another line of
interpretation,
that of
Xenopohon,
in whose historical
writings
the "immediate effect" of the
divinity
is seen in the
"decisive moments.""58 When it
says
in the
preface
that
history
deals with human-
ity
as it is and "at
times,
the hand of God above
them,"
it does
not,
as Leo ironi-
cally suggested
in his
review,
imply
that God
only
"at
times" raises his
hand,59
but
that "the hand of God" can
only
at times be observed. In the
Geschichten,
these
decisive moments are all
entirely
immanent: the
divinity appears
at crucial turns
51. Ibid.,
244.
52.
Ibid.,
193.
53.
Ibid.,
178.
54.
See,
for
example, Ranke, Geschichten,
242. For more on Ranke's
literary strategies,
see
Wolfgang Hardtwig,
"Die
Geschichtserfahrung
der
Moderne
und die
Asthetisierung
der Geschichts-
schreibung: Leopold
von
Ranke,"
Geschichte und
Gesellschaft
23
(1997), 104-107;
von der
Dunk,
"Die historische
Darstellung
bei
Ranke," 153-155, 158-159;
Felix
Gilbert, History:
Politics or Cul-
ture?
Reflections
on Ranke and Burckhardt
(Princeton:
Princeton
University Press, 1990),
41-42.
55. For
instance,
nightingales
were mentioned several
times."Ftir
die
Nachtigallen
scheint Hr. R.
eine besondere Passion zu haben..."
Leo, "[Review of] Geschichten,"
133.
56.
Ranke,
Das
Briefwerk,
216.
57.
See,
for
example,
Carl
Hinrichs,
Ranke und die
Geschichtstheologie
der Goethezeit
(Gdttingen,
Frankfurt,
and Berlin:
Musterschmidt, 1954),
112-113.
58.
Ranke,
SW
53/54,
665.
59.
Leo, "[Review of] Geschichten,"
134.
54 J. D. BRAW
in the "course of
events,"
but its effect is limited to this course of events
itself;
God restores
(or even,
one
might argue, is)
the balance of the
conflicting powers,
but does not lead the historical
process
to
any
discernible aim outside itself. It
is,
in other
words,
a secular
providence throughout.6
Religion
was identified at an
early stage
in the literature on Ranke as one of
the
principal
motives of his historical
writings.61
The
importance
of this
religious
element has been discussed
largely
in terms of
finding
a "divine
plan"
in his-
tory,
of
uncovering
a
"holy hieroglyph,"
or
finding
the moments in which the
Divinity
interferes with human affairs.
Meinecke,
for
instance,
describes Ranke
as a
"priest
in the service of
God,"
observing
the divine
providence
at work in the
historical
process.62
Yet if Ranke's intention in
writing
the Geschichten had been
to
point
to a divine will at work in human
history,
the result was
by
all means
a failure: there are
only
a few instances in which "God" or "God's
finger"
are
evoked,
and even then
only
at some distance from the
narrative,
in cases where no
other cause is needed.63
Furthermore,
several of these instances were excluded in
the second edition without
significantly altering
the
meaning
of the
narrative.64
A
"divine
plan" completely
fails to
materialize,
even in the first edition.
One
way
of
making
sense of this
apparent
incoherence has been to declare
the
religious aspect,
the
recognition
of God in
history,
the end to which critical
method was the
means;
von Laue concludes that before Ranke could commence
the search for
God,
he needed to have the historical truth
"pure
and
simple."65
Others have
interpreted
the
religious aspect
as a mere
driving
force,
which
may
well have led Ranke to
history
and
given
some
depth
to his
enterprise,
but did
not exert
any
influence over his
critical-methodological
work.66
Meinecke finds
it remarkable that Ranke
managed
to avoid the
trap
of
subjecting
the historical
process
to
theological concepts
and
tracing
God in the details.67
There
is, however,
little evidence to
suggest
that this was ever an
imminent
dan-
ger.
As Ilse
Mayer-Kulenkampff
has
demonstrated,
the
young
Ranke's
religious
attitude was not bound to
any particular "objective religion."68
Rather,
it was based
on the idea of a
religious experience
that can be
separated
from the
"positive"
or
"objective"
manifestations of
religion,
and indeed is more authentic than
these;
dogma
and doctrines are
essentially
reflections
upon
this
religious experience.
Ranke was thus a
proponent
of a broader
contemporary
cultural and
religious
shift,
60. See Friedrich Nietzsche,
Kritische
Studienausgabe,
vol. 11:
Nachlafl
1884-1885,
ed.
Giorgio
Colli and Mazzini Montinari
(Berlin
and New York: de
Gruyter, 1999),
662.
61.
See,
for
example,
Hermann
Oncken,
Aus Rankes
Friihzeit (Gotha: Verlag Friedrich
Andreas
Perthes, 1922), 2, 3;
Gerhard
Masur,
Rankes
Begriff
der
Weltgeschichte (Munich
and Berlin: R.
Oldenbourg, 1926),
54.
62. Friedrich
Meinecke,
Ranke und Burckhardt: Ein
Vortrag, gehalten
in der Deutschen Akademie
der
Wissenschaften zu
Berlin
(Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1948),
13.
63. Theodore von
Laue,
Ranke: The Formative Years
(Princeton:
Princeton
University Press,
1950),
29-30.
64. Silvia
Backs,
Dialektisches Denken in Rankes
Geschichsschreibung
bis
1854
(Cologne
and
Vienna:
B6hlau
Verlag, 1985), 96,
277-279.
65. Von
Laue, Ranke,
43.
66. See
Oncken,
Aus Rankes
Friihzeit,
7-8.
67.
Meinecke,
Ranke und
Burckhardt,
13.
68. Ilse
Mayer-Kulenkampff,
"Rankes Lutherverhiiltnis:
Dargestellt
nach dem
Lutherfragment
von
1817,"
Historische
Zeitschrift
172
(1951),
78.
El poder que le otorga a Dios en la historia
En Ranke subyace la idea de Dios detras
de la historia de la humanidad, como un elemento
que restaura el equilibrio cuando se pierde.
Sin embargo no lo da como origen y causa de
la historia, sa es exclusiva del hombre.
VISION AS REVISION 55
described
by
Martin
Jay
as "the shift from faith identified
primarily
with adher-
ence to
belief,
either rational or
willed,
in certain
propositions
about God and His
creation to faith understood
phenomenologically
as devotional or
pious
behaviour
derived from
something
akin to an
emotionally charged, perceptual experience
of
divinity
or the
holy."69 "Perceptual experience"
or,
as he himself called it in an
1825
letter,
"the untroubled truth of the inner sense
[die
unverkiimmerte Wahrheit
des inneren
Sinnes]"70
was the essence of Rankean
religion.
The few instances where Ranke invokes God are therefore at most reflections
of a belief in the
divinity
as the last instance of order of the
universe;
to build a
coherent
theology
of
history
on these scattered and
increasingly
rare references
is not
likely
to be
very fruitful.7
The
religious significance
of Ranke's
enterprise
is rather the concentration on historical
life,
and the
aspiration
to share in this
life
through
aesthetic-historical
experience. Despite
occasional
expressions
of
the
aspiration
to
go
behind the manifestations of life to the source of life
itself,
Ranke in his historical
works,
not least in the
Geschichten,
clearly stayed
on the
stage
of
appearances.
As
aesthetic-religious experience
rather than
explanation
or
analysis
was the
aim,
there was
indeed,
as
Dilthey noted,
no serious
attempt
to
go beyond
the admiration of the fullness and richness of the
appearances.72
This,
it would
seem,
is what Ranke means when he writes that he wishes to acknowl-
edge
"not
God,
but in the
feeling
of
him,
everything
else"-the human
race,
the
peoples,
the
history.73
As Gadamer
states,
"because all historical
phenomena
are
manifestations of universal
life,
to share in them is to share in life. This
gives
the
word
'understanding'
its almost
religious
tone. To understand is to
participate
immediately
in
life,
without
any
mediation
through concepts."74
Ranke's
revision,
as it has been
interpreted
here,
was an
attempt
to do
justice
to
the
experience
of the richness and life of the
past,
an
experience
that was seen
not
only
as aesthetic but also as
religious.
What stimulated this revision? In
contrast to other
"revisionists,"
and to
contemporary
historians like Niebuhr and
Schlosser,
Ranke seems to have had no
particular political
and moral
purposes
or
driving
forces. In his
writings, "politics"
is often
employed
as a
counterconcept
of
"history,"75
and
although
moral reflections and
judgments
were
part
of the
gen-
eral reflections Ranke included in his historical
representation,
moral concerns
were not the
origin
and moral
arguments
not the
point
of Ranke's historical
repre-
sentation: on the
contrary,
Ranke
rejected
the
"high
office" of moral
judgment.76
Rather,
the stimulus of Ranke's historical
enterprise
was the
perceived inability
69.
Jay, Songs of Experience,
80.
70.
Ranke,
Das
Briefwerk,
86.
71. See
Backs,
Dialektisches Denken in
Rankes,
96-101.
72. Wilhelm
Dilthey,
Der
Aufbau
der
geschichtlichen
Welt in den
Geisteswissenschaften
(Frankfurt
a. M.:
Suhrkamp, 1970),
118.
73.
Leopold
von
Ranke,
Neue
Briefe,
ed. Bernhard Hoeft and Hans Herzfeld
(Hamburg:
Hoffmann
und
Campe Verlag, 1949),
19.
74.
Hans-Georg Gadamer,
Truth and
Method,
2nd
ed.,
transl. Joel Weinsheimer and Donald G.
Marshall
(London
and New York:
Continuum, 2004), 207-208; cf. Friedrich
Meinecke, Werke,
vol.
IV: Zur Theorie und
Philosophie
der Geschichte
(Stuttgart:
K. F.
Koehler
Verlag, 1965),
232.
75.
See,
for
example, Ranke, Vorlesungseinleitungen,
81.
76.
Ranke, Geschichten,
VII.
56 J. D. BRAW
of
existing historiography
to
represent
and lead to historical-aesthetic
experience,
the visual
perception
of the richness and fullness of historical life Ranke was
convinced existed.77 In the last
instance,
both these characteristics and the
experi-
ence of them were conceived as related to
religion:
richness and fullness
being
manifestations of divine
creativity,
the
experience being
the
"knowledge
of the
heart" that Ranke saw as the core of
religion.
This
visionary conception
of the nature of the
past
also
implied
a revision of
how
history
should be written and how it should be researched. As
opposed
to
the colorless and bloodless
historiography
that
existed,
the new
historiography
should reflect
richness, development,
and
fullness;
in
short,
human
life.
As
opposed
to what Ranke
perceived
as
fragmented
and
fragmenting historiography,
the new
historiography
should show the coherence and
unity
of human
history.
As
opposed
to what Ranke
perceived
as the traditional character of
existing
his-
toriography,
that
is,
its
building
on the accumulated
perception
of
events,
the new
historiography
should concern itself with the
original
and authentic
experience
of the event itself.
Some commentators have found tensions in and between these
ideals,
either
along
the lines of
universality-particularity
or of critical
research-literary rep-
resentation.78
While Ranke
recognized
some
shortcomings
of his own in both
aspects,
he nevertheless did not see his ideals as
conflicting
or
impossible
to
attain,
and hence did not see the
attempt
to combine them as futile. At
times,
he
criticizes his own work and doubts his own
capacity
to translate the ideal combi-
nation into
practice,
but he does not seem to believe it
impossible
to write
history
in the
way
that he had envisioned.79 The idea that one should have to choose
one ideal over the other
simply
does not
appear,
even
though, according
to some
commentators,
it should have. The fact that Ranke does not seem to have doubted
the
tenability
of either combination
suggests
that the ideals need to be
interpreted
differently,
in line with the
ocularity
of his
enterprise:
that
is,
as aesthetic rather
than
philosophical
or
methodological categories.
In
overlooking
or
downplaying
the visual character and the aesthetic
aspect
of Ranke's entire
enterprise,
or
limiting
it to the level of historical
representa-
tion,
recent commentators have
neglected
a crucial observation
repeatedly
made
in earlier Ranke literature. Von
Sybel,
in his memorial
speech
on
Ranke,
had
already
identified the core of Ranke's
conception
of
history
and
historiography
as "the aesthetic
joy
in
every appearance
of a
particular being,
a
particular
life."80
Dilthey
described Ranke as a
"great
artist,"
observing
the world in a
"poetic
mood."81 Gerhard
Masur,
in his 1926 Rankes
Begriff
der
Weltgeschichte,
defines
"the visual
joy
in the concrete
event"
as the essence of Ranke's
intuition.82
77.
Ranke,
Das
Briefwerk,
18.
78.
See,
for
example, Krieger,
Ranke: The
Meaning of History, 107; Siegfried Baur,
Versuch
iiber
die Historik des
jungen
Ranke
(Berlin: Duncker
&
Humblot, 1998),
83.
79.
See,
for
example, Ranke,
SW
53/54,
663.
80. Von
Sybel,
"Geddichtnisrede auf
Leopold
v.
Ranke," 468;
see also
Iggers,
"The
Image
of
Ranke,"
29-31.
81.
Dilthey,
Der
Aufbau
der
geschichtlichen Welt,
118-119.
82.
Masur,
Rankes
Begriff
der
Weltgeschichte,
66.
VISION AS REVISION 57
This observation is
important
as it
helps
to
explain
the coherence of Ranke's
conception
of
history
and
historiography.
As
part
of
properly developed philoso-
phy
of
history seeking
to combine
universality
and
particularity, development
and
individuality,
Ranke's
enterprise
would have been
deeply problematic.83
When
universality
and
particularity
are understood as
primarily
aesthetic con-
cepts,
however,
the conflict
appears
less
critical.84
There is no
necessary
con-
tradiction between
enjoying
a
part
of a work of art and
enjoying
the work of art
as a whole. An
opera
or an oratorio is not
fragmented by
listeners'
appreciation
of an individual
aria;
on the
contrary,
this is "means and end at the same time"
(Herder).
The
very
movement between the whole and the individual
parts
can in
itself be a source of an aesthetic
experience, namely
of how the
part
fits into the
whole,
and how the whole is reflected in the
part.85
The same
principle applies
to the
appreciation
of individual
persons
or nations in relation to "universal his-
tory";
the aesthetic
enjoyment may
assume
slightly
different
characters,
but it is
the same aesthetic
experience
nonetheless;
and the movement between the whole
and its
parts
is likewise a source of aesthetic
experience.
Similarly,
when critical method is understood as
ascertaining "pure
facts"
(whatever
that
may be),
it
might
be in conflict with
literary representation;
when
critical method however is understood as based on creative
imagination,
as Ranke
in his
reply
to Leo
suggested
it should
be,
the distinction
again
loses its
sharpness.
Critical method
might
of course mean that whatever
story
the historian
attempts
to tell falls
apart
and shows itself to be full of
gaps.
Yet
Ranke,
like
Niebuhr,
was
no
stranger
to
bridging
these
gaps
with the
help
of creative
imagination
and a
certain
elasticity
of
language, attempting,
for
instance,
to divine the
goings-on
in
individual
minds,
an
attempt
for which there was little
support
in the
sources.86
II. REVISIONS AND PARADIGM SHIFTS
Was Ranke's revision of
history
and
historiography
a
paradigm
shift? This has been
argued
most
recently by Siegfried
Baur,
according
to whom "a
paradigm
shift has
seldom been initiated in a more
paradigmatic way"
than Ranke's
"critique
of his-
tory-writing
in
general.""87
Yet the character of this
revision,
especially
in its roots
in
religious
and aesthetic
experience, highlights
the difference between revision in
history
and
paradigm
shifts in other scientific
disciplines. Paradigms,
as defined
by
Thomas
Kuhn,
are
"universally recognized
scientific achievements that for a
time
provide
model
problems
and solutions to a
community
of
practitioners."88As
the
widely differing interpretations
and
appropriations
of Ranke
demonstrate,
83. On this inherent conflict in Rankean
principles
understood as
philosophical principles,
see F.
R.
Ankersmit,
"Historicism: An
Attempt
at
Synthesis," History
and
Theory
34
(1995),
153.
84. See
Ranke,
Das
Briefwerk,
96.
85. On the connection between the historical school and romantic
hermeneutics,
see
Gadamer,
Truth and
Method,
195-214.
86. Ranke had written in his first work that the historian should "research the
particular
and com-
mend the rest to God."
87.
Baur,
Versuch iiber die
Historik,
80.
88. Thomas S.
Kuhn,
The Structure
of Scientific Revolutions,
2nd
ed., enlarged (Chicago
and
London:
University
of
Chicago Press, 1970),
viii.
58 J. D. BRAW
however,
there is no consensus as to the nature of his "scientific achievement"
(and
it was not
"universally recognized,"
even in
Germany).
Thus there is no consensus on what "Rankean"
historiography
is or
ought
to
be: different
groups
have
appropriated
different
aspects
of the holistic Rankean
conception
of
history,
and at times ended
up
with
conceptions
almost
completely
contrary
to that of their
authority:
Ernst Troeltsch's
description
of
post-Rankean
German
historiography
reads like a
catalogue
of the
things
most alien to
Ranke,
such as the
"fragmentation
and
emptying
of the
image
of
history [Zersplitterung
und
Entleerung
des historischen
Bildes]."89 Subsequently,
Troeltsch's
description
of the reaction
against
this kind of
historiography
is,
if not identical
with,
far
more
closely
related to Ranke's vision of
history
and
historiography.9?
This dis-
crepancy
between achievement and
reception (and
between various
receptions)
suggests
that there cannot
really
be a "Rankean
paradigm," providing
the frame
for some Rankean normal science.
The same
goes,
it
seems,
for the
notoriously
difficult
concept
of
historicism,
the
meaning
and use of which has caused almost as much debate as the
phenom-
enon it seeks to describe.91
Despite
this lack of
conceptual
consensus,
historicism
has been
interpreted
as a
paradigm
and indeed as a
paradigmatization
in the his-
torical
discipline.92
Historicism can be seen as a
paradigm
in at least three differ-
ent
ways:
as a
theory
of human
life,
with
emphasis
on its fundamental
historicity;
as a
(critical) scholarly practice;
or as a combination of these two.93
Yet the
deeper
consensus on
approach
and
interpretation postulated by
the
theory
of
paradigms
fails to
appear,
even in
Germany.
A
comparison
between
the often
supposedly closely
related
enterprises
of Ranke and
Droysen (in
which
Droysen
has
frequently
been
given
the role of a
conceptually
clearer and more
rigorous
version of
Ranke)
makes clear how little common
ground
and how little
common
understanding
there was in the intellectual movement that has come to
be labeled
historicism.94
The
comparison
was indeed made
by
the "historicists"
themselves: Ranke was
highly
critical of
Droysen's Tendenzgeschichte,
and
Droysen disapproved
of Ranke's "eunuch-like
objectivity."95
These were not
superficial
differences;
on the
contrary, they
are related to the fundamental
ques-
tions of the
conception
of time and of the
proper
task of the historian.
The
only way
of
making
Ranke's revision
part
of a
paradigm
shift,
to
bring
it in
line with
contemporary
historians,
philosophers,
and so
on,
is to
postulate
a low-
est common
denominator,
such as
"a
new
experience
of
reality,"
an
experience
89. Ernst
Troeltsch,
Der Historismus und seine
Probleme (Gesammelte Schiften,
vol.
3) (Aalen:
Scientia, 1961),
4-5.
90.
Ibid.,
5.
91. See
Georg
G.
Iggers,
"Historicism: The
History
and
Meaning
of the
Term,"
Journal
of
the
History of
Ideas 56
(1995),
129-137.
92. Jorn Rilsen,
"Von der
Aufkliirung
zum
Historimus:
Idealtypische Perspektiven
eines
Strukturwandels,"
in Von der
Aufkldrung
zum
Historismus: Zum Strukturwandel des historischen
Denkens,
ed. Horst Walter Blanke and
Jkrn
Rtisen
(Paderborn:
Ferdinand
Schdningh, 1984),
21.
93. See
Iggers, "Historicism,"
142-151.
94. See Michael J.
Maclean,
"Johann Gustav
Droysen
and the
Development
of Historical Herme-
neutics," History
and
Theory
21
(1982),
347-365.
95.
Ibid.,
357-358.
VISION AS REVISION 59
of the
historicity
of
being
or
change
as a fundamental
aspect
of human life.96 This
would, however,
on the one hand make
Vico, Winckelmann,
and Herder histori-
cists or at least
proto-historicists, "anticipating
historicism." On the other
hand,
it would
quite possibly
exclude Ranke: the
object
of his research and
writing,
humanity
"as it
is,"
was not
fundamentally
different over
time,
at least not more
different than it
being possible
to make
general--including moral--statements
about human affairs.97
These countertheoretical limitations and counterintuitive results are
discourag-
ing
in their own
right.
But more
crucially,
as the outline of Ranke's revision above
sought
to
illustrate,
the idea of "critical" or "historicist"
paradigms
takes
only
the
periphery
of Ranke's
thought
into consideration. Ranke did insist on critical
method,
but unless his reasons for
doing
so and the
creative-imaginative way
in
which he
pursued
critical research is taken into
account,
the
"paradigm"
remains
a mere shadow of Ranke's
thought.
In the same
way, "change"
does describe
an
integral aspect
of Ranke's
thought;
but unless the
way
in which
change
and
transformation,
together
with
interdependence,
the "causal
nexus,"
personal
and
national
individuality,
and other
expressions
of historical life
captured
Ranke's
imagination
and led to historical-aesthetic
experience,
the
concept
of
"change"
itself does not
approach
the core or
explain
the coherence of Ranke's
thought.98
In the
paradigm-based interpretation,
Ranke becomes either a leader of semi-
nars,
a historical
thinker,
or a historical
writer;
yet
he
attempted
to be all in one
and all at once.
By necessity,
the construction of a critical or historicist
paradigm
has the same effect on
any
other historical
enterprise
believed to be
part
of the
same broader
developments
of
historiography. Complexity
and
individuality
are
sacrificed for the sake of overall
coherence;
the individual historian is
replaced by
a
supraindividual subject,
"Historicism,"
with an intellectual life of its own.
The difference between these two kinds of observation
might
be described as
one of
taste,
and as such
falling
under the rule of non
disputandum.
Yet the curi-
ous fact that histories or
prehistories
of historicism written
by self-proclaimed
historicists tend to be so
overtly antihistoricist,
that
is,
presenting
historicism as
the telos of a
process
in which the historicist state of mind
gradually
overcomes
the barriers of human
thought
and realizes
itself, suggests
a crucial
way
in which
the historical
discipline
differs from
physics.99
"Normal
science"
may
be
regu-
larly
confronted with
anomalies;
but it is inconceivable that a
practitioner
of nor-
mal science committed to the
approaches
and solutions of the current
paradigm
would
actively produce
these anomalies. Yet this has been shown to be
eminently
possible
in
historiography.
In other
words,
a historical
conception
is neither
fully
communicated nor
fully appropriated.
96.
See,
for
example,
Ulrich
Muhlack,
Geschichtswissenschaft
im Humanismus und in der
Aufkliirung:
Die
Vorgeschichte
des Historismus
(Munich: Verlag
C. H.
Beck, 1991),
414.
97. See
Gilbert, History:
Politics or Culture? 38-40.
98. For a
description
of this
coherence,
see von der
Dunk,
"Die historische
Darstellung
bei
Ranke,"
144.
99. The most obvious
example
of this kind of
interpretation
is Meinecke's Die
Entstehung
des
Historismus. Friedrich
Meinecke, Werke,
vol. III: Die
Entstehung
des
Historismus,
ed. Carl Hinrichs
(Munich:
R.
Oldenbourg Verlag, 1965), 580;
cf.
Meinecke, Werke,
vol.
IV, 344;
for a modem
example,
see
Iggers, "Historicism,"
146.
LEER A DETALLE STE
PRRAFO!
60 J. D. BRAW
This is
especially
true of Ranke's
conception
of
history,
which
might explain
the
diversity among
Ranke's students.'"
Being grounded
in aesthetic
experience,
Ranke's vision of
history
can
only
be
brought
into
language by
means of analo-
gies
and
metaphors.
That
is,
it can
only
to a limited extent be shared: it does not
have the force to
prove
its
correctness,
nor does it
attempt
to.'01 At
most,
it can
evoke a similar
experience
in the student or
reader;
but
already
there,
it
merges
with other
factors,
mixes with different motives
(moral, political,
scientific,
religious,
and so
on),
and assumes a different character. Von
Sybel,
Dove,
and
Meinecke were
all,
in different
senses,
influenced
by
the Rankean
conception
of
history,
and
yet
none of them
(or
indeed
anyone else)
worked or
represented
his-
tory
in the same
way
as Ranke.
Moreover,
even the
very
method
being
based on
"imagination,"
as von
Sybel
calls
it, "normal
science" or a "scientific
community"
could
hardly emerge.
Either the followers could
"slip
into routine and miss the
profundity"'12
of
their
authority, beginning
to
carry
out
"mopping-up operations"'03
and
investigate
ever
more minuscule fractions of their
field;
or
they
could continue the
tradition,
using
their own
imagination
and
literary creativity.
In both
cases,
they
wrote
history
quite
different from that of their
authority. Following
Ranke,
in other
words,
always implied
not
following
Ranke.
Ranke's
conception
of
history
and
historiography
was a
deeply
individual and
historically particular
constellation of
"religious
and
philosophical
interests,"
emotional
detachment,
aesthetic
perceptivity,
dislike of
extremes,
creative
imagi-
nation,
a certain moral
insensitivity,
and
political
indifference,
belonging
to a
generation
whose
experiences
differed
radically
both from those of the
preceding
generation
and from those of the
generation
of his
followers.'"1
In this
way,
the
term Ranke used to describe his students and students' students-as a "scientific
family"'10-
seems to
capture
more of the
diversity
and
development
of this
group
than does
"paradigm."
The Rankean
legacy
is indeed
confusing
and
ambiguous;
however,
given
its
seemingly
infinite
capacity
to
give
rise to
historiographical
reflection and
debate,
it could as well be described as rich and
complex.
University College
London/Universitdt
Bielefeld
100. And
indeed,
the
diversity
of views held
by Ranke;
as Gadamer has
shown,
there is a
strong
Hegelian
element in the
anti-Hegelian
Ranke's
thought. Gadamer,
Truth and
Method,
201.
101.
Ranke, Vorlesungseinleitungen, 77,
83.
102. Herbert
Butterfield,
Man on His Past: The
Study of
the
History of
Historical
Scholarship
(Cambridge,
UK:
Cambridge University Press, 1955),
100.
103.
Kuhn,
The Structure
of Scientific Revolutions,
24.
104.
See,
for
example, Meinecke,
Ranke und
Burckhardt, 5,
7.
105. Von
Sybel,
"Gedichtnisrede auf
Leopold
v.
Ranke,"
476.