Historicity
Historicity is the historical actuality of persons and events, meaning the quality of being part of history instead of being a historical myth, legend, or fiction. The historicity of a claim about the past is its factual status.[1] Historicity denotes historical actuality, authenticity, factuality and focuses on the true value of knowledge claims about the past.[2][3]
Some theoreticians characterize historicity as a dimension of all natural phenomena that take place in space and time. Other scholars characterize it as an attribute reserved to certain human occurrences, in agreement with the practice of historiography.[4] Herbert Marcuse explained historicity as that which "defines history and thus distinguishes it from 'nature' or the 'economy'" and "signifies the meaning we intend when we say of something that is 'historical'."[5] The Blackwell Dictionary of Western Philosophy defines historicity as "denoting the feature of our human situation by which we are located in specific concrete temporal and historical circumstances".[6] For Wilhelm Dilthey, historicity identifies human beings as unique and concrete historical beings.[6]
Questions regarding historicity concern not just the issue of "what really happened", but also how modern observers can come to know "what really happened".
Questions of historicity are particularly relevant to partisan or poetic accounts of past events. For example, the historicity of the Iliad has become a topic of debate because later archaeological finds suggest that the work was based on some true event.[12]
Questions of historicity frequently arise in relation to historical studies of religion. In these cases, value commitments can influence the choice of research methodology.[9]
See also
- Historicity of the Bible
- Historicity of Jesus
- Historicity of the canonical Gospels
- Historicism (Christian eschatology), a specific brand of Biblical literalism
- Historicity of Muhammad
- Historicity of the Book of Mormon
- Historicism
- Historical method
- Historicity of King Arthur
- Historicity of William Tell
- Historicity of Robin Hood
- Historicity of Ragnar Lodbrok
- Historicity of Laozi
- Parallelomania
- Temporality
References
- ISBN 978-1-351-93058-1.
- .
- ^ Harre, R., & Moghaddam, F.M. (2006). Historicity, social psychology, and change. In Rockmore, T. & Margolis, J. (Eds.), History, historicity, and science (pp. 94–120). London: Ashgate Publishing Limited. [1]
- ^ Jones, Michael S., "Lucian Blaga, The Historical Phenomenon: An Excerpt from The Historical Being" (2012). Faculty Publications and Presentations. Paper 1.
- ^ Herbert Marcuse, Hegel’s Ontology and the Theory of Historicity, trans. by Seyla Benhabib (Cambridge, MA; London: The MIT Press, 1987), 1.
- ^ ISBN 1405106794.
- ^ William J. Hamblin, professor of history at Brigham Young University. Two part article on historicity, [2] and [3]
- ^
- ISBN 9780415349185.
- ^ D.R. Woolf, A Global Encyclopedia of Historical Writing - Volume 2 (2014), p. 642-43.
- ISBN 978-1-350-01270-7.
External links
- Media related to Historicity at Wikimedia Commons