This project sets out to address the following question: do we in the 21st Century have an answer to the question: what do we really mean by the word ‘history’? Not at all. Does it even matter for us in the 21st Century that we have no answer to the question of what we really mean by the word ‘history’? Not at all. Traditionally, history relates to our knowledge of the past and so might generally be defined in terms of an epistemology; as a theory of knowledge that deals with the past. The problem of historical knowledge and its relation to truth has been in question since Antiquity. Epistemology became the foundation of historical thought through a turn toward the need for a theory of knowledge in the 17th to 19th Centuries. This is when historical thinkers sought to elevate history to the rank of philosophy and to the level of precision of the natural sciences. At the same time, the awakening of historical consciousness during the Renaissance elevated modernity out of the shadow of antiquity, against which Western thought measured its own progress. From the 17th Century to this very day, every major development in the philosophy of history has been completely determined out of this foundation.
All historical thought prior to this epistemological turn is measured against this yardstick. In the Western tradition, the philosophy of history traces its origin to Ancient Greece, to Herodotus and Thucydides, when historical events began to be narrativised. Accordingly, in the 19th Century Greek historians began to be reinterpreted as epistemologists, and not very good ones at that. Since then, ancient historiography has been read and interpreted by historians only insofar as we find in it a preparation for the epistemological foundation of history. Since the awakening of historical consciousness, the question of modernity has been inextricably tied up with an imperative of progress that demands an imperative of ever-new needs which, once sated, become instantly outmoded and obsolete and replaced by some newer need, ad infinitum. Consequently, ancient historical thought has long been considered redundant.
Until only recently, the question of the relationship between modernity and progress was grounded in the problem of the relationship between antiquity and modernity. Today, in the 21st Century, antiquity is no longer relevant and we have progressed far beyond the rudimentary accomplishments of our ancient ancestors. And yet this assumption of progress is so rarely addressed in the current discourse. We take it for granted that we have advanced beyond the Greeks. It has become obvious. So much so that we no longer even pose the question of what we really mean by the word ‘history’. It too has become obvious. This research project takes what has become obvious and makes it transparent. If we are to answer the question of what we mean by the word ‘history’ then we would do well to rethink our historical relationship with the Greeks, to understand not how history has progressed since antiquity but how history itself unfolds. It is only by rethinking the ground of history as an unfolding of Western thought that we can understand that history means nothing else than to understand ourselves, to come to terms with ourselves. History is an orientation to our own being.
The website for The Ground of History project can be found here.
Project Lead: Aaron Turner