Philosophy and humanistic disciplines: The theory of history
Donald R. Kelley
‘What is history?’ has been a controversial question from antiquity down to the present, but it was never more vigorously discussed than in Renaissance (‘Che cosa sia storia?’ asked Dionigi Atanagi 1559; eight years later Giovanni Viperano, ‘Quid sit historia?’ and still quarter-century after that Tommaso Campanella, historia sit?’). Then, as before since, answers ranged widely – simple happenings (res gestae) God's ‘grand design’, lowly ‘art’ an elaborate ‘science’, vague ‘sense’ ‘most certain philosophy’ (certissima philosophia, phrase of Andrea Alciato) indeed position, according Jean Bodin, ‘above all sciences’. ‘History’ could be objective or subjective, refer past merely memory thereof, ancient testimony modern reconstruction; fifteenth sixteenth centuries rose grandly scale western learning. Through classical revival became liberal art literary genre; through Reformation surrogate for tradition ‘true religion’; Counter-Reformation controversy highly organised science. In various ways history dominant mode expression argument century, its significance contacts with philosophy increased accordingly.
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