The heroic study of records
Herman Paul
The archival turn in 19 th -century historical scholarship – that is, the growing tendency among historians to equate professional studies with based on research not only affected profession’s epistemological assumptions and day-to-day working manners, but also changed persona of historian. Archival required cultivation exercise such dispositions, virtues, or character traits as carefulness, meticulousness, diligence industry. This article shows a significance attached these qualities made increasingly contested. As case German-Austrian historian Theodor von Sickel his critics shows, it was necessity which late Europe came hold different views. Sickel’s were rather concerned about potentially detrimental effects philological ethos could have historian’s character. What primarily at stake debates gains losses increased commitments study traits, dispositions virtues skills he excelled.
History of the Human Sciences