Chapter III: History

History as individual judgment--The individual element and historical sources: relics and narrative--The intuitive faculty in historical research--The intuitive faculty in historical exposition. Resemblance of history and art. Difference between history and art--The predicate or logical element in history--Vain attempts to eliminate it--Extension of historical predicates beyond the limits of mere existence--Asserted unsurmountable variance in judging and presenting historical facts and consequent demand for a history without judgment--Restriction of variance, and exclusion of apparent variances--Overcoming of variances by means of deep study of the concepts--Subjectivity and objectivity in history: their meaning--Historical judgments of value, and normal or neutral values. Critique--Various legitimate meanings of protests against historical subjectivity--The demand for a theory of historical factors--Impossibility of dividing history according to its intuitive and reflective elements--Empiricity of the division of the historical process into four stages--Divisions founded upon the historical object--Logical division according to the forms of the spirit--The empirical division of the representative material--Empirical concepts in history; and the false theory as to the function they fulfil there--Hence also the claim to reduce history to a natural science; and the thesis of the practical character of history--Distinction between historical facts and non-historical facts; and its empirical value--The professional prejudice and theory of the practical character of history.

IV

IDENTITY OF PHILOSOPHY AND HISTORY

Necessity of the historical element in philosophy--Historical quality of the culture required of the philosopher--Apparent objections--Communication of philosophy as changing of philosophy--Perpetuity of this changing--The overcoming and continuous progress of philosophy--Meaning of the eternity of philosophy--The concept of spontaneous, ingenuous, innate philosophy, etc.; and its meaning--Philosophy as criticism and polemic--Identity of philosophy and history--Didactic divisions, and other reasons for the apparent duality--Note.