Some features of historical knowledge and ontology

Abstract

The author argues that the whole of history, which allows us to comprehend it and establish its essence, is not just various interpretations of history, but also a historical way of life of a personality and a historical way of life of a culture that goes through several stages in its development. Building on this scheme, the author argues that the conceptualization of history in philosophy and in science gave rise to two different methodologies of historical research, which lead to two types of history: one based on a plot, and another one based on an interdisciplinary study. The latter is associated with a process of the conceptualization of history in philosophy and science and originates in late Antiquity and the Middle Ages. However, it reaches its full development only in the Modern Age. This type of history is not only characterized by a philosophical and a scientific analysis of historical constructions and explanations, but also by the development of a new methodology of history and new practices in historical research. Now a plot is nothing more than an empirical framework. The main focus is on the creation of ideal objects that can solve a number of problems within the plot and on the philosophical explanations that shed light on the described events as well as on a broader range of relevant problems. Both types of history are characterized by an ontology of time and a categorical scheme “past-present-future”. The author provides a discussion of both of these characteristic properties of the historical discipline.