What is History For? Johann Gustav Droysen and the Functions of Historiography: 17 (Making Sense of History, 17) - Softcover

"...a work of deep erudition and a thorough historiographical investigation of the entire, although extremely vast, body of works by Droysen, as well as on the equally rich secondary literature... Assis' monograph is extremely valuable, since, through a painstaking review of Droysen's texts, it sheds light on the unsurpassable tension that can be found there between an epistemology of history, as an alternative model of any exemplary theory of history, and a historical-political thought that needed the examples of the past to find which actions had to be carried out in the present or the future." H-Soz-u-Kult

A scholar of Hellenistic and Prussian history, Droysen developed a historical theory that at the time was unprecedented in range and depth, and which remains to the present day a valuable key for understanding history as both an idea and a professional practice. Arthur Alfaix Assis interprets Droysen's theoretical project as an attempt to redefine the function of historiography within the context of a rising criticism of exemplar theories of history, and focuses on Droysen's claim that the goal underlying historical writing and reading should be the development of the subjective capacity to think historically. In addition, Assis examines the connections and disconnections between Droysen's theory of historical thinking, his practice of historical thought, and his political activism. Ultimately, Assis not only shows how Droysen helped reinvent the relationship between historical knowledge and human agency, but also traces some of the contradictions and limitations inherent to that project.