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HISTORICAL UNDERSTANDING AND HISTORICAL INTERPRETATION AS CONTEXTUALIZATION
Author(s) -
MITROVIĆ BRANKO
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
history and theory
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.169
H-Index - 41
eISSN - 1468-2303
pISSN - 0018-2656
DOI - 10.1111/hith.10762
Subject(s) - contextualization , interpretation (philosophy) , epistemology , context (archaeology) , dilemma , historical thinking , relation (database) , order (exchange) , sociology , history , philosophy , computer science , linguistics , archaeology , finance , database , economics
This article discusses the theoretical problems pertaining to the relationship between historical contextualization and historical understanding and interpretation. On the one hand, there is the view that documents need to be understood in relation to their historical context; on the other, it is not clear how a historian can get out of his or her own historical context in order to be able to engage with the conceptual frameworks, beliefs, or ways of reasoning that are radically different from his or her own. The paper proposes a resolution to this dilemma; its upshot is that historical understanding is constituted by contextualization.