Meaning and Representation in History

✍ Scribed by Jörn Rüsen (editor)

• Publisher: Berghahn Books
• Year: 2006
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 288
• Series: Making Sense of History; 7
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

History has always been more than just the past. It involves a relationship between past and present, perceived, on the one hand, as a temporal chain of events and, on the other, symbolically as an interpretation that gives meaning to these events through varying cultural orientations, charging it with norms and values, hopes and fears. And it is memory that links the present to the past and therefore has to be seen as the most fundamental procedure of the human mind that constitutes history: memory and historical thinking are the door of the human mind to experience. At the same time, it transforms the past into a meaningful and sense bearing part of the present and beyond. It is these complex interrelationships that are the focus of the contributors to this volume, among them such distinguished scholars as Paul Ricoeur, Johan Galtung, Eberhard Lämmert, and James E. Young. Full of profound insights into human society pat and present it is a book that not only historians but also philosophers and social scientists should engage with.

✦ Table of Contents

Contents
List of Illustrations
Preface to the Series
Introduction: What does “Making sense of history” mean?
Part I: Meaning
Chapter 1: Memory—Forgetting—History
Chapter 2: How Meaning Came into the World and What Became of It
Chapter 3: Sense of History: What does it mean?
Chapter 4: “The Meaning of History” A Modern Construction and Notion?
Chapter 5: The Meanings of History
Chapter 6: The Three Levels of “Sinnbildung” in Historical Writing
Chapter 7: The Reality of History
Chapter 8: Language and Historical Experience
Part II: Representation
Chapter 9: Flights from History
Chapter 10: Memory and Identity
Chapter 11: The Material Presence of the Past
Chapter 12: Ruins: A Visual Expression of Historical Meaning
Chapter 13: Three Versions of Wallenstein
Chapter 14: The Arts of Jewish Memory in a Postmodern Age
Bibliography
Notes on the Contributors
Index of Names