What is Meta-History?

Jörn Rüsen:
What is the Meta-History?
Approaching a Comprehensive Theory
of Historical Studies

The title of my paper already gives an

answer to the question what meta-history
is: meta-history is the theory of historical
studies. But what does theory mean and
what historical studies? Theory is a form of
cognition and knowledge, characterized by
generalizing statements, and therefore it is
an abstraction from concrete, single and
unique phenomena. We find it in the
knowledge of everyday-life and in all
academic disciplines.

Here, in the academic disciplines, it is a

matter of controversy, whether all
disciplines really have theoretical elements
and use theories. The dominant philosophy
of history in the second half of the 19th
century e.g. (Windelband, Rickert, Dilthey)
made a sharp distinction between
individualizing and generalizing modes of
thought and used this distinction to
illuminate the specific nature of the

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 What is Meta-History?

humanities, mainly all disciplines which are

dealing with history.

I think that the difference between

theoretical and a- or non-theoretical
disciplines or sciences (in the broader
meaning of the word science) is completely
misleading. Why? Even in those disciplines
like historical studies, where abstract
theories are not the main purpose of their
cognitive work, we will find generalizing
statements as necessary elements for
describing and explaining the events of the
past and their temporal order. Max Weber
illuminated these theoretical elements as
ideal types, which are necessary to
conceptualize the individuality of historical
phenomena by means of a certain kind of
theorizing.

But the theoretical status of meta-history is

different. It has a reflective nature; it is a
theory about the cognitive forms and
procedures of historical thinking. If one
concedes that historical thinking uses
theoretical elements, meta-history even is
a theory about theory. That exactly is
indicated by the formulation "meta".

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 What is Meta-History?

Thus meta-history reflects history, - history

not as something which happened in the
past, but as a way of dealing with the past,
of making sense of experiencing it for the
purpose of orienting the people of the
present in the temporal dimension of their
lives.

Meta-history reflects the mental procedures

and structures of making sense of the
experience of the past. It draws a mental or
intellectual map of historical consciousness.
This reflection and mapping does not refer
to all dimensions and activities of historical
consciousness, but concentrates on its
specific manifestation in historical studies
as an institutionalized form of historical
thinking. In the non-English speaking world
this institutionalized form is called 'science'.
So meta-history is a space for the discourse
on the question whether history is a science
or not. If it is a science, what then is its
distinctive nature when comparing it with
other academic disciplines, mainly the
natural sciences?

With this concentration on the ' scientific'

character of historical thinking meta-history

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 What is Meta-History?

has got a place in the work of the

professional historians, mainly when
explaining the rules of historical method.
This has led to a narrowing of the scope of
understanding what historical thinking is
about. Without a more general and
fundamental insight into the mental and
intellectual work of historical consciousness
there is no clear idea of what its activities
in the professional form of an academic
discipline actually are. This argument
indicates my way of conceptualizing meta-
history. It reflects all those mental
elements and principles which constitute
historical thinking. So it only considers
'thinking' (or to be more precise: it inquires
into sense-making, since this includes the
work of a literary forming, which indeed
refers less to cognitive elements than to
esthetic ones). It addresses its context in
the social life of the people and all social,
political and economic conditions, under
which history is performed in human life;
but this applies only to a performance in
respect to its importance for thinking,
cognition, and sense-formation. Meta-

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 What is Meta-History?

history starts its reflective work with the

fundamental and general question: "what
makes sense in historical thinking?"

In order to find an answer to this question

for the basic category of historical sense, it
is useful to distinguish single elements of
sense generation in general and applying
them to the special field of historical
consciousness.

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 What is Meta-History?

Sense making is a dynamic procedure of

the human mind, which can be described in
an abstract way as a process which leads
from perception and experience to
interpretation, which produces knowledge,
and from interpretation to orientation,
which uses knowledge for understanding
the problems of human life, and, finally,
from orientation to motivation, which gives
the human will a direction, a purpose and
an aim.

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 What is Meta-History?

This complex interrelationship of basic

principles of human sense generation can
be picked up and transformed into a similar
abstract scheme of basic principles and
activities of historical consciousness. This
scheme refers to the special form of
historical thinking, which is typical for its
modern academic character. It should
express the idea of historical thinking as a
process of cognition, which starts from a
question and ends in an answer. Question
and answer can be related to the social and
cultural context, within which the process
of cognition takes place and which has an

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 What is Meta-History?

impact on it. At the same time the step

from this context to the specific procedures
of historical research and of history writing
could be marked.

So the beginning of meta-history should be

a reflection on the beginning of the
activities of the human mind in respect to
the challenge of specific mental operations:
I mean the operations which can only find
an answer by referring to the perception
and experience of the human past in a
cognitive manner.

This challenge can be identified as needs

for orientation in the temporal dimension of
human life. In every human life form these
needs are permanently produced by the
experiences of temporal changes, to which
the affected people have to adjust their
lives. In the specific view on historical
studies they acquire the form of interests,
which demand cognition
(Erkenntnisinteressen). History as 'science'
is the result of a fundamental
transformation of needs for orientation into
interests for cognition.

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 What is Meta-History?

These needs and interests give the human

mind the direction towards the past, which
brings the past into a perspective, within
which it receives meaning and becomes a
matter of understanding. The past in itself
is not history; it acquires this character
within a perspective, which relates it to the
present and to the future perspective of
human life. Here is the place where
fundamental questions, what history in
general is about, have to be discussed.
Philosophy of history becomes visible as an
integral part of the work of the professional
historians. That does not mean they have

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 What is Meta-History?

to turn into a philosophers as such; but

that their work can't be understood without
an impact of philosophical presuppositions
concerning the meaning of the past as
history. General periodizations covering the
whole realm of historical experience are
here at stake as well.

But not only general philosophical questions

or comprehensive periodizations fall into
this realm of meta-history. In the specific
work of professional historians concepts of
interpretation play an enormous role. They
stem from the leading questions they want
to answer. A well known example is the
theory of modernization or –to say it in a

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 What is Meta-History?

more updated way– modernizations in

modern history. These concepts have their
own logical form, namely that of a more or
less articulated hypothesis. 'Science'
endows concepts of interpretation with a
theoretical form, in which they function by
opening the realm of historical experience
according to the research guiding
questions. It is them which define what
constitutes a historical source. Many history
teachers in school and university tell their
students that proper historical thinking
starts with the sources. But what is a
source? In general: all relicts from the past,
everything which can give information of
what, when, where, and why happened in
the past. But historical thinking has to
select the relevant sources for the required
information; for this selection a filter is
necessary and a criterion, which may
decide upon what is relevant and important
and what is not. This filter and this criterion
have a theoretical status in relation to the
information furnished by the sources.

Concepts of interpretation and more or less

theoretically explicated perspectives are

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 What is Meta-History?

only insofar useful as they disclose relevant

source material, which can be used to get
the information about the past to answer
the question at the beginning of the
cognition-process. Historical perspectives
are only meaningful, if they become - so to
speak -filled with evidence. Historical
thinking without evidence of what
happened in the past is senseless.
Historical sense and meaning demand
evidence as a necessary condition for the
possibility of any form of historical
knowledge. Therefore the approach to
evidence and its content of information
about the past is a necessary principle and
procedure of historical thinking. It has its
own logic. It is the logic of making
statements plausible by referring to so-
called facts. These facts are not simply
given, they don´t lie around in the open,
but they have to be brought about by
dealing with all the materials in which the
past is still present.

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 What is Meta-History?

Here is the place in the mental map of

historical thinking where the essence of its
modern ' scientific' character is located: the
methodical rules of historical research.
From their very beginning as an academic
discipline till today historical studies are
characterized as an academic discipline and
distinguished as professional. From all
other ways of doing history it differs by its
ability to gain solid historical knowledge by
research. Research is a way of dealing with
the evidence of the past. It brings about
new knowledge of what happened, and
when and where and why it did so.
Research endows this knowledge with a

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 What is Meta-History?

certain reliability, namely that of being

based on evidence.

This knowledge always has its specific –

namely historical – form. It can only be
sufficiently analyzed when it is shaped
according to this specific form usually called
historiography. This form has its specific
logic as well, which is fundamentally
different from the logic of theoretical
conceptualization and empirical research. It
is the narrative logic of telling a story.

The difference and the interrelationship

between gaining knowledge by research
and presenting it in a historiographical form
is a highly controversial issue of meta-
history. Nobody can deny that two

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 What is Meta-History?

principles exist -method and representation

- but since both govern clearly different
logics, it is anything but clear how they are
synthesized on the logical basis of historical
thinking. Many theoretists today think that
interpretation is nothing but re-
presentation. Thus they radically deny the
'scientific' character of historical studies
and position historical thinking only in a
place in literature. On the other hand
professional historians insist on rational
procedures of gaining solid knowledge out
of the sources and deny any logical
supremacy of narration over all single
procedures.

It is the task of meta-history today to

recognize these contradictions and to show
that the narrative structure of historical
knowledge does not oppose the rationality
of methodical research. Neither does it
exclude elements of rational argumentation
from historical presentation.

The reconstruction of the main principles of

historical sense generation would be
incomplete if the function of
historiographically presented historical

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 What is Meta-History?

knowledge were omitted. It is the function

which decides whether the thought-
provoking needs for orientation - or more
specifically: interests in historical
knowledge - are fulfilled or not. Then the
results of the process of generating
meaning out of the experience of the past
may come to an end (and immediately start
again with new questions). As all other
constitutive principles that one of the
function of historical knowledge in practical
life has its own specific logic. It is the logic
of serving practical life by cultural
orientation. It makes historical knowledge
effective. Regarding the rational status of
historical studies, this logic furnishes
historical knowledge with elements of
'practical truth'. This truth criterion can be
clearly (in respect to its logic) distinguished
from the empirical and theoretical truth of
research as well as from the criteria of a
convincing re-presentation.

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 What is Meta-History?

Here the issue of identity plays an

important role. Without a historical
reference to the past the question who we
are, to whom we belong and who the
others are, with whom we have to live
together cannot be answered. Every piece
of historical knowledge contributes to this
answer. Very often this does not occur
directly, but only mediated, and more or
less disconnected from identity politics.

Looking at the function of historical thinking

in its cultural context and realizing the
close connection between functions and
needs, we become aware that the cognitive
dimension of historical thinking is
fundamentally related to non-cognitive

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 What is Meta-History?

ones, - mainly (but not exclusively) to a

political one (an esthetic dimension is
already apparent in the principle of
historiographical forming). The motivational
forces of the human mind can't be
overlooked when focussing on the roots of
historical thinking and its role in practical
life. This makes politics constitutive for
historical cognition (but only as one factor
besides others)..

What now is the specific role of academic or

' scientific' argumentation in this field of
practical life? It is not at all separated from
it, but is rooted in it and needed by it. Its
necessity is based on a fundamental need
for the reliability of historical knowledge in
human life. Historical studies with its
emphasis on evidence and its explanatory
interpretation plays an important role in
giving reasons and in criticizing the claim
for plausibility in historical presentations. -

It is the advantage of this concept of meta-

history to emphasize the interrelationship
between the cognitive work of the
professional historians and the role history
plays in practical life. We can't understand

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 What is Meta-History?

the specific logic of historical cognition

without knowing how it is rooted in and
refers to cultural life. The usual distinction
between serving life purposes
(Lebensdienlichkeit) and claims for
rationality and even objectivity is
completely misleading. We come much
closer to the reality of doing history when
we consider their mutual dependence, and
at the same time those areas of historical
thinking where not primarily practical
purposes are pursued. Here the
commitment to empirical and theoretical
evidence may play the foremost role.

Till now my argumentation has emphasized

different logics as necessary factors of

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 What is Meta-History?

historical thinking. Each of the five

enumerated principles have a different
logic: each is necessary, and all five
together are sufficient for reconstructing
and explaining what constitutes historical
thinking as a mental activity with special
respect to historical studies. Therefore I
think that my concept of meta-history is
comprehensive indeed. It can claim for a
systemic order covering the issue of
historical thinking in all its relevant
dimensions.

The sequence of these logics might give a

misleading impression, since from the very
beginning they are interrelated, but without
giving them this sequential order, the
internal (even logical) dynamics in historical
thinking would not have become visible.

But how are these logics interrelated? This

question cannot be answered without a
systematic reconstruction of the discursive
form of historical thinking and their specific
logic of communication. In a very
schematic way these forms of
communication can be described as
dominating a section in the space where

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 What is Meta-History?

the different principles of historical sense

generation are mediated.:

1. Needs for orientation and concept of

historical understanding are systematically
interrelated in a discourse of symbolization,
where ' history' is defined as a cultural unit
in human life orientation.

2. Concepts of historical understanding and

rules for treating the sources are
systematically mediated by a strategy of
cognition. Here the approach to evidence in
historical perspective is the dominating
issue.

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 What is Meta-History?

3. Rules for treating the sources in a

historical perspective and forms of
representation are mediated by a strategy
of esthetics. It is this strategy which
enables empirical knowledge about the
human past to the historiographical
representation of the past.

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 What is Meta-History?

4. Forms of representation and functions of

orientation are mediated by a strategy of
rhetoric. With this strategy the
historiographically represented past can
play a role in the historical culture of the
present.

5. Functions of orientation and needs for

orientation are mediated by a discourse of
memory politics and identity formation in
practical life. Here the role of historical
knowledge in practical life is at stake.

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 What is Meta-History?

In these five views at the discursive and

communicative dynamics of historical
thinking become visible. But the proper
understanding of this dynamics would be
impossible if the role of human subjectivity
in making sense of history did not undergo
some differentiation concerning its
dimensions. Today everybody is convinced
that it is the human mind which brings
about the meaning of history. Sense
generation is mainly, if not exclusively,
seen as a cultural issue of the presence
referring to the past. Thus by the mental
creativity of historically minded people
history is completely determined. This
determination can be called constructivism.
Its essence holds that history is nothing but

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 What is Meta-History?

a construction of the past brought about in

the present. The past has no voice of its
own in the sense generating process of
historical thinking. It is nothing but a
soundboard for the tunes that people of
today want to hear in order to place
themselves into the course of time.

Is this true? Is the past really voiceless?

Using the scheme of historical sense
generation we can easily show that matters
are much more complicated. At least three
different dimensions of pursuing the
process of historical sense generation can
be distinguished.

1. The first one is the level where the

dominance of human subjectivity is
evident. It is the level of (re-)construction.
The whole process of conceptualizing
historical perspectives, of working with the
sources and of forming historical knowledge
historiographically is governed by the
intellectual capacities of the historians.

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 What is Meta-History?

2. But what about the influence of the

context, within which these capacities were
used? What about important criteria and
modes of discourse and even the whole
culture of their terms of doing history?
Arent´t they already pregiven in the
cultural life, of which the historians
themselves are a part of? And is the past
not already present in these circumstances
and conditions of the historical thinking of
the present? In order to make this evident
it is useful to distinguish a level of historical
sense generation where the effectivity of its
conditions and circumstances is
dominating. I would like to call it the level

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 What is Meta-History?

of practical life or of functioning historical

sense generation. Here the historians as
constructors of historical meaning
themselves are constructed; they are
offspring 'children of their time'.

3. Both levels are interrelated, and it is

useful to distinguish another level of its
own, artificially separated from the two
others, where this interrelationship takes
place. It is the level of pragmatism where
the constructors interfere in those
processes where the constructing of the
constructors takes place. The historians
are activists of historical culture on the
level of theoretical reflection; yet, on the

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 What is Meta-History?

level of pragmatic reconstruction they are

still actors, but no longer the masters of
what takes place here in the public and
private life. They are the actors who rewrite
their pregiven roles on the stage of history
without being able to rewrite the whole
screenplay. And they have no chance or
possibility of changing or stepping out of it.

This brings me to the last point of my

concept of meta-history. When we look at
the three different dimensions in which
historical sense generation takes place, we
know that their distinction is artificial, that
they are three angles of one comprehensive
process. How can we characterize their

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 What is Meta-History?

systemic interrelatedness and internal

unity? It is the unity of the creative process
of historical sense generation, that is when
historians do their work in the context of
the historical culture of their time. Sense
takes place before and beyond it is noticed
and reflected and handled by the
historians. They execute it in their practical
work, and by doing so it becomes a matter
of their creativity, but, nevertheless, at the
same time they remain but performers
(executors) of sense.

Doing and be done coincide in the absolute

presence of sense during the actual

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 What is Meta-History?

performance and practise of historical

thinking. Doing history in the human mind
is a part of history as the temporal
execution of human life. This very history is
different from the history the historians
address, research and re-present. It is so–
to-speak history in and as presence. Only
afterwards it can be reflected in its
complicated temporal dimension. As such
this can't be thought because thinking
already raises it to the status of the
subject matter of thinking. It is no longer
left in the status of its actualperformance
and action, of its doing and being done. It
is un-pre-thinkable. In this fascinating
ontological status of unpre-thinkability it is
a real basis, the ground for any historical
sense-generating by historical thinking.

This is an epistemological argument, which

transgresses the cognition process, and
even the traditional philosophy of history
(in both forms: concerning what happened
in the past and what afterwards is said
about and understood by it). Nevertheless,
here we have the logical consequence of an
analysis of the the historians´ intellectual

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 What is Meta-History?

work of when they want to come to terms

with the past in order to serve the cultural
orientation of the presence for the sake of
the future. Of course, I am full aware that
by speaking about this unprethinkability I
am, at the same time, approaching the end
of thinking about historical thinking, of
meta-history. Nonetheless, I have tried my
best to cope with what has been left to us.

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