In my opinion, history is actually threatened by two apposite dangers in its effort to make clear and to defi ne its epistemological status. On the one hand, the danger of being absorbed by the social sciences–in particular, sociology- which claim for themselves any analysis of the existential condition of mankind. On the other hand, to be limited to a mere factual description, as a result of the return of “positivism” in all its forms, has reducing historical knowledge to a mere “chronology” of events and processes developer by man, under the false premise that “historical facts” exist by themselves, without any intervention of the historian. This last one would only assume a passive part in the writing of the “discourse” of “historical account”. This is an attempt at ignoring what has been called by Marrou the Basic “data” of any critical study of historical knowledge (using Dilthey’ s terminology). This is simple that “history is inseparable from the historian”: a Basic principle, without which there is no historical understanding. In order to surmount this crisis it seems essential a return to the epistemology of history.
Ahumada Durán, R. (2009). History search of meaning in a time of doubt. The contemporary "Historiographical turn" and the return to epistemology. Cuadernos De Historia, (31), Pág. 123–155. Retrieved from https://cuadernosdehistoria.uchile.cl/index.php/CDH/article/view/30819
