Heidegger’s Concept of “Authentic Historical Science,” by Dimitri Ginev
Dimitri Ginev draws attention to an aspect of Heidegger’s philosophical project that has been strangely neglected by previous studies—the attempt to outline an authentic approach to historical inquiry and to historiographical methods; guided not by a taken-for-granted epistemology but by a self-critical awareness of the hermeneutical structure of history itself. The paper suggests that to understand history in an authentic manner—that is, as a narrative confronting its own pre-narrativity—we must view our relation to it as one of an open horizon of possibilities whereby the past retains the forward motion of the future. As such, history is not to be regarded as a casket of dead historical facts, but rather as a dynamic, on-going register of possibility that re-invigorates critical perspectives on the present. Ginev refreshingly demonstrates the critical importance of Heidegger’s views for current debates concerning the problems of historical objectivity and narrative interpretation.
Article available through Philosophy Documentation Center, here.
Dimitri Ginev is Professor of Philosophy of Science and Hermeneutics at the University of Sofia, Bulgaria and Senior Research Fellow at University of Konstanz. He is also founder and editor of Studia Culturologica: An International Journal for a Dialogue between Hermeneutic Philosophy and the Human Sciences. The author of numerous books in continental philosophy and philosophy of science, his most recent monograph is The Tenets of Cognitive Existentialism (Ohio University Press, 2011). Other recent publications include “Radical Reflexivity and Hermeneutic Pre-Normativity,” Philosophy and Social Criticism 40:7 (2014), “Hermeneutic Pre-Normativity, Philosophical Forum 44:3 (2013), and “The Concept of ‘Grammar’ in Being and Time,” Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal 31:1(2010).
Dimitri Ginev, “Heidegger’s Concept of ‘Authentic Historical Science’,” Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal 36:1 (2015), pp. 3–25.