Table of Contents

List of Tables and Figures
Preface

Introduction: How to Understand Historical Thinking

PART I: NARRATION

Chapter 1. Historical Narration: Foundation, Types, Reason
Chapter 2. Narrative Competence: The Ontogeny of Historical and Moral Consciousness
Chapter 3. Rhetoric and Aesthetics of History: Leopold von Ranke
Chapter 4. Narrativity and Objectivity in Historical Studies

PART II: INTERPRETATION

Chapter 5. What is Historical Theory?
Chapter 6. New History: Paradigms of Interpretation
Chapter 7. Theoretical Approaches to an Intercultural Comparison of Historiography
Chapter 8. Loosening the Order of History: Modernity, Postmodernity, Memory

PART III: ORIENTATION

Chapter 9. Historical Thinking as Trauerarbeit: Burckhardt’s Answer to a Question of our Time
Chapter 10. Historizing Nazi-Time: Metahistorical Reflections on the Debate Between Friedländer and Broszat
Chapter 11. Holocaust-Memory and German Identity

Bibliography
Index

About the Author

Jörn Rüsen was Professor of Modern History at Universities Bochum and Bielefeld for many years. From 1994 to 1997 he was Director of the Center for Interdisciplinary Research (ZiF) at Bielefeld. Since 1997 he has been President of the Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities Essen (Kulturwissenschaftliches Institut). He specialises in theory and methodology of historical sciences, the history of historiography, intercultural aspects of historical thinking, theory of historical learning, and the history of human rights.