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Fiction and Myth in History

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 July 2024

Alfred Stern
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Extract

Fiction and myth have been used for centuries in writing history as well as in making it. And this is not surprising; for Clio was not only the muse of history but also that of epic poetry. This personal union of the two functions shows that the Greeks may have felt what we know today, thanks to the additional experience of twenty-five hundred years: that in historiography as well as in its subject matter, history as reality, it is not always possible to draw a neat line of demarcation between historical truth and poetical fiction. History as res scriptae is, and has to be, a product of documentation and imagination. If this imagination is subjected to logical methodology, it will result in “scientific” history, in which the word “science” has to be interpreted in that liberal sense proposed by Collingwood, as “any organized body of knowledge.” If, on the contrary, the imaginative component of historiography is abandoned to poetical fancy, it will result in mythological history. Finally, if the imagination of the historian is guided by the conscious, half-conscious or sub-conscious wish to influence and manipulate the readers’ minds, the result will be ideological history.

Type
Notes and Discussion
Information
Diogenes , Volume 11 , Issue 42 , June 1963 , pp. 98 - 118
Copyright
Copyright © 1963 Fédération Internationale des Sociétés de Philosophie / International Federation of Philosophical Societies (FISP)

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References

1 R. G. Collingwood, The Idea of History (Oxford, 1949), p. 249.

2 Discorsi di Niccolò Machiavelli sopra le Deche di Tito Livio, capitulo decimoterzo, 57.

3 H. Vaihinger, Die Philosophie des Als Ob, 7-8. Auflage (Leipzig, 1922), pp. 24, 152.

4 Il Principe di Niccolò Machiavelli, Cap. XVIII, 65.

5 Ibid., 66.

6 I. Kant, Kritik der Urteilskraft, Einleitung IV, 17.

7 F. Nietzsche, Gesammelte Werke (München, 1922-1929), Band XV, ph. 8, 9, 10.

8 Ibid., Band VI, 17; Band XXI, 104.

9 H. Vaihinger, Die Philosophie des Als Ob, Kap. XXV, p. 190.

10 R. Descartes, Discours de la méthode (Paris, 1898), I, p. 14.

11 Œuvres complètes de Voltaire (Paris, 1879), tome XIX, Dictionnaire philosophique, III, 346.

12 M. Weber, Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Wissenschaftslehre (Tübingen, 1922), pp. 190, 191, 208, 209, etc.

13 Cf. A. Stern, Sartre—His Philosophy and Psychoanalysis (New York, 1953), pp. 209, 210.

14 Cf. A. Stern, La Filosofía de la Política y el Sentido de la Guerra actual (México, 1943), p. 38.

15 G. Sorel, Réflexions sur la violence (Paris, 1908), XXVI.

16 Ibid., pp. 123, 94.

17 V. Pareto, Trattato di Sociologia generale, Vol. I, par. 154, 66.

18 B. Mussolini, My Autobiography (New York, 1928), XIX.

19 L. Fermi, Mussolini (The University of Chicago Press, 1961).

20 B. Biancini, Dizionario Mussoliniano (Terza Edizione accresciuta, Milano, 1942), p. 158.

21 H. Vaihinger, Die Philosophie des Als Ob, XV.

22 W. James, Pragmatism (New York, 1910), p. 75.

23 Ibid., pp. 73, 299.

24 B. Russell, A History of Western Philosophy (New York, 1945), p. 818.

25 H. Vaihinger, op. cit., Kap. XX, p. 136.

26 A. Rosenberg, Der Mythos des zwanzigsten Jahrhunderts, p. 669.

27 B. Russell, The Impact of Science on Society (New York, 1953), p. 82.