Ranke: The Meaning of History (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 125 Leonard Krieger. Ranke: The Meaning of History. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977. Pp. xii + 402. $23.00. Disciplines, like states, seem to require founding fathers; for most modem historians, the supreme patriarch of their craft is Leopold yon Ranke. Ranke's long and productive scholarly life, his success in propagating new methodological procedures, and his ability to encapsulate theoretical statements in striking form have combined to ensure his preeminence. Given Ranke's symbolic importance, it is not surprising that historians have spent considerable effort evaluating Ranke's view of history and measuring it against the demands and problems of modem historiography . Leonard Krieger's new study is a major contribution to this important body of scholarship. It's significance is twofold: it offers a novel interpretation of Ranke's achievement and its meaning for contemporary historians, and it attempts to present a new form for the study of intellectual history. Generally, Rankean scholarship has produced two contradictory interpretations of his work. The first pictures Ranke as the founder of historical positivism, the prophet of value-free objectivity , whose main concern was to establish correct canons for scientific history. In this sense, Ranke supposedly proclaimed the objectivity of historical understanding, emphasized the priority of facts over concepts, and saw past politics as the central field of historical inquiry. The second approach makes Ranke the founder of modem histodcism. In this view, Ranke formulated a theory of empathetic understanding, argued for the equivalent uniqueness of all historical events, and believed in the interconnectedness of all areas of historical life. Krieger sides with neither interpretation . As he demonstates, both can be discovered in Ranke's theoretical writings (upon which most interpretations are based), and both attest to a basic ambivalence in Ranke's early thought. Instead , Krieger seeks to discover how Ranke overcame these basic polar views, how he combined the "scientific dimension" with the "ideal dimension." If the answer cannot be found in Ranke's theoretical writings, then one must turn to an analysis of Ranke's historical practice. Krieger reminds us that Ranke was primarily a synthetic historian; his theoretical statements were, at best, ad hoc reactions to a set of specific imperatives. Usually, they served the negative function of distancing historical inquiry from formal philosophical analysis, especially from the procedures of Kant, Hegel, and Schelling. The book, therefore, is organized into two sections. The first offers an analytic discussion of the theoretical writings that emphasizes their discordant elements. The second, and by far the longest, discusses Ranke's historical works and probes their relation to Ranke's personal development. It is designed to revise the impressions "given by the analytic format of the first" (p. x). What Krieger attempts is to discern a field of inquiry which lies between Ranke's theory and practice, a field Krieger calls Ranke's view of history. It unites the three elements of formal theory, modifying and informing practice, and personal commitment, in simple terms, it is a study of Ranke's praxis. The main focus, then, is upon Ranke's internal development. As Krieger describes it, the stress is not upon objective contexts of influence and historical milieu, but rather upon the revealing aspects of Ranke's history; it "is subjectified---i.e. Rankefied" (p. xi). Krieger's search for a middle term between theory and practice reveals his basic dialectical approach. The argument is based upon a complex set of hierarchically connected dialectical moments, all designed to demonstrate the creative movement of Ranke's thought. The dominant theme is the movement from polarity to integration in Ranke's view of history. Each stage of the development corresponds to a critical juncture in Ranke's life: his religious conversion, his break with his brother, and, most important, his reactions to the political events of 1830, 1848, and 1870. A subtheme stresses Ranke's reactive nature, his need to resolve his personal conflicts through the medium of history. Hence, the historical writings reveal a process of gradual sublimination that leads to a complete identification of "private desires and professional achievements'' (p. 67). The end result is a final "integration of specialized research into general history" (p. 180). 126 HISTORY OF...