Abt. Geschichtswissenschaft

19.05.2021 | 18-20 Uhr | Anmeldung per Mail

In this presentation I explain the link between empathy, the history discipline, the philosophy of history and history education. It explores how empathy became a core concept in history teaching and how Collingwood’s philosophy of history was imported into the curriculum. Having identified inadequacies in this application of Collingwood’s thought, I return to the concept’s roots in German historicism and follow its development through nineteenth- and twentieth-century hermeneutic traditions. Here it is not only educationalists but also historians and historical theorists more broadly who have misconceived Collingwood’s position towards empathy. As an alternative, I suggest that the conjunction of Collingwood and Gadamer on the importance of the logic of question and answer illuminates the proper object of contextualist historical understanding.

Tyson Retz obtained his PhD (2016) from the University of Melbourne, where he was also a postdoctoral fellow. He is the author of Empathy and History (Berghahn 2018), a dual exploration of empathy's intellectual and educational history, as well as numerous articles on core problems in historical theory and method. His current book project explores the concept of progress within different conceptions of history. 

Teilnahmeanfragen verwaltet Frau Bednarek per Mail (sandra.bednarek@uni-bielefeld.de)