Abstract

The problem of historical objectivity repays study to counter the subjectivism of the neo-romantics and the arbitrary factual structures of recondite specialization. The ancients did not develop a theoretical distinction between objective and subjective in their conception of his tory. In the Renaissance, individualism impinged on the ancients' conception, but no philosophic view of historical objectivity evolved. The history-minded eighteenth century likewise failed to provide the necessary philosophical categories of historical understanding, though with Voltaire an approach- to them emerged. The solution to the problem came only with the Kantian and post-Kantian concern with the epistemological problems of transcendentalism, especially from Humboldt's notion of ideas as inner forms of historical manifestations. These tendencies found their summation in Hegel's philosophy of history. Among other Hegelian insights, the concept of the realization of a concrete, objective reason in our subjective understanding solved the problem of how philosophical, i.e., objectively true, knowledge of history is possible