Theory and History: A Delicate Relationship

Abstract

There is a tension between Theory and History: “[...] poetry is more philosophical and of a higher character than history, because poetry remains in the universal sphere whilst history studies only the particular” (Aristotle, 2007: 43). This statement of Aristotle was perhaps the first indication of that tension seen between these two forms of knowledge: historical and theoretical. In the quote above, philosophy is the reference of a thought hierarchically higher, and its legitimacy as such involves the universality of its truths. Additionally, it is of paramount importance to state that poetry in this aristotelian reflection is considered a form of knowledge, although differing from history regarding the matter of the ‘known’: in the first one, the fact could have happened, while in the second it certainly happened. And as it happened, the fact is singular, and what could have happened falls into the universal sphere. In this sense, a key to understand the tension mentioned above is the uniqueness and the universality of the knowledge acquired: “[...] It is clear that it is not up to the poet to narrate exactly what happened, but what could have happened, ‘the possible’, in accordance with the likelihood or necessity. The historian and the poet are not distinguished from each other by the fact of the first write in prose and the second in verse [...]. They differ from each other because one wrote what happened and what else could have happened” (Aristotle, 2007: 43). By situating the history in a lower level in comparison with poetry. Aristotle seems to have aroused in contemporary thinkers the idea of the distinction between historical knowledge and theoretical knowledge. This study deals with the nature of historical knowledge and their methodological difficulties in the use of theoretical frameworks, which are necessary to address their fundamental questions.