Practicing Historiography. Content and Form in Historical Thinking

The more we need historiography to guide us through the chaos of the world, the more uncertain it becomes as to what
it actually is. In fact, the possibility of making clear-cut, exclusive choices about what constitutes knowledge of the past is longgone. For example, reconstructing the continuity of the historical process was the great problem that Ranke and Droysen’s historiography had addressed and solved with by using the notion of “connection”, namely that data are fragments that must be verified philologically. However, historiography goes beyond philology, creating a connection to make them meaningful. And connection is essentially an idea, a vision, an interpretation.

In other words, in Kantian terms, data requires subjective interpretation.

Preface by Santi Di Bella