Definition of history.

History - the science of the past human society and its present, about the patterns of development public life in specific forms, in space-time dimensions. The content of history in general is the historical process, which reveals itself in the phenomena of human life, information about which is preserved in historical monuments and sources. These phenomena are extremely diverse and relate to the development of the economy, the external and internal social life of the country, international relations, activities historical figures. Accordingly, history is a multidisciplinary science; it is made up of a number of independent branches of historical knowledge, namely: the history of economic, political, social, civil, military, state and law, religion and others.

Methodology of history.

The methodology of history is a system of principles and methods of historical knowledge. Until recently, the most widespread were positivist and Marxist orientations in historical knowledge. The first is based on positive (positive) knowledge based on experience. The second is based on materialist dialectics.

Theories of historical process.

A theory is a logical diagram that explains historical facts. Theories of the historical process are determined by the subject of history. A theory is a logical diagram that explains historical facts. One theory of the historical process differs from another in its subject of study and system of views on the historical process. Each of the theories offers its own version of the vision of the historical process. According to the subjects of study, three theories of the historical process are distinguished:

Religious-historical;

World historical;

Local-historical.

The subject of study of religious-historical theory is the connection between man and God. From the point of view of this theory, the meaning of history lies in the movement of man towards God as the Supreme Mind, the Creator, during which the formation of a free personality occurs.

The subject of study of world-historical theory is the global progress of mankind. All peoples go through the same stages, only for some it happens earlier, for others - later. There are several directions in this theory:

Materialistic (the development of society is driven by the struggle between different classes, which ultimately leads to the construction of a classless society);

Liberal (in history there is always a choice of development path, which depends on a strong person);

Technological (changes in society occur as a result of technological development).

Local historical theory studies local civilizations: their origin, formation, flourishing, decline and death.

Subject of history.

The history of Russia is a scientific discipline that studies the process of development of our Fatherland, its multinational people, and the formation of the main state and public institutions. National history is an integral part of world history. This approach is based on the philosophical categories of general and special. The use of these categories makes it possible to show the features of the development of Russia as a multinational, multi-confessional state, which has traditions that have developed over many centuries and its own principles of life. Scientific disputes about its belonging to any type of civilization do not stop today. It is easy to notice that in the past and present of Russia the features of various civilizations are intricately intertwined. Not without reason, a number of scientists claim the existence of a special type of civilization - Eurasian, to which our country belongs.

Therefore, when studying the course, it is necessary to combine a civilizational approach with formational characteristics. Russia is a civilizational region, the unique development of which is determined by natural-climatic, geopolitical, confessional (religious), sociopolitical and other factors. On the uniqueness of Russia and its role in the world cultural historical process Its border position between Europe and Asia had a significant influence, which determined the contradictory influence of the West and the East on Russia. At the same time, recognition of originality does not mean isolation of Russia from the general historical development; The history of Russia is considered within the framework of the formation of world civilization.

The past of every nation is unique and inimitable. In the historical development of the Russian state, it is necessary to highlight a number of determining factors, which include the geographical location, the influence of natural and climatic conditions, the geopolitical factor, the specifics of the spread of religious teachings (multi-confessionalism), religious tolerance, the multinational composition of the population, which has absorbed various traditions of both the East and the and the West. Finally, a significant role in the history of Russia is played by the peculiarities of the national consciousness of Russians and the specificity of their mentality (worldview), as well as the traditions of social organization - the absence of a rigid structured society and the undividedness, unlike the West, of the interests of society, the state and the individual - conciliarity. However, this does not mean the absence of corporate interests separate groups and segments of the population, especially closely related to servicing the institutions of state power and administration. On the other hand, the vast expanses of the Russian state, poorly populated by tribes of different languages ​​and customs, poorly connected with each other, could only be governed with the help of a strong centralized government. Without this, the collapse of a unique ethnocultural community would have been a foregone conclusion.

Historical schools.

Historical research involves historiographical analysis. Historiography is the analysis of concepts already existing in scientific and autobiographical literature. Studying the works of historians allows you to determine your own research topic, not repeat paths already taken, and not waste time developing refuted hypotheses.

Historical research can only be recognized as scientific when it has a clearly defined subject, poses a problem, puts forward a hypothesis, and uses appropriate scientific methods, checks the reliability of sources, relies on the historiography of the issue and, finally, argues the author’s concept. Historical knowledge exists in the form of facts and concepts.

Historical school is a concept of the 18th - 19th centuries, since from that time scientists began to create scientifically based theories. Ancient historians explained events by the personal qualities of outstanding rulers and commanders, the morals and traditions of the country, irresistible fate, fate, fate. Medieval historians looked for the causes of events in God's will and drew analogies with biblical stories. Under the influence of the ideas of the French Enlightenment, history began to be viewed from the point of view of the moral improvement of mankind, the ascent from barbaric customs to civilization. Since the 19th century Social, economic, biological and other theories are used to interpret facts.

Public school. The greatest contribution to Russian historical science of the 19th century was made by N.M. Karamzin, SM. Soloviev, V.O. Klyuchevsky.

The main work of N.M. Karamzin - “History of the Russian State.” The author's main idea is that Russia perished from anarchy and was saved by wise autocracy. The state was declared the highest value, and the ideal form of government was an enlightened noble monarchy with a patriarchal pre-Petrine way of life. The historian preferred Ivan III and Alexei Mikhailovich, who strengthened the state through gradual transformations, and not through the bloody reigns of Ivan the Terrible and Peter.

The most prominent representative of the state historical school was S.M. Soloviev, who wrote “The History of Russia from Ancient Times” in 29 books. He considered the main factors of history to be the nature of the country, the character of the people and the course of external events. State - highest form historical development, since only in the state the people gain the opportunity for progressive development.

IN. Klyuchevsky, who developed as a scientist at the state historical school, believed that history is influenced by various factors: natural, economic, ethnic, personal. He noted the important role of the process of colonization of new lands in Russian history, which led to an extensive path of economic development. From the point of view of a historian, the character of the Russian people was significantly influenced by the temperate continental climate and forest-steppe landscape, adaptation to which developed the habit of hard but short-term work, patience, a desire to change places, and everyday unpretentiousness. Considerable attention from V.O. Klyuchevsky paid attention to the psychology of behavior of rulers and social groups.

In modern Russian historical science, there are several influential scientific schools that form the basis for the analysis of the past various factors. None of the schools can claim to have absolute truth; each has strong and weaknesses, successes and failures.

Marxist direction. Representatives of the movement are based on the position that the material conditions of people’s lives determine their conscious activity. Social structure, politics, law, morality, ideology, and partly art and science depend on the method of production of goods. K. Marx called the dominant mode of production in combination with its inherent superstructure a socio-economic formation. Humanity progresses from lower to higher formations: from primitive, slaveholding, feudal, capitalist to communist. For the countries of the East, Marxism proposed a parallel formation - the Asian mode of production, which is based on community, collective and state ownership of land.

In slaveholding, feudal, capitalist formations, society is divided into classes. A class is a large group of people occupying a specific place in the production and distribution of goods, and this place depends on the ownership of the means of production. In the formation there are classes of exploiters (property owners) and exploited. The transition from one formation to another is associated with the improvement of technology, which creates new sources of wealth appropriated by new classes. Having become economically dominant, the new class seizes political dominance. K. Marx illustrated this scheme with examples of bourgeois revolutions in Europe.

Domestic historians Soviet period made a significant contribution to the development of Russian historical science. Their works, created within the framework of the Marxist movement, have largely not lost their significance in our time.

The strength of the Marxist historical school is the materialist explanation of the past, the priority study of economic relations, social structure, and public policy. The weak point is Eurocentrism (transferring the development experience of Western European countries to the whole world). The forecast about the inevitable transition of the most developed bourgeois countries to communism, which was considered as the pinnacle of technical and scientific progress and the liberation of the individual from exploitation, turned out to be erroneous.

Civilization school. The founders of this school were N.Ya. Danilevsky and A. Toynbee. The history of the world is considered as a process of development of local civilizations. A. Toynbee considered the place of origin and religion to be constant criteria of civilization. Civilization goes through several stages: birth, growth, flourishing, breakdown, collapse, death. It develops through the work of the “Call-Response” system. Any problem in life can be considered as a Challenge - an enemy attack, unfavorable nature and climate, fear of death. There is a solution to the problem. The answer is a reflection of aggression, forms of farming, religion. The progress of civilization is associated with the development of spiritual and material culture, which is carried out by creative individuals. The masses imitate the creative minority and are unable to create something new. The breakdown of civilization is characterized by the emergence of hostile groups within the elite. The collapse of civilization is associated with the degradation of the ruling class, which ceases to be interested in state affairs, and is engaged in personal enrichment and intrigue. In place old elite a new elite comes, formed from unprivileged strata. In the phase of the collapse of civilization, great empires are created, which take as a model either their past (archaism) or the utopian idea of ​​a new system (futurism). The death of a civilization is associated with its conquest by another civilization and the spread of a different culture.

The strength of the civilization school is that it explains the development of all regions of the world, and history is recognized as a multifactorial process, so that at different stages different factors can dominate: economic, political, religious. The weakness of the civilizational approach lies in the vagueness of the “Challenge-Response” criterion, which states more than explains. In addition, this approach practically does not take into account the role masses in history.

Theory of ethnogenesis. Developed in detail in the works of L.N. Gumilyov. The history of humanity seems to be the history of ethnic groups. Ethnicity is a group of people with their own stereotype of behavior, which is acquired by offspring through conditioned reflex imitation. The ethnos exists for no more than 1500 years, going through the following stages in its development: passionary impulse, acmatic phase, breakdown, inertial phase, obscuration, homeostasis, memorial phase, degeneration.

Each stage has its own stereotype of behavior - during the passionary impulse and in the acmatic phase, the ideals of sacrifice and victory prevail. Breakdown is characterized by the desire for success, knowledge, and beauty. In the inertial phase, the desire for improvement without risking life is dominant. Obscuration is marked by the predominance of the ideal of a quiet, philistine life adapted to the landscape. In the last phases, the ethnic group turns out to be unable to conduct a productive economy or create a culture and gradually degrades.

The historical age of an ethnos depends on the amount of passionarity - the biochemical energy of living matter, which gives the ability to supercharge forces. Passionarity comes from space in the form of radiation, affects the genes of people and is inherited. In the first stages, energy is in abundance - ethnic groups wage wars and colonization. Over time, the amount of energy decreases, and ethnic groups create a culture. All great empires were created by passionate ethnic groups, but after a certain number of generations the energy decreased and the empires died. The reason could be either conquest from the outside or collapse from within.

The strength of the school of ethnogenesis lies in explaining the events of world history on the basis of a measurable value - passionarity. The theory allows us to predict the future of ethnic groups. The weak side of the school of ethnogenesis is the lack of proof of the very concept of “passionarity”. History takes on the characteristics of biology, when all problems can be reduced to an excess or lack of energy.

Most modern Russian historians do not directly connect their research with one school or another. However, when creating concepts, one can trace the influence of one of these schools. Currently, researchers quite rarely rise to the level of generalizations within the framework of world history, preferring to study the history of individual regions and periods, to deepen existing ideas about the past of Russia at a new qualitative level.

Principles of historical science.

What do we understand by the principles and methods of historical science, historical research?

It seems that principles are the main, fundamental principles of science. They come from the study of the objective laws of history, are the result of this study, and in this sense correspond to the laws. However, there is a significant difference between patterns and principles: patterns act objectively, and principles are a logical category; they exist not in nature, but in the minds of people.

In modern historical science The following basic principles of scientific historical research are applied: objectivity, historicism, social approach to the study of history, comprehensive study of the problem.

The principle of objectivity is one of the principles that obliges us to consider historical reality as a whole, regardless of the desires, aspirations, attitudes and preferences of the subject. Considering history from the perspective of this principle means that it is necessary, first of all, to study the objective laws that determine the processes of socio-political development; that it is necessary to rely on facts in their true content; that it is finally necessary to consider each phenomenon in its versatility and inconsistency, to study all the facts in their totality.

The principle of historicism is one of the most significant for any historical discipline, including the history of Russia. Any historical phenomenon should be studied from the point of view of where, when, due to what reasons (political, ideological) this phenomenon arose, what it was like at the beginning, how it was assessed then, how it then developed in connection with changes in the general situation and internal content, how it was replaced its role, what path it has taken, what assessments it was given at this or that stage of development, what it has become now, what can be said about the prospects for its development. The principle of historicism requires that any person who studies history should not fall into the role of a judge when assessing certain historical and political events. The principle of historicism obliges us to soberly take into account the real forces that certain political forces had at their disposal when implementing their ideas, programs and slogans in specific historical periods.

An important principle when studying the history of Russia is the principle social approach. In this regard, the point of view of the outstanding Russian scientist and thinker G.V. Plekhanov is not without interest, who wrote: “Where a historian has to depict the struggle of opposing forces, he will inevitably sympathize with one or the other... In this regard, he will be subjective... But such subjectivism will not prevent him from being a completely objective historian, unless he begins to distort the real economic relations on the basis of which social forces have grown" (Plekhanov G.V. Selected philosophical works. T. 1. M., 1956. P. 671 ). IN modern conditions Russian historians began to call the principle of party membership the principle of a social approach, meaning by it the manifestation of certain social and class interests, the entire sum of social-class relations: in political struggle, in the economic field, in the contradictions of social and class psychology and traditions, in inter-class and extra-class contradictions. The principle of the social approach provides for simultaneous adherence to the principles of subjectivity and historicism. It should be emphasized that the principle of a social approach to political history is especially necessary and essential in the study and assessment of programs and real political activities of political parties and movements, their leaders and figures. A few words should also be said on the principle of comprehensiveness.

The principle of a comprehensive study of history implies not only the need for completeness and reliability of information, but also the fact that it is necessary to keep in mind and take into account all aspects and all relationships affecting the political sphere of society.

Thus, the principles of objectivity, historicism, social approach, and comprehensiveness of study are based on the dialectical-materialist methodology for the study of historical processes.

Historical knowledge.

Historical knowledge is the result of the process of historical knowledge of reality, tested by practice and justified by logic, its adequate reflection in the human mind in the form of ideas, concepts, judgments, theories.

Historical knowledge can be conditionally divided (according to methods of cognition) into three levels.

1) reconstructive knowledge - fixation of historical facts in chronological order - formed in the process of reconstructive activity of the historian. In the course of this activity (usually using special historical methods - textual, diplomatic, source studies, historiographic, etc.) the historian establishes historical facts. Reconstructive knowledge, a reconstructive picture of the past, is created in the form of a narrative (story, narration) or in the form of tables and diagrams.

2) empirical historical knowledge - knowledge about the regularities and relationships between various facts, phenomena, processes - is the result of reconstructive processing. Its purpose is to clarify repetition in the process of historical development. In the course of such research, the historian establishes facts of a higher level - empirical (open regularities - similar signs of processes, typology of phenomena, etc.).

3) theoretical historical knowledge - knowledge about typology and repeatability, regularity of facts, phenomena, processes, structures - explains empirical facts in the course of theoretical knowledge. The task of theoretical knowledge is to formulate a theory, i.e. identifying the laws of historical development (but not functioning. So, for example, political science studies the laws of the functioning of state institutions, and history studies the laws of their development. Economics studies the laws of the functioning of economic systems, and history studies the laws of their development. Etc.). The function of historical theory is to explain the regularities of the historical process and model its development.

Sometimes the place of theory can be taken by an ideological construct, but this has nothing to do with science.

Since historical knowledge and knowledge are forms social consciousness, then their functions (i.e. tasks, methods and results) are socially determined. The functions of historical knowledge include:

The need to form social self-awareness,

Satisfying the need for social education,

The needs for political activity and politics itself,

Needs to explain, foresee and predict the future.

Functions of historical knowledge.

Cognitive - identifying patterns of historical development.

Prognostic - foreseeing the future.

Educational - the formation of civic, moral values ​​and qualities.

Social memory is a way of identifying and orienting society and the individual.

Requirements for specialists graduating from a university.

According to the new State Standard graduate School must train highly qualified specialists who can solve professional problems at the level of the latest achievements of world science and technology and at the same time become cultural, spiritually rich people professionally engaged in creative mental work, development and dissemination of culture.

A specialist of the 21st century must:

1. have good general scientific (general theoretical) training in the natural sciences, which he receives in the course of studying mathematics, physics and other disciplines.

2. have deep theoretical and practical knowledge directly in their specialty - veterinary medicine.

3. have good humanitarian, including historical, training, a high level general culture, high qualities of a civic personality, a sense of patriotism, hard work, etc. A specialist must gain a fairly complete understanding of philosophy, economic theory, sociology, political science, psychology, and cultural studies.

Historical consciousness and its levels.

Humanitarian training in Russian universities begins with Russian history. In the course of studying history, historical consciousness is formed, which is one of the important aspects of social consciousness. Historical consciousness is the totality of ideas of society as a whole and its social groups individually, about their past and the past of all humanity.

Like any other forms of social consciousness, historical consciousness has a complex structure. Four levels can be distinguished.

The first (lowest) level of historical consciousness is formed in the same ways as everyday consciousness, based on the accumulation of direct life experience, when a person observes certain events throughout his life, or even takes part in them. The broad masses of the population, as carriers of everyday consciousness at the lowest level of historical consciousness, are not able to bring it into the system, to evaluate it from the point of view of the entire course of the historical process.

The second stage of historical consciousness can be formed under the influence of fiction, cinema, radio, television, theater, painting, under the influence of acquaintance with historical monuments. At this level, historical consciousness also has not yet transformed into systematic knowledge. The ideas that form it are still fragmentary, chaotic, and not chronologically ordered.

The third stage of historical consciousness is formed on the basis of historical knowledge itself, acquired in history lessons at school, where students first receive ideas about the past in a systematized form.

At the fourth (highest) stage, the formation of historical consciousness occurs on the basis of a comprehensive theoretical understanding of the past, at the level of identifying trends in historical development. Based on the knowledge about the past accumulated by history, generalized historical experience, a scientific worldview is formed, attempts are made to obtain a more or less clear understanding of the nature and driving forces development of human society, its periodization, sense of history, typology, models of social development.

The significance of the formation of historical consciousness:

1. It ensures awareness by a certain community of people of the fact that they constitute a single people united by a community historical fate, traditions, culture, language, common psychological traits.

2. National-historical consciousness is a defensive factor that ensures the self-preservation of the people. If it is destroyed, then this people will be left not only without a past, without its historical roots, but also without a future. This is a fact long established by historical experience.

3. It contributes to the selection and formation of socially significant norms, moral values, traditions and customs are formed, the way of thinking and behavior inherent in a given people.

* This work is not scientific work, is not a graduation qualifying work and represents the result of processing, structuring and formatting collected information, intended for use as a source of material for self-study educational works.

Introduction

History of origin

Sciences closely related to history

Philosophy of history

Periodization of world history

Subject and objectives of history

Study methods

Functions of historical knowledge

Current state of affairs

Development prospects

Conclusion

Literature

Introduction

The word "history" has several meanings. So, for example, the phrase “get into history” can carry two different meanings for a person in trouble or for a politician who wants to leave his mark on history.

Sometimes it is very interesting for a person to know about the lives of his predecessors. A science like history helps him in this. History is one of ancient sciences, it originated in Greece and dates back about 2,500 years. In the 6th century, such a concept as historians-lagographs appeared - the authors of the first historical works. One of them was Herodotus. Today he is considered the father of history. Beginning with Herodotus, people appeared in Greece and Rome who would write down stories. Since then, history as a science has become widespread.

In ancient Greek mythology, there was a goddess Clio, who patronized history. She was depicted as a young woman with a spiritual face full of deep thought. She had a scroll and a slate stick in her hands, which meant that nothing in our world disappears without a trace.

In this way, history can be defined. History is a humanitarian science that studies the past of human society in all its beauty and diversity, which is created with the aim of understanding its present and future prospects (Motto of science: Historia est magistra vitae - “History is the teacher of life”).

Herodotus of Halicarnassus (484 BC - 425 BC) is the author of the first historical treatise - “history”, which describes the Greco-Persian wars and the customs of contemporary peoples. The birthplace of Herodotus is Halicarnassus in Asia Minor. In his youth he belonged to the party that fought against the ruling tyrant Lygdamidas. Then Herodotus was expelled, and after some time he went on long journeys. He traveled around Babylon, Assyria, Egypt, the Balkan Peninsula from the Peloponnese to Macedonia, and then settled in Athens.

History of origin

The subject of history did not immediately exist in the form in which we know it now. Due to the progressive development of history, a process of improvement and improvement of material production took place, the political system of society and its social structure changed and became more complex, progress was observed in science, and culture developed. As society developed, history developed as a science, which absorbed the experience of numerous generations. As a result, its content expanded and enriched, and a process of knowledge accumulation took place.

In Ancient Greece, the word “history” meant “establishment, investigation, recognition.” As a rule, the word “history” meant authenticity, the truth of events and historical facts. It also meant any knowledge obtained through one’s own discoveries and research. Subsequently, the word “history” began to mean various stories about some incident or incident, fictional or real.

The work of Herodotus is not at all a historical study in our understanding, it is the narrative of a gifted, very inquisitive person who has read, seen and heard a lot, not without skepticism, but not legible enough in the information received. Herodotus was not only a historian; some parts of his work were a real encyclopedia of that time: they contained a lot of geographical, ethnographic and literary information. Nevertheless, Herodotus is rightly called the father of history. His work consists of 9 books. The first half contains stories about the development and rise of the Persian kingdom, Babylonia, Egypt, Libya and some other countries. The second half is a sequential historical account of the Greco-Persian wars.

Sciences closely related to history

Over the entire existence of human society, a number of auxiliary historical disciplines responsible for the development of general issues of methodology and technology of historical research. To create history as a science, facts alone are not enough; there must be various evidence of events that once happened. The past is recreated by scientists from various written sources, from the study of objects material culture.

The science of history captures all phenomena of human life. These phenomena are extremely multifaceted and diverse, relating to the internal and foreign policy, development of economy and culture, different forms social life of the country, the development of international relations, the activities of historical figures, military events. Therefore, history is a multidisciplinary science, it consists of a number of independent “branches” of historical knowledge, namely: the history of social, civil, economic, military, political, state and law, religion, etc. For an in-depth study of these branches, there are many sciences located in close contact with history.

The most famous of them:

Anthropology (human interaction with the world);

Archeology (the study of the lives of predecessors in material objects);

Heraldry (study of coats of arms);

Diplomacy (study of legal documents and acts);

Local history (the study of geographical, economic and political characteristics of one region);

Numismatics (the study of coinage);

Chronology (the study of the sequence of events).

All these sciences provide and find interesting materials, written, material, ethnographic, photographic and film documents for a detailed study of the life of our predecessors. Historical science relies on them. Most important place in the development of historical science occupy two scientific fields: archeology and ethnography. Archeology, which was once an auxiliary branch in the study of history, is now an independent science that studies objects of material culture, which is very important for the reconstruction of real events.

Philosophy of history

Philosophy of history is a specific area of ​​philosophy that tries to resolve the question of ultimate meaning human history. Philosophy of history should not be confused with historiography (the study of science as an academic discipline with its own certain methods, practically used).

The following approaches are used in the philosophy of history:

1. formational;

2. civilizational;

3. world-system;

4. school "Annals";

5. relay-stadial.

The formational approach is an approach whose main concept is progress in development, i.e. transition from lower to higher tall type society. Proponents of this approach were K. Marx, F. Engels, V. I. Lenin, and others. The founder of the formation approach, K. Marx, assumed that human society goes through several stages (formations) in its development; the transition from one to another formation is carried out through a social revolution.

The civilizational approach is an approach associated with common cultural values different eras, coordinated with each other and closely interconnected. It was developed by N. Ya. Danilevsky, O. Spengler, A. Toynbee, S. Aizenstadt and others. Proponents of the civilizational approach emphasize main feature the development of human society is cyclical. From the point of view of supporters of this approach, the main unit of the process of social development is civilization.

World-systems is an approach based on world-systems analysis. If previous approaches examined the development primarily of individual societies, rather than their systems, then in this approach, on the contrary, greater influence is given to systems. Numerous studies in this area were carried out by A. G. Frank, I. Wallerstein, S. Amin, J. Arrighi, A. I. Fursov, A. V. Korotaev, and others.

The Annales School is a historical school that was formed around the Annales magazine; had a significant influence on the formation of the entire world historiography of the 20th century. Adherents were M. Blok, L. Febvre, F. Braudel, A. Ya. Gurevich.

Relay-stage (Yu. I. Semenov) (essentially nothing more than a modified Marxist-formational approach, where the main driving force social development is the same class struggle, and the ultimate goal is communism.)

These approaches make it possible to consider the historical process under different angles vision, so they do not so much deny each other as complement each other.

Periodization of world history

One of the most important issues Historical science considers the problem of periodization of the development of human society. Periodization is the establishment of chronologically successive stages in social development. The division of time into stages should be based on decisive factors that are the same for all countries or for the majority of leading countries.

Since the development of historical science, scientists have developed many different options for periodizing the development of society. Today, the process of periodization of world history consists of two principles: for initial periods In the formation of human society, the main parameter is the material from which ancient people made the main tools and the technology for their production. This is how such concepts as “Stone Age”, “Copper Stone Age”, “Bronze Age” and “Iron Age” entered history.

With the advent of writing (approximately 5,000 years ago), other grounds for periodization began to arise. To do this, historians began to use the time of existence of various civilizations and states, which in turn kept their own account of time.

So for today world history It is customary to divide it into four main periods:

1. Ancient world(the period when man separated from the animal world about 2 million years ago and before the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 AD).

2. The Middle Ages (the period from the fall of the Western Roman Empire to the beginning of the Renaissance in the 16th century).

3. Modern times (from the Renaissance to 1918 - the end of the First World War).

4. Modern times (from 1919 to the present day).

Subject and objectives of history

Compared to the humanities, which study any one aspect of social life, history learns the entirety of the life of society throughout the entire historical process.

The basis of historical science is the collection, systematization and generalization of facts. History is a science that studies human society in its development, therefore the subject of the study of history is events, patterns of behavior of people, systems of their value systems and motivations.

The purpose of history is to find facts and establish their causes and consequences.

The main objectives of history include:

Study of various aspects and problems of historical development.

Study of the process of accumulating knowledge about human society.

Studying the process of changing and improving methods and techniques of historical analysis.

Analysis of changes in various problems of historical research, as well as clarification and identification of factors and directions of this process.

Studying the development and characteristics of the work of various historical scientific institutions, as well as training systems in the country for the entire system of historical education.

Analysis of the process of evolution of funds scientific activity, scientific and popular science press organs.

Study of international relations of historical science, as well as interaction between scientists from different countries.

Studying government policy in the field of historical science and education, because depends largely on her various conditions the use of archival materials by historians, the possibility of publishing research results.

Study methods

The method is a way of studying historical processes through their manifestations - historical facts, a way of obtaining new knowledge from facts.

Specific methods are considered:

1. general scientific;

2. historical;

3. special (borrowed from other sciences).

The common methods for all humanities are:

Logical;

Historical.

The purpose of the logical method is to consider the phenomena being studied at the highest stage of development, in sequence and relationship with previous stages of historical development.

The historical method reproduces various phenomena and processes in them chronological order with all the features and unique features, down to the smallest details, through which general patterns can be revealed.

These methods complement each other, since if all the possibilities of the historical method have been exhausted, then appropriate conclusions and generalizations can be made using the logical method.

In the study and research of Russian history, the following methods are most often used:

CHRONOLOGICAL - consists of presenting phenomena in strictly chronological order;

CHRONOLOGICALLY PROBLEM - consists of studying historical phenomena by eras and periods, and within periods - by problems.

PROBLEM-CHRONOLOGICAL - explores only one specific aspect of the life and activities of the state in its gradual development;

SYNCHRONIC - thanks to this method, it is possible to establish a connection between individual processes and phenomena that occur at the same time, but in different parts of the country or abroad.

There are also other methods for studying and researching the history of the country:

Periodization method;

Comparative historical;

Retrospective;

System-structural;

Statistical;

A method of sociological research that is drawn from sociology to study and research contemporary issues.

The methodology of any science pursues two tasks - the main and the derivative. The main one is to establish the reasons by virtue of which science receives its meaning; derivative comes down to giving a systematic teaching about the methods by which something is studied.

The methodology of historical knowledge is concerned with establishing the principles of historical knowledge; for example, what importance should the historian attach to the principles of cause and effect and expediency in historical processes? What is the criterion of historical assessment on the basis of which the historian selects material? In what sense does he use the concepts of “evolution”, “progress”, “regression”, etc.?

The methodological foundations of the history course are determined by a number of ideas:

This is a statement of the specificity of historical knowledge and the relativity of the criteria of truth and reliability in historical research;

The originality of the subject and methods of historical research, and therefore of historical knowledge in general (the object of historical knowledge is a person, whose nature and behavior are diverse in themselves and can be considered in various relationships);

Historical knowledge is not now and has never been previously a purely academic phenomenon; its functions are distinguished by wide social coverage;

Historical knowledge is a functionally important element of social memory.

Functions of historical knowledge

Like any science, history performs a number of specific functions.

The first is cognitive; consists of studying the paths of development of various countries and peoples from the perspective of historicism. This function is intellectually developing and allows you to objectively reflect the course of phenomena and processes, which in turn make up the history of mankind.

The second function is practical-political. It consists in the fact that, on the basis of understanding historical facts, it reveals the patterns of development of society. Thus, it helps to choose a certain political course for the development of society and allows one to avoid subjective mistakes when choosing paths and models of development.

The third function is ideological. History gives humanity documentary stories about outstanding events the past, about thinkers who made a significant contribution to the development of society. A worldview - a view of the world, society, the laws of its development - can be scientific if it is based on objective reality. In the development of society, historical facts are the objective reality.

History has a huge educational influence. This is the fourth story feature. The formation of civic qualities directly depends on knowledge of the history of one’s people and world history. History describes the role of people and individuals in the development of society; helps to recognize the high spiritual qualities of a person, moral and moral values humanity in their development, lays down such concepts as honor, duty to society, moral responsibility.

Current state of affairs

Every process that occurs in society leaves changes in the economic and social life. Studying humanities is one of the important parts of education modern man. History has always aroused great interest from society. This interest is very understandable, because a person is interested in knowing the history of his ancestors. In past years, history as a science was highly politicized and permeated with various political and ideological teachings. Many pages of history in literature were depicted in a very one-sided and distorted way, which left a serious imprint on the formation of people’s historical thinking. Today, nothing prevents historians from thinking objectively. Still, some scientists rush to extremes, moving away from objectivity, and see only tragedies and mistakes in this or that event. In modern historical science, the principles of scientific historical research are applied: objectivity, historicism, social approach. Historical topics today come to the forefront of socio-political life. This, of course, cannot but please professional historians and at the same time arouse pride in the state of science.

Development prospects

It can be concluded that humanitarian knowledge occupies one of the central positions in the world of sciences. It crosses various flows of information that come from all other branches of knowledge. Human belonging to nature, society, culture is especially clearly manifested in general laws existence, which is considered by philosophy and mathematics. From this we can conclude that the humanities have the most likely prospects for development.

History as a science does not stand still, but inevitably moves forward. Archives are being collected, excavations are being carried out, various studies. All these events definitely advance science towards studying man’s past and predicting his future. Time does not stand still, and various things are constantly happening. political events. Scientific and technological progress provides scientists with new opportunities to study finds: X-ray diffraction and radiocarbon dating, magnetoscopy, and other modern research methods. Such approaches advance the study of the past to a higher quality level and create all the conditions for the further development of historical science.

Conclusion

First of all, any literate person should know the history of his fatherland, the life and deeds of his fathers, grandfathers and great-grandfathers. You can't live on native land and not to know who lived here before us, not to know and not to remember their labors, glory, delusions and mistakes. To guide the activities of the present, it is necessary to assimilate the historical experience, knowledge and methods of thinking that previous generations have developed. History is an integral part of general culture. A person who studies history has historical knowledge, which is one of important elements public consciousness. History embodies the social memory of all generations. The more extensive such memory is, the spiritually richer the person and society as a whole. The deeper a person’s knowledge of the socio-economic and cultural experience that was accumulated by previous generations, the more definite and purposeful his activity.

Studying history teaches you to think historical categories, see society in development, evaluate the phenomena of social life in relation to their past and correlate with the subsequent course of events.

Literature

1. Abramson M.L., Kirillova A.A., Kolesnitsky N.F., etc. History of the Middle Ages: A textbook for students of the history department of pedagogical institutes. M: Enlightenment, 1986. 575 p.

2. Zakharevich A.V. History of the Fatherland: Textbook. M.: Publishing and trading corporation "Dashkov and K", 2004. 756 p.

3. Collingwood J. “The Idea of ​​History.” M.: Prospekt, 1980. 485 p.

4. Orlov A.S., Georgiev V.A., Georgieva N.G., Sivokhina T.A. History of Russia. M: Prospekt, 2000. 520s

5. Polyak G.B., Markova A.N. World history: Textbook for universities. M: Culture and Sports, UNITY, 1997. 496 p.

6. Repina L.P., Zvereva V.V., Paramonova M.Yu. History of historical knowledge. M.: Bustard, 2004. 372 p.

7. Smirnov I. P. “How is history born?” St. Petersburg: Aletheya, 2006. 413s

History as a science.

1. Essence, forms and functions of historical knowledge.
2. Approaches to the study of history: formational, civilizational.
3. Methods and sources for studying history.
4. Domestic historiography.

1. History is one of the oldest sciences, it is about two and a half thousand years old. The ancient Greek historian Herodotus (5th century BC) is considered its founder.

Original meaning ancient Greek word“history” meant investigation, recognition, establishment. History was identified with establishing the authenticity and truth of events and facts. Soon, “history” began to be called any story about any incident, real or fictitious. On modern stage this term has two main meanings:

1) history is a story about the past;

2) history is a science that studies the human past in all its diversity in order to understand the present and development trends in the future.

Generalization and processing of accumulated human experience is the primary task of history. People always, especially during critical periods in the life of mankind, try to find answers to many questions in the world historical experience. On historical examples people are raised to respect the eternal human values: peace, goodness, justice, beauty, freedom. Historical science tries to give a holistic vision of the historical process in the unity of all its characteristics. History as a single process of the evolution of nature and society is studied by a set of social sciences with the involvement of data from the natural and technical sciences.

History is a concrete science that requires precise knowledge of the chronology of facts and events. It is closely related to other sciences, but unlike them, it examines the process of development of society as a whole, analyzes the entire set of phenomena of social life, all its aspects (economics, politics, culture, everyday life, etc.), their interrelations and interdependence.

For history, the object of study is the entire set of facts that characterize the life of society both in the past and in the present. The subject of history is the study of human society as a single contradictory process.

The subject of studying the history of Russia is the patterns of political and socio-economic development of the Russian state and society. The history of Russia examines socio-political processes and movements, the activities of various political forces and parties, the development of political systems and government agencies. Unlike other social sciences, Russian history examines specific forms of manifestation of historical patterns, expressed in historical events and facts and economic policy.

Thus, to put it briefly, the subject of studying the course of Russian history is the process of formation of preconditions, origin and socio-political development Russian society and states as part of the world process of human history.

History performs a number of important functions:

1) information and cognitive function;

2) practical-political function;

3) ideological function;

4) educational function.

In the course of studying history, historical consciousness is formed - the idea of ​​society as a whole and its social groups separately about its past and the past of all humanity. Each nation has a certain range of historical ideas about its origin, major events its history, figures of the past. These ideas are captured in traditions, tales, legends, fairy tales, which form an integral part of the spiritual life of every people as one of the ways of their self-expression and self-affirmation. Historical consciousness takes the form of myth, chronicle or science.

The importance of forming historical consciousness, preserving historical memory in modern conditions is very large. First of all, it ensures that a certain community of people understands the fact that they constitute one people.

1. Researchers have always been interested in the question of what human history represents: a unidirectional path for all peoples or a multivariate development process.

Within the framework of the Christian concept of history, everything that happens is the embodiment of Divine Providence and depends on the will of Providence. The meaning of history boils down to a consistent movement towards God, during which a person overcomes his dependence on nature and passions, coming to the knowledge of the ultimate truth.

During the Renaissance, N. Machiavelli, and during the Enlightenment, Voltaire, J. J. Rousseau and S. L. Montesquieu tried to determine the internal laws of the historical process. But a real revolution in historical science occurred in the second half of the 19th century. Its main content was identifying the patterns of historical progress, expanding the scope of the subject of historical science, intertwining it with philosophy, political economy, archeology; a huge contribution to the formation of new views on the patterns of history was made by G. Hegel, K. Marx, L. Morgan, F. Engels, O .Comte, G.Spencer, S.M.Soloviev.

As a result, in the 19th century it established itself in Europe classic model world, based on the idea of ​​universality and unilinearity of history. According to this model, a single world civilization developed on the basis of Western values. From this it was concluded that only those countries that develop according to the European model are considered civilized. For other peoples, the path was also clear - either follow the Western model, or remain in a barbaric state.

Within the framework of these views, a Marxist school has developed in historical science, which attaches the main importance in the evolutionary process to the development of material productive forces. It was developed in the 19th century by German scientists K. Marx and F. Engels. The essence of this concept boiled down to the following: the world-historical process represents a consistent change of socio-economic formations, i.e. methods of production and corresponding social-class forms of interaction between people. Productive forces develop as long as their needs are met by those existing in society relations of production. When these conditions are violated, the development of productive forces is inhibited, which causes a revolution in production relations, and one social era gives way to another. In total, scientists have proposed five formations: primitive communal, slaveholding, feudal, capitalist, communist.

It turns out that productive forces (i.e. labor and the means of production set in motion by it) are the foundation of social dynamics, and forms of ownership determine production relations. The engine of progress is the contradictions between the exploiters and the exploited.

This approach, based on the idea of ​​the universality and one-dimensionality of history, is called formational. Quite reasonably explaining the structure, development and functioning of society in countries Western Europe, at the same time it suffers from a number of shortcomings. First of all, there are many countries that did not go through all the stages of development in sequence, or in which one stage overlapped another. Some states of society are generally difficult to explain from the point of view of the formational approach, especially since even in classical Western countries the economic basis turned out to be multi-structured, and in the social structure there were not only the proletariat and the bourgeoisie.

Critics of the formational approach, both in domestic and international foreign historiography indicate that with this view, a person is assigned a secondary role.

In the same 19th century, scientists proposed the concept of multivariate historical development, called civilizational: the history of mankind is a collection of different civilizations that act as independent subjects of history. N.Ya. Danilevsky, A. Toynbee, O. Spengler made a great contribution to the development of this theory.

The category “civilization” has many definitions. This term was introduced into circulation by French educators to designate a civil society in which freedom, law, and justice reign. L. Morgan and F. Engels identified three stages in the history of mankind: savagery, barbarism and civilization, which meant the development of industry, the emergence of classes, private property, and the state.

A number of scientists believe that civilization should be understood high level development of material and spiritual culture of society. However, there is an opposite opinion on this matter. O. Spengler considers civilization as the final moment of the development of society, its “decline”.

Speaking about modern approaches, we can say that civilization is a set of systems that are at compatible levels of development, occupy a certain territory and are distinguished by certain patterns of socio-political, economic, spiritual, cultural development.

The essence of civilization is determined by the following factors: geographical environment; farming system; social organization; political system; spiritual values. Changes in mentality, in the system of spiritual values ​​and ideals often have a decisive influence on the fate of civilization.

Modern researchers (Semenikova L.I.) distinguish three types of civilizations: natural, eastern and western.

The natural type of civilizations includes peoples living within the framework of the natural annual cycle, in unity and harmony with nature. These are natural communities of a number of tribes in Africa, South America, Australia and Oceania.

Eastern civilizations characterized by communal isolation and orientation towards collective forms of life and work. Among the forms of ownership, state and communal are predominant. Relations in society are relations of citizenship, when everything public relations are locked into power structures. In the political sphere, the state plays a huge role; it permeates all structures of society, interferes in all spheres of activity, and all power belongs to one person who is deified. In such a society, no one has rights; everything is subordinated to state interests. Traditions were the highest social value; changes in all spheres of life occurred rarely, hence the cult of ancestors and the high authority of elders.

Western type civilization is characterized by an orientation toward the development of the internal market, private property, and commodity-money relations. In the political field, there is a gradual democratization of political structures and public administration, a system of legal protection of citizens from arbitrary power is being formed. Consciousness western man characterized by independence, rationalism, pragmatism, freedom from religious dogma.

The methodology of the civilizational approach has its weaknesses: the criteria for identifying types of civilization are amorphous; it does not answer the questions that inevitably arise when studying the history of mankind about the direction and meaning of historical development.

As a result, we can conclude: both approaches allow us to consider the historical process with different points vision, but none of them can fully explain its essence.

Historical sources are everything that reflects the historical process and gives us the opportunity to study the past of mankind.

Several decades ago, historical science developed a system for classifying historical sources based on the principle of an information carrier. When using it, you need to remember that any classification is conditional. In our opinion, this traditional system gives the most complete picture of the whole variety of historical sources. Most authors identify six types of sources.

1). Written sources. They include ancient chronicles, memoirs, articles from newspapers and magazines, office documents, statistical materials, etc. Even fiction can become an important source, because the works of writers and poets perfectly reflect the life, customs, and social sentiments of a particular era.

2). Material sources. These include household and household items, tools, weapons, etc.

3). Ethnographic sources. These include cultural, religious, and everyday traditions of different peoples.

4). Oral sources.

5). Visual sources.

6). Audiovisual documents.

Researching historical sources requires special skills and knowledge. First of all, it is necessary to correctly determine the necessary research methods.

A method is a way of studying historical patterns through their specific manifestations - historical facts, a way of extracting new knowledge from facts.

Historical research methods themselves can be divided into two groups:

1) methods based on various options for studying processes in time: chronological, chronological-problematic, synchronistic;

2) methods based on identifying the patterns of the historical process: comparative-historical, retrospective (method of historical modeling), structural-systemic.

The essence of the chronological method is that phenomena are presented in temporal order. The chronological-problematic method involves the study and research of Russian history by periods or eras, and within them - by problems. Taking into account the problem-chronological method, there is a study and research of any one aspect of the life and activities of the state in its consistent development. The synchronistic method makes it possible to establish connections and relationships between phenomena and processes occurring at the same time in different places in Russia and its regions.

The comparative historical method aims to establish general trends inherent in similar processes, determine the changes that have occurred, and identify ways of social development. Retrospective allows you to restore the process based on its identified typical properties and show the patterns of its development. Structural-systemic establishes the unity of events and phenomena in socio-historical development, on the basis of which qualitatively different social, economic, political, cultural systems of social order are distinguished within a certain chronological framework.

Historiography is the history of historical science. History as a science originated in Russia in the 18th century. By this time it had accumulated sufficient quantity empirical material requiring comprehension.

The first Russian historian is usually called V.N. Tatishchev. He creates the first historical work in Russia, “Russian History from the Most Ancient Times,” in four volumes. It contained a wealth of data from the chronicles, their analysis, classification, and valuable excerpts from individual codes that have not reached us.

The origin of the first theories in the 18th century dates back to national history: Norman and anti-Norman. They concerned the issue of the formation of the ancient Russian state. Norman theory was proposed by German scientists G. Bayer, G. Miller and A. Schlozer. Having studied the ancient Russian chronicle “The Tale of Bygone Years,” they put forward a theory about the formation of the ancient Russian state only thanks to the Varangians invited from Scandinavia, and not by the Eastern Slavs. The latter, according to these researchers, were at a very low level of development and could not cope with this task on their own.

The anti-Norman theory was proposed by the prominent Russian scientist M.V. Lomonosov. He put forward the idea of ​​the West Slavic, Pomeranian origin of Rurik and the chronicle Varangians, which is refuted by the data of philologists, but is confirmed archaeological finds, as more and more traces of connections between the Novgorod Slavs and part of the Krivichi with the West Slavic world are being revealed.

The next stage in Russian historiography was “History of the Russian State” by N.M. Karamzin, written at the request of Emperor Alexander I. All his work is imbued with the idea of ​​monarchism. N.M. Karamzin made history a subject of wide public interest and contributed a lot of positive things to the scientific knowledge of Russian history.

The further development of historical science required a rejection of the purely descriptive, pragmatic approach to history inherited from antiquity, penetration into the internal course of historical development, a transition from the presentation of the activities of rulers and heroes to the study of the history of society itself.

Formation of a new scientific concept was reflected in the activities of S.M. Solovyov. One of the main ideas of his writings is the idea of ​​the history of Russia as a single, naturally developing process. Soloviev seeks to understand the historical process based on internal patterns, including the nature of the country, the nature of the tribe and the course of external events. S.M. Solovyov’s student V.O. Klyuchevsky sought to present the historical process as a process of development of social classes, the relationships and roles of which changed in connection with economic and political development countries.

After the victory of Oktyabrskaya socialist revolution In 1917, Soviet historical science began to develop within the framework of historical materialism, recognized as the only philosophy of history. The materialist understanding of history based on the Marxist doctrine of socio-economic formations won, which, however, allowed Soviet historiography to achieve success in the study of socio-political and economic issues. In the works Soviet historians The problems of the socio-economic development of the country, feudal land tenure, etc. were studied in detail. The results obtained made it possible to clarify the prerequisites for the formation of the state and centralization, the role of various social groups and strata in the history of the Russian state and many other issues. Such remarkable scientists as B.D. Grekov, V.V. Mavrodin, M.N. Tikhomirov, A.A. Zimin, B.A. Rybakov and others worked in this direction. Despite the ideologization of historical research, they managed to create interesting works and put forward many hypotheses. In the lighting Soviet history Other cliches of ideology were cultivated: the role of I.V. Stalin was exaggerated and his crimes were hushed up. The history of our country was presented as the leaders of the Soviet state wanted it.

When perestroika began in the USSR, many changes occurred in historical science. Thanks to freedom of speech and publicity, historical articles and books that truthfully told about the repressions of the 30-40s. XX century. The truth became known about the incredible difficulties and colossal sacrifices that our country suffered while building Stalinist socialism. They now look at October 1917, the Civil War and the Great Patriotic War in a new way.

Currently, the process of understanding and rethinking the history of Russia continues. Many problems have to be solved in conditions of transition from one social system to another, in conditions of fundamental changes in the political system of society, its economic foundations, the promotion of new political and ideological paradigms, and new moral values.

Literature

1. Derevianko A.P., Shabelnikova History of Russia. M., 2006

2. Zakharevich A.V. History of the Fatherland. M., 2008

3.Kirillov V.V. History of Russia. M., 2006

4. Munchaev Sh.M., Ustinov V.M. History of Russia. M., 2003

5. Nekrasova M.B. History of the Fatherland. M., 2002

Front page

Introduction……………………………………………………………………………….....3

What is history?........................................................ .....................................5

The subject of history as a science: purpose, learning objectives, socially significant functions……………………………………………………..……...8

1. Periodization of world history…………………………………….13

Conclusion……………………………………………………………...14

List of references……………………………………………………….16

Introduction

Interest in the past has existed since the human race appeared. This interest is difficult to explain by human curiosity alone. The fact is that man himself is a historical being. It grows, changes, develops over time, is a product of this development.

The original meaning of the word “history” goes back to the ancient Greek term meaning “investigation”, “recognition”, “establishment”. History was identified with establishing the authenticity and truth of events and facts. In Roman historiography (Historiography is a branch of historical science that studies its history), this word began to mean not a method of recognition, but a story about the events of the past. Soon, “history” began to be called any story about any incident, real or fictitious. Currently, we use the word “history” in two senses: firstly, to mean a story about the past, and secondly, when talking about the science that studies the past.

The subject of history is defined ambiguously. The subject of history can be social, political, economic, demographic history, the history of the city, village, family, and private life. The definition of the subject of history is subjective, connected with the ideology of the state and the worldview of the historian. Historians who take a materialist position believe that history as a science studies the patterns of social development, which ultimately depend on the method of production of material goods. This approach prioritizes economics, society—rather than people—in explaining causation. Historians who adhere to liberal positions are convinced that the subject of the study of history is man (personality) in the self-realization of natural rights granted by nature. The famous French historian Marc Bloch defined history “as the science of people in time.”

1. What is history?

History is one of the oldest sciences, about 2500 years old. The ancient Greek historian Herodotus (5th century BC) is considered its founder. The ancients valued history very much and called it “magistra vitae” (teacher of life).

History is usually defined as a science about the past- past reality, about what once happened to a person, people, society as a whole. Thus the story comes down to simple analysis events, processes, states that have somehow sunk into oblivion. This understanding of history is neither accurate nor complete, moreover, it is internally contradictory. In fact, history does not allow people to forget “their former life.” History, as it were, resurrects the past, the past, rediscovering and reconstructing it for the present. Thanks to history, historical knowledge, the past does not die, but continues to live in the present, serving the present.

It is noteworthy that in Ancient Greece the patroness of history was Clio - the goddess who glorifies. The scroll and slate stick in her hands are a symbol and guarantee that nothing should disappear without a trace.

History is the collective memory of the people, the memory of the past. But the memory of the past is no longer the past in the proper sense of the word. This is the past, restored and restored according to the standards of modernity, with a focus on the values ​​and ideals of people's lives in the present, because the past exists for us through the present and thanks to it. K. Jaspers expressed this thought in his own way: “History directly concerns us... And everything that concerns us thereby constitutes the problem of the present for man.”

Initial meaning of the word "story" goes back to the Greek "ioropia", which means "investigation", "recognition", "establishment". Thus, initially "story" identified with a way of recognizing, establishing true events and facts. However, in Roman historiography it has already acquired second meaning (story about past events), that is, the center of gravity was transferred from the study of the past to the narration of it. During the Renaissance, there is third the meaning of the concept "history". History began to be understood type of literature, special function which was establishing and recording the truth.

However, history was not considered as an independent field of knowledge, especially scientific, for a long time. It did not have its own subject during the period of Antiquity, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, and even during the Enlightenment. How is this fact consistent with the fairly high prestige and widespread prevalence of historical knowledge? How to reconcile it with the huge number of works containing historical information, from Herodotus and Thucydides, through countless medieval chronicles, chronicles and “hagiographies”, to historical studies of the early modern era? This is explained by the fact that history for a long time was integrated into the general knowledge system. In the eras of Antiquity and the Middle Ages, it existed and developed in combination with mythology, religion, theology, literature and, to some extent, geography. During the Renaissance it was given a powerful impetus geographical discoveries, flowering of art, political theories. In the XVII-XVIII centuries. history was connected with political theory, geography, literature, philosophy, and culture.

The need to isolate scientific knowledge itself began to be felt since the time of the natural science revolution (XVII century). However, even at the beginning of the 19th century, the “undifferentiation” of “philosophical” and scientific knowledge, on the one hand, and science itself into disciplines, on the other, continued to persist.

One of the first attempts to determine the place of history as scientific discipline, which has its own subject, was undertaken by the German philosopher W. Krug in his work “An Experience in a Systematic Encyclopedia of Knowledge.” The circle divided sciences into philological and real, real into positive (legal and theological) and natural, natural into historical and rational, etc. In turn, the “historical” sciences were divided into geographical (place) and historical (time) disciplines.

At the end of the 19th century. French philosopher A. Naville divided all sciences into three groups:

1. “Theorematics” - “sciences about the limits of possibilities or laws” (mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, psychology, sociology).

2. “History” - “sciences about realized possibilities or facts” (astronomy, geology, botany, zoology, mineralogy, human history).

3. “Canon” - “the science of possibilities, the implementation of which would be good, or about ideal rules behavior" (morality, art theory, law, medicine, pedagogy).

2. The subject of history as a science: purpose, objectives of study, socially significant functions.

The study of any science begins with defining the concepts with which it operates in the process of cognition of both nature and society. From this point of view, the question arises: what is history as a science? What is the subject of its study? In answering this question, first of all, it is necessary to distinguish between history as any process of development of nature and society, closely related to each other, and history as the science of these processes.

We will consider history as a science in the development of human society in all its diversity. And since the history of society is a set of specific and diverse actions and actions individuals, human communities that are in a certain relationship, constituting all of humanity, the subject of the study of history is the activities and actions of people, the entire set of relations in society.

Famous Russian historian V.O. Klyuchevsky wrote about history as a science: “In scientific language, the word “history” is used in a double sense: 1) as movement in time, a process, and 2) as knowledge of the process. Therefore, everything that happens in time has its own history. The content of history ", as a separate science, a special branch of scientific knowledge, is the historical process, i.e. the course, conditions and successes of human society or the life of mankind in its development and results."

Historians study their subject in a diversified way over time, in parts, from different angles. Disorder, fragmentation, unevenness, “white spots” and “gray niches” of the past - such is the fabric of historical time. But historical knowledge in general allows, when necessary, to turn your gaze and see all the diversity of the “world of history,” structures and connections, events and actions, the existence of peoples and the everyday life of heroes and “little” people, everyday consciousness and the global worldview.

Due to the fact that the content of historical science is the historical process, revealed in the phenomena of human life, and these phenomena are extremely diverse, therefore history is a multidisciplinary science, it is composed of a number of independent branches of historical knowledge, namely: political history, civil, economic history, cultural history, military history, history of state and law, etc.

History is also divided according to the breadth of study of the object: history of the world as a whole (world or general history); history of world civilizations; history of continents (history of Asia and Africa, Latin America); history of individual countries and peoples (history of the USA, Canada, China, Russia, etc.).

A number of auxiliary historical disciplines have emerged that develop general questions methods and techniques of historical research. Among them: paleography (the history of writing), numismatics (coins, orders, medals), toponymy (the study of names of geographical places), source studies ( general techniques and methods of studying historical sources), etc.

History is a concrete science that requires precise knowledge of chronology (dates), facts, events. It is related to other humanities and social sciences. These relations developed differently in different periods, but the largest representatives of historiography have always believed in the “common market” of the social sciences. This belief continues today. Interpenetration and mutual enrichment social sciences, the so-called interdisciplinarity, is a phenomenon characteristic of the 20th century. It is due to the demarcation of social sciences, their separation into independent fields of knowledge, as a result of which the process of division of labor and specialization was accompanied by deepening relationships.

History, as well as other humanities and social sciences late XIX- XX centuries did not escape the influence of psychology. They were very popular at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. books by G. Lebon " Psychological laws evolution of peoples" (Le Bon. 1894) and "Psychology of Peoples and Masses" (Le Bon. 1895), which substantiated the assumption that European society had entered the "era of the crowd", when the rational critical principle embodied in the individual is suppressed by the irrational mass consciousness. Austrian psychologist S. Freud believed that his concept of the “subconscious” could be the key to understanding historical figures, and Freud’s “Essay on Leonardo da Vinci,” written in 1910, was essentially the first attempt at psychohistory.

The term “psychohistory” appeared in the 50s in the USA, where journals on psychohistory were published at that time. Their heroes were such historical figures as Hitler, Trotsky, Gandhi, etc. Psychoanalysis had a great influence on the criticism of some historical sources - diaries, letters, memoirs.

The fact of the author’s psychological need for fantasy began to be taken into account. A separate topic was the study of diary entries about dreams. There are examples of the application of psychoanalysis to social groups, for example, to the history of peasant and urban religious movements, in the study of which historians often deal with deviations. But in general, the flourishing of psychohistory turned out to be short-lived, and the possibilities were limited.

Today, both the significance and the limitations of psychoanalysis for their discipline are obvious to historians. The areas where psychoanalysis can be effectively used are outlined quite clearly: the study of outstanding personalities, the study of cultural traditions. The task of synthesizing history and psychology, if it makes sense, is still a matter for the future.

In comparison with other humanities and social sciences that study any one aspect of social life, history differs in that the subject of its knowledge is the entire totality of the life of society throughout the entire historical process. In addition, many problems of the past and present, which are dealt with by political scientists, economists, sociologists, ethnologists and other specialists in the humanitarian and social cycle, can only be solved on the basis of a historical approach and historical analysis, on the basis of the work done by historians, because only the collection, systematization and generalization of enormous factual material makes it possible to see and understand the trends of social development.

The study and teaching of history in modern conditions is complicated by a number of circumstances:

1. The process of rethinking the past in our country is taking place in the context of a change in the socio-economic and political system, in the conditions of the formation of new moral values. In this regard, history has become a real battlefield, a field of political struggle, where not only scientifically based criticism collides, but also politicized points of view, whose supporters are interested not so much in historical truth as in arguments in favor of their existence. And this, instead of one half-truth, gives rise to another.

2. History has always been closely connected with politics, interests and destinies of rulers, who rarely encouraged the desire of historians to know the truth and communicate it to society. This is felt especially acutely today. Therefore, we have to deal with bias and subjectivity in assessing historical events, especially the Soviet period.

3. Unfortunately, the level of historical training and general political culture of our youth does not create favorable conditions for deep critical understanding and perception of numerous publications that distort the picture of the historical development of our country.

4. The situation is complicated by the lack of textbooks. Available separate textbooks and teaching aids are isolated.

In these conditions, teaching history acquires a general civil meaning.

3. Periodization of world history.

One of the important problems of historical science is the problem of periodization of the development of human society. Periodization is the establishment of chronologically successive stages in social development. The identification of stages should be based on decisive factors common to all countries or leading states.

Since the development of historical science, scientists have developed many different options for the periodization of social development. Today, the periodization of world history is based on two principles: for the early periods of the formation of human society, the material from which the main tools were made and the technology for their production are fundamental. This is how the concepts “Stone Age”, “Copper-Stone Age”, “Bronze Age”, “Iron Age” appeared.

The dating of these periods is established using natural scientific methods (geological, dendrochronology, etc.). With the advent of writing in human history (about 5,000 years ago), other grounds for periodization arose. It began to be determined by the time of existence of various civilizations and states, which kept their own account of time

In general, world history is usually divided into four main periods:

Ancient world (the period from the separation of man from the animal world about 2 million years ago until the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 AD).

Middle Ages(the period from the fall of the Western Roman Empire to the beginning of the Renaissance in the 16th century).

New time(from the Renaissance to 1918 - the end of the First World War).

Modern times(from 1919 to the present day).

Conclusion

Whatever subject historians study, they all use scientific categories in their research: historical movement (historical time, historical space), historical fact, theory of study (methodological interpretation).

The historical movement includes the interrelated scientific categories of historical time and historical space.

Historical time moves only forward. Each segment of movement in historical time is woven from thousands of connections, material and spiritual, it is unique and has no equal. History does not exist outside the concept of historical time. Events following one after another form a time series. There are internal connections between events in a time series.

At the end of the 19th century, materialist historians divided the history of society into formations: primitive communal, slaveholding, feudal, capitalist, communist. At the turn of the 21st century, historical-liberal periodization divides society into periods: traditional, industrial, information (post-industrial).

Theories of historical process or theories of study (methodological interpretation) are determined by the subject of history. Theory is a logical diagram that explains historical facts. Historical facts themselves, as “fragments of reality,” do not explain anything. Only a historian gives an interpretation of a fact, which depends on his ideological and theoretical views. What distinguishes one theory of the historical process from another? The difference between them lies in the subject of study and the system of views on the historical process. Each theory-scheme selects from a variety of historical facts only those that fit into its logic. Based on the subject of historical research, each theory identifies its own periodization, defines its own conceptual apparatus, and creates its own historiography. Various theories They identify only their own patterns or alternatives - variants of the historical process and offer their vision of the past, make their forecasts for the future.

Only the facts of history can be true; the interpretation of these facts is always subjective. Facts tendentiously selected and arranged into a predetermined logical and semantic scheme (without explanation or conclusions) cannot claim to be an objective history, but are merely an example of a hidden selection of facts of a certain theory.

Different theories of study that explain real historical facts have no advantage over each other. All of them are “truthful, objective, correct” and reflect the difference in worldviews, systems of views on history and modern society. Criticism of one theory from the position of another is incorrect, since it replaces the worldview, the subject of study. Attempts to create a general (single), universal theory, that is, to unite different theories - worldviews (subjects of study), are anti-scientific, as they lead to a violation of cause-and-effect relationships and to contradictory conclusions.

List of used literature:

Barg M. Civilizational approach to history // Communist, 1991, No. 3.

Grechko P.K. Conceptual Models of History: A Guide for Students. M.: Logos, 1995.

Danilevsky N.Ya. Russia and Europe. M.: Book, 1991.

Ionov I.N. The theory of civilization and the evolution of scientific knowledge // Social Sciences and Modernity, 1997, No. 6.

Klyuchevsky V.O.. Course of Russian history. M., 1956. T. I. Part I.

Marx M., Engels F. Sobr. Op. T. 13, 22.

Rakitov A.I. Historical knowledge: a systemic-gnoseological approach. M.: Politizdat, 1982.

Savelyeva I.M., Poletaev A.V. History and time: in search of the lost. Languages ​​of Russian culture. M., 1997.

Semennikova L.I. Civilizations in the history of mankind. Bryansk: Kursiv, 1998.

Toynbee A. Comprehension of history. M., 1991.

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History belongs to the humanities. At its center is man (the social manifestation of man, man as an individual in different historical eras). The subject of historical science is all manifestations of human life, from the birth of society to the present. The main task is knowledge (study and comprehension) of the past of humanity - knowledge necessary to understand the current state of human society and foresee its development in the future. Any branch of scientific knowledge goes through 2 stages: 1. Empirical period (collection of materials). 2. Scientific reflection (science understanding itself). In history, the problem of the objectivity of scientific knowledge is acutely raised (political views influence the results of knowledge). Functions of history: educational, cognitive, cultural and educational, social and political. Main directions:

1) “New historical science” (30s French “school of annals”, L. Fevry M. Blok) – total (“global”) history, i.e. holistic, synthetic history, aimed at studying the history of people and individual human communities, all aspects of their lives and activities. The main methods (methodological revolution) are interdisciplinary (involving representatives of other social sciences in joint research work) and comparative (comparative-historical, M. Blok) approaches. Characteristic feature(F. Braudel) – in contrast to event-descriptive history and the explanation of past events by the action of universal laws, the main attention was paid to the selection and interpretation of such sources that make it possible to study everything that makes up a person’s life (“history of mentalities”).

2) “new social history” (80s) – history is understood as the social interaction of people. Subdisciplines - "new labor history", "women's history" (gender history), "peasant studies", "local" and "oral" history.

3) historical anthropology - historical reality is shown through the state and development of human consciousness.

4) “new cultural history” - a description of historical reality through the use of a cultural or sociocultural approach, methods of cultural anthropology, social psychology, and linguistics.

5) “history of everyday life” - its subject of study is private life in a variety of manifestations.

Basic approaches:

Formational approach – Marx-Engels-Lenin; historical process – process of change of tax-economic formations (PO→slave→feudal→capital→commun); “+” is easy to understand, concepts are well developed, economics is well studied, general development is highlighted; “-” commune leads to it, studying only through economics, not all countries go through these stages

Civilization approach – Danilevsky-Sorokin-Toyneball; ist process - a change of civilizations that existed at different times in different territories (K.Rus, M.Rus, Russian Empire, USSR, Russian Federation); “+” in the center of attention of a person who studies the uniqueness of civilizations; “-” is difficult to understand, there is no consensus on the definition of civilization, you can get lost in the details.

Conclusion: the main one is the digital approach, but both have the right to life. Forms are part of the Civ approach to studying economics.

Sources: written (narrative - chronicles, essays, memoirs; document - state, private). Material (movable - weapons, tools; immovable - cities, temples). Complex (monuments with inscriptions).

Introduction

History is one of the oldest sciences, it originated in Greece and dates back about 2500 years. In ancient Greek mythology, the patroness of history is the muse Clio, the daughter of Zeus and Mnemosyne, the goddess of memory. The scroll and slate stick in her hands are a symbol and guarantee that nothing should disappear without a trace. The ancients valued history very much and called it “magistra vitae” (teacher of life).

The original meaning of the word “history” goes back to the Greek “ioropia”, which means “investigation”, “recognition”, “establishment”. Thus, initially “history” was identified with the method of recognizing and establishing true events and facts.

In Roman historiography, the meaning of history began to be perceived as a story about the events of the past, that is, the center of gravity was transferred from the study of the past to the narration of it. During the Renaissance, a third meaning of the concept of “history” emerged. History began to be understood as a type of literature, the special function of which was to establish and record the truth.

1. History

history social scientific

History was not considered as an independent field of knowledge, especially scientific, for a long time. In the 6th century, such a concept as lagograph historians emerged - the authors of the first historical works. One of them was Herodotus (5th century BC). Today he is considered the father of history. Herodotus came from Halicarnassus, a Dorian city located in southwest Asia Minor in Caria. In his youth, Herodotus, after the defeat of his “party” in the political struggle against the tyrant Halicarnassus, fled to the island of Samos, from where he subsequently made a series of trips to several lands then known to the Greeks. Presumably, he traveled around part of Asia Minor and the Middle East, visited Egypt, visited some cities of the Hellespont, Macedonia, Thrace, perhaps reaching the Northern Black Sea region, and also visited, of course, a number of policies in the very Balkan Greece. Finding ourselves around 445 BC. - 444 BC in Athens, Herodotus gave public readings there, for which he was awarded by the Athenian people an incredibly large sum of 10 talents. Having gone with other colonists to the pan-Greek colony of Thurii, Herodotus may have visited some other cities of Magna Graecia. Around the mid-420s, Herodotus died in the same Thurii, leaving behind his only work - “History”.

However, history was not considered as an independent field of knowledge, especially scientific, for a long time. It did not have its own subject during the period of Antiquity, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, and even during the Enlightenment. How is this fact consistent with the fairly high prestige and widespread prevalence of historical knowledge? How to reconcile it with the huge number of works containing historical information, from Herodotus and Thucydides, through countless medieval chronicles, chronicles and “hagiographies”, to historical studies of the early modern era? This is explained by the fact that history has been integrated into the general system of knowledge for a long time. In the eras of Antiquity and the Middle Ages, it existed and developed in combination with mythology, religion, theology, literature and, to some extent, geography. During the Renaissance, it was given a powerful impetus by geographical discoveries, the flowering of art, and political theories. In the XVII-XVIII centuries. history was connected with political theory, geography, literature, philosophy, and culture.

The need to isolate scientific knowledge itself began to be felt since the time of the natural science revolution (XVII century). However, even at the beginning of the 19th century, the “non-division” of “philosophical” and scientific knowledge, on the one hand, and science itself into disciplines, on the other, continued to persist.

One of the first attempts to determine the place of history as a scientific discipline with its own subject was made by the German philosopher W. Krug in his work “The Experience of a Systematic Encyclopedia of Knowledge.” The circle divided sciences into philological and real, real into positive (legal and theological) and natural, natural into historical and rational, etc. In turn, the “historical” sciences were divided into geographical (place) and historical (time) disciplines.

At the end of the 19th century. French philosopher A. Naville divided all sciences into three groups:

1. “Theorematics” - “sciences about the limits of possibilities or laws” (mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, psychology, sociology).

2. “History” - “sciences about realized possibilities or facts” (astronomy, geology, botany, zoology, mineralogy, human history).

3. “Canon” - “the science of possibilities, the implementation of which would be good, or of ideal rules of behavior” (morality, art theory, law, medicine, pedagogy).

2. The subject of history as a science: purpose, objectives of study, socially significant functions

history social scientific

The study of any science begins with defining the concepts with which it operates in the process of cognition of both nature and society. From this point of view, the question arises: what is history as a science? What is the subject of its study? In answering this question, it is first of all necessary to distinguish between history as any process of development of nature and society, closely related to each other, and history as the science of these processes.

Considering history as a science in the development of human society in all its diversity, it is necessary to represent the totality of specific and diverse actions and actions of individual people, human communities, which are in a certain relationship, constituting all of humanity, the subject of the study of history is the activities and actions of people, the entire set of relationships in society.

Famous Russian historian V.O. Klyuchevsky wrote about history as a science: “In scientific language, the word “history” is used in a double sense: as movement in time, a process, and as knowledge of the process. Therefore, everything that happens in time has its own history. The content of history, as a separate science, a special branch of scientific knowledge, is the historical process, i.e. the course, conditions and successes of human society or the life of mankind in its development and results" (V.O. Klyuchevsky. Course of Russian History. M., 1956. T. I. Part I. P. 14).

Historians study their subject in a diversified way over time, in parts, from different angles. Disorder, fragmentation, unevenness, “white spots” and “gray niches” of the past - such is the fabric of historical time. But historical knowledge in general allows, when necessary, to turn your gaze and see all the diversity of the “world of history,” structures and connections, events and actions, the existence of peoples and the everyday life of heroes and “little” people, everyday consciousness and the global worldview.

Due to the fact that the content of historical science is the historical process, revealed in the phenomena of human life, and these phenomena are extremely diverse, therefore history is a multidisciplinary science, it is composed of a number of independent branches of historical knowledge, namely: political history, civil, cultural history, military history, history of state and law, etc.

History is also divided according to the breadth of study of the object: the history of the world as a whole (world or universal history); history of world civilizations; history of continents (history of Asia and Africa, Latin America); history of individual countries and peoples (history of the USA, Canada, China, Russia, etc.).

A number of auxiliary historical disciplines have also emerged that develop general questions of the methodology and technology of historical research. Among them: paleography (the history of writing), numismatics (coins, orders, medals), toponymy (the study of names of geographical places), source studies (general techniques and methods for studying historical sources), etc.

History is a concrete science that requires precise knowledge of chronology (dates), facts, events. It is related to other humanities and social sciences. These relations developed differently in different periods, but the largest representatives of historiography have always believed in the “common market” of the social sciences. This belief continues today. The interpenetration and mutual enrichment of social sciences, the so-called interdisciplinarity, is a phenomenon characteristic of the 20th century. It is due to the demarcation of social sciences, their separation into independent fields of knowledge, as a result of which the process of division of labor and specialization was accompanied by deepening relationships.

History, as well as other humanities and social sciences of the late XIX-XX centuries. did not escape the influence of psychology. They were very popular at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. G. Le Bon’s books “Psychological Laws of the Evolution of Peoples” (Le Bon. 1894) and “Psychology of Peoples and Masses” (Le Bon. 1895), which substantiated the assumption of the entry of European society into the “era of the crowd”, when a reasonable critical principle, embodied in the individual, suppressed by irrational mass consciousness. The Austrian psychologist S. Freud believed that his concept of the “subconscious” could be the key to understanding historical figures, and Freud’s “Essay on Leonardo da Vinci,” written in 1910, was essentially the first attempt at psychohistory.

The term “psychohistory” appeared in the 50s in the USA, where journals on psychohistory were published at that time. Their heroes were such historical figures as Hitler, Trotsky, Gandhi, etc. Psychoanalysis had a great influence on the criticism of some historical sources - diaries, letters, memoirs.

In general, the flourishing of psychohistory turned out to be short-lived, and its possibilities were limited.

Today, both the significance and the limitations of psychoanalysis for their discipline are obvious to historians. The areas where psychoanalysis can be effectively used are outlined quite clearly: the study of outstanding personalities, the study of cultural traditions. The task of synthesizing history and psychology, if it makes sense, is still a matter for the future.

Compared to other humanities and social sciences that study any one aspect of social life, history differs in that the subject of knowledge is the entire totality of the life of society throughout the entire historical process. In addition, many problems of the past and present, which are dealt with by political scientists, economists, sociologists, ethnologists and other specialists in the humanitarian and social cycle, can be solved only on the basis of a historical approach and historical analysis, on the basis of the work done by historians, because only collection, systematization and generalization of vast factual material allows us to see and understand trends in social development.

The main functions of history are:

The cognitive (intellectual and developmental) function consists primarily of a specific study of the historical path of development of human society (the history of world civilizations), a theoretical generalization of facts and events, as well as identifying the main trends in the history of the development of world civilizations and their characteristics, reflected in historical sources .

The worldview function is that a worldview - a view of the world, society, the laws of its development can be scientific only when it is based on objective reality, that is, historical facts, the foundation on which the science of society is based. One of the most important ideological aspects of studying is the formation of historicism of thinking, because it teaches one to think in historical categories, see society in development, evaluate the phenomena of social life in relation to their past and correlate it with the subsequent course of development.

The practical-political function is that history, by identifying, on the basis of a theoretical understanding of historical facts, the patterns of development of human society, helps to develop a scientifically based political course, analyze and avoid subjective decisions. The educational function contributes to the formation of civic qualities, helps to understand such categories as honor, duty to society, good and evil, and, in general, the moral values ​​of humanity in their development.

3. Periodization of world history

One of the important problems of historical science is the problem of periodization of the development of human society. Periodization is the establishment of chronologically successive stages in social development. The identification of stages should be based on decisive factors common to all countries or leading states.

Since the development of historical science, scientists have developed many different options for the periodization of social development. Today, the periodization of world history is based on two principles: for the early periods of the formation of human society, the material from which the main tools were made and the technology for their production are fundamental. This is how the concepts “Stone Age”, “Copper-Stone Age”, “Bronze Age”, “Iron Age” appeared.

The dating of these periods is established using natural scientific methods (geological, dendrochronology, etc.). With the advent of writing in human history (about 5,000 years ago), other grounds for periodization arose. It began to be determined by the time of existence of various civilizations and states, which kept their own account of time

In general, world history is usually divided into four main periods:

1. The ancient world (the period from the separation of man from the animal world about 2 million years ago until the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 AD).

2. The Middle Ages (the period from the fall of the Western Roman Empire to the beginning of the Renaissance in the 16th century).

3. Modern times (from the Renaissance to 1918 - the end of the First World War).

4. Modern times (from 1919 to the present day).

4. Basic concepts (interpretations) of the historical process and methods of understanding it

People have long tried to understand the complex historical process. What are the stages of history? What are the laws of its development? Humanity is still resolving these and other questions. At different times, different answers were given to them. The presence of different ideological positions led to the presence of different concepts (from the Latin “conceptio” - understanding, system, a certain way of understanding) of world history.

The earliest isChristian interpretation (from the 4th-5th centuries to the mid-18th century). Its main problem is the question of the meaning and content of human earthly history. From the point of view of Christianity, the meaning of history lies in the consistent movement of humanity towards God, in the knowledge of the ultimate truth given to man in Revelation. The content of the historical process is the liberation of man, his transformation into a conscious historical figure. Thus, the “father of history” Herodotus considered the main content of the historical process to be the struggle between Asia and Europe, which by his time resulted in a series of Greco-Persian wars. Historians of later times (Polybeus, for example) considered the main result of the development of human civilization to be the establishment of the power of the Roman Republic throughout the Mediterranean. Part of the Bible - the book of the prophet Daniel - divided world history into periods of existence of one or another empire that dominated the world.

Human history begins with the fall of Adam and Eve and their expulsion from paradise. The idea of ​​the end of history (the end of the world), the timing of which is hidden from the human mind, is hushed up. The fact that different peoples live in different historical times is explained by the difference in the timing of the adoption of Christianity, and therefore the main line of history (Christian peoples) and its dead-end lines (pagan periphery) are identified.

The Christian interpretation of history bequeathed to historical science the idea of ​​world history. Currently, works on Russian history by G. Florovsky, N. Kantorov, A. Nechvolodov - supporters of the Christian concept - have been republished.

With the beginning of modern times, the Christian concept was subjected to critical rethinking. Appearedrationalistic (world-historical) concept of history, which found philosophical and theoretical justification and systematization in the philosophy of history of Hegel and the historical materialism of K. Marx.

The main problem of this concept is the relationship between the spiritual and the natural in the historical process. Both Hegel and Marx considered history to be universal, developing according to general and objective laws. Both thinkers are characterized by the thesis that the most important social institution is the state: as the actual existence of a moral idea (Hegel) or as a political and legal superstructure over the economic basis (Marx). They are also united by the interpretation of historical knowledge - they include both a section related to the study of the factual side of history, and a theoretical and methodological section: philosophy (Hegel) or sociology (Marx). However, Hegel comprehended world history with the help of the then-current concept of “the spirit of the people.” This spirit, according to Hegel, manifests itself in religion, art, science, moral life society, the constitution, the state. Hegel brought to the forefront in the historical process one or another people - the bearer of the absolute spirit. Hegel considered the Ancient East to be the starting point of world history. For Hegel, the eras of the Ancient East, Antiquity, the Middle Ages, and the New Age acted as stages of world history. Throughout the history of mankind, Hegel pursued the idea of ​​development, which was manifested in the extent to which society realized the idea of ​​freedom, the extent to which it embodied this idea in law, government, etc. Marx contrasted materialism with Hegelian idealism in explaining historical development.

Historical materialism, according to Engels, is “a view of the course of world history that finds the final cause and decisive driving force of all important historical events in the economic development of society, in changes in the mode of production and exchange, in the resulting division of society into various classes and in the struggle of these classes among themselves” (Marx K., Engels F. Sobr. soch. T. 22, P. 306).

Mode of production material life, according to Marx, determines the social, political and spiritual processes of life in general. It is not the consciousness of people that determines their existence, but, on the contrary, social existence determines consciousness.

Specification and further development The Marxist understanding of history became the concept of socio-economic formation.

The concept of socio-economic formation in Marxism designates qualitatively unique stages in the history of mankind. There are five such stages, or formations: primitive communal, slaveholding, feudal, capitalist, communist. The transition from one socio-economic formation to another occurs as a result of a social revolution; it is based on the conflict between productive forces and production relations. “At a certain stage of their development,” we read from Marx, “the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production, or - which is only the legal expression of the latter - with the property relations within which they have hitherto developed. From forms of development of productive forces, these relations turn into their fetters. Then comes the era of social revolution" (Marx K., Engels F. Collected works. T. 13, p. 7).

It is in the consistent change of formations that progress lies, the final result of which should be the establishment of a just world order. The new basis gives rise to a new superstructure. Such a transition cannot occur without struggle between people, classes (groups) of people, especially since some classes are exploitative, while others are exploited. History, according to K. Marx, is all permeated with this struggle. Marx considered the class struggle to be the driving force of history, and revolutions its “locomotives.”

The strengths of the formational concept are:

1. Detailed development of the theory of the economic foundation (basis) of society.

2. Discovery of the laws of economic development, showing the internal connections of the social organism (formation);

3. Creation of a clear model of the entire historical development. With its advent, the history of mankind appeared to society as an objective, natural, progressive process in which the main stages and driving forces are visible.

The disadvantages of this concept include:

1. Well-known determinism, in which the freedom of choice of a person, a statesman, is limited. Free will is considered only in terms of compliance with the main trends of socio-economic development or non-compliance with them.

2. Progress in Marxist teaching is viewed linearly; it does not go back.

Formation theory itself general view was formulated by K. Marx as a generalization of the historical path of development of Europe. K. Marx, realizing the diversity of the world, saw that some states do not fit the formational model. Marx attributed these countries to the so-called “Asian mode of production.” However, in Europe, the development of some countries did not always fit into the scheme of five formations.

In the 20s - 30s of the XX century. Marx's theory in the USSR was simplified. A strict law of change in socio-economic formations was formulated, which included all world development. Everything that did not fit into the formational model of development was considered historical features. The theory of three echelons of development of world capitalism was put forward. The developed countries of the West were classified as the first echelon, Russia - as the countries of the second echelon (catching up development). Many countries from former colonies got into the third tier. The development of this theory reflected the desire to improve the concept of the formation approach.

Thus, the rationalistic (world-historical) interpretation of history was of great scientific importance for understanding historical development. But its inherent Eurocentrism made it difficult to to a certain extent a reflection of the multidimensionality, multivariance, diversity of the historical process, and this led to the emergence of alternative concepts of historical development.

This is how it appearedcultural-historical interpretation of history.

The main structural unit of the historical process, from the point of view of this approach, is “civilization”. The term “civilization” comes from the Latin root “civil” - state, urban, civil. It was used in contrast to the word "silvaticus", which translated from Latin means forest, rough, wild. The word "civilization" was originally used with three common meanings. The first is a synonym for culture, the second is the stage of social development following barbarism, the third is the level, stage of social development of material and spiritual culture. Due to the universality and ambiguity of this category, it is difficult to define. There are more than a hundred definitions of “civilization.” However, for this approach to the historical process, the understanding of “civilization” as an integral social system, all of whose components are closely interconnected and bear the stamp of the originality of a particular civilization, is of great importance. The system itself has an internal (independent) functioning mechanism.

This approach was typical for the Russian thinker of the 19th century. N.Ya. Danilevsky (1822-1885), who wrote about civilization that “the main thing... should be the difference between cultural and historical types, so to speak, independent, unique plans of religious, social, everyday, industrial, political, scientific, artistic, in a word , historical development (Danilevsky N.Ya. Russia and Europe. M., 1991. P. 85).

The famous English historian and sociologist A. Toynbee (1889-1975) also represented civilization as an integral social system. “Civilizations,” he believed, “are wholes, the parts of which are consistent with each other and interdependent... All aspects of the social life of a civilization in a stage of growth are coordinated into a single social whole, where economic, political and cultural elements are coordinated due to internal harmony.” (Toynbee A.D. Comprehension of history. Vol. I, p. 34).

According to scientists, the essence of civilization, its originality is determined by a number of factors: the natural environment, the farming system, the political system and social organization of society, religion (or ideology elevated to the rank of religion), spiritual values, mentality. At the same time, special attention is paid to mentality.

With the search for a solution to the problem of the method of cognition and the subject of history, the famous German philosopher and historian O. Spengler (1880-1936) began developing his concept of historical development, who published his book “The Decline of Europe” (Russian translation. Vol. I, 1923) on the eve of the First World War .). What is the subject of history and in what language is the book of history written? - asks the German thinker. Answering these questions, he develops the thesis that the subject of history cannot only be the laws of social development. Knowledge of history cannot be reduced only to the search for cause-and-effect relationships between phenomena and events. History deals with living forms of “being”, and in them fate and elements of chance play a significant role.

The content of world history, according to Spengler, consists of the phenomena of individual cultures that follow each other, a series of cultures growing, touching, shading and suppressing one another.

Spengler was a passionate and convinced supporter of the uniqueness and originality of different cultures. Not only antiquity and Western Europe, but also India, Egypt, China, Babylon, Arab and Mexican cultures were considered by him as changing manifestations and expressions of a single life at the center of everything. None of the cultures, according to Spengler, should occupy a predominant position. They all have same value in the overall picture of history. At the basis of each individual culture, according to Spengler, lies “its own great soul, its own ideal form, its own prototype, or pure type. O. Spengler believed that in all cultures the transition to civilization was accompanied by revolutions of the poor, the emergence of egalitarian ideas, and the establishment of dictatorial regimes.

“Immediation, observation, comparison, direct inner confidence, precise sensory fantasy - these, according to Spengler, are the main means of historical research of cultures and their individual destinies.”

The founders and followers of the historical school that developed around the editorial board of the journal “Annals of Economic and Social History” (1929), the French historians F. Braudel (1886-1944), L. Febvre (1878-1956), saw the problems of world development in their own way. .).

Without attaching primary importance to historical patterns or accidents in explaining the phenomena of the past, they brought to the fore the factor of “environment” (historical time), which, in their opinion, is not measured by a measure of duration, but is, as it were, a plasma in which historical phenomena float and only in it, in this concrete historical “environment,” can they be understood. French historians were interested, first of all, in the life, way of life, and mentality of peoples.

The problems of the civilizational approach to the knowledge of history were of concern in the 19th-20th centuries. not only foreign, but also domestic historians and philosophers. First of all, we should name the original Russian thinker N.Ya. Danilevsky. (1822-1885), who in the book “Russia and Europe” (1869) put forward his concept of world history. The fundamental, essential reality of history appears in Danilevsky in the form of cultural-historical types - special, fairly stable communities or associations of peoples.

N.Ya. Danilevsky identified such distinctive cultures as Egyptian, Indian, Babylonian, Iranian, Roman, Chinese, German-Roman, Jewish, Greek, etc.

In each cultural and historical type, he noted certain stages of development, likening them to living organisms. With this approach, all cultural and historical types, as well as the peoples that compose them, “are born, reach various stages of development, grow old, become decrepit and die.” All cultural-historical types have natural ambition, a tendency to expand the limits of their activities and their influence; historical instincts, that is, sympathies and higher moral principles that determine their life activity, the uniqueness of their final goal or destiny. Relations between cultural and historical types, according to Danilevsky, are rigid. They are permeated with the logic of mutual struggle, repression, and discord. Clashes between peoples are like storms and thunderstorms in nature. Strong and energetic cultural-historical types put to death decrepit, agonizing cultural-historical types.

However, the relations between cultural and historical types are not limited to the logic of struggle. They are more multidimensional. Each cultural and historical type makes its own contribution to the diverse and unified civilizational life of humanity. The process is not “for everyone to go in the same direction, but for the entire field, which constitutes the field of historical activity of mankind, to proceed in different directions.”

According to Danilevsky, there are not and should not be privileged cultural and historical types in the world. No civilization can lay claim to the standard of human coexistence. But each is unattainably great in one thing, uniquely its own - in relation to its historical destiny, its spiritual origin, its idea. Art, the development of the idea of ​​beauty, is a distinctive feature of Greek civilization; law and political organization - Roman; the promotion and most complete development of the “idea of ​​the one true God” - the Jewish one; sciences about the nature of the German-Roman. The Slavic civilization, led by Russia, according to Danilevsky, is just unfolding and gaining historical momentum. But its goal has already been outlined quite clearly - a fair structure for the socio-economic life of people.

The strengths of the civilizational method are:

1. “Humanizing history.” Man is the beginning and end of history. This is the main advantage of this method.

2. Its universality, because it is focused on understanding the history of society, taking into account countries and regions. Its principles apply to the history of any country or group of countries. This makes it possible to gain a deeper understanding of historical processes, their features, and helps to identify the intrinsic value of each society, its place in world history and culture.

3. Its most important advantage is the idea of ​​history as a multivariate, multilinear process.

4. Great importance for understanding the historical process is given to religion, culture, mentality of peoples, that is, spiritual, moral and intellectual factors.

But, like any theory, the civilizational approach also has weaknesses:

1. Universality, being an advantage of the theory, is also a disadvantage, since these principles actively work mainly at the “global level”, and the development of specific problems requires the use of other techniques.

2. The weakness of this approach lies in the amorphous nature of the criteria for identifying types of civilization. In some civilizations it prevails economic beginning, in others - political, in others - religious, and in others - cultural.

3. Great difficulties arise for researchers when considering issues of mentality (mentality) of peoples. The spiritual, moral, intellectual structures of humanity undoubtedly play vital role, but their indicators are vague and barely perceptible.

4. There is an insufficient development of the conceptual apparatus of this methodology. Suffice it to say that today there is no single criterion for defining such a basic category as “civilization.”

5. Development prospects

All this taken together allows us to conclude that both approaches - formational and civilizational - make it possible to consider the historical development of human society from different angles, from different sides.

Today there is no particular reason to abandon many of the provisions of Marxism in understanding the historical process. In particular, the concept of “formation” has not lost its relevance, just do not make it absolute. It cannot be argued that all peoples who have embarked on the path of civilizational development necessarily go through all five stages identified by Marx, but such a stage, for example, as feudalism, is generally recognized. The civilizational approach also has every right to exist. For within the framework of one formation several civilizations can exist simultaneously, and some civilizations exist, passing through several formational stages during their history.

Each of the approaches under consideration has strengths and weaknesses, but if you do not go to extremes, but take the best that is available in both methodologies, historical science will only benefit.

Conclusion

The prospects for the development of history as a science can be concluded in the fact that humanitarian knowledge is one of the central sciences in the world. It crosses various flows of information that come from all other branches of knowledge.

Human belonging to nature, society, and culture is especially clearly manifested in the general laws of existence, which are considered by philosophy and mathematics. From this we can conclude that the humanities have the most likely prospects for development.

History as a science does not stand still, but inevitably moves forward. Archives are being collected, excavations are being carried out, and various studies are being carried out. All these events definitely advance science towards studying man’s past and predicting his future. Time does not stand still, and various political events are constantly happening. Scientific and technological progress presents scientists with new opportunities in studying finds: X-ray diffraction and radiocarbon analyses, magnetoscopy, and other modern research methods. Such approaches advance the study of the past to a higher quality level and create all the conditions for the further development of historical science.

The unity of the past, present and future is the root of peoples’ interest in their history. History is intended to facilitate self-awareness for society and people and show the path to self-improvement. The past does not go away without a trace, it has no boundaries, it cannot be canceled. Its oblivion is a tragedy for subsequent generations, for human society cannot develop without a spiritual heritage. Without it, it is doomed to degradation.

To guide the activities of the present, it is necessary to assimilate the historical experience, knowledge and methods of thinking that previous generations have developed.