Modern historical epistemology through the prism of Paul Ricoeur’ transactions

Abstract

In this article it is carried out the contribution of Paul Ricoeur, the leading theorist of modern humanitarian knowledge, in the elaboration of the modern historical epistemology problems. His diverse works affect all sense fields of history and historical perception. The article shows the place of Paul Ricoeur as a primary guide of philosophical hermeneutic tradition achievements in the sphere of historical research, moreover, as a thinker, who gives a principal possibility to surmount divisions of different historiographical trends and find a methodological consensus in regard to basic orientations of historical scholarship. On the basis of his works the dialectic of a historical objectivity and a personal subjectivity of historian, the interoperability issues of history and historical memory are traced. At the same time this paper touches principals dichotomies, basic for the Paul Ricoeur’s considerations, such as fiction and historical narration, structure and event, history and truth, memory and imagination, scientism and art of interpretation, human action and social constraint. The contents of a current debate on the theory of history, based on the development of the Ricoeur’s “defatalisation” of history concept and utopian future vision are shown.