Konstruktivismus und die Traditionen der Historik

Abstract

The present article undertakes a systematic exposition of three divergent domains, ranging from core topics of radical constructivism up to current options of the historical sciences. In the first part, a constructivist explication of various concepts is performed which centres around notions like memory, remembering, time or communication. In a second step, a brief review is presented on major perspectives with respect to the philosophy of history, starting from the unexpectedly modern views within the enlightenment period and leading to the objective approaches of German historicism and, finally, to the current postobjectivist traditions. In a final section, two radically different options for contemporary historical sciences are outlined, namely, first, a literary departure of historiography and, second, a new orientation of the historical sciences as a theory of large-scale dynamical systems.