What does history study and what is its meaning?

What does history study? There was never an unambiguous answer to this question. Karl Jaspers, reflecting on this topic, said that when we try to peer into history, it immerses us in the very mystery of human existence. This is our past, which made us the way we are. Or, at least, as we imagine ourselves to be. Therefore, we ask similar questions: where does everything come from, where does it lead to and what does it actually mean? The need to refer to the past and keep records of various events has very deep roots. At first, history was only a chronological (and not always) pile of events and phenomena. The latter are called facts. Actually, the fact that studying history, namely the main structural elements on which the whole process of research, which is characteristic of this science, is based.

However, the accumulation of some facts was completely inadequate for the emergence of a scholarly discourse. Theoretical reasoning begins with the search for a connection between events and phenomena. When people start trying to find the meaning of what is happening or bringing it, to see the goals or causes of what happened and will happen, then science also arises. There is a rationalization of history. It is as if it stands out in a special world that remains outside of us and at the same time has some kind of communication with us. But when we begin to ask questions about the essence of this particular being, we thereby carry out its philosophical analysis. He also answers questions about what history is studying.

Even initially, when the formation of this science took place in the archaic period, no theorizing could do without structures and categories. After all, any concept used in this area, such as a city or people, state or slaves, is no longer a historical fact. This is a category that generalizes it. Therefore, history also studies these concepts, and the relationship between them and the events that have taken place. When we search for the meaning of the facts and try to understand whether they fit into any system, we often think not even about what was and will be, but about what should be. Thus, we are looking not only for what history is studying, but also for what it leads us to or for which we all should come ideally.

This is how the notion of special time, a process that has a beginning and an end, arises. This historical category, too, was understood in different ways. In ancient times, time was a symbol of depravity, a fall from the "golden age". Then came the concept of development - the epic history of individual peoples. And then, at the end of the ancient era, after Augustine, a theory of progress arose. It said that history is a linear time, passing from falling to salvation, that it has a hidden meaning, the main driving force of which is God and His plan. In fact, all the later secular theories about successive progressive formations repeating the meaning of Augustine's ideas about the movement from hell to heaven, only interpreted them in a social sense.

Since the earliest times, the study of history and philosophy has also focused on policy analysis. However, this was not an analysis of real events but rather a search for ideal forms of the state and legislation. Then, in the Renaissance, the analysis of law prevailed over the consideration of types of political systems, and the latter were placed in dependence on the first. At the present stage, a whole science has emerged. It is called political history. It analyzes the real-time processes. Thinking that political history is studying, one can say that now it reflects not only over what is happening today, but tries to bring modern events from the traditions of former eras.