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According to William James, "history" is "a double-barrelled word," in that it quite properly refers both to the facts of the past themselves and to an understanding or account of these facts. This seems to me to be one of the two distinctions that need to be employed in answering the question, What is history?

Wiki MarkupThe other arises from the two different ways in which we can experience facts of the past and understand or give an account of them. Rudolf Bultmann clarifies these two ways when he says that "the one reality \ [_sc_. of the past\] can be seen under a double aspect in accordance with our double possibility as human beings of existing authentically or inauthentically. In inauthentic existence we understand ourselves in terms of the world that stands at our disposal, whereas in authentic existence we understand ourselves in terms of the future of which we cannot dispose. Correspondingly, we can look at the history of the past in an objectifying way or else as personal address, insofar as in it the possibilities of human selfunderstanding become perceptible and summon us to responsible choice" (_NTM_: 158).

My view is that Bultmann's clarification is only strengthened if his distinction between the objectifying and existential ways of experiencing the past is seen to be a high-level special case of Whitehead's still more fundamental distinction between "perception in the (pure) mode of presentational immediacy," or "the (mixed) mode of symbolic reference," on the one hand, and "perception in the (pure) mode of causal efficacy," on the other. But be this as it may, both the facts of the past and our understanding or account of them are different, depending upon whether or not we turn to them in an objectifying way or, rather, in an existential way, allowing that, in the economy of human existence, both ways are necessary if we are either to
survive or to prosper.

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". . .it belongs to a historical event that it has a meaning in the continuous course of history, a meaning that first raises it to the rank of a historical event" (135).unmigrated-wiki-markup).

". . . historical phenomena are \ [not\] ambiguous, but they are many-sided. They can be seen under several aspects, under different perspectives. And this is so because human beings themselves are complex. They consist of body and soul (or if one prefers, of body, soul, and spirit); they are possessed of drives and reason; they have material and spiritual needs, wishes, and imagination.... It is just as possible, therefore, to see and describe history as political history as to see and describe it as the history of economics, the history of problems, the history of ideas, or the history of individuals and personalities.... Each of these ways of looking at history is open to one side of the phenomena, and something objectively right becomes evident under every aspect (provided there are not any methodical errors). The picture is falsified only when one way of looking is absolutized and turned into a dogma....

"In every perspective something objectively right is seen. The subjectivity of historians (given the strictness of their methods) does not mean that they see falsely, but only that they choose certain ways of asking questions. Without such, however, no picture of history can be projected at all, insofar as it seeks to get beyond a merely chronological and narrative presentation and tries to show the play of forces in the course of events and their connection" (135 f.).

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"Even in this case understanding history gives rise to a scientific, 'objectifying' presentation.... The living participation of historians in history, their existential encounter with it, shifts into the role of a means for acquiring 'objective' historical knowledge. Thus historians who are involved the most intensively and the most passionately force themselves to a perceiving that attains the highest degree of objectivity....

Wiki Markup"But while \ [the genuine understanding of history\] soon becomes the means to an objectifying presentation and submits its knowledge to discussion, there is an existential understanding that is solely my own and out of which there can indeed arise a practical way of leading my life but not any objectifying presentation" (137 ff.).

"If we question history out of a lively concern with our own problems, it really begins to speak to us. Through discussion with the past it comes alive, and in learning to know history we learn to know our own present: historical knowledge is at the same time knowledge of ourselves. To understand history is possible only for one who does not stand over against it as a neutral, nonparticipating spectator but also stands within it and shares responsibility for it. We speak of this encounter with history that grows out of one's own historicity as the 'existential encounter.' The historian participates in it with the whole of his or her existence.

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"... the historical meaning of an event can be understood only from the standpoint of its future. Its future belongs to the very essence of the event" (157).unmigrated-wiki-markup

"If ... the science of history seeks to clarify the possibilities of self-understanding that are manifested by human decisions, it must also present the concrete situations of past history. But these situations disclose themselves only to an objectifying view of the past. Even if such a view cannot grasp the historical meaning of an act or an event, it nevertheless can and must seek to know the sheer facts of acts and events and, in this sense, to establish 'how it really was.'... Therefore, it is quite clear that existentialist interpretation of history has need of objectifying observation of the historical past. Even if such observation cannot grasp the historical meaning of an act or an event, existentialist interpretation is equally unable to dispense with the (most reliable possible) determination of facts.... If one means by 'fact' a historical fact in the full sense, inclusive of its meaning and its significance in the continuum of historical processes, the statement \ [_sc_. Nietzsche's statement that there are no facts but only interpretations\] is correct. In this sense a fact is always an 'interpretation,' a picture drawn by the historian who is personally involved in it. But an interpretation clearly is not a creature of fantasy but the interpretation of something, and this something to be interpreted is the 'fact' that (within whatever limits) is accessible to the historian's objectifying view" (158 f.).