Paul Recoeur and the Philosophy-History Dialogue

Abstract

            Recoeur’s philosophical conception of History has rejected any philosophical thought which assumes that history is predefined or can be defined. His conception transcends conventional philosophical modes of enquiry. Recoeur suggests that a new philosophical reading of history is crucial. This novel reading ought to be the result of a process of continuous dialogue and conversation with different methods of interpretations in the field of the humanities and historical knowledge. This unconventional reading of history should also accommodate both epistemological and methodological modes of historical enquiry like in the case of the wave of “New History” is France which offered a methodological study of history; and those historical studies which were purely epistemological like the ones conducted by Raymond Aron, Henry Marou and Paul Veyne, of which they unfold under what is known in Germany as Critical Philosophy of History.