Decontesting Historical Consciousness (Routledge Approaches to History)

Decontesting Historical Consciousness provides a comprehensive exploration of historical consciousness, redefining it not just as an academic concept but as a fundamental human state of mind essential for navigating the modern world.By approaching historical consciousness from an ontological perspective, and by viewing humans and the world as both “history-made” and “history-making,” the text illuminates how our understanding of the past directly shapes our individual well-being and collective survival. After an overview of how historical consciousness has been defined over time, this book offers a new ontological definition of the concept.Then it proceeds to analysing the historicity of the world and the human, the historicity of time and historical narratives, and the ways in which history is used.Further, the book discusses the relation of historical consciousness to historical knowledge and historical thinking.A distinctive feature of the work is the introduction of original typolo