Mr. Huizinga. Methodology J. Huizinga. Huizinge's definition of history

The twentieth century passed in disputes about history. Nazis and liberals, defenders of empires and fighters for the liberation of peoples began to draw inspiration from it. For each of them, history was divided into the correct one, that is, pleasing to them, and the other one, into the one that did not fit into their standards.

There was also academic history, scrupulously, to the point of dejection, collecting facts. There was a fictional story that delighted millions of readers and carried them a moral charge, which, as a rule, depended on the morality of the author. But in little Holland there was a man who turned the first, the second, and the third upside down. He showed that there is another story. His name was Johan Huizinga.

On the benefits of cultural unprofessionalism

Today, few people remember the names of the first Nobel laureates in literature. The very first, in 1901, was received by the half-forgotten, or rather almost forgotten now, French poet Sully-Prudhomme. And the next year, in 1902, it was awarded to Theodor Mommsen, a pillar of German historical science and, perhaps, of all European science. For his Roman History. This was no exception in the history of literary Nobeliana. Winston Churchill became the winner for the second time in 1953 for his memoirs about the Second World War, which have all the signs of historical research.

But Mommsen's work was exemplary. Amazingly well-founded, devoid of the slightest emotionality, with carefully verified facts, emphatically critical of any dubious statements of contemporaries, similar to a cross-examination of an honest investigator, discarding everything unnecessary. This work was a triumph of balance, impartiality.

The next year after receiving Nobel Prize Mommsen has gone to another world. And, perhaps, together with him in the nineteenth century remained the science that claimed: "History is a fact." No, the twentieth century answered him: "History is an interpretation." And he asked himself the question: "Where are its boundaries?"

After all, the fact relies on the source. But historical source- this is just a trace, and incomplete, of what happened in the past. Consequently, in reality, history does not deal with facts, but with their essentially inferior traces. From which, in turn, it follows that objectivism in the spirit of Mommsen is just one of the interpretations. Others are possible.

In other words: if we refuse to strictly follow (albeit with a degree of criticism) the chronicles of the past, then we must give ourselves free rein. But at the same time follow, as one of the reformers of historical science Mark Blok said, "the law of honesty, which obliges the historian not to put forward any provisions that could not be verified." So, the first condition is formulated - intellectual honesty.

And yet even this is not enough. No one can escape from himself, from his world. The personality of the historian leaves an imprint on what he writes. Arnold J. Toynbee, the inventor of the history of mankind as the history of civilization, now very popular, was not just a believing Christian. For him, Christ - the Savior - was the only truly noteworthy character in all of human history. The civilizational history of Toynbee, set out in the multi-volume "Comprehension of History", no matter what it analyzes - the Islamic area or the Celestial Empire, the Mayan civilization or the failed northern Christian civilization - is subject to one idea: Christ is the only one who deserves that each individual person studied with him.

Toynbee's Russian antipode, Lev Gumilyov, examines history (perhaps without realizing it himself) based on his long camp experience. History for him is one big Zone, from where only furious passionaries are able to escape. The escape of a passionary from the Zone is both the campaigns of Genghis Khan and the expansion of the territory of its habitation by the Moscow dynasty.

Neither Toynbee nor Gumilyov sinned against the facts. But their interpretations imposed a unique, inimitable interpretation of history. There are no vulnerabilities in these interpretations. You just have to believe in them. By the way, both Toynbee and Gumilyov, being, of course, anti-Marxists, it is precisely in this, in the amazing "fitting", impenetrableness of their interpretations, that they are surprisingly similar to their main ideological enemy - Karl Marx.

This path, perhaps not entirely false, but archaic. What if we go the other way?

In 1915, a voluminous book was published in Holland, to very few people before that familiar researcher Johan Huizinga "Autumn of the Middle Ages". The book was subtitled: "A study of the forms of life and forms of thought in France and the Netherlands in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries." If there were really grandiose discoveries in the 20th century, they were contained in this book. All previous and subsequent interpretations concerned, for the most part, social, economic, political developments in the history of mankind. Heroes, commanders, kings, leaders of revolts, financial swindlers, organizers of witty ambushes, adventurers - and anyone else acted in this story.

Plus - the "popular masses". Either passively floating on the waves of the historical process, then - according to another version - active creators of history.

And suddenly there was a person who was simply not interested in all this. How uninteresting to interpret anything in one way or another.

There was a man who brought to the fore the way of life and forms of thinking. That is, what later received the now super popular name - mentality. Huizinga did not come up with this term - he appeared a little later in France, in the early 20s of the twentieth century. But Huizinga was the first to take mentality to heart, who showed how to find an approach to its study.

The most interesting thing is that Johan Huizinga did not have a formal historical education. He became a historian by chance, when fate forced him to go to teach history in one of the Dutch schools. But it was precisely this, perhaps, that gave that freshness of sight that introduced him to the number of true pioneers of the new. And where, it seemed, nothing new could be discovered.

At the same time, a bastion of world culture already stood behind him. And two more qualities, about which he himself spoke: "Wisdom and Kindness." His book is reprinted regularly in all languages. And they argue about it to this day. So she hasn't aged at all. As well as something new that Huizinga introduced into the knowledge of history and culture.

How to become wise and kind

Johan Huizinga was born in 1872 in the small town of Groningen, in the north of Holland. Several generations of his ancestors were Protestant priests of the Mennonite persuasion. But at the same time, as the outstanding Russian Christian thinker S. Averintsev, who discovered Huizinga for Russia, wrote: "In the course of Huizinga's spiritual development, this inherited Christianity underwent strong secularization, losing all confessional features and turning into an addition (and correction) to the tradition of classical humanism" .

From the very beginning of his life, Huizinga was an absolute humanitarian, not interested in what is called the exact or natural sciences. Although his father (Hizinga's biographers for some reason stubbornly emphasize the fact that he suffered from acquired syphilis) was engaged in chemistry and biology. In the Huizinga gymnasium, he became interested in Semitic languages - Hebrew and Arabic. Those who knew him noted that he always worked without haste and fuss, while not setting any goals for himself. He studied only what he was interested in in itself. In his autobiography "My Way of a Historian" (after all, a historian!) he says that he was not a diligent reader.

Diligent - from the point of view of the academic process, as it is imagined by the layman, including the settled and burdened with titles and diplomas. At the same time, from his youth, Huizinga gained the fame of a person who gets up early and manages everything. Although his favorite pastime was just lonely walks, during which he thinks so well. He valued his thoughts and tried to simply understand what was in the air.

The Netherlands at the end of the 20th century was a relatively poor country. The rest of the overseas colonies did not bring income to the collapsed empire. The land was poor, and the life of those years is the life captured in Van Gogh's Potato Eaters. The Huizinga family did not have enough money to send their son to Leiden University, where he could continue his study of Semitic languages. I had to confine myself to the university in Groningen, where there was a specialty "Dutch philology". For some reason, the study of Sanskrit was included in this philology.

The young Huizinga was markedly apolitical. I didn't even read any newspapers. Real life, he believed, resides in the human soul. Huizinga revered art above life, more precisely - its highest level.

After Groningen, he continued his studies in Leipzig, where he studied the Slavic languages, as well as Lithuanian and Old Irish. Again, from the point of view of the layman, the classes are empty. His dissertation was called: "On Vidushaka in Indian Drama" (Vidushaka - jester), for which he needed to read most of the ancient Indian plays in Sanskrit. In Huizinga's work, he showed a profound difference between the Eastern understanding of the funny and the European.

After defending his dissertation, he did not find a job in his specialty, and he had to go as an ordinary gymnasium history teacher in Haarlem. He really took up the story as soon as he started telling it. “I didn’t worry about the critical foundation. Most of all I wanted to give a live story,” he recalled. He carried this vivacity into his work. Liveliness, not fiction. It is no coincidence that academic historians have always regarded him with suspicion. “A luxurious thing,” one of them said about “Autumn of the Middle Ages,” just don’t think that it looks like a story.” Another noted that Huizinga "always lacked a solid methodological base." But after the world got acquainted with the works of Huizinga, history as an analysis of mentality itself became a methodology. It is a fact.

There must have been some light in him, for when a place became available in the department of history in Groningen, he applied and was, despite the resistance of the university public, but at the insistence of his teacher, enrolled in the department without a single publication on history. During his teaching period from 1904 to 1915, he published practically nothing. From the point of view of classical university traditions - almost nonsense. But he successfully married the daughter of one of the respectable Groningen burghers, who at the same time held a high position in local government.

Then Huizinga admitted that during these years in his mind there was a break with the East. And rapprochement with European history. First of all, with the late Middle Ages. He himself said that in

During one of his walks, an idea dawned on him: the late Middle Ages are not a harbinger of the future, but the withering away of the past. The history that began with republican Rome was receding into the past. To retell what came out from under his pen is completely pointless. Just reading this text is a pleasure. For the first time, the reader could understand the feelings and thoughts of other, departing people. People from a bygone era. It will then begin to look for the definition of mentality as a connection between time and space in the perception of an individual, as well as codes and signs of this connection.

And then, in the early 1920s, there was a new turn. Having never been to America, Huizinga wrote a book about her, seeing the future in her. The autumn of the Middle Ages is a languid and sweet withering. Modern America is a stormy start to the future.

At this time, he had already moved from Groningen and began teaching at the University of Amsterdam. With the money of the Dutch government, he travels to the United States and writes a second book about this country. He was offered to stay there, but he returned to his homeland. Public acceptance grew. He was even one of the witnesses at the wedding of Princess Juliana and the German financier Bernard, who became a Dutch prince.

Surprisingly, as these lines are written, Prince Bernard is still alive, fully conscious, and on the throne of Holland is his daughter Beatrice.

In 1938, another intellectual innovation - the book "Homo Ludens" - "The Man Playing". In essence, it was the first full-fledged book in the humanities in the field that later became known as "culturology". Today, when mainly people with a lazy mind go to cultural studies, this concept has turned out to be very discredited. But Huizinga showed how through culture, or rather, through a small part of it - through the game, you can see peace and war, politics and poetry, flirting and sports - whatever. It was also a great game of the mind. Huizinga, like no one else, corresponded to the image of the Master of the Game from Hermann Hesse's Bead Game. Yes, and history for him is not so much a science, not so much an art, but a mysterious and beautiful game of beads, where only honesty, wisdom and kindness matter.

His first wife died and he remarried. Huizinga's intellectual status in Europe was unusually high, albeit in rather narrow circles. Nevertheless, for his country he was one of the intellectual and moral leaders. In Europe and America, his ideas sold like hot cakes. Moreover, too many not only did not refer to Huizinga as the primary source of their exercises, but rather sought to prick him more painfully as a brilliant, but non-professional. He was not offended and did not answer anyone's reproaches.

The Second World War threw out a curious piece with the history of Holland. The country was occupied almost without a fight. But Hitler, in some strange way, respected the Dutch in his own way. He even said that if the Germans had the qualities of the Dutch, they would be invincible. Probably referring to the amazing resilience of the inhabitants of the "lower lands". But on the very eve of the war, the nation was, in essence, deconsolidated. For example, the movement for the abolition of the monarchy intensified.

Having managed to move to England, Queen Wilhelmina took on the role of a unifier of the people. Almost daily, she turned to her compatriots on the radio with an appeal not to give up, to preserve her pride. "Grandmother" for the Dutch has become the same symbol of perseverance as De Gaulle for the French or Churchill for the British. And after the war, Wilhelmina, as well as her heirs - Juliana, and then Beatrice - became a ferment in the process of national consolidation.

No words, there were also collaborators. The Dutch even served in the SS units. But the resistance did not stop. Huizinga did not participate in it, but remained a humanist who did not want to give up his positions. And so it was for all anti-Nazis. In the end, the University of Leiden, where by that time (since 1932) Huizinga had been rector, was closed, and he himself ended up in an internment camp. as a hostage. The Nazis knew who to take. But they did not know him. He remained a historian. On October 3, 1942, he gave a lecture to the internees. This happened on the anniversary of the lifting of the siege of Leiden by the Spaniards, which took place in 1574. He spoke of freedom, courage, perseverance. And in the end - about kindness and wisdom. It was his mentality. This was his culture.

German scientists, as well as humanities scientists of occupied Europe who remained at large, were not afraid to speak in his defense. He was released from an internment camp and exiled to live in a small village near Arnhem. There he could witness an attempt by the British and Poles to capture the Arnhem bridge - one of the key European transport crossings. Attempts heroic, ugly organized and unsuccessful.

He was no longer young. He stopped eating and died of exhaustion on February 1, 1945. I think he didn't want to burden anyone with himself. It seems that there was wisdom and kindness in this too.

Culture as professionalism of life and history

"When Guillaume de Marcheau first saw his unknown beloved, he was amazed that she put on an azure-blue cap with green parrots for a white dress, for green is the color of new love, while blue is the color of fidelity." No one before Huizinga wrote history in this way.

But he goes even further. He concludes the story of the troubadour as follows: "The poet was most likely sixty years old when a noble young lady from Champagne, Peronella d" Armenter, being eighteen years old, sent him her first rondelle in 1362, in which she personally offered her heart to her to an unknown poet and asked him to enter into a love correspondence with her. The message inflamed the poor sick poet, blind in one eye and suffering from gout ... "

Huizinga does not write that this was the time of the plague epidemics, when the population of Europe was reduced from 73 to 45 million people. He does not write about the mass uprisings of those years - for example, about the Paris revolt under the leadership of the merchant foreman (Prevost) Etienne Marcel. He does not write about the creation of Burgundy with the current Holland in its composition. He does not write about the "Golden Bull", which weakened the power in the Holy Roman Empire, and the consequences of this bull.

Everything was written before him. Lion Feuchtwanger in his novel "Success" ridiculed such "scientists" that for years they study a stuffed elephant from trunk to tail, and then, in the second half of life, from tail to trunk. History before Huizinga was sometimes in this state. However, sometimes she is in such a state today.

Huizinga does not write about plague epidemics. But he writes about the attitude of people at that time to death. And explores the "Dance of Death", which gained popularity in that era. He writes about culture, by which he understands all the visible evidence that has come down to us in the word, in the image, in other material remnants of time. human soul, human notions. Perhaps not without the influence of Huizinga, one of the characters in the play of the most cultured American prose writer of the twentieth century, Thornton Wilder, "Our Town" exclaims: "Two and a half million people lived in Babylon. What do we know about them?" About what they thought, how and to whom they prayed and why they prayed, how they loved and with what they died.

Culture is mentality. For Huizinga, there are no "bad mentalities" and "good mentalities." They all fit into the cultural space. It is today that the term "mentality" is used to justify various nasty things: "Say what to do - we have such a mentality." Russian politicians, who have never heard of Huizinga, especially like to sin with this.

History can serve as a justification for culture, but it cannot become a word of defense or accusation for politics or political journalism. The danger, according to Huizinga, is "where political interest molds ideal concepts from historical material, which are offered as a new myth, that is, as the sacred foundations of thinking, and are imposed on the masses as faith." He must have been referring to Nazi Germany. But his words apply today to too many historical interpretations.

It turns out that the most pragmatic thing that history has is culture. It opposes myths, prejudices that lead to delusions, and from delusions to crimes.

In another of his famous works - "In the Shadow of Tomorrow", written on the eve of the war, Huizinga noted: "Culture can be called high, even if it has not created technology or sculpture, but it will not be called that if it lacks mercy."

He was aware that culture could not save anyone or anything. Huizinga considered the wars of the past as a form of play, even in its extremes, in contact with culture. But he could not understand the aging Oswald Spengler, who sang of war as an integral part of human existence in general. He noted with sadness and irony that wars had ceased to be a game, even to the slightest extent that they were, as it seemed to him, in the past.

The word "History" traditionally had six meanings. First, history as an incident. Second, as a story. Third, as a development process. Fourth, how is the life of society. Fifth, like everything in the past. Sixth, as a special, historical science.

Johan Huizinga initiated reflections on the seventh meaning. History as culture. And in a broad sense, culture and mentality are the same concepts. For his story. So history is mentality.

To understand in what world Guillaume de Marchaux lived, what signs, codes he used and knew, means to understand the mentality of the Autumn of the Middle Ages. Someday a future historian will look for the key to us, to our signs and codes. And with gratitude, learning, he will re-read Huizinga's books. For if history is culture, then Johan Huizinga was a true "Homo Istorikus". Not many of the "Homo Sapiens" are able to rise to this.

Huizinga Johan, 1872-1945

Dutch philosopher, historian and cultural theorist. Author of works: "Autumn of the Middle Ages" (1919), "Homo Ludens" (1938), "In the Shadow of Tomorrow" (1939), etc.

From 1905 he was a professor at Groningen, and from 1915 at Leiden University. Rector of Leiden University. In 1942, the university was closed by the Nazis, and the rector himself was sent to a concentration camp for hostages.

Oh, if healthy sleep would already make a righteous person out of a person!

There is no universal way back. There is only forward movement, although unfamiliar depths and distances turn our heads, although the near future gapes before us, like an abyss in a fog. Although there is no return to the past, it can give us an instructive lesson, serve as a guide.

Human culture arises and unfolds in the game, like a game.

The epoch, inclined for the sake of the will to live, to reject the norms of knowledge and judgment, is quite suited to the revival of superstition.

) universities.

Johan Huizinga
Johan Huizinga

Date of Birth	December 7(1872-12-07 ) […]
Place of Birth	Groningen
Date of death	1st of February(1945-02-01 ) […] (72 years old) or January 31(1945-01-31 ) (72 years old)
A place of death	Arnhem
A country
Scientific sphere	story
Place of work	University of Groningen, Leiden University
Alma mater	University of Groningen
Academic degree	doctorate [d] (May 28)
Known as	philosopher, cultural historian
Awards and prizes
Quotations on Wikiquote

Media files at Wikimedia Commons

Biography

During the years of the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands, the scientist was arrested and imprisoned from August to October 1942 in a concentration camp, after which he was forbidden to live in Leiden. He died on February 1, 1945 near the city of Arnhem in the house of his university colleague Rudolf Cleveringa.

Proceedings

Dr. Anton van der Lem on Huizinga's work

The Dutch researcher of the work of Johan Huizinga, Dr. Anton van der Lem, speaking of the unrelenting appeal of the work of his famous compatriot, points to five of their most significant features:

Love for history solely for its own sake. In his approach to the study of the past, Huizinga, following Jakob Burckhardt, seeks not to "learn lessons for the future", but to see the enduring. It does not pursue political, economic or social goals. Many pages of his works are characterized by features of tangible authenticity. Ideological predilections have no power over them.
A pluralistic understanding of history and the rejection of seductive explanations. History is a living, multifaceted process that could proceed differently. History has no purpose, no necessity, no engine, no all-determining principles. Huizinga rejects monocausality in the analysis of historical processes. This makes it possible for his works to maintain persuasiveness regardless of the current time.
The gift of figurative embodiment historical events. Huizinga does not accept the positivist view of history as a process subject to rational explanation. History for Huizinga is not a message, not a story, but a search, an investigation.
The idea of a "historical sensation". Huizinga compares the feeling of a "historical sensation" with a musical experience, or rather with understanding the world through a musical experience.
The ethical imperative. The historian must remain faithful to the truth, correcting his subjectivity as much as possible. The pursuit of truth is the moral duty of the historian. Huizinga points to such categories as the seven deadly sins, the four cardinal virtues, or the desire for peace and justice, as the yardstick by which events of the past should be judged.

Huizinge's definition of history

In the essay "On the definition of the concept of "history"" (Dutch. Over een definition van het begrip geschiedenis) Huizinga gives the following definition of history:

History is a spiritual form in which a culture is aware of its past.

Original text (n.d.)
Geschidenis is de geestelijke vorm, waarin een cultuur zich rekenschap geeft van haar verleden

Over een definition van het begrip geschiedenis

Huizinga treats the elements of this definition as follows:

spirit form- a broad concept that includes not only science, but also art. Thus, not only scientific history, but also narrative chronicles, historical legends and other forms of historical consciousness that have existed and still exist in different cultures.
culture. Culture in this context refers to a cultural community, such as a nation, tribe, state. Culture can be monolithic, or it can be divided into various subcultures.
Gives a report. This means that the purpose of studying history (in whatever form they may be expressed - as a chronicle, memoirs, scientific research) is the understanding and interpretation of the surrounding reality.
Your past. According to Huizinga, every culture has its own past. Under the past of a particular culture is meant not only the past of the representatives of culture themselves, but the general image of the past (one's own and others'), which dominates in this culture. Huizinga believes that each culture will have its own view of the past and will "write history" in its own way. Moreover, within the same culture, different subcultures will have different histories (in the sense of "a different image of history"). As an example, different interpretations of the history of the Netherlands from the point of view of Protestants and socialists are given. Huizinga considers this situation normal, but on the condition that the historian, working within his own culture, should try to follow the truth (an ethical imperative).

Bibliography

Huizinga J. About historical life ideals / Per. with a goal Irina Mikhailova. Ed. Y. Kolker. - London: Overseas Publications Interchange Ltd, 1992. - ISBN 1-870128-44-3.
Huizinga J. Homo Ludens. "Man playing": Articles on the history of culture. / Per., comp. and intro. Art. D. V. Silvestrov; Comment. D. E. Kharitonovich. - M.: Progress-Tradition, 1997. - 416 p. - ISBN 5-89493-010-3.
Huizinga J.

The year after receiving the Nobel Prize, Mommsen passed away. And, perhaps, together with him in the nineteenth century remained the science that claimed: "History is a fact." No, the twentieth century answered him: "History is an interpretation." And he asked himself the question: "Where are its boundaries?"

After all, the fact relies on the source. But a historical source is just a trace, and an incomplete one, of what happened in the past. Consequently, in reality, history does not deal with facts, but with their essentially inferior traces. From which, in turn, it follows that objectivism in the spirit of Mommsen is just one of the interpretations. Others are possible.

Best of the day

This path, perhaps not entirely false, but archaic. What if we go the other way?

Plus - the "popular masses". Either passively floating on the waves of the historical process, then - according to another version - active creators of history.

And suddenly there was a person who was simply not interested in all this. How uninteresting to interpret anything in one way or another.

How to become wise and kind

The young Huizinga was markedly apolitical. I didn't even read any newspapers. Real life, he believed, resides in the human soul. Huizinga revered art above life, more precisely - its highest level.

Then Huizinga admitted that during these years in his mind there was a break with the East. And rapprochement with European history. First of all, with the late Middle Ages. He himself said that during one of his walks he was struck by the idea: the late Middle Ages is not a harbinger of the future, but the withering away of the past. The history that began with republican Rome was receding into the past. To retell what came out from under his pen is completely pointless. Just reading this text is a pleasure. For the first time, the reader could understand the feelings and thoughts of other, departing people. People from a bygone era. It will then begin to look for the definition of mentality as a connection between time and space in the perception of an individual, as well as codes and signs of this connection.

Surprisingly, as these lines are written, Prince Bernard is still alive, fully conscious, and on the throne of Holland is his daughter Beatrice.

The outbreak of the Second World War threw out a curious thing with the history of Holland. The country was occupied almost without a fight. But Hitler, in some strange way, respected the Dutch in his own way. He even said that if the Germans had the qualities of the Dutch, they would be invincible. Probably referring to the amazing resilience of the inhabitants of the "lower lands". But on the very eve of the war, the nation was, in essence, deconsolidated. For example, the movement for the abolition of the monarchy intensified.

He was no longer young. He stopped eating and died of exhaustion on February 1, 1945. I think he didn't want to burden anyone with himself. It seems that there was wisdom and kindness in this too.

Culture as professionalism of life and history

Huizinga does not write about plague epidemics. But he writes about the attitude of people at that time to death. And explores the "Dance of Death", which gained popularity in that era. He writes about culture, by which he understands all the visible evidence of the human soul, human ideas that have come down to us in the word, in the image, in other material remnants of time. Perhaps not without the influence of Huizinga, one of the characters in the play of the most cultured American prose writer of the twentieth century, Thornton Wilder, "Our Town" exclaims: "Two and a half million people lived in Babylon. What do we know about them?" About what they thought, how and to whom they prayed and why they prayed, how they loved and with what they died.

It turns out that the most pragmatic thing that history has is culture. It opposes myths, prejudices that lead to delusions, and from delusions to crimes.

Johan Huizinga initiated reflections on the seventh meaning. History as culture. And in a broad sense, culture and mentality are the same concepts. For his story. So history is mentality.