Relationship of History and Political Science

The purpose of this essay is to discuss the relationship of history and political science within the broader fields of the humanities and the social sciences. It will also discuss the nature of the humanities and of the social sciences.

The study of the humanities goes back to the foundation of the European universities in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The discipline, growing essentially out of the revival of classical studies that set off the Renaissance in Italy, was called the humanities because it dealt primarily with human values, rather than primarily with theology, and hoped to elucidate human nature rather than the nature of the divine. Human values and human nature were understood largely in religious terms in that period, of course, but given the Renaissance interest in re-appropriating and revaluing the classical world, the scope of the humanities included more than the strict Christianity of the early Middle Ages.

From that origin, the humanities have retained their earmark characteristic of being primarily concerned with the study and understanding of human values, however these might be expressed in a specific field. It is understood that a value is not a fact, but always something more like an a priori assumption. It is a given, not a conclusion, and cannot be objectively observed. It does not exist independently of the humans beings who hold it.

The social sciences are all of far more recent origin. Modeled at first on the physical sciences,

Related Essays

Comparison of Political Science Books Poli .... back cover notes that the book was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in history, underlining the close relationship between political science and historical .... (1284 5 )

TWO POLITICAL SCIENCE BOOKS: A COMPARISON Poli .... back cover notes that the book was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in history, underlining the close relationship between political science and historical .... (1284 5 )

Aristotle's Political Science Writings .... Much of what Aristotle says about the development of the state and about the relationship between the individual and the .... History of Political Philosophy. .... (2427 10 )

Interdisplinary Perspective of American Government The purpose of this research is to examine the relationship between history and political science in the study of American government and to examine how the .... (1517 6 )

Locke & Hobbes on Political Science .... Locke sees political power as being "for the regulating .... social contract and of the relationship between the .... A History of Philosophy: Volume IV: Descartes to .... (1641 7 )

me" or "These data seem important to me." There is not an infinite regression here; there is always an ultimate, foundational subjective experience that cannot be proven or disproven by any kind of appeal to facts. If the humanities are defined, as they have been here, as the disciplines that deal with human values, then clearly history must be counted as one of the humanities. Not even the simplest account of a past event can be written without the writer's making a series of value judgments in order to decide what and how to write. Further, in writing humanistic history, a writer is not only allowed but expected to be making value judgments about the values of the people being discussed. No one could write an account of the Second World War that placed the values of the Nazis and of the Allies on an equal moral footing--at least, no one except perhaps a devout neo-Nazi. Unfairly biased histories are not professionally acceptable, of course, but a straightforward admission of one's own biases and allegiances will always make it easier to write an historical account, as well as easier for the reader to make allowances for the writer's predilections. All human beings must have some sort of values in order to make ordinary de

Category: History - R