Historicity is the historical actuality of persons and events, meaning the quality of being part of

history History (derived ) is the systematic study and the documentation of the human activity. The time period of event before the History of writing#Inventions of writing, invention of writing systems is considered prehistory. "History" is an umbr ...

instead of being a historical

myth Myth is a folklore genre consisting of Narrative, narratives that play a fundamental role in a society, such as foundational tales or Origin myth, origin myths. Since "myth" is widely used to imply that a story is not Objectivity (philosophy), ...

legend A legend is a Folklore genre, genre of folklore that consists of a narrative featuring human actions, believed or perceived, both by teller and listeners, to have taken place in human history. Narratives in this genre may demonstrate human valu ...

, or

fiction Fiction is any creative work, chiefly any narrative work, portraying individuals, events, or places that are imaginary, or in ways that are imaginary. Fictional portrayals are thus inconsistent with history, fact, or plausibility. In a traditi ...

. The historicity of a claim about the past is its factual status. Historicity denotes historical actuality, authenticity, factuality and focuses on the true value of knowledge claims about the past. Some theoreticians characterize historicity as a dimension of all natural phenomena that take place in space and time. Other scholars characterize it as an attribute reserved to certain human occurrences, in agreement with the practice of

historiography Historiography is the study of the methods of historians in developing history as an academic discipline, and by extension is any body of historical work on a particular subject. The historiography of a specific topic covers how historians ha ...

.Jones, Michael S.,
Lucian Blaga, The Historical Phenomenon: An Excerpt from The Historical Being
(2012). Faculty Publications and Presentations. Paper 1.

Herbert Marcuse Herbert Marcuse (; ; July 19, 1898 – July 29, 1979) was a German-American philosopher, social critic, and political theorist, associated with the Frankfurt School of critical theory. Born in Berlin, Marcuse studied at the Humboldt University ...

explained historicity as that which "defines history and thus distinguishes it from 'nature' or the 'economy'" and "signifies the meaning we intend when we say of something that is 'historical'." The ''Blackwell Dictionary of Western Philosophy'' defines historicity as "denoting the feature of our human situation by which we are located in specific concrete temporal and historical circumstances". For

Wilhelm Dilthey Wilhelm Dilthey (; ; 19 November 1833 – 1 October 1911) was a German historian, psychologist, sociologist, and hermeneutic philosopher, who held G. W. F. Hegel's Chair in Philosophy at the University of Berlin. As a polymathic philosopher, w ...

, historicity identifies human beings as unique and concrete historical beings. Questions regarding historicity concern not just the issue of "what really happened", but also how modern observers can come to know "what really happened". This second issue is closely tied to historical research practices and methodologies for analyzing the reliability of

primary sources In the study of history as an academic discipline, a primary source (also called an original source) is an artifact, document, diary, manuscript, autobiography, recording, or any other source of information that was created at the time under ...

and other evidence. Because various methodologies thematize historicity differently, it is not possible to reduce historicity to a single structure to be represented. Some methodologies like

historicism Historicism is an approach to explaining the existence of phenomena, especially social and cultural practices (including ideas and beliefs), by studying their history, that is, by studying the process by which they came about. The term is widely u ...

can make historicity subject to constructions of history based on submerged value commitments.Hall, J. (2007). ''Historicity and Sociohistorical Research.'' In W. Outhwaite, & S. Turner (Eds.), ''The Sage Handbook of Social Science Methodology.'' (pp. 82–102). London: Sage Publications Ltd. Hall, J. (2007). ''History, Methodologies, and the Study of Religion.'' In J. Beckford, & N. Demerath (Eds.), ''The SAGE Handbook of the Sociology of Religion'' (pp. 167–189). London: Sage Publications Ltd. The historiographer

François Hartog François Hartog (born in 1946) is a French historian. He is noted for his "regimes of historicity" theory as well as his analyses of presentism and the contemporary experience of time. Hartog is also an academic and author of several works inclu ...

introduced the notion of regimes of historicity to describe a society that considers its past and attempts to deal with it, a process that is also cited as "a method of self-awareness in a human community". The historicity of a reported event may be distinct from the historicity of persons involved in the event. For example, a popular story says that as a child,

George Washington George Washington (February 22, 1732, 1799) was an American military officer, statesman, and Founding Father who served as the first president of the United States from 1789 to 1797. Appointed by the Continental Congress as commander of th ...

chopped down a cherry tree, and when confronted about it, honestly took responsibility for the act. Although there is no doubt that Washington existed as an historical figure, the historicity of this specific account has been found lacking. Questions of historicity are particularly relevant to partisan or poetic accounts of past events. For example, the historicity of the ''Iliad'' has become a topic of debate because later archaeological finds suggest that the work was based on some true event. Questions of historicity frequently arise in relation to historical studies of religion. In these cases, value commitments can influence the choice of research

methodology In its most common sense, methodology is the study of research methods. However, the term can also refer to the methods themselves or to the philosophical discussion of associated background assumptions. A method is a structured procedure for bri ...

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*{{Commons category-inline Historiography

See also

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