Bouton Learning From History

Journal of the Philosophy of History (2018) 1–33
brill.com/jph
Learning from History

The Transformations of the topos historia magistra vitae in Modernity1
Christophe Bouton
Bordeaux Montaigne University
christophe.bouton@u-bordeaux-montaigne.fr
Abstract
In this paper, I would like to show that Koselleck’s thesis on the dissolution of the topos
historia magistra vitae in modernity is open to certain objections, to the extent that
one finds in modernity a number of practical conceptions of history which are “useful
for life”. My own thesis is that the topos of history as the “Guide to Life” is not so much
dissolved as rather transformed with modernity, and in a sense which has to be speci-
fied. This point of view will be defended with reference to European authors of the
nineteenth century (I focus on the examples of Droysen and Nietzsche), though I will
add some observations on the twentieth century in the last part of the paper.
Keywords
Droysen – historia magistra vitae – Koselleck – Nietzsche – Polybius – pragmatic

history – practical past
My point of departure is the article by Koselleck entitled “Historia Magistra

Vitae: The Dissolution of the Topos into the Perspective of a Modernized
Historical Process”. This article appeared in 1967 in a Festschrift for Karl
1 An earlier version of this article was presented at the 2nd Conference of the International
Network for Theory of History (“The practical past”, Ouro Preto, 23–26 August 2016). I would
like to thank the attendees of the conference and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful
comments and suggestions.
© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2018 | doi 10.1163/18722636-12341390

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Löwith,2 and was republished in 1979 in Futures Past.3 In this piece, Koselleck
defends the idea that the ancient topos historia magistra vitae, of history as
a “Guide to Life”, has been operative for more than 2000 years, from ancient
times right through to the eighteenth century, only to disappear, little by little,
in modern times. (He talks of the “dissolution” – Auflösung in German – of the
topos starting from the period that follows the French Revolution.) Over and
above the numerous meanings that can be attributed to this formula, depend-
ing on the context and the different periods in which it was employed, one re-
covers, according to Koselleck, a representation of history in the sense of that
discipline according to which the stories told by historians furnish a collection
of examples, a treasure trove of numerous and varied experiences from which
much can be learnt. In other words, history, as historiography, provides us with
“lessons” that can be used again, moral judgments with juridical, political and
theological ends in view, etc. This practical or pragmatic conception of history,
founded in an idea of the permanence of human nature, makes of the past
an example to be imitated or avoided, an experience which remains valid for
the present and for the future. So, for Koselleck, the expression historia mag-
istra vitae refers to a historical category, prescribing a certain way of thinking
about historical experience. As we shall see in this paper, the semantics of this
expression varies not merely relative to different epochs but also to individu-
als, groups, or even different institutions that make use of it.
Koselleck explains that in the course of the emergence of modernity (the
Sattelzeit running roughly from 1750 to 1850), the way individuals think about
the future and the past begins to change radically. The future is represented
as new, as unpredictable (modernity is die Neuzeit in German, literally “New
Times”); novelty, movement and change become important, conceived in the
light of the category of progress central to the Enlightenment. The past on
the other hand is rejected as past, surpassed; it embodies a tradition that can-
not be preserved, especially after the French Revolution, given that the latter
marks a decisive break in the representation of historical time. This is an epoch
in which one gets the feeling that history is accelerating, as much from the
standpoint of political changes as from that of technical progress. The horizon
of expectation is more and more cut off from the space of experience: one
no longer expects the future to repeat the past, hoping that it will bring with
2 “Historia Magistra Vitae. Über die Auflösung des Topos im Horizont neuzeitliche beweg-
ter Geschichte”, in Natur und Geschichte, Karl Löwith zum 70. Geburtstag, ed. H. Braun and
M. Riedel (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1967), 196–219.
3 Reinhart Koselleck, Futures Past: On the Semantics of Historical Time [1979], transl. K. Tribe
(New York: Columbia University Press, 2004), 26–42.

Learning from History | doi 10.1163/18722636-12341390 3
it novelties that will be appreciated as improvements. In the representation

of history that belongs to modernity, the past is no longer on the same foot-
ing as the present; it is rendered obsolete by the novelty of the future and the
“acceleration of history”, and the formula historia magistra vitae loses its secu-
lar relevance. Two important references bear witness to this dissolution of the
topos, references Koselleck doesn’t fail to mention in his article. In his Lectures
on the Philosophy of History, given at Berlin in 1820, Hegel, who had read and
appreciated certain “pragmatic” historians in his youth, now criticises them
severely by rejecting the very idea that lessons could be drawn from history:
“But what experience and history teaches is this—that nations and govern-
ments have never learned anything from history or acted upon any lessons
they might have drawn from it.”4 The only lesson to be drawn from history
is that no lesson can be drawn from history! In 1840, Tocqueville expresses a
rather similar idea. Since the French Revolution, the past has nothing to teach
us about the present or the future: “I go back from age to age to the remotest
antiquity; but I find no parallel to what is occurring before my eyes: as the past
has ceased to throw its light upon the future, the mind of man wanders in
obscurity.”5 One notes Tocqueville’s discretely critical tone. The break with the
continuity of past, present and future, a continuity characteristic of traditional
society before the revolution of 1789, transforms the light of modernity into a
disturbing twilight.
Koselleck’s thesis – the dissolution of the topos of historia magistra vitae in
modernity – has itself become a topos in the field of the theory of history. It
is often mentioned as a well-established truth. François Hartog refers to it to
characterise the passage from the old regime of historicity, based on the past,
to the modern regime, which is futurist, that is, oriented towards the future.6
In a chapter entitled “After Learning from History”, Hans Ulrich Grumbrecht
speaks of the “de-pragmatization” of historical knowledge:7 Wanting to pro-
mote itself to the rank of a science in the course of the nineteenth century,
history got rid of its pragmatic dimension, in particular, the moral function
4 Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of World History. Introduction, transl. H. B. Nisbet

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975) 21, quoted by Koselleck in Futures Past, 37–38.
5 Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, transl. H. Reeve (London: Longmans, Green,
1889) II: 303, quoted in Futures Past, 31.
6 See François Hartog, Regimes of Historicity: Presentism and Experiences of Time. transl.
S. Brown (New York: Columbia University Press, 2015), 65–96 (chap. 3: “Chateaubriand.
Between Old and New Regimes of Historicity”).
7 Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht, In 1926: Living at the Edge of Time (Cambridge: Harvard University
Press, 1998), 413.

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of the judge of the past and source of inspiration. Hayden White gives expres-
sion to the same idea in his last work The Practical Past, insisting on the link
between the professionalization of history as a science in the nineteenth cen-
tury and the rejection of its role as “Guide to Life”: “But in the process, history
had to cede its place among the moral sciences and its function as an organon
of ethical reflection. The ‘scientific’ status of history was saved but at the cost
of history’s demotion from its traditional role as magistra vitae to that of a
second-order, fact-collecting enterprise.”8
Following Michael Oakeshott,9 White distinguishes “the whole past”, the to-
tality of all those events which have been and which are no longer, the majority
of which have left no trace of their existence; the “historical past”, the past as it
has been reconstructed and selectively represented by historians, which is only
a tiny part of the whole past; and the “practical past”, the past that helps with
day-to-day life and helps to answer the question “what should I do?” – the past
both individuals and communities appeal to, in order to reach conclusions or
to make decisions bearing on the present, either in daily life or in times of cri-
sis. In the old model of historia magistra vitae, the practical past can be drawn
from the historical past. But with the development of history as a science in the
nineteenth century, the two forms of the past became separated, as profession-
al historians claim to be writing history objectively, without reference to pres-
ent questions or institutions (even if this is not always the case). White’s thesis
is that the historical or realist novel of the nineteenth century (Walter Scott,
Hugo, Flaubert, etc.) and some novels of twentieth century (like Austerlitz
by W. G. Sebald) took over from scientific history with a view to exploiting
the “practical past”.10 One thus could add “Fictio magistra vitae to Historia
magistra vitae”.11
In this paper, I would like to show that Koselleck’s thesis on the dissolution
of the topos historia magistra vitae needs to be made more precise and heavily
qualified. I begin by specifying the different meanings of the concept of history
as “Guide to Life” by going back briefly to the origins of the topos in ancient
Greek historiography (I). I then reproduce two main arguments in favour of the
8 Hayden White, The Practical Past (Evanston, Ill: Northwestern University Press, 2014), 97.
9 See Michael Oakeshott, On History and Other Essays (Oxford: Blackwell, 1983), 1–48. On
the issues raised by this distinction, see Jonas Ahlskog, “Michael Oakeshott and Hayden
White on the practical and the historical past”, Rethinking History: 20 (2016), 375–394.
10 H. White, The Practical Past, chap. I.
11 Karlheinz Stierle, “The narrativization of the World”, in The Tropes for the Past: Hayden
White and the History/Literature Debate, ed. Kuisma Korhonen (Amsterdam, New York:
Rodopi, 2006), 80.

dissolution of the topos (II). I continue by defending the idea that Koselleck’s
thesis is open to certain objections, to the extent that one finds in modernity
a number of practical conceptions of history which are “useful for life” (I focus
on the examples of Droysen and Nietzsche) (III). My own thesis, presented in
the last part of this paper (IV), is that the topos of history as the “Guide to Life”
is not so much dissolved as rather transformed with modernity, and in a sense
which has to be specified. The scope of this paper might seem excessively vast,
but this is due to the fact that it is based on a critical discussion of Koselleck’s
article, who himself paints on a large canvas, stretching from Polybius (2nd
century BC) to Henry Adams’ “law of acceleration” formulated at the begin-
ning of the twentieth century! This long journey from Antiquity to Modernity
is methodologically necessary if one wants to grasp the evolution of the topos
over the long term. However, I will take a few short-cuts, and will defend my
point of view with reference to European authors of the nineteenth century,
though I will add some observations on the twentieth century in the last sec-
tions (III.3 and IV).
1 The Functions of History in Ancient Historiography
As it figures in the title of Koselleck’s article, the term topos can have two mean-
ings. It designates a common locus, an outworn truth that is no longer dis-
cussed. But in its more original sense, it refers to rhetoric, where it designates
an argument used to convince the listener. As it is well known, the formula
historia magistra vitae is to be found in Cicero’s treatise of rhetoric De Oratore
(II, 9, 36): “Historia vero testis temporum, lux veritatis, vita memoriae, magistra
vitae, nuntia vetustatis, qua voce alia nisi oratoris immortalitati commendatur?”;
“And as History, which bears witness to the passing of the ages, sheds light
upon reality, gives life to recollection and guidance to human existence, and
brings tidings of ancient days, whose voice, but the orator’s, can entrust her
to immortality?”12 In ancient times, the orator was expected to draw from his-
tory (in the sense of a knowledge bearing on past facts) examples appropri-
ate enough to convince the listener of the validity of his claims. Thus, there
was a rhetorical (and political) use of history as an instrument of eloquence.
In his De Oratore, Cicero does not develop any thoughts on history, which he
only mentions in passing, but he does confer authority and perpetuity on
the formula historia magistra vitae. If he fails to explain how history can be the
“light of truth” (“lux veritatis”) and offer “guidance to human existence”, it is
12 Cicero, On the Orator, Books I–II (Loeb Classical Library No. 348), 224–225.

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only because he refers to classical models well known in his day. The image
of “history as a treasure trove” of ever available experiences goes back to
Thucydides and his History of the Peloponnesian War (I, 22, 4). The conception
of history as the “Guide to Life” refers more particularly to other historians like
Polybius, or, at the time of Cicero, to Diodorus of Sicily.
Even though he does mention a few classical historians, Koselleck does not,
in my view, take enough care with the semantics of the topos of historia mag-
istra vitae in antiquity. In the frame of this paper, I propose to distinguish the
principal meanings, basing my distinctions mostly on Polybius’ “pragmatic”
conception of history, since Polybius, who certainly did emphasize the useful-
ness of history in his work, is a key reference for historians until the end of the
nineteenth century.13
The functions of history that I will highlight are often entangled in the texts
and the practices of historians. In some cases, there can be overlaps between
the types I distinguished. It is a matter of sketching out a heuristic model or
ideal-type – capable of being improved – with a view to analysing with greater
finesse and pursuing still further, the evolution of the topos over the course of
time. By “functions of history”, I mean, most of the time, the justifications that
attempt to establish, on a metahistorical level, what historiography is for and to
what ends history in general, or a particular historical work, was, or should be,
written. The justifications theoretically ascribed to a historical text are some-
times different from the functions it actually performs in practice. However,
I will not deal with this issue here, since the questions raised by Koselleck’s
essay on the topos historia magistra vitae mostly consist of a discussion on his-
toriography’s justifications, that is, they bear mostly on the functions of history
as they are formulated and explained by historians, philosophers, etc.:
1) For a historian like Polybius, the first function of history is knowledge of the
past (what I call its epistemic role). The past has to be related with documents
13 See George Nadel, “Philosophy of History Before Historicism”, History and Theory 3,
No3 (1964), 298: “To have read Polybius is to have read most of the advocates of exem-
plar history, ancient and modern”. In his paper, Nadel proposes a schema which is much
too simplistic: “the origins” of “exemplar history” in Antiquity (294–304); “heyday” from
Renaissance until the Enlightenment (304–309); “decline” from the end of the eighteenth
century. Contrary to Koselleck, Nadel offers few arguments in support of the thesis con-
cerning the so-called “decline” of the pragmatic conception of history, principally the pro-
fessionalization of this discipline in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. However,
he does qualify his proposal near the end where he talks of “the authoritative position
ascribed to the ancients, from which exemplar history derived, also survived, but again
with significant changes.” (314)

and sources, the causes of events have to be known along with the motives
of its actors and the connections between events, and the trend of “universal
history” has to be explained (for Polybius, it was the rapid domination of the
world by Rome in a span of about fifty years, between 220 and 168 BC).
2) History also has a didactic function to play, one of forming and training:
“the study of History is in the truest sense an education, and a training for po-
litical life.” (Polybius, Histories, I, 1).14 This didactic function, which for Polybius
may challenge the superior rank philosophy holds in academic studies, is both
pedagogical and pragmatic. In its pedagogical function, history is an education
(paideia), used to form young people, “rich and powerful people who aspire to
leadership roles.”15 In the education of the future elite of ancient cities, history
intervenes through the teaching of rhetoric and its exempla, since, in antiquity,
history is considered a branch of rhetoric. For Polybius, however, history is not
just a matter of rhetoric; it provides highly instructive experience, a precious
knowledge (mathema) of the past, and from the past, for those educated peo-
ple who are able to read it (Histories, I, 35). Polybius talks of his history as being
“pragmatic” (pragmatike) not just because it bears on pragmata, political af-
fairs and deeds, but also because he thinks of it as a way of acting (Histories,
IX, 2). By throwing light upon the present, history seeks to provide examples,
general lessons16 from particular events or specific behaviours, which might
help individuals make a decision in a given situation, individuals like politi-
cians, runners or military leaders.
3) For most historians of antiquity, history also has a normative role. This
follows directly from its didactic role: presenting examples to be imitated or
avoided, whether for young people or for people in command, requires that
one evaluate these examples positively or negatively. The normative function
of history can itself be broken down into several possible operations. The histo-
rian exercises a moral function. He can and should judge the past by praising its
virtues and condemning its crimes (see for instance Polybius, Histories, II, 61).
Passing judgment on the past is not an end in itself; it also has a psychological
function, which is to inspire feelings of admiration, to incite others to imitate
certain actions, to exhort them to accomplish great deeds, to encourage, to
raise morale and create hope. Finally, history in its normative function plays
14 In this section, I quote Polybius, Histories, transl. E. S. Shuckburgh (London, New York:
Macmillan, 1889).
15 Brian C. McGing, Polybius’ Histories (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 66 and also
66–70 on the notion of “pragmatic history”.
16 For example, “we are taught the truth of that saying of Euripides ‘One wise man’s skill is
worth a world in arms’.” (Histories, I, 35)

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a political role in many ways. The study of history is not only a means of train-
ing for political life, but the role of history is sometimes that of justifying a
political power. This function of legitimation, whether explicitly assumed or,
more often, implicitly suppressed, appears more specifically in Roman histori-
ography, which, under the Republic, praised the mores majorum of Rome and
its aristocracy, and then later, under the Empire, highlighted the virtues of the
reigning emperor and/or the vices of the previous ones.17
To take up Oakeshott’s distinction referred to earlier in the introduction,
one might say that the epistemic function of history concerns the “historical
past”, whereas the didactic and normative functions make it possible to un-
pack the content of the expression “practical past”. It is the combination of
these diverse functions that forms what I call historico-practical reasoning,
whose basic structures I will reproduce below, since they underpin our topos
of historia magistra vitae:
1) History furnishes us with information on specific actions and events

that have happened in the past (epistemic function).
2) These actions and events may well have been evaluated positively or neg-
atively, in order to provide general lessons (normative function).
3) These past actions and events, and the lessons drawn from it, have to be
taught (pedagogical function).
4) In situations that are similar to those that have happened in the past, we
should strive to reproduce or avoid actions and events similar to those
mentioned in (1) (pragmatic function).
The classical conception of history as the “Guide to Life” is found again in

the Renaissance, with authors like Machiavelli or Bodin, both mentioned by
Koselleck in his 1967 paper.18 In the course of the eighteenth century, the di-
dactic and normative functions of history remain fully present. Koselleck cites
J. T. Jablonski who, in his Allgemeinen Lexicon der Künste und Wissenschaft
(1748), claims that “histories are a mirror for virtues and vices in which one can
17 On the complex relationship between history and politics in Rome, see John Matthews,
“The Emperor and his Historians”, in A Companion to Greek and Roman Historiography,
ed. John Marincola, Vol. 1 (Oxford: Blackwell, 2007), 290–304, and Jane D. Chaplin, Livy’s
Exemplary History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), especially 192–196 (on Livy
and Augustus).
18 For the transition from Polybius to Renaissance, see G. W. Trompf, The Idea of Historical
Recurrence in Western Thought: From Antiquity to the Reformation (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1979).

learn through assumed experience what is to be done or left undone; they are a
monument to evil as well as praiseworthy deeds.”19 In his De l’étude de l’histoire
(1775), Mably states that history has to be a school for morality and politics,
delivering salutary lessons which should be held in mind by those in power:
“failing to profit from the experience of past centuries, either out of indiffer-
ence, laziness or presumption leads each century to reproduce the spectacle
of the same errors and calamities”.20 It is this same notion of experience that
one finds again in the same period, this time authored by Johann von Müller in
his History of the Swiss Confederation (Histoire de la Confédération Suisse, 1780–
1805, 4 vol.), one of the principal targets of the Hegelian critique of any prag-
matic and moralizing history:21 “the nature and destiny of this confederation,
the best and the most enduring, seems to us a worthy subject for a perfectly
faithful portrait, not only because the conservation of these memories inter-
ests the honour, the prosperity and the existence of the country, but because
nations that have not yet reached that point will be able one day to collect
experiences regarding an innocent and salutary institution.”22
2 The Reasons for the Dissolution of the Topos
In his article of 1967, Koselleck offers a number of reasons for the dissolution, in
his view, of the topos of historia magistra vitae from the end of the eighteenth
century, reasons I recalled in the introduction. I would now like to specify two
classical arguments against the topos historia magistra vitae. These arguments
will have to be borne in mind if we are to understand the evolution of the topos
(studied in sections 3 and 4).
2.1 The Epistemological Argument Against Judging in History

The epistemological argument stipulates that judging and knowing the past are
two quite different things: judgements of value bearing on the past tend to de-
form the facts, casting doubt upon the narrative as partial and biased. Moreover,
value judgments of this kind are not relevant since they are anachronistic. They
impose norms on events taking place at a time when the norms themselves did
19 J. T. Jablonski, Allgemeines Lexikon der Künste und Wissenschaften (Leipzig, 1748) I, 386,
quoted by Koselleck in Futures Past, 33.
20 Mably, De l’étude de l’histoire (Paris, Fayard, 1988), Chapitre 1: “Que l’histoire doit être une
école de morale et de politique [History should be a school of morality and politics]”, 15.
21 Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of World History. Introduction, 21–22.
22 Histoire de la confédération suisse, transl. fr. de M-Ch Bonnard (Paris/Genève, 1837), XII.

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not even exist. On this point, Koselleck cites the famous declaration of Ranke
dating from 1824: “The task of judging the past for the benefit of future genera-
tions has been given to History: the present essay does not aspire to such an
elevated task; it merely seeks to show the past as it once was (wie es eigentlich
gewesen).”23
This critique of the normative function of history was proposed well be-
fore the Sattelzeit. If Machiavelli assumes the heritage of historia magistra vitae
from every angle, Bodin’s position is more complex than Koselleck leads us
to believe.24 Bodin accepts the idea of history as a treasure house of exam-
ples designed to guide our conduct, but he has his reservations with regard to
the moralizing function: “grave doubts trouble me whether historians ought
to praise or to vituperate and to express judgments about the matter under
discussion, or whether they should leave to the reader the formation of an un-
biased opinion.”25 According to him, it is better to leave the reader to form his
own value judgments; for otherwise historians run the risk of awakening the
suspicion that their narrative is not objective. Montaigne rejects Bodin’s idea
that one can draw general rules from history, but he accepts the latter’s critique
of value judgments in history, arguing that they should be made not by the
historian but by the reader or teacher: the historians who judge the past “want
to chew our morsels for us; they give themselves the right to judge, and conse-
quently to slant history to their fancy; for once the judgment leans to one side,
one cannot help turning and twisting the narrative to that bias.”26
23 Leopold von Ranke, Geschichten der romanischen und germanischen Völker, Sämtliche
Werke (Leipzig, 1867–90) Bd. 33, vi sq., quoted by Koselleck in Futures Past, 36.
24 See Koselleck, “Historia Magistra Vitae”, in Futures Past, 29. Bodin’s use of the formula
“historia magistra vitae” could be an example of the existence of the notion of history
as a “singular collective” before the Sattelzeit, which nuances another famous thesis of
Koselleck. See Jan Marco Sawilla, “‘Geschichte’: Ein Produkt der deutschen Aufklärung?
Eine Kritik an Reinhart Kosellecks Begriff des ‘Kollektivsingulars Geschichte’ ”, Zeitschrift
für historische Forschung 31 (2004), 401–402.
25 Jean Bodin, Method for the easy comprehension of history, transl. B. Reynolds, Beatrice
(New York: Norton, 1969), 51.
26 Michel de Montaigne, “On Books” [Essay II, 10], in Complete Essays, transl. D. M. Frame
(Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1958), 304. Hugo Friedrich concludes that in
Montaigne, there are “only traces left” of Cicero’s formula historia magistra vitae
(Montaigne, ed. P. Desan, transl. D. Eng (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California
Press, 1991), 200–201). In fact, what Montaigne rejects is the pretention of the historian to
be able to judge the past (moral function), not the usefulness of history in education
(pedagogical function), which he stresses in his essay “Of the education of children”
(I, 16).

2.2 The Ontological Argument: The Singularity of the Past

A second argument against the idea that history can be the “Guide to Life”
is linked to a conception of the relation between past and present. I call it
“ontological” in the sense that it bears on the very reality of the past. It is a pos-
sible consequence of the idea – that can be traced back to Herder – regarding
the unique and specific historicity of each epoch. It holds that history can teach
us nothing about the present; for the present is fundamentally different from the
past (and vice versa). In other words, every past event is by definition unique,
each situation quite individual, and in such a way that it is impossible to draw
lessons from it, to formulate general rules. To justify his claim cited above, that
history teaches us that people have never learnt anything from history, Hegel
adds: “Each age and each nation finds itself in such peculiar circumstances, in
such a unique situation, that it can and must make decisions with reference to
itself alone (and only the great individual can decide what the right course is).
Amid the pressure of great events, a general principle is of no help, and it is not
enough to look back on similar situations [in the past]; for pale recollections
are powerless before the stress of the moment, and impotent before the life
and freedom of the present.”27
In the wake of the French Revolution, in 1799, Volney defends a more pes-
simistic view in a text in which he settles his account with the Terror. He writes
in the foreword to his Lectures on History at the Ecole normale supérieure: “The
more I have examined the day to day influence of History on the actions and
opinions of men, the more I am convinced that it was one of the most fertile
sources of their prejudices and their mistakes.”28 If one’s knowledge of the past
is too general and imperfect, one draws false analogies, baseless hypotheses,
erroneous applications, “and from that, lessons can be drawn for administra-
tion and government which prove disastrous.”29 Historia magistra erroris!
27 Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of World History. Introduction, 21.

28 Volney, foreword (written in 1799) to his lectures on history at the Ecole normale supéri-
eure, in La Loi naturelle [suivi de] Leçons d’histoire, ed. J. Gaulmier (Paris, Garnier, 1980),
83. Volney was a fervent revolutionary, imprisoned under the Terror of 1793, liberated after
the downfall of Robespierre in September 1794 to give lectures on history at the new Ecole
normale supérieure from 1794 to 1795.
29 Ibid., 112–113.

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3 The Persistence of the Topos
In the third part of my paper, I would like to point out some limitations in
Koselleck’s study. We have seen that certain functions of the topos historia
magistra vitae had been criticized before the Sattelzeit, and we are now going
to see that certain others were preserved afterwards, despite the critical argu-
ments mentioned above. Koselleck either pays little attention to, or even over-
looks, a number of important authors who defended a pragmatic conception
of history in the second half of the nineteenth century. For this reason, I pro-
pose to focus on one historian and one philosopher: Droysen and Nietzsche.
3.1 Droysen
With Droysen (1808–1884) we have an interesting counterexample, where the
project of raising history to the rank of a science does not stand in the way
of its pragmatic heritage.30 Koselleck mentions him three times in the 1967
article, but without stressing that his Historik makes it possible to reformulate
the topos of historia magistra vitae within the frame of science. At the end
of his paper, he refers briefly to Droysen’s Historik and his notion of Bildung.31
However, we shall see that an author like Droysen is able to call in question the
thesis of the dissolution of the topos of historia magistra vitae.
In his lectures on the theory of history, Droysen certainly does reject the
pragmatic, moralising history of the eighteenth century, even noting that it was
called “pragmatic, for the wrong reason” ( fälschlich “pragmatisch” genannt).32
But he also insists that the term “pragmatic”, derived from Polybius, ought
not to be despised. For Polybius the term “pragmatic” has two meanings: 1) it
signifies “objective” (sachgemäss),33 “realistic” (realistisch),34 in conformity
with events, as opposed to the narratives of myths and legends; 2) it is also
30 This point is well emphasized by Arthur Alfaix Assis, What Is History For? Johann Gustav
Droysen and the Functions of Historiography (New York, Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2014).
31 Koselleck, “Historia Magistra Vitae”, in Futures Past, 41. Assis concludes that in his arti-
cle of 1967, Koselleck “avoids the mistake of postulating that the downfall of the exem-
plar theory of history meant the total disappearance of historical pragmatism” (What Is
History For?, 11). I agree with Assis, but in that case, it would be better to talk of a trans-
formation rather than a dissolution or even of an “erosion” of the topos (What Is History
For?, 86). And the question remains: why did Koselleck minimize the significance of this
historical pragmatism, even though it remains very evident in the nineteenth century?
32 Johann Gustav Droysen, Historik, ed. Peter Leyh (Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: F. Frommann –
G. Holzboog, 1977), 250.
33 Ibid., 93.
34 Ibid., 233.

what opens the way to pragmata, to the affairs of the State.35 Droysen takes
over the heritage of Polybius in these two first functions, both epistemic and
didactic: understanding/relating the past and forming/preparing the future.
But he is more cautious with respect to the moral function of judging the past.
It is in the methodical part of his Historik (in the Methodik) that the epistemic
function is made explicit. Historical research takes its start from a present
question addressed to the past (the “historical question”), after which a heuris-
tic can be developed, one which collects and selects documents as a function
of this question, finishing with a critique of the sources. The phase of “inter-
pretation” comes later. Here the “pragmatic interpretation” corresponds more
particularly to research into the causal nexus of events.
The didactic function is analysed in the Topic (Topik), where Droysen distin-
guishes four ways of presenting historical research. The first two derive from
the epistemic function of history (knowledge of the past): 1) “Investigative pre-
sentation” (untersuchende Darstellung) sums up the principal results of the
research. 2) “Narrative presentation” (erzählende Darstellung) exhibits the re-
sults in the form of a series of events, a narrative with a plot. 3) The “didactic
presentation” (didaktische Darstellung) brings out the instructive meaning that
history has for the present. It corresponds to what I called previously the “peda-
gogical” function of history and which aims at forming individuals. In this per-
spective, history has to be an education of the human species in Lessing’s sense
of that term. It is no longer a matter of looking for models or for general rules in
history but of furnishing a culture (Bildung) – particular or general – enabling
individuals to confront the present: “History is not instructive in consequence
of affording patterns for imitation or rules for new application, but through the
fact that we mentally live it over again and live according to it. ‘It is a repertory
of ideas furnishing matter which judgment must needs put into the crucible
in order to purify it’ (Frederic the Great).”36 There is no rule to be applied, for
history never repeats itself.37 There are no models to be imitated, only forms
of greatness that can be inspiring. Regarding particular culture, Droysen offers
the example of a military cadet finding in military history not so much rules for
acting in such and such a situation but rather a mental exercise preparing him
for action.38 The study of history also provides a general culture, allowing in-
dividuals to situate themselves in the historical process in order to enhance it:
35 Ibid., 93.

36 Droysen, Outline of the Principles of History, §92, transl. E. B. Andrews (Boston: Ginn &
Company, 1893), 53–54.
37 Droysen, Historik, 250.
38 Ibid., 251.

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“Not single examples, but the whole high ethical flow of history should inspire
us and carry us forward.”39 In its didactic function, history can in fact “breathe
into the young enthusiasm for what is great”,40 it can incorporate the psycho-
logical function invoked previously.
4) The fourth way of exhibiting historical research is “discussive
presentation” or “presentation by discussion” (diskussive Darstellung), still
known as “historical discussion” (historische Diskussion). Droysen here points
out a function of history that has often been confused with the didactic func-
tion of teaching, understood as contributing to a decision. I will call it the in-
formative function of history, since the aim is no longer one of forming but of
informing, focusing the data of the research on a present question. The discus-
sive presentation is like a “concave mirror” that reflects the light of the past on
a definite point of the present.41 It is a matter of comparing the present with
the past, inscribing the new into the movement of history. It is in this sense that
Droysen writes: “The statesman is the historian in practice” (Der Staatsman is
der praktische Historiker).42 The statesman ought to have a good knowledge of
the history of his country, of its institutions, if he is to be able to navigate the
problems of the present and to arrive at a legitimate judgement in the light of
the precedents of the past. He has to know history in order to be able to make
history.43 Even if Droysen distinguishes amongst “history’s workmen” (Arbeiter
der Geschichte), the “promoters” (Werkmeister, that is statesmen, politicians,
bureaucrats, etc.) from the “handymen” (Handlager),44 he also thinks that his-
torical thinking is useful for anonymous individuals. Each, given his or her situ-
ation, has to be an “historian in practice”, with a view to directing his or her
own life, and of aligning it with that of the state.45 In Droysen’s eyes, history as
a discipline is indeed a “Guide to Life”, in the sense in which it has a pedagogi-
cal and pragmatic function. Historia magistra agendi.
Thus, there exists a reciprocal relation between life and historical knowl-
edge. The historical method transforms events in history, both in the sense of
relating them and in that of knowing the past: “It is only subsequently that a
39 Ibid.
40 Ibid., 259.
41 Droysen, Outline of the Principles of History, §93, 55.
42 Ibid., 56.
43 See Benjamin Herzog “Res gestae/Historia rerum gestarum”, in Lexikon Geschichtswis
senschaft. Hundert Grundbegriffe, ed. S. Jordan (Stuttgart: Reclam, 2002), 258.
44 Droysen, Historik, 388.
45 Ibid., 269: “But in every moral relation, each has to be a historian in practice in an ana-
logous manner” (aber jeder in jedem sittlichen Verhältnis hat in analoger Weise ein prakti-
scher Historiker zu sein).

particular way of surveying what is past and finished makes ‘history out of af-
fairs’ (macht aus Geschäften Geschichte).”46 In return, historical knowledge can
be useful when it comes to influencing the course of events, the affairs of one’s
country. The topos of historia magistra vitae becomes “the transformation of
affairs into history and the valorisation of history for the purposes of affairs”
(das Umsetzen des Geschäfts in Geschichte, und die Verwertung der Geschichte
für die Geschäfte).47
This reciprocal action is an ideal model, only applicable to reality, however,
if the “didactic” and “discussive” presentations of history are grounded in the
epistemic function (“investigative presentation” and “narrative presentation”,
which are the first steps). As was already suggested in Cicero’s formula, history
can only be a “Guide to Life” if it dispenses “the light of truth”, which means
for Droysen that it is based on a rigorous method. For him, the “practical past”
is not opposed to the “historical past”; quite the contrary, it is derived from it.
3.2 Nietzsche
After a historian, a philosopher. The other important example of an actuali-
sation of the topos of historia magistra vitae in the nineteenth century is in
fact Nietzsche’s Second Untimely Meditations (1874), curiously absent from
Koselleck’s study. Many are those who have drawn from this text a critical diag-
nosis of the excesses of historical studies, of the saturation of his epoch by his-
tory, which finishes paralysing the “vital creative force”, and in the end destroys
it. Against this historical malady, the remedy proposed by Nietzsche would
be the virtue of forgetfulness, invoked at the beginning of his essay (§1), and
the “unhistorical” and “supra-historical” meanings of art and religion, men-
tioned at the end (§10). So, at first sight, Nietzsche provides grist to the mill of
Koselleck’s thesis; as if history, far from being a “Guide to Life”, carried with it
pathology and death. In truth, however, Nietzsche does not support a global re-
jection of the motif of history as magistra vitae. On the contrary, he interprets
the formula in the literal sense by enquiring into the usefulness of history for
life. We know that for him there are three forms of history, each of which has
its advantages and disadvantages for life (monumental, antiquarian, critical).
In such a framework, what matters is transforming the old topos of historia
magistra vitae in the light of monumental history, which favours a certain use
of history as the source of great examples.
Nietzsche was certainly better informed about the work of Droysen in con-
nection with Hellenism than in connection with his Historik, whose Hegelian
46 Droysen, Outline of the Principles of History, §45, 33 (transl. modified).

47 Droysen, Historik, 69–70.

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inspiration in “Systematic” he most probably did not share, history being pre-
sented there as a theodicy. He was also more critical of history presented as
“empirical science”.48 Like Droysen, however, Nietzsche traces his pragmatic
conception of history as a “Guide to Life” back to Polybius: “With respect to
the man of action, Polybius, for example, calls political history the proper
preparation for governing a state and the greatest teacher (die vorzüglichste
Lehrmeisterin) who, by reminding us of the sudden misfortunes of others, ex-
horts us steadfastly to bear the reverses of fortune.”49 In the presentation of
the monumental view (§2), Nietzsche adapts the topos of history as a “teacher
for life” as follows. The active and creative man needs masters and examples;
and these he is not able to find for the most part in the “mediocre masses”
of the present time. Here, knowledge of the past is focused on a “Republic of
Geniuses”, understood as a source of encouragement and inspiration: “What
is the advantage to the present individual, then, of the monumental view of
the past, the concern with the classical and the rare of earlier times? It is the
knowledge that the greatness which once existed was at least possible once,
and may well again be possible sometime; he goes his way more courageously;
for now the doubt which assails him in moments of weakness, that he may
perhaps want the impossible, has been conquered.”50
To accomplish great things, Nietzsche explains quite lyrically, man has to
contemplate and appropriate the past from the standpoint of monumental
history, which furnishes the spectacle of a relay race, of a chain linking great
individuals across the centuries, and over the peaks of humanity. History in
its monumental usage – the study of the great personalities of the past – is
then a guide to action and a key to what is possible. It promotes a practical ex-
ploitation of the past, appropriating from pragmatic history the psychological
function of inspiration. What Nietzsche calls the classical instinct consists in
being inspired by the past in its uniqueness, its singularity, in order to create
something completely new.
The strength of Nietzsche’s position is that of making it possible to ad-
just his praise of monumental history to its severest critics, in the course of
which he takes up most of the epistemological objections against the topos of
historia magistra vitae. Monumental history does have its own disadvantages.
48 See Annette Wittkau-Horgby, “Droysen and Nietzsche: Two Different Answers to the
Discovery of Historicity”, in The Discovery of Historicity in German Idealism and Historism,
ed. P. Koslowski (Berlin: Springer, 2005), 59–76.
49 Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Advantage and Disadvantage of History for Life, §2, transl.
(modified) P. Preuss (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 1980), 15.
50 Ibid., 16.

It can overlook entire swathes of the past, succumb to generalisation, to ide-

alisation and to simplification, even to a deformation of the past. The other
risk of monumental history is that of fostering conformism and promoting an
academic approach that stifles original creativity. In the domain of art, this
risk is particularly flagrant: “Think of artless and feebly artistic natures girded
and armed by the monumental history of art and artists: Against whom will
they now direct their weapons? Against their traditional enemies, the strong
artistic spirits, namely against those who alone are capable of learning truly,
that is, for the sake of life, from that history and of putting what they have
learned into higher practice. It is their path which is obstructed and their air
which is darkened when one dances idolatrously and diligently round a half
understood monument of some great past.”51
Nietzsche’s conclusion is that monumental history should not be aban-
doned but counterbalanced by antiquarian history, devoted to preserving the
truth of the facts, and critical history, which curbs the cult of the grandeur of
the past by setting it at a distance and even going so far as to condemn the past
from the perspective of the present.
3.3 Other References in the Twentieth Century

Let us add a few references to other authors who assume – though in modi-
fied form – the topos of historia magistra vitae. In his Reflections on History, a
course of lectures given in Basel in 1870–71, but only published after his death
in 1905, Burckhardt, Nietzsche’s teacher, develops a critique of value judg-
ments in history, even though he adds this essential nuance: “What was once
joy and sorrow must now become knowledge as it must in the life of individual.
Therewith the saying Historia vitae magistra takes a higher, yet humbler sense.
We wish experience to make us, not so much shrewder (for next time) as wiser
(forever) (Wir wollen durch Erfahrung nicht sowohl klug ( für ein andermal) als
weise ( für immer) werden).”52 Koselleck refers to this passage without quoting
the text, even though it constitutes a positive occurrence of the topos historia
magistra vitae. He interprets it as follows: “For the contention that one could
learn nothing from history was itself a certainty born of experience, a historical
lesson that could render the knowing more insightful, more prudent, or, to bor-
row a term from Burckhardt, wiser.”53 It seems to me that Burckhardt is skep-
tical about the idea that the study of the past can always help to understand
51 Ibid., 18.

52 Jacob Burckhardt, Reflections on History, transl. (modified) M. D. Hottinger (Indianapolis,
IN: Liberty fund, 1979), 39.
53 “Historia Magistra Vitae”, in Futures Past, 31.

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the present and he certainly does not think that that is the principal task of
history. However, he does not exclude the possibility that history can make
us “shrewder” the next time around, in the sense that the experience drawn
from it can shed light on later situations bearing comparison with it. But the
principal strength of historical studies lies, in his view, in making us “wiser”, to
the extent that they transform the memories and passions attached to them
into knowledge.54 Burckhardt thinks that this knowledge, far from confirming
the tradition, is a preparation for change, because “the shackling of custom
by symbols, etc., can only be loosed by knowledge of the past.” In so doing, it
makes it possible for a culture to evolve and so to have a history, as opposed to
the barbarians who have no history (who are “geschichtlos”).55
In its attempt to make of history a science, one may very well wonder whether,
at the beginning of the twentieth century, the Annales School had not already
rejected the idea of the usefulness of history. In this connection, the following
sentence by Lucien Febvre is often quoted: “A history which serves is a servile
history (une histoire qui sert est une histoire serve)”. However, this statement has
to be placed in context. It is taken from the inaugural lecture at the Faculty of
Letters of Strasbourg, pronounced on 4 December 1919: “A history which serves
is a servile history. As professors of the French University of Strasbourg, we are
not the demobilized missionaries of an official national Gospel, as beautiful,
as great, as well-intentioned as all that might seem.”56 Febvre wanted to break
with the political instrumentalization of history in France, and even more
so, in his eyes, in Germany, in the University of Strasbourg, where it served to
reinforce nationalism. During the Third Republic in France, the teaching of
history aimed at educating future citizens. But it was also a matter of inculcat-
ing patriotic values through what has been called the “national novel” (roman
national) of France. After the First World War, there could be legitimate doubts
about this role of history. This is why Febvre insisted that history is above all a
“science” that seeks truth, regardless of any political considerations, or of any
reference to the need to construct a “national novel”.
This attitude does not mean that the Annales School has denied history
any utility other than purely theoretical. Another witness to the persistence of
the motif of historia magistra vitae, as modified in the course of the twentieth
century, can be seen in Marc Bloch and his Apologie pour l’histoire (written
54 See Sabina Loriga, Le petit X. De la biographie à l’histoire (Paris: Seuil, 2010), 192.
55 Burckhardt, Reflections on History, 39.
56 “L’Histoire dans un monde en ruine”, Revue de Synthèse Historique, t.XXX, 1920, 4.

between 1941 and 1942). Like Febvre,57 Bloch rejects “the mania for making
judgments” (still present in the positivism of the nineteenth century), which
twists and distorts the narration of facts with a bias. In this sense, he clearly
keeps his distance with regard to the moralizing function of history. The histo-
rian should not set himself up as “a sort of judge in Hades, charged with met-
ing out praise or blame to dead heroes.”58 When historians study a past action,
they can certainly consider how the morality of the time considered the act,
and whether the action succeeded or failed in attaining the objectives sought
by those who undertook it. But it is not their business to judge these acts by
the standards of their own values. A judgment of this kind is anachronistic,
transforming the criteria relative to a given epoch, that of the historian, into
absolute norms. Instead of trying to be for or against Robespierre, it is better to
simply say who Robespierre was. The moralizing attitude harms the epistemic
function of historical science, but also its practical utility, as history teaches us:
“the lesson of the intellectual development of mankind is clear: the sciences
have shown themselves ever more fruitful and, hence, on the long run, more
practical in proportion as they deliberately abandon the old anthropocentrism
of good and evil.”59
This declaration shows that the rejection of moralizing history in no way
imposes that of its didactic function. On the contrary, the less history is moral-
izing, the more it remains rigorous, and the more it remains useful for forming
and informing individuals. Bloch considers that history serves just as much to
know the past on the basis of the present as to understand the present in the
light of the past, with a view to taking action upon it: “ignorance of the past not
only confuses contemporary science, but confounds contemporary action.”60
History thereby becomes a “vast experience of human diversity”,61 and not a
tribunal for judging the good and the bad. Bloch brings us back to the idea,
which itself goes back to antiquity, according to which the study of history per-
mits man to multiply his experiences and to prepare for action. Henry Rousso
comments on Bloch’s position as follows: “The understanding of the present
57 Lucien Febvre, “Contre les juges suppléants de la vallée de Josaphat”, in Combats pour
l’Histoire (Paris, Armand Colin, 1992), 108: “No, the historian is not a judge. Not even an
investigating judge. History is not to judge, it is to understand – and to make understand.
Let us not tire of repeating it. The progress of our science is at this price”.
58 Marc Bloch, The Historian’s Craft, transl. P. Putnam (New York: Vintage Books, 1953), 139.
59 Marc Bloch, The Historian’s Craft, 144.
60 Ibid., 40.

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through the past seems to revive the very long tradition of Western historiogra-
phy of history as a “Guide to Life”, if this tradition has ever been erased.”62
Another French historian, Henri-Irénée Marrou, expresses the same idea in
his classic work De la connaissance historique, which appeared in 1954. Entire
swathes of our knowledge of the past were without doubt the fruit of pure
curiosity, unmotivated by any concern for experiences that might be useful for
the present. But Marrou reminds us that history cannot be reduced to a purely
theoretical or aesthetic contemplation of past events. It also has a practical
function. History is certainly not susceptible to immediate applications, in the
sense in which it might furnish men of action with precise decisions. All it can
do is supply them with abundant material, an enlarged experience on which
they can exercise their judgment and mould their initiatives. Understood
along these lines, history, in its scientifically modern form, is compatible with
the topos of historia magistra vitae, so long as the historian steers clear of the
traditionally moralizing and purely rhetorical version:
[W]e have no hesitation in taking up again in a new mode the classical

conception of historia magistra vitae. We know how absurdly narrow-
minded was the use made of this doctrine by the old rhetoricians: in their
hands history was reduced to a repertoire of topical anecdotes, examples
illustrating moralizing principles, precedents adopted for the jurist or the
statesman, proven strategies for the tactician and the diplomat.63
But according to Marrou, it is possible to derive a deeper meaning from this

formula historia magistra vitae. It is “by discovering what men are, by meeting
men other than myself, that I get to know better who Man is, the sort of man I
am in myself, with all his virtualities, both splendid and frightful.”64
4 Transformations of the topos in Modernity
In the course of the eighteenth and twentieth centuries, the practical relation
to the past introduced with the model of history as the “Guide to Life” – to form,
inform, judge, inspire, justify – continues to be employed in a variety of ways,
running from the desire to take advantage of historical knowledge, to educate
citizens, to the struggle against social quietism and tradition. Far from being
62 Henry Rousso, La dernière catastrophe. L’histoire, le présent, le contemporain (Paris:

Gallimard, 2012), 109, my emphasis.
63 Henri-Iréné Marrou, De la connaissance historique (Paris: Seuil, 1975), 261.
64 Ibid.

“dissolved”, the topos of historia magistra vitae became transformed and is still
used. Why did Koselleck not discuss authors who might have made it possible
to refine his thesis of dissolution? Why does he maintain this thesis right up
to the paper of 1967, which concludes with a touch of pessimism relating to
Henry Adam’s “law of acceleration”: now, history moves too fast for knowledge
of the past to be instructive regarding the present.65 To answer these ques-
tions, it is worth remembering the context in which this paper was formulat-
ed, to honour the anniversary of Karl Löwith’s 70 years. For Löwith, who had
been one of Koselleck’s examiners on his doctoral thesis, the philosophies of
history, typical of modernity, represented unfounded secularizations of theo-
logical schemas, to which he responds by assuming a classical vision of his-
tory understood as a cycle, with neither beginning nor end.66 Koselleck does
not take up the conceptual framework of secularization in his paper,67 but the
hypothesis can be advanced that the thesis of dissolution animates a discrete
critique of modernity oblivious of its own past, a modernity destructive of tra-
dition, a critique which, from another angle, rejoins that developed by Löwith.
The article of 1967, with which I started, is not Koselleck’s last word on the
subject, however. In another less well-known study, dated 1971, he returns to
the Nietzschean question of the utility of history for life: “Wozu noch Historie?
[Why still study history?].”68 If history is not able to furnish immediate rec-
ommendations for future actions, its study does not become an end in itself:
“historia magistra vitae – not historia magistra historiae.”69 However, contrary
to the traditional model of historia magistra vitae, history no longer lends itself
to any immediate application, either to Politics, to Law or to Morality. It offers no
ready-made solutions. All it can do – but this is one of its most essential tasks – is
65 Koselleck, “Historia Magistra Vitae”, in Futures past, 42: “Adams drew the conclusion that
one could no longer teach how to behave, but at the most, how to react.”
66 See Karl Löwith, Meaning in history (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1949). Koselleck
knew this work well, having contributed to its German translation in 1953. (Weltgeschichte
und Heilsgeschehen: die theologischen Voraussetzungen der Geschichtsphilosophie
(Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1953)). I thank Jeffrey Andrew Barash for having given me this in-
formation. On Koselleck and Löwith, see Hans Joas, “The Contingency of Secularization:
Reflections on the Problem of Secularization in the Work of Reinhart Koselleck”, in The
Benefit of Broad Horizons: Intellectual and Institutional Preconditions for a Global Social
Science: Festschrift for Bjorn Wittrock on the Occasion of His 65th Birthday, ed. Hans Joas
and Barbro Klein (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 87–104.
67 He does so in a later study: “Zeitverkürzung und Beschleunigung. Eine Studie zur
Säkularisation” [1985], in Zeitschichten, Studien zur Historik (Frankfurt am Main:
Suhrkamp, 2000), 177–202.
68 “Wozu noch Historie?”, Historische Zeitschrift, 212/1 (1971), 1–18.
69 Ibid., 11.

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furnish useful indications, which might yet prove to be of some help in ori-
enting action, in making forecasts: “as science, history must look at the past
with a critical eye, with a view to acquiring a more precise knowledge of the
conditions of action relevant to a praxis bearing on today and tomorrow.”70 In
his long article devoted to the concept of “History”, published a few years later
in 1975, Koselleck does not fail to point out the social and political functions
of that concept of history which prevailed in the nineteenth century. He men-
tions Droysen, for whom history is “an instrument of reflection capable of ori-
enting any attempt at action on the social and political plane.”71 Stefan-Ludwig
Hoffman cites another text from the same period, which clarifies Koselleck’s
position: “Today historical lessons can no longer be derived directly from
history, but only indirectly through a theory of possible histories […] As soon as
the structures of a historical epoch have been successfully identified in terms
of their anthropological conditions, which can be derived from concrete indi-
vidual cases, the results can make visible exemplary findings, which can also
be related to our own present.”72 As Hoffman explains the matter, Koselleck
“realigns the topos of historia magistra vitae in a theoretically reflective
manner”: “Although we cannot predict concrete histories, we can make prog-
noses about the conditions according to which such histories could occur.”73
These developments qualify and modify the thesis that the topos of historia
magistra vitae might have suffered a process of dissolution starting with the
French Revolution, as if modernity had forgotten about its own past. If the idea
that one can draw lessons from history does not get “dissolved” in modernity,
it certainly does get transformed right across the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries. As noted by Benjamin Herzog, “the traditional topos reacted to the
challenge by allowing itself to be modified, by taking on modern forms, and by
thereby becoming indispensable from a theoretical point of view.”74 What are
these modern forms? In the last section of this paper, I will point out at least
three major mutations: the appreciation of change, the growing awareness of the
historicity of the past and the separation of the functions of history.
70 Ibid., 1.
71 Koselleck, “Geschichte/Historie” in Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe, ed. O. Brunner, W. Conze
and R. Koselleck, Vol. 2 (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1975), 694.
72 Koselleck, Kritik und Krise: Eine Studie zur Pathogenese der bürgerlichen Welt (Frankfurt-
am-Main: Suhrkamp, 1973 [1959]), ix. This passage, which comes from the preface to the
German paperback edition of 1973, is quoted and translated by Stefan‐Ludwig Hoffmann,
“Koselleck, Arendt, and the anthropology of historical experience”, History and Theory 49
(May 2010), 235.
73 Hoffmann, “Koselleck, Arendt, and the anthropology of historical experience”, 235.
74 Benjamin Herzog, “Historia magistra vitae”, in Lexikon Geschichtswissenschaft, 145.

4.1 The Appreciation of Change in the Reference to the Past

In the traditional model of historia magistra vitae, the reference to history
serves principally to perpetuate the tradition. Appeal is made to the past to
confirm the prevailing political and social structures. The horizon of expecta-
tion falls in line with the space of experience. Examples become cases to imi-
tate as closely as possible. The period of the French Revolution certainly marks
a break, not in the sense that the topos is abandoned, but in the sense that its
finality is modified. History can now be used by political actors to change the
present situation, to designate a different future. The first change in the topos
is the appreciation of change: Historia magistra mutationis. This new political
function of history – legitimizing change – is reinforced by a didactic function.
In the course of the nineteenth century, a number of progressive historians like
Droysen “conceived historiography as a didactic means destined to propagate
the opinion that political and cultural changes would follow the course of pro-
gressive reforms.”75 The leading idea is that history has to be known if it is to be
changed, if we are to free ourselves from it. In the thinking of the history of the
nineteenth century, examples and precedents no longer refer automatically to
the category of “imitation”, but rather to that of “creation”.
We can illustrate this point by mentioning another aspect of the theme of
historia magistra vitae in the nineteenth century, an aspect that has been ne-
glected by Koselleck. Well after the French Revolution, a number of histori-
cal actors continued to appeal to historical events to inspire or justify their
enterprises. And before all else, to the Revolution itself, which features both
as a radical break in the experience of history and as a point of reference for
the new space of experience. The French Revolution, which was supposed to
sound the knell of the topos of historia magistra vitae, in fact re-established the
latter on a new basis. To take only the example of France, the history of 1789
was also frequently invoked on other revolutionary occasions, as in 1830, 1848
and 1871. For the French revolutionaries, history was a “Guide to Life” and ac-
tion because it exposed past possibilities of human existence, the virtualities
which, for some, had not yet been realized.76
Marx – also absent from Koselleck’s study – is undoubtedly the philosopher
who did most to emphasize this tendency of religious or political leaders to
take history as a model, to invoke the ghosts (Gespenst) and spirits (Geister) of
75 Assis, What Is History For?, 129.

76 See on this point Michèle Riot-Sarcey, Le procès de la liberté: une histoire souterraine du
XIXe siècle en France (Paris, La découverte, 2016), 10: “According to the written manifes-
tos of the insurgents of 1830 and 1848, the past (1789) was in a way the engine of the
insurrection.”

24 doi 10.1163/18722636-12341390 | Bouton
the past.77 As in Nietzsche’s monumental history, such a conception of history

can be summed up as the study of great personalities or of the great events of
the past. Thus, Luther referred to Saint Paul, Cromwell to the Old Testament,
the French revolutionaries of 1789 – such as Robespierre and Saint Just, or
even Babeuf – to the Roman republic, Napoleon to the Roman Empire, the
revolutionaries of 1848 to the Revolution of 1789, Louis Bonaparte to Napoleon.
During a revolution, the past is no longer “suffered” as a form of the tradition,
but “chosen.”78 Henceforward actors choose, within the field of history, those
examples which can serve as precedents to justify and inspire their actions.
From having been a nightmare, the past becomes a dream, the laboratory in
which a new future is worked out. The model of historia magistra vitae remains
operative in a paradoxical way: appeal to precedents is needed to accomplish
actions without precedents; the old has to be invoked to create the absolutely
new. In The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, Marx certainly takes a
poor view of the use of history by political actors for reactionary ends. As the
title indicates, Louis Bonaparte’s coup d’etat of 2 December 1851, bringing the
Second Republic to an end, is presented as a replica of the young Napoleon’s
coup d’etat of the eighteenth Brumaire, marking the end of the Directory and
of the French Revolution. For Marx, however, all this is but a pale caricature
of the Napoleonic epoch, the repetition of a tragedy leading up to a farce, a
parody. On the other hand, Marx does not place the coup d’etat of 1851 on the
same plane of political exploitation of the past as the use of the past by the
English in their Revolution of 1642–1651, or even in the French Revolution of
1789: “The awakening of the dead in those revolutions served the purpose of
glorifying the new struggles, not of parodying the old, of magnifying the given
task in imagination, not of fleeing from its solution in reality; of finding once
more the spirit of revolution, not of making its ghost walk about again.”79
77 See Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte [1852], transl. (Moscow:
Progress Publishers, 1972), 10 ss. See also Hannah Arendt, On Revolution (London: Penguin
Books, 1990), 196: “without the classical example shining through the centuries, none of
the men of the revolutions on either side of the Atlantic would have possessed the cour-
age for what then turned out to be unprecedented action.”
78 I follow the insightful analysis of François Hartog, “La Révolution française et l’Antiquité.
Avenir d’une illusion ou cheminement d’un quiproquo ?” in L’Antiquité grecque au XIXe
siècle, ed. C. Avlani (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2000), 7–46, here 36. In this article, Hartog em-
phasizes the “paradox of imitation” (14) that appears at the time of the French Revolution.
Like Saint-Just with ancient Rome, the Revolutionaries referred to Antiquity while at the
same time professing that this glorious past must serve to create an entirely new situation.
79 Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, 11–12.

For the second half of the nineteenth century, this model of historia magis-
tra vitae, even in the form of a creative inspiration, is no longer valid for Marx.
For it sets limits to the need for a radical transformation in bourgeois society:
“The social revolution of the nineteenth century cannot draw its poetry from
the past, but only from the future. It cannot begin with itself before it has
stripped off all superstition in regard to the past. Earlier revolutions required
recollections of past world history in order to drug themselves concerning
their own content. In order to arrive at its own content, the revolution of the
nineteenth century must let the dead bury their dead.”80 The idea of history
as a “Guide to Life”, of a history capable of inspiring and legitimizing, is over,
replaced by the movement leading to the proletarian revolution. Marx’s analy-
sis seems to confirm Koselleck’s thesis, to the extent that it suggests that even
if the model of historia magistra vitae could have lingered on in the decades
following 1789, it would still have become obsolete by the middle of the nine-
teenth century. However, one should be careful not to accord too great an
importance to Marx’s position, which is linked to his polemic against Louis
Bonaparte. For him, it is much more a matter of criticising the attitude consist-
ing in utilizing the past (Napoleon) to justify and so, to dissimulate an action
which was fundamentally reactionary (a coup d’etat). In another text dating
from the same period, Marx offers what he calls the Jacobin France of 1793
as the model for a democratic Germany: “As in France in 1793, bringing about
the most rigorous centralization is today, in Germany, the task of the truly rev-
olutionary party.”81 In his Civil War in France (1871), Marx certainly does not
mention the numerous references of the Paris Commune to 1789 and 1793 (the
revival of the revolutionary calendar for example) for critical purposes. The
parody argument is only applied to the Versaillais, “caricaturing 1789 by hold-
ing their ghastly meetings in the Jeu de Paume [where the representation of
the Third Estate declared for a constitution].”82 One sees that the role of legiti-
mation of history (what I called the political function of the topos) varies with
Marx as a function of the context assumed: it is authorized when it serves to
appreciate change and progress, criticised when it is enlisted in the service of
a reactionary political strategy.
80 Ibid., 12–13.

81 Marx, Engels, “Address of the Central Committee to the Communist League”, in
Enthüllun gen über Kommunisten-Prozess zu Köln, ed. F. Engels (Hottingen-Zürich:
Volksbuchhandlung, 1885), 82.
82 Marx, Civil War in France, in Later Political Writings, transl. T. Carver (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1996), 194.

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Even in the case of the proletarian revolution, where the aim is to invent
an entirely unknown society, the appeal to the past appears as a useful de-
tour. That is why so many political thinkers and actors, in the wake of Marx,
have continued to make use of the model of history as a guide to action.
Engels draws a parallel between the French Revolution and dictatorship of the
Proletariat, an intermediary phase between the revolution and communist
society.83 In 1901, Jaurès tells us that “we take the French Revolution to have
been a fact of immense and admirable fruitfulness.”84 Far from rejecting the
usefulness of the past, he confirms on the contrary its exemplary role. Lenin
also invoked the French Revolution to define the paths and the critical issues
of the Russian Revolution, contrasting the Jacobin tactics of the Terror with
those of the Girondins, more moderate even if less effective. Here again, the
reference to 1793 is not on the plane of imitation but on that of an analogy
authorizing novelty.85 In these revolutionary discourses, the reference to the
(revolutionary) past furnishes us with useful information (informative
function). It throws light on present alternatives, reminds people of unreal-
ized possibilities (pragmatic function). It serves as a source of inspiration
(psychological function) and/or of legitimation (political function) regarding
the mode of change, creative rather than imitative.
4.2 Historicity of the Past

What explains the rejection of the categories of imitation and repetition of
the past stems from the appreciation of change in modernity, but also from
the growing awareness of the historicity of the past. The classical conception
of historia magistra vitae presupposes that the past still remains, in certain
respects, on the same plane as the present, that it remains available for us,
constituting an eternal reserve of examples which can still be made use of.
The categories of progress and historicity that appear in the second half of the
eighteenth century have left the relation to the past much more complicated.
83 Friedrich Engels, “A Critique of the Draft Social-Democratic Program of 1891”, in Marx/
Engels collected Works, Vol. 27 (Moscow and London: Progress Publishers and Lawrence
and Wishart, 1990), 227.
84 Jean Jaurès, Histoire socialiste de la Révolution française. Introduction, Vol. 1, (Paris: Éditions
sociales, 1968), 61.
85 Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, “Two Tactics of Social-Democracy in the Democratic Revolution”
(1905), in Lenin’s Collected Works, Vol. 9, transl. A. Fineburg and J. Katzer (Moscow:
Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1962), 140. See François Furet, Interpreting the
French Revolution, transl. E. Forster (Cambridge MA: Cambridge University Press, 1981),
86: “Bolsheviks always had their mind fixed on the example of the French Revolution,
especially in its Jacobin phase.”

The idea of progress suggests that the further off the past is the more it is irrel-
evant, surpassed, and so ever the less able to serve as a model for the present.
Far from being on the same plane as the present, the past is now understood
in its historicity, in the sense that every event or period of the past is situated
in a specific context, one which keeps it at a greater or lesser distance from us,
making it alien to us (this is the point of the ontological argument studied in
section 2.2).
This evolution could not but have had its effects on the validity of the
topos of historia magistra vitae. It first implies a distrust of general rules,
used throughout the entire course of the tradition of pragmatic history, from
Polybius to von Müller passing across Bodin or Mably. The more the past is
grasped in its singularity, the more difficult it is to draw general principles from
it. For Droysen, history contains no rules, and yet, as we have seen, it remains
“a repertory of ideas furnishing matter for the judgment”. What is the nature
of this judgment, which no longer relies upon the application of rules? History
helps in reaching judgments but, to take up Kant’s distinction,86 we are not
talking about determinative judgment – applying a general rule already known
to a particular case – but a reflective judgment which, on the basis of anal-
ogy and comparison, shifts from the particular to the general. What can be
called the “historico-practical judgment” looks for examples in the past, analo-
gous situations capable of throwing light on a particular present case. Instead
of subsuming the particular under the general, it recommends reflecting on
the present in the light of the past, that is, comparing the particular (present)
with a particular (past), without necessarily drawing more general conclusions
from the comparison. Just such a historico-practical reasoning can be analysed
out along the following lines:
1) The present situation reminds one of certain past situations (analogy/

comparison).
2) In these past situations, specific actions and events took place, in a good
or bad way.
3) We should therefore act to reproduce or avoid actions and events analo-
gous to those mentioned in (2).87
86 Even though Droysen does not talk about this, Kant’s distinction between determinative
and reflective judgments seems to be helpful on this point. See Kant, The Jäsche Logic,
§§81–84, in Lectures on logic, transl. J. Michael Young (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1992), 624–627.
87 For a more detailed analysis of the different forms of this reasoning, see Bernhard
Forchtner, who studied the rhetoric of the topos historia magistra vitae in contemporary

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In modernity, the field of that history on the basis of which the past is com-
pared, studied and questioned for its relevance to the present – what Koselleck
calls the “space of experience” – has been contracted, without disappearing
altogether. This is a second transformation of the topos. History is taken to
be a “Guide to Life” in more recent periods, running back a few generations.
One might well ask whether the interest in contemporary history, which has
become ever more developed since the end of the Second World War,88 is not
linked to the didactic and normative functions of history. This does not mean
that one stops studying ancient, medieval or modern history, but that the more
recent past is itself also included in the field of historical research; it is also
capable of offering keys to understanding the present and acting on it.
4.3 Separation of the Functions of History

The other modification of the topos of historia magistra vitae is that, with the
advent of modernity, the three functions of history (epistemic, didactic and
normative) have become better separated. In the works of the historians of an-
tiquity, of the Renaissance and of the Enlightenment, these functions are often
mixed up. The historian can describe, explain, teach, judge and justify right
through his enquiry, passing quietly from one register to the other. With the
birth of history as a scientific discipline in the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries, one notes an ever clearer distinction between works of research
(dissertations, books, specialised articles), teaching manuals (for schools and
universities), and public pronouncements. As far as possible, the epistemic
function is disconnected from the didactic and the normative. However,
these other functions have not disappeared. Rather than being relegated to
the sole domain of literature – even if the literature of the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries certainly played an important role in the formation of the
political speeches: “Historia Magistra Vitae: The Topos of History as a Teacher in Public
Struggles over Self- and Other Representation”, in Contemporary Studies in Critical
Discourse Analysis, ed. C. Hart and P. Cap (London: Bloomsbury, 2014), 19–43. Forchtner
mentions Koselleck’s paper of 1967 and its thesis, according to which modernity has ren-
dered the topos “outdated” (25). But he rightly emphasizes, with many recent examples,
that “this does not imply that its rhetorical use in political dramas has not prevailed” (25).
He sums up the meaning of the topos as follows: “since history teaches us that specific
actions have specific consequences, one should perform or omit a specific action in a
specific situation (allegedly) comparable with the historical examples referred to” (26).
88 On this topic, see Rousso, La dernière catastrophe. Droysen already had an interest in
contemporary history, especially in his Vorlesungen über die Freiheitskriege given at the
University of Kiel in 1842–43 (published in 1846).

“practical past”, as White emphasized89 – they are still to be found in the do-
main of history, under new guises which vary as a function of the contexts and
the public with which the historians in question were concerned.
The pedagogical function of forming the young (giving them a culture, an
historical Bildung) has been reinforced by the institutionalisation of the teach-
ing of history in primary and secondary schools and in university. In Germany,
it has even given rise to a specific discipline, Geschichtsdidactik (historical di-
dactics), bearing on the teaching (lehren) and learning (lernen) of history. This
is probably where the heritage of historia magistra vitae is most present. In
his Historik, Jörn Rüsen makes use of Cicero’s formula several times. First of
all, he emphasizes that with modernity the working out of historical narrative
switches from the “exemplary type”, based on the topos of historia magistra
vitae,90 to a “genetic type”, concerned with underlining the processes of de-
velopment, the changes in the past, the ruptures and discontinuities. But this
does not mark the end of our topos, which remains attached to the didactic
function of history: “This is the purpose of the well-known formula of Cicero,
that history is the teacher of life. This way of thinking is still effective and, for
its didactic orientation, remains peculiarly mighty in the teaching and learn-
ing of history.”91 The difference from the classical topos is that the rules of ex-
emplary action drawn from the past no longer have any atemporal validity;
they have to be temporalized, as a function of their historical context, their
specific historicity.92
We have seen in the section on Droysen that the didactic function of history
(to form and instruct) is completed with an informative function (to inform,
help in decision-making). It seems to me that this function of enlightening citi-
zens, what Droysen calls the “discussive function”, is still valid for the historians
of the twentieth century. The German historian Hans-Ulrich Wehler has, in
this way, drawn attention to the fact that historical experiences, whether true
or ideological, have always played a role in the planification, the behaviour and
the decisions of individuals or groups.93 The problem is that it often operates
on the basis of prejudices, of collective memories which have become more
or less legendary, vague or oversimplified representations of the past. Wehler’s
89 See H. White, The Practical Past, op. cit. For the twentieth century, I am thinking princi-
pally of the literature on those who survived the Shoah, and wrote to inform new genera-
tions (Robert Antelme, Imre Kertész, Primo Levi, etc.).
90 Jörn Rüsen, Historik: Theorie der Geschichtswissenschaft (Köln: Böhlau, 2013), 211.
91 Ibid., 256.
92 Ibid., 257.
93 See Hans-Ulrich Wehler, Aus der Geschichte lernen? (München: C. H. Beck, 1988), 11–18.

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thesis is that history as a scientific discipline is able to put order into the ex-
perience of the past. The historian can furnish knowledge of the past which
outlines certain possible orientations for the present. Far from rendering the
didactic function of history obsolete, the bloody history of the twentieth cen-
tury makes it all the more necessary. For familiarity with historical problems
acquired through the reading of history gives rise to a salutary scepticism,
which helps to immunize us against totalitarian discourses, promises of sal-
vation, against oversimplifications of the past or its ideological exploitation.94
The informative function of history can assume both a positive (supply-
ing historical information to the public on a specific subject95) as well as a
negative form. In the course of the twentieth century, it becomes the critical
function of seeking to counterbalance the political usages of the past. It is a
matter of criticizing certain contemporary talk about the past as deforming,
simplifying and generalizing the facts, etc. In this way historians can play a very
precious role in denouncing the distortions such and such a politician imposes
on the past, as Allan Megill has underlined: “History can provide cautionary
tales against political arrogance in the present. But it cannot support such and
such proposed policy.”96 Not only should this critical function of history avoid
transforming itself into a political function of legitimation, but it also has to be
clearly separated from the epistemic function: “It should not be confused with
historical knowledge.”97 For it arises out of a very different way in which the
historian is able to intervene in public space.
It is the third (normative) function of history (judging, inspiring, justifying) –
history as a tribunal set up to moralise – that has been the most criticised and
often even rejected by historians or by philosophers for epistemological rea-
sons that we have examined in section 2.1. This tendency, which first emerged
at the time of the Renaissance, has been reinforced by the professionalization
of history in the course of the nineteenth century. Remember Ranke and his
rejection of value judgements in history. The historians have no right to judge
the facts they study in the light of their own convictions or the values of their
94 Ibid.
95 See David Armitage and Jo Guldi, The History Manifesto (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2014), who defend the idea of history as a “guide to public life”: “Indeed,
in a crisis of short-termism, our world needs somewhere to turn to for information about
the relationship between past and future. Our argument is that History – the discipline
and its subject-matter – can be just the arbiter we need at this critical time.” (7)
96 Allan Megill, Historical Knowledge, Historical Error: A Contemporary Guide to Practice
(Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2007), 37.
97 Ibid., 38.

time; for if they do, they are likely to deform the past and fall into a sterile
anachronism. As we have seen, Marc Bloch firmly upheld this point of view
when he attacked the “mania for making judgment.”98 Whether the past is
disparaged in the light of the present or the present in the light of the past,
value judgments have no place in history. Does this mean that the normative
function of history has been dissolved? The truth of the matter is more compli-
cated. I can do no more than offer a few indications in the last section.
4.4 From historia magistra vitae to the “Duty to Remember”

In connection with the historians of the nineteenth century, it has often been
pointed out that in France, in Germany and in England, history, as a scientific
discipline, laid claim to having progressed beyond judgements of value, even
while often serving to uphold the ideology of the nation-state, whose civilis-
ing virtues they repeatedly praised. The goals theoretically ascribed to history
(knowing the past objectively without judging it) conflicted with the tasks
it actually accomplished in practice (promoting the “national novel”). Thus,
Ernest Lavisses’s history of France reminded French school children that “the
Gauls, your ancestors, were brave men”.99 The pedagogical function of history
was adapted to judgments of value, the construction of models to be imitated
etc., all of which remained far removed from the advocated ideal of objectiv-
ity. Certainly, Lavisses’s history gradually lost ground in the twentieth century,
especially after the breakthrough accomplished by the Ecole des Annales. But
the problem of value judgments did not disappear. In the twentieth century,
historians are confronted with a series of genocides, with the result that the
context in which history is written no longer remains the same as that which
was obtained in Ranke’s day. It is no longer a matter of praising, exclusively, the
heroic acts of the past with a view to inspiring the young, of giving examples
of sacrifices, but of condemning ideologies and the mass massacres to which
they lead, of offering “negative examples”, this with a view to avoiding any
repetition of these events. Following Agnes Heller, Megill takes the view that
“it is permissible, and sometimes desirable, for historians to offer explicit moral
judgment.”100 But the moral judgments of historians are only pertinent in ex-
ceptional cases, for “moral monsters”, as for example those responsible for the

99 See Pierre Nora, “L’Histoire de France de Lavisse” in Les Lieux de mémoire, vol. II (Paris:
Gallimard, 1986) 317–375.
100 See Megill, “History-Writing and Moral Judgment: A Note on Chapter Seven of Agnes
Heller’s A Theory of History (1982)”, in Ethics and Heritage: Essays on the Philosophy of
Ágnes Heller, ed. J. Boros and M. Vajda (Pécs, Hungary: Brambauer, 2007), 91.

32 doi 10.1163/18722636-12341390 | Bouton
Holocaust, “the evil of the twentieth century.”101 Megill takes up Collingwood’s

famous parallel drawn between historiography and criminal investigation,
which, from another angle, again illustrates the idea of a separation of the
different functions of history: “Collingwood’s police inspector (whose proce-
dures, Collingwood holds, are the same as those of the historian) makes no
moral judgment on the crime during the course of his investigation of it: after
all, such judgment is not relevant to the task of discovering what happened.
Still, one can imagine the inspector saying, perhaps after he has completed the
investigation and feels able to think about the world in a more reflective way,
‘I do not approve of murder.’ Under similar circumstances the historian might
say, ‘I do not approve of looting, exploitation, plundering, oppression ...’ ”102
Today, it seems generally admitted by historians that moral judgments have
no place in the epistemic function of the knowledge of the past, with which,
moreover, they should never be confused. Value judgments either have to be
left to the reader or expressed by the historian at the end of his enquiry, or they
should be clearly announced from the very beginning in the case of this form
of history which prefers an “assumed subjectivity” to an “enforced objectivity.”103
But in every case, the ideal of a clear distinction between the epistemic and
normative functions is maintained, with a view to helping the historian avoid
the objection of partiality or of a blatant distortion of the facts.
More generally, the question of the “duty to remember”, a question that
makes full use of the didactic and normative functions of history, can be con-
sidered as a new avatar of the topos of history as a guide to, or a teacher of,
life. Thus Tzvetan Todorov defends the idea of an exemplary usage of memory,
which, on the basis of historical knowledge, consists in making of the past a
model for understanding new situations: “The pattern or model use […] allows
the past to be used with the present in mind and serves as an example of expe-
rienced injustices that may help to combat those taking place today.”104 What
the history of the twentieth century teaches us is that, from this point of view,
we have every interest in remembering our history … in order to reduce the
chances of its being repeated again one day.
101 Ibid., 99.

102 Ibid., 100.
103 Rousso, La dernière catastrophe, 162 (Rousso refers to the history of the Vichy Regime).
104 Tzvetan Todorov, “The Uses and Abuses of Memory”, in What Happens to History: The
Renewal of Ethics in Contemporary Thought, ed. H. Marchitello (London, New York:
Routledge, 2001), 20.

Conclusion
Even though the end of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution marked a
turning point in the semantics and use of the topos historia magistra vitae, one
should avoid conceiving of this change in terms of a “dissolution” (Auflösung) –
as Koselleck did in his 1967 paper. The expression “dissolution” carries with it
the idea of suppression. So it is better to talk about the transformations and
reformulations of the topos that took place within the framework of politi-
cal modernity: historiography becomes much more open to changes and tem-
poral differences between past and present, and also much more sensitive to
the singularities of each epoch and experience. Another major transformation
corresponds to a process of functional specialization, after which historians
became free to choose among uses of historical knowledge (epistemic, didac-
tic, normative) that previously would not have been dissociable from one an-
other. The famous Ciceronian topos still permeates our own historical cultures
in various ways, with the importance of historical education, the negative ex-
emplarity usually ascribed to the Holocaust, or the ethical questions raised by
the debates on the “duty to remember”, which have emerged since the 1980s in
Europe and, more recently, in other countries, such as in Latin America after
the end of the dictatorships. Modernity is thus characterized by a specific con-
cern for the past, which is reflected, on the one hand, by the growing recogni-
tion of historicity and, on the other, by new forms of history, which, for all that,
does not cease to be a practical or a practically-relevant enterprise.

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Journal of the Philosophy of History (2018) 1–33

Learning from History

Droysen – historia magistra vitae – Koselleck – Nietzsche – Polybius – pragmatic

My point of departure is the article by Koselleck entitled “Historia Magistra

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2018 | doi 10.1163/18722636-12341390

Journal of the Philosophy of History (2018) 1–33

it novelties that will be appreciated as improvements. In the representation

4 Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of World History. Introduction, transl. H. B. Nisbet

Journal of the Philosophy of History (2018) 1–33

Journal of the Philosophy of History (2018) 1–33

1 The Functions of History in Ancient Historiography

Journal of the Philosophy of History (2018) 1–33

Journal of the Philosophy of History (2018) 1–33

Journal of the Philosophy of History (2018) 1–33

1) History furnishes us with information on specific actions and events

The classical conception of history as the “Guide to Life” is found again in

Journal of the Philosophy of History (2018) 1–33

2 The Reasons for the Dissolution of the Topos

2.1 The Epistemological Argument Against Judging in History

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Journal of the Philosophy of History (2018) 1–33

2.2 The Ontological Argument: The Singularity of the Past

27 Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of World History. Introduction, 21.

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3 The Persistence of the Topos

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35 Ibid., 93.

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Journal of the Philosophy of History (2018) 1–33

46 Droysen, Outline of the Principles of History, §45, 33 (transl. modified).

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Journal of the Philosophy of History (2018) 1–33

It can overlook entire swathes of the past, succumb to generalisation, to ide-

3.3 Other References in the Twentieth Century

51 Ibid., 18.

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Journal of the Philosophy of History (2018) 1–33

[W]e have no hesitation in taking up again in a new mode the classical

But according to Marrou, it is possible to derive a deeper meaning from this

4 Transformations of the topos in Modernity

62 Henry Rousso, La dernière catastrophe. L’histoire, le présent, le contemporain (Paris:

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Journal of the Philosophy of History (2018) 1–33

4.1 The Appreciation of Change in the Reference to the Past

75 Assis, What Is History For?, 129.

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the past.77 As in Nietzsche’s monumental history, such a conception of history

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80 Ibid., 12–13.

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4.2 Historicity of the Past

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1) The present situation reminds one of certain past situations (analogy/

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4.3 Separation of the Functions of History

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Journal of the Philosophy of History (2018) 1–33

Journal of the Philosophy of History (2018) 1–33

4.4 From historia magistra vitae to the “Duty to Remember”

98 Marc Bloch, The Historian’s Craft, 31.

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4 Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of World History. Introduction, transl. H. B. Nisbet

27 Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of World History. Introduction, 21.

35 Ibid., 93.

46 Droysen, Outline of the Principles of History, §45, 33 (transl. modified).

51 Ibid., 18.

62 Henry Rousso, La dernière catastrophe. L’histoire, le présent, le contemporain (Paris:

75 Assis, What Is History For?, 129.

80 Ibid., 12–13.

98 Marc Bloch, The Historian’s Craft, 31.

101 Ibid., 99.