Kracauer sees history as a distinct "area of reality," much as his
Theory of Film stressed the supposedly unique properties of
photography. Here he decides that they are both "intermediate" or
"anteroom" areas. He dwells on the art-nor-science character of the
historian's work. But he never comes up with a real Theory. So the
book does not provoke the kind of critical attention which resulted
in Pauline Kael's attack on his cinematic dogmas and opaque
formulations thereof. Not that Kracauer has renounced grandiloquent
opacity: take "the question as to whether the underlying
subjectivity of historical writings may not transcend itself." But
if he neglects to unpack questions like this, he declines to press
them either. They serve as motifs for a gallery of appraisals and
suggestions, a montage of issues and writers. The issues include
man's relation to society, the structure of an historical period,
notions of time. Writers include Hegel, Marx, Tolstoy, Burckhardt,
Croce, Dilthey, Husserl, Collingwood, Bloch, and Levi-Strauss, as
well as Proust, who engenders some of the more fruitful remarks.
Kracauer pays no attention to current academic philosophers of
history (except Mandelbaum). They will find the book passe and
muddled. Certainly a dose of analytic rigor would have expedited
Kracauer's quest for "a redefinition and rehabilitation of certain
modes of thought peculiar to historians." Yet the name may attract
a certain audience, and students can use the book as a chatty and
erudite biography. (Kirkus Reviews)
"The late Siegfried Kracauer was best known as a historian and
critic of the cinema. His main intellectual preoccupation during
the last years of his life was the relation between past and
present, and the relation between histories in different levels of
generality. Philosophy is concerned with the last things while
history seeks to explain 'the last things before the last.' One
after another he examined various theories of history and exposed
their strengths and weaknesses. Well written and cogently argued."
--Library Journal This edition features a new introduction by
editor Paul Oskar Kristeller of Columbia University.
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