History – Culture – Metaphor. On Historical Thinking

Historiography is one of the most systematic accounts of the fate of culture. It is also a record of the human—reflexive and reflective metaphors of the world. It is at the same time anthropomorphizing and humanizing it. Historical imagination captures the world in its classical variant directly, in its non-classical variant indirectly in the perspective of anthropomorphization. This allows the world to be adapted to the human dimension or, in other words, to be constructed on a human scale. Historiography and historical thinking, especially the traditional ones, are close to the figures of public discourse because they offer meanings commensurate with it. Additionally, they are openly clothed in value, so in public discourse they fall prey to easy, casual and biased interpretations. Thanks to these features, historical thinking and historiography provide semantics for the expression of currently important values and the common and particular emotions centered around them.