Teaching directory
Course 2024-2025

Epistemology of history [LHISB305]

  • 2 credits
  • 15h
  • 2nd quarter
Language of instruction: French / Français

Learning outcomes

- Acquire a broad general and interdisciplinary culture by opening up to other disciplines and understanding their links with history - Developing critical thinking and scientific reasoning skills - Understand the challenges of the discipline - To acquire a reflective and critical awareness in the practice of the historical approach

Objectives

At the end of the course, the student should be able to : • to construct a personal reflection on how history is (or should be) written; • to situate the main issues of history as a discipline with scientific pretensions, its ambition and its limits, its strengths and weaknesses; • judge the qualities, shortcomings and defects of a historical study by reference to the concepts seen in the course

Content

This course is presented as a reflection on historical knowledge and the work of the historian. Among the themes likely to be addressed: the meaning of human history (philosophies of history), the ambition of historians, periodization, explanation in history (causality, conceptualizations, validity of reasoning...), writing history. Numerous examples drawn from contemporary historiography will be analysed during the course.


Co-requisites

Historiographie [LHISB318] et Épistémologie [LPHIB201]

Teaching methods

Interactive lecture

Evaluations

The assessment will be based both on an individual written assignment due at the end of the course period and on the material covered in the course or in the syllabus. This written work consists of a reflection fed by the course and based on the reading and analysis of an article, book or chapter of a book to be chosen from a list established by the teacher or freely chosen by the student (subject to validation of this choice by the teacher). In the oral examination, the student presents this work and then answers questions posed by the teacher, which may relate to the epistemological reflection presented, to the study analysed or to the course material in general.

Recommended readings

MARROU (Henri-Irénée), De la connaissance historique, Paris, 1975 (Coll. Points Histoire, 21) PROST (Antoine), Douze leçons sur l'histoire, Paris: Seuil, 1996 (Coll. Points Histoire, 225) VEYNE (Paul), Comment on écrit l'histoire : essai d'épistémologie, Paris: Seuil, 1971 ; nouv. éd., Paris, 1996 (Coll. Points Histoire, 226) BURGUIÈRE (A.), ed. in Dictionnaire des sciences historiques, Paris, 1986 DELACROIX (Ch.) et al, Historiographies: concepts and debates, 2 vols, Paris, 2010 (Folio Histoire, 179-180)

Language of instruction

French / Français

Location for course

NAMUR

Organizer

Faculté de philosophie et lettres
Rue de Bruxelles, 61
5000 NAMUR

Degree of Reference

Undergraduate Degree