16000-10

We next have in mind that the term "history" is not so much 'the past' in the sense of that which is past, but rather derivation from such a past. Anything that 'has a history' stands in the context of a becoming. In such becoming, 'development' is sometimes a rise, sometimes a fall. What 'has a history' in -this way can, at the same time, 'make' such history. As 'epoch-making', it determines 'a future' 'in the present'. Here "history" signifies a 'context' of events and 'effects', which draws on through 'the past', the 'Present', and the 'future'. On this view, the past has no special priority. Further, "history" signifies the totality of those entities which change 'in time', and indeed the transformations and vicissitudes of men, of human groupings and their 'cultures', as distinguished from Nature, which likewise operates 'in time'. Here what one has in view is not so much a kind of Being-historizing-as it is that realm of entities which one distinguishes from Nature by having regard for how man's existence is essentially determined by 'spirit' and 'culture', even though in a certain manner Nature too belongs to "history" as thus understood. Finally, whatever has been handed down to us is as such held to be 'historical', whether it is something which we know histologically or something that has been taken over as self-evident, with its derivation hidden.