Focal point »Social relevance of historical Human Sciences«
Platform 4 ‘Education – Society – Norms – Ethical Reflection’ has the intention of linking the Human and Social Sciences‘ expertise into a competence network and accordingly is thematically and institutionally widely represented.
The research activities are orientated on the guidelines of the Future Concept ‘Research – Relevance – Responsibility’ and the focus is directed towards application orientated questions with social relevance. This leaves the Human and Cultural Sciences with a historical approach (‘historical’ in its widest meaning neither limited to the distant past nor in general to historical science) in a quandary with regards to current relevance and/or to application.
This does not concern justification or the self-image of the Human Sciences as a whole, nor the role of literature, art or general understanding of history in our society, but is rather a subquestion: In which way can results of historically aligned scientific research in the Human Sciences either alone or in research associations be seen as relevant in the context of current social questions?
This is a question conceived by and/or for Platform 4, but far beyond this it is a latent or even explicit question underlying many present social and research political discussions; it is not least a regularly discussed topic in research associations’ applications (DFG, BMBF, large institutes). Incidentally, this concerns variations of a known topic: In the pre-modern era the relevance question was understood in the sense of a historia magistra vitae; in the 19th century it was considered to already have been dealt with during the course of historism and the ‘objective’ researching of the past; in the 20th century there are numerous theoretical approaches with which the Human Sciences are attempting to overcome the positivism of the late 19th century. Currently, a constellation often arises in which the systematic social sciences provide the theoretical framework and the humanities provide the field of application. Is also here different hermeneutics conceivable? It is worth questioning anew how historical orientated Human Sciences research in context and in the consciousness of current questions could look.
In December 2014 an inaugural workshop brought together the representatives of, in the widest sense of the word, historically (or partially historically) orientated projects both from existing association projects and from the University of Tübingen’s Exploration Funds projects. The workshop aimed, based on the sketch mentioned above, to sound out what type of questions, problems and approaches to solutions are in the different projects (or also why no problem is seen here) and in which way the topic can be worked on together in Platform 4.
