Theory of History, Epistemic Transformations, and Presentism

Abstract

This remarkable book is an outcome of many years of reflection on conceptual history by one of its leading exponents, who through the magnificent Iberconceptos project has explored the scope for thinking about the life of ideas ‘beyond Bielefeld (Koselleck) and Cambridge (Skinner)’. Fernández Sebastián here offers a master class in what conceptual history can be in the hands of a seasoned practitioner who is both rigorous and imaginative, not to mention formidably well read in the historiographies of Iberian America, Europe, and the United States. Many historians would have been content with that, but Fernández Sebastián's ambitions go a great deal further. His work on the conceptual history of the Iberian independence revolutions leads him to urge historians to take seriously the theorizing of history, not of History in a Hegelian sense, but as an intellectual discipline. This would require scrutiny of historical practice beyond discussions of method (which, he suggests, all too easily reduces to technique) to a far deeper level of reflexivity about historical consciousness. The author engagingly reveals, tucked away in a footnote, his hope that the book might persuade readers who think they are not interested in theory of history to think again.