Which past? Whose transcendental presupposition?

摘要

This paper starts from the presumption that historiography is not the objective retelling of a self-evident object?'the past'?but is rather a 'code', one that constitutes its object. The central element in this code, it suggests, is humanism/anthropology. It is not because man is a meaning producing being, who leaves behind traces of himself, that history-writing is possible; rather, it is historiography that helps secure this humanist/anthropological presumption. Moreover, the presumption that Man is a culture secreting and meaning producing being is not universally 'true', is not (pace Weber) a 'transcendental presupposition', but is rather a specifically modern and presumption. History-writing, the essay concludes, is not always adequate to non-Western pasts.