What does history study? There has never been a definite answer to this question. Reflecting on this topic, Karl Jaspers talked about the fact that when we try to peer into history, it immerses us in the very mystery of human existence. After all, it is our past that has made us what we are. Or at least as we imagine ourselves. Therefore, we ask similar questions: where does everything come from, where does it lead, and what does it actually mean? The need to turn to the past and keep records of various events has very deep roots. At the beginning, history was only a chronological (and even not always) piling up of events and phenomena. The latter are called facts. Actually, what history studies, namely, the main structural elements on which the entire research process that is characteristic of this science is based.
However, the accumulation of facts alone was completely insufficient for the emergence of scientific discourse. Theoretical reasoning begins with the search for a connection between events and phenomena. When people start trying to search for the meaning of what is happening or to bring it in, to see the goals or reasons for what happened and will happen, then science arises. There is a rationalization of history. It seems to stand out in a special world that remains outside of us and at the same time has some kind of communication with us. But when we begin to ask questions about the essence of this special being, we thereby carry out its philosophical analysis. He also answers questions about what history is studying.
Even initially, when the formation of this science took place in the archaic period, no theorizing was complete without structures and categories. After all, any concept used in this area, such as a city or people, a state or slaves, is no longer a historical fact. This is a certain category that generalizes it.
Therefore, history also studies these concepts, and the relationship between them and events that have occurred. When we look for the meaning of facts and try to understand whether they fit into any system, we often think not even about what was and will be, but about what should be. Thus, we are looking not only for what history studies, but also for what it leads us to or to which we all should ideally come.
So the concept of special time, a process with a beginning and an end, arises. This historical category was also understood in different ways. In ancient times, time was a symbol of corruption, the fall of the "Golden Age". Then came the concept of development - the epic story of individual nations. And then, at the end of the ancient era, after Augustine, the theory of progress was born. She said that history is a linear time that passes from the fall to salvation, that it has a hidden meaning, the main driving force of which is God and His plan. In fact, all later secular theories about progressive formations following one another repeated the meaning of Augustine's ideas about the movement from hell to paradise, only interpreted them in a social sense.
From an early age, the study of history and philosophy also focused on the analysis of politics. However, this was not an analysis of real events, but rather, there was a search for ideal forms of state and legislation. Then, in the Renaissance, the analysis of law prevailed over the consideration of the types of political systems, and the latter became dependent on the former. At the present stage, a whole science stood out. It is called political history. It analyzes real-time processes. Thinking about what political history is studying, we can say that now it reflects not only on what is happening today, but is trying to derive modern events from the traditions of past eras.