Abstract
In this article I argue that it is the task of philosophy of history to elucidate the practice of history. Therefore philosophy of history must stick to the analysis of the debates of historians and neither literary theory nor aesthetics can function as "models" for philosophy of history. This is so because historians present reconstructions of a past reality on the basis of factual research and discuss these reconstructions primarily in terms of factual adequacy. The fact that these discussions seldom lead to a consensus constitutes a basic feature of "doing history" to be analyzed by its philosophy. An analysis of the Historikerstreit leads, first, to the observation that traditional objectivism and relativism cannot account for the fact that historians debate at all. Second, it leads to the observation that according to most historians judgments of value are supposed to fall outside the scope of rational debate. This conviction is traced back to deep-rooted but outdated conceptions of rationality. To get beyond objectivism and relativism, "internal realism" is proposed and connected to the notion of practical identity. The fact-value distinction is re-analyzed in this framework of "internal realism" and put to work in the Historikerstreit. Third, I argue that the theory of "speech-acts" and the notion of "horizon of expectation" can be connected to "internal realism" to give a more adequate elucidation of the normative aspects of historiography. Fourth, and along the way, I maintain that historians can profit from "internal realism" because the scope of their discussion would be widened to include the traditionally implicit normative issues involved.