Historical actions or historical events

Nathan Rotenstreich

pp. 69-84

in: Yirmiahu Yovel (ed), Philosophy of history and action, Berlin, Springer, 1978

Abstract

The question we are about to analyse is whether or not the historical domain should be characterized as one of events or one of actions. We deliberately disregard, at least at the beginning of our analysis, the particularity of the historical domain in as much as the relation between dimensions of time goes: we deal only with the phenomenological features of the datum of history. We can put the question by employing the traditional distinction between res gestae and historia rerum gestarum, with a view of asking the question whether the res gestae are events or actions, or perhaps neither of the two.