Razumijevanje sadašnjosti kroz prošlost
To Understand the Present Time through the Past

Summary/Abstract: If a historian makes a question is the history magistra vitae today, there are inevitably some more related questions that should be answered, in order to answer the first question. One of them is the question, is the demand justified to go back to the pragmatic line in the sense of the antique understanding of edifying role and usefulness of history? As the aim of the pragmatic history is on the basis of the past events, that are repeated, to teach the citizien and statesman to act politically, there is the question of some events being repeated or not? The statement, that the past events cannot be repeated according to B. Djurdjev is only a right starting point, can the understanding of history include the criterion of relative repeating? There are numerous examples from our past that prove that the events were repeated relatively, namely in a changed form and the process they provoked. Related to this there is still one of the lasting, actual questions of history, the question of the individual relation to the total historical development. The question was considered within the historicism and evolutionism in the historical development, the relation by accident and the law of development by some authors in the relation between the traditional and structural history. If some events from our past are repeated, the history scholar can confirm them by examining, then is logical that the history can serve, being edifying, in that case magistra vitae. The role of the historian is important anyway. An objective approach to research a historical issue, following the historical method, the scholar can perceive the past being his main task, then based on his notion, he is able to comprehend the present time. To know the past, can really be a teaching of future, because of historia magistra vitae.

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