ABSTRACT
This chapter breaks down the Ranke-Hegel binary and shows that both were part of a wider movement that harnessed metaphysics and history in the service of creating quite diverse visions of how things make sense. It unfolds Hegel's thought on the interconnection between history and philosophy. Much of Ranke's writing supports this interpretation of him as a technical empiricist. Modern historiography means Leopold von Ranke. In the case of von Ranke, there is an argument for the superiority of history over philosophy in explaining the universal. But this argument, it will be shown, bears fewer radical implications than the historical embodiment of intuition as female in Hale's world, or its realisation in the ghosts, revenants and poltergeists of Defoe and Howitt's spirited histories. In critical history, which succeeds original history, surveys of a people, a country or even the known world are offered.
