ABSTRACT
To most modem theorists of hermeneutics, seeking truth in history often is a futile, contradictory effort, for truth, which has been identified since the Scientific Revolution in the seventeenth century as a timeless, univocal notion, is essentially ahistorical. According to the Confucian hermeneutic tradition, Confucius played a double, complex role in the evolution of Chinese historiography. The importance of the Chunqiu lies in the fact that it reveals the tension and complexity many have noticed in the Confucian treatment of the human past. In the Chunqiu one finds many entries about natural occurrences that were considered omens from heaven, such as eclipses, floods, locusts, and earthquakes. As modem European historians searched for truth in objectivity, Chinese historians used truth to expound moral and political righteousness. Confucius' way of reading history shows that in ancient China history was not simply an amalgamation of individual memories; it was rather a macrocosm of mankind's collective memory of the past.
