ABSTRACT
The underlying idea of the analogical orientation is the assumption that nothing is new under the sun, or, at least, that no event is unprecedented. This is one of the most ancient ideas of historiog raphy, and has been able to survive two and a half thousand years of its history. Generalized statements can be applied, with varying degrees of criticalness, but they have always been used. The norm of their critical usage requires that they should never be used either as explanatory or as organizing principles. The reason for the first requirement is obvious, the reason for the second is less so, at least as far as synchronic organizing principles are concerned. Synchronic organizing principles are typologies based on the similarity of certain 178
phenomena in the same cluster. Should the historian apply the same cluster in different cases, he implies that the types of social phenomena are in those cases identical. In a manner of speaking, he can put his finger on them: this is democracy, this is autocracy. If orientative principles are applied, no identity ought to be established at all. If it comes to open generalizations, establishing identity concludes in mere tautology, for one would identify with one another two phenomena which were anyhow supposed to be identical. If the generalization is covert or incomplete (as in the case of precedents), the organizing usage of orientative principles hinders the historian in his working out of the specificity of a particular historical event - and precisely for that reason it is a misuse.
