ABSTRACT
Krzysztof Pomian, a Polish philosopher and cultural historian of Jewish descent, has been developing his epistemology of historical cognition parallel to Hayden White, though completely independent of him. Unfortunately, the Polish metahistorian is practically absent in the English-speaking world, since he wrote and published almost exclusively in Polish, French, and Italian. Pomian (b. 1934), barred from teaching at Warsaw University in Poland after 1968, emigrated to France, where he was a professor at the CNRS (Centre National de le Recherche Scientifique) until his retirement. White, who read Pomian in French, regarded him as one of the greatest minds of the 20th century and mentioned him as the final link in a chain of philosophical reflection on history as a science that leads from Droysen through Heidegger, Collingwood, Popper, and Koselleck. This study is a first in the world literature comprehensive attempt at offering a synthetic presentation of and a lecture on Pomian’s concepts, written especially for the English-speaking audience.
