Resumo

BETANCOURT MARTINEZ, Fernando. Historical knowledge as an event: circularity and systemic operation. Hist. graf [online]. 2013, n.41, pp.79-114. ISSN 1405-0927.

If history has been presented as the science of events since the nineteenth century it is because history itself is an historical event. Posited in this way, circularity will be the aim of exploration in this paper. Circularity defines the operative condition of historical discipline on a systemic framework, where its cognitive abilities could be described on two main aspects. First, in terms of the epistemological features presented from a framework of emergency (XIX Century). The hypothesis here considers that its nature and cognitive limits can be explained if it stays close to its social determination: to be an emerging order in the context of a functionally differentiated society. And the second, if history is a science that in events finds it legitimacy, then it is not about anything but the internal order of an operation well before an ontological view of reality. Therefore, the events that it works on are constructed as events structured through its own internal logic.

Palavras-chave : history theory; epistemology; systems theory; spiritual sciences; social sciences; Michel Foucault; Niklas Luhmann.