Historicity

Historicity refers to the historical actuality of persons and events, distinguishing what is part of history from myth, legend, or fiction. It concerns both the factual status of claims about the past and the methods by which modern observers can determine what really happened. The concept has been characterized as a dimension of all natural phenomena occurring in space and time, or alternatively as an attribute reserved for certain human occurrences. Herbert Marcuse described historicity as that which defines history and distinguishes it from nature or the economy, while Wilhelm Dilthey saw it as identifying human beings as unique and concrete historical beings. Questions of historicity arise especially in partisan or poetic accounts, such as debates over the Iliad, and in historical studies of religion, where value commitments can influence methodology.