"Life history" is one of those common-sense notions which has been smuggled into the learned universe, first with little noise among anthropologists, then more recently, and with a lot of noise, among sociologists. To speak of "life history" implies the not insignificant presupposition that life is a history. As in Maupassant's title Une Vie (A Life), a life is inseparably the sum of the events of an individual existence seen as a history and the narrative of that history. That is precisely what common sense, or everyday language, tells us: life is like a path, a road, a track, with crossroads (Hercules between vice and virtue), pitfalls, even ambushes (Jules Romain speaks of successive ambushes of competitions and examinations). Life can also be seen as a progression, that is, a way that one is clearing and has yet to clear, a trip, a trajectory, a cursus, a passage, a voyage, a directed journey, a unidirectional and linear move ("mobility"), consisting of a beginning ("entering into life"), various stages, and an end, understood both as a termination and as a goal ("He will make his way," meaning he will succeed, he will have a fine career). This way of looking at a life implies tacit acceptance of the philosophy of history as a series of historical events (Geschichte) which is implied in the philosophy of history as an historical narrative (Historie), or briefly, implied in a theory of the narrative. An historian's narrative is indiscernible from that of a novelist in this context, especially if the narration is biographical or autobiographical.

Without pretending to exhaustiveness, we can try to unravel some of the presuppositions of this theory.

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