Historians typically tell stories about the past, but how are we to understand the epistemic status of those narratives? This problem is particularly pressing for history education, which seeks guidance not only on the question of which narrative to teach but also more fundamentally on the question of the goals of instruction in history. This article explores the nature of historical narrative, first, by engaging with the seminal work of Hayden White, and second, by developing the critique of White by (...) David Carr. The picture of historical inquiry that emerges is one in which the fundamental cognitive activity is one of negotiating among narratives. Students, like historians, like any of us, come to the work of historical inquiry in possession of prior narratives, which are then thrown into an encounter with other narratives of varying size and scope. Good historians enact the negotiation among narratives responsibly and well, demonstrating the virtues of historical interpretation. History education, therefore, ought to help students improve their historical interpretations at the same time as it fosters those qualities that make them good interpreters. (shrink)

Koopman’s book revolves around the notion of transition, which he proposes is one of the central ideas of the pragmatist tradition but one which had not previously been fully articulated yet nevertheless shapes the pragmatist attitude in philosophy. Transition, according to Koopman, denotes “those temporal structures and historical shapes in virtue of which we get from here to there”. One of the consequences of transitionalism is the understanding of critique and inquiry as historical pro...

My purpose in the researching and the writing of this thesis has been to investigate, and to try to explain, Frank Ankersmit's curious shift from his well expressed and firmly held narrativist position of "Narrative Logic", to an arguably contradictory, yet passionately held counter belief in the plausibility of a form of direct historical experience - an authentic unmediated relationship with the past. I am, accordingly, presenting here what I believe to be the most adequate explanatory account of/for Ankersmit's intellectual (...) journey. A journey which, in essence, constituted a substitution of his earlier representational, language centred philosophy of history for what might be taken as a new and mystical non-representational theory. This alternative theory of Ankersmit' s, lacking cognitive foundations, works on the basis of sensations, moods, feelings and therefore a consciousness deemed to be received directly from the past itself, and therein - for this thesis - lies its fatal weakness as a historical theory. Belief in the mystical may be all right at some level, if this is what is wanted, but a mystical experience itself cannot produce a historical re-presentation which is the only way that the past can be presented historically. Thus, I argue that Ankersmit's journey from language to experience - the latter phenomenon being more appropriately situated within the field of sociology/social theory and memory studies - is, in the end, a lost historical cause. (shrink)

History and philosophy complement and overlap each other in subject matter, but the two disciplines exhibit conflict over methodology. Since Hempel's challenge to historians that they should adopt the covering law model of explanation, the methodological conflict has revolved around the respective roles of the general and the particular in each discipline. In recent years, the revival of narrativism in history, coupled with the trend in philosophy of science to rely upon case studies, joins the methodological conflict anew. So long (...) as contemporary philosophy of science relies upon history's methodology to construct its case studies, it subjects itself to a paradoxical situation: the better the history, the worse the philosophy. An example of the methodological conflict is presented in the case of Antoine Lavoisier. This example also serves our ultimateconclusion, which is that distinctively philosophical methods of case-study design promise enhanced prescriptive powers for philosophy of science. (shrink)

For G.W.F. Hegel, history is the development of the spirit in time just as nature is the development of idea in space. Consciousness of idea is spirit. The synthesis of idea, nature, and development of consciousness is history. For this reason, history and idea are interrelated. This paper is an attempt to solve the problem why Hegel’s view on history is idealistic. It is because the Hegel’s view on history is based on idea. This paper seeks to understand Hegel’s idealistic (...) view on history. (shrink)

History educators find themselves in the peculiar situation of wishing to introduce students to the history discipline while lacking a clear conception of the features intrinsic to historical inquiry across its various specialisations and subject matters. In affirming that no one methodological charter hangs in the corridors of academic history departments, we fail to provide an adequate justification for an education in history. The doctrine that history is an exercise in disciplined knowledge, a specific way of knowing, is weakened by (...) disciplinary disquietude and dissimilitude. Three features impress themselves upon all who inquire into the past. In the learning and teaching of history, these three features assume a distinct structural shape. First, colligation consists in grouping the events and concepts to be studied according to their shared purposes. Second, historical distance, intimately tied up with tradition and collective memory, provides the means for identifying a past separate from the present to be studied in its own right. Third, reconstruction describes the process of supplying individual content to the general categories illuminated by the earlier stages. To work knowingly in this structure of historical inquiry offers no solutions to the problems of historical thinking, it is to work productively within these problems. (shrink)

This critical review of Aviezer Tucker's Our Knowledge of the Past: A Philosophy of Historiography examines the character, scope, and limits of scientific historiography, the overall topic of Tucker's book. The review begins by arguing that the book both unwittingly juggles two criteria for scientific, as opposed to nonscientific, historiography - the production of knowledge and Kuhnian disciplinary matrices - and wrongly construes the subject matter of such historiography to be present evidence for the past as opposed to this evidence (...) in addition to the past itself. There ensues a lengthy discussion of the role of theories in scientific historiography that (1) contests Tucker's thesis that theories of information transmission and grand social theories are central to the enterprise, (2) criticizes his failure to distinguish technical from theoretical terms, and (3) claims that scholarly historiography is more of an art than a science. The review concludes by arguing that scientific historiography as Tucker conceives of it cannot meet the many needs society has vis- -vis the past. (shrink)

In the modern consideration of historical time, reason is the driving force of progress through a homogenous, linear and continuum time. In fact, during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries humanity was witnessing a history of progress in which it appeared that history was progressing towards a better world. However, the tragedies of the twentieth century indicate the opposite. Western reason proved unable to stop the barbarism of war. At the heart of this panorama, according to Emmanuel Levinas and Johann Baptist (...) Metz, was the idealism of the Greek logos presented in the philosophical and theological mode of thinking. Theology and philosophy would share in this way the same idealist vocation towards totality which, in Levinas’s categories, is the forgetting of singularity and their concrete situation in favour of universality. I will show how by resorting to the Jewish legacy, and particularly to the concepts of eschatology, apocalypse, and messianism, Levinas and Metz define a new relationship with historical time. In this way they not only oppose the mainstream consideration of history as a vector of continuous progress towards its own realization, but also introduce in history the contingency of individual experiences and particularly those of the victims of such history. (shrink)

How good is psychotherapy as a tool of research into human nature? There is an orthodox defence of it as a research tool, which relies on showing that interpretations are true of the patient when they satisfy certain criteria. This defence is examined and rejected. The reply is considered that an interpretation which 'keeps things moving' is true, or an approximation to the truth. This reply is rejected by comparing and contrasting an interpretation in psychotherapy with one from brainwashing sessions. (...) Two suppositions about psychotherapy (which weaken its discovery powers) are deliberately adopted — the suppositions that the material produced is 'perspective' and 'method' dependent. An unorthodox defence of psychotherapy is then offered — by means of a watery sense of 'discover'. This enables us to outline a weak sense in which psychotherapy is a valid enterprise, but one which is still strong enough for research purposes. (shrink)

This article presents the importance of Buitendag's stance in the so-called 'theology of nature'. His theological statements endeavour to understand reality in conversation with other academic disciplines to see things in a wider and holistic perspective. Following a suggestion of Moltmann, theology must not restrict itself to internal ecclesiastical and personal faith topics but search for 'the truth of the whole'. It is argued that Buitendag's concept of holism is different from Moltmann's 'the truth of the whole'. Moltmann's holism is (...) eschatologically directed after history, but is meaningless in a contemporary debate. His concept of history seems to be problematic too. Buitendag's holism is more Quinean as a comprehensive relative approach, bottom-up from contemporary insights within different academic disciplines. His theological approach looks like an ellipsis, involving both an ontological and epistemological focus. He defends communion as the primary concept, ontologically, which biologists may recognise in their observations of animal communities too. His theology shows a panentheistic perspective for the discourse on divine immanent agency by using as analogy the mind-body relationship in a sophisticated way. Buitendag shows the importance of this perspective for theological hermeneutics. This article presents some logical and theological problems in a panentheistic view which some prominent supporters defend as 'reality depicting'. Buitendag avoids this because of a relational ontology. (shrink)