To raise the question of the nature of narrative is to invite reflection on the very nature of culture and, possibly, even on the nature of humanity itself. So natural is the impulse to narrate, so inevitable is the form of narrative for any report of the way things really happened, that narrativity could appear problematical only in a culture in which it was absent—absent or, as in some domains of Western intellectual and artistic culture, programmatically refused. As a panglobal (...) fact of culture, narrative and narration are less problems than simply data. As the late Roland Barthes remarked, narrative "is simply there like life itself . . . international, transhistorical, transcultural."1 Far from being a problem, then, narrative might well be considered a solution to a problem of general human concern, namely, the problem of how to translate knowing into telling,2 the problem of fashioning human experience into a form assimilable to structures of meaning that are generally human rather than culture-specific. We may not be able fully to comprehend specific thought patterns of another culture, but we have relatively less difficulty understanding a story coming from another culture, however exotic that culture may appear to us. As Barthes says, "narrative...is translatable without fundamental damage" in a way that a lyric poem or a philosophical discourse is not. · 1. Roland Barthes, "Introduction to the Structural Analysis of Narratives," Music, Image, Text, trans. Stephen Heath , p. 79.· 2. The words "narrative," "narration," "to narrate," and so on derive via the Latin gnārus and narro from the Sanskrit root gnâ . The same root yields γνωριμος : see Emile Boisacq, Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue grecque , under the entry for this word. My thanks to Ted Morris of Cornell, one of our greatest etymologists. Hayden White, professor in the program of history of consciousness at the University of California, Santa Cruz, is the author of The Tropics of Discourse: Essays in Cultural Criticism, The Greco-Roman Tradition, and Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth Century Europe. " The Narrativization of Real Events" appeared in the Summer 1981 issue of Critical Inquiry. Critical Responses to the present essay include Louis O. Mink's "Everyman His or Her Own Annalist", and Marilyn Robinson Waldman's "The Otherwise Unnoteworthy Year 711: A Reply to Hayden White," both in the Summer 1981 issue of Critical Inquiry. (shrink)

A British historian might be excused for looking slightly askance at any collection of recent books relating to the philosophy of history. This is because we have been told, several times over and by distinguished members of the profession, that such speculative and analytic activity has little, if anything, to do with the actual business of historiography. One of the most forthright warnings was delivered on the very first page of Professor G. R. Elton'sThe Practice of History(1967), when we were (...) advised that: ‘Every new number ofHistory and Theoryis liable to contain yet another article struggling to give history a philosophic base, and some of them are interesting. But they do not, I fear, advance the writing of history’. For Elton, therefore, there could be little point in granting his colleague in another discipline the right to assess the cognitive claims of historiography. The historian himself, and he alone, was qualified to determine, for all practical purposes, the aims and applications of historical method. It was left to the late Arnold Toynbee to diagnose (inToynbee on Toynbee, 1974) the dangers in this protectionist approach. He claimed that Elton was ‘trying deliberately to create a closed circuit of “professional” historians’ which was, in his opinion, ‘fatal to any form of study’. But of course Toynbee's own lack of standing within the historical profession could be put forward as a telling index of the dangers of transgressing the barriers between history and philosophy. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Toward the Materiality of Aesthetic ExperiencePeter de Bolla (bio)Over the last twenty years or so it has become a commonplace in discussions of "aesthetics" or of "art" in the most general sense to note that the term "aesthetics" was only very recently invented by Alexander Baumgarten in 1735, where it appears in his Meditationes philosophicae de nonnullis ad poema pertinentibus [see Menke 40; Dickie; Eagleton]. But the force of (...) this observation in regard to the relative youth of the concept is rarely, if ever, commented upon. As many philosophers and critics have pointed out, Baumgarten's use of the term was not primarily angled at what today might be unproblematically called "artworks"—say, paintings in the European grand master tradition—since his new kind of investigation was to be a "science of sensual recognition," that is, a general inquiry into how we come to know the world from the evidence of our senses. But, as is also frequently remarked, early on in the tradition of speculation now associated with "aesthetics as the study of art" the mutual attraction (to put it in the most anodyne terms) of "art" and "aesthetics" seems to have been extremely strong. As Jonathan Ree remarks, "the real begetter of the philosophical doctrine connecting the arts with the empirical senses—what we might call the aesthetic theory of the arts—was Gotthold Ephraim Lessing" [58]. From this point on (for heuristic purposes it may be identified with the date of publication of Lessing's Laokoon in 1766), artworks, which heretofore had not required a specific branch of inquiry in order for them to make sense or be conceptually grounded as art, are almost universally assumed to require "aesthetic" contemplation or appreciation.1 It is curious, then, that before 1766 such a mode of experiencing artworks had not been felt to be lacking.One might understand this observation both historically and philosophically, and both approaches, it seems to me, are needed. In the case of the first, a number of material effects conspired across mid-eighteenth-century Europe to produce what was in essence the modern art market. These include the legal establishment of copyright, first in England in 1709 but only by the end of the century in France and Germany; the foundation of various institutions whose primary purpose was the promotion and establishment of the fine arts: academies of painting, sculpture, or letters either with or without royal patronage; the public exhibition of paintings (from 1737 in France and 1761 in England); the opening of royal collections to public view (during the second half of the century in London, Paris, Munich, Vienna and Rome); the development of public concerts of secular music (in small scale from the 1670s in England but only becoming fully integrated in fashionable social life by mid-century); the construction of purpose-built concert venues (the Gewandthaus in Leipzig, a former cloth merchant's hall, was remodeled in 1781 in order to accommodate a resident orchestra, in effect becoming the first dedicated concert hall in Europe); the foundation of literary periodicals and review media; the emergence of social spaces and rituals encompassing polite discussion of [End Page 19] literature (coffeehouses, the construction of dedicated library rooms in domestic settings); and the promotion of architecture to a fine art through various societies, competitions, and the public display of architectural drawings in exhibition contexts (the Royal Academy yearly show included both drawings and models). These and other material conditions helped define the fine arts and construct a market in and for them.2 By the 1770s the category of the "fine arts" was well established in Britain, Germany, and France: Charles Batteux's Les beaux arts reduit a un meme principe, first published in France in 1746, was quickly translated into English as The Polite Arts; or, a Dissertation on Poetry,Painting, Musick, Architecture, and Eloquence in 1749 and into German in 1751. By 1771 a four-volume General Theory of the Fine Arts had been published for the German public by J. G. Sulzer.All of this points to the fact that the concept of the "artwork" is subject to both historical and material pressures. Prior to the mid-eighteenth... (shrink)

Now in its third edition, _Narration and Knowledge_ is a classic work exploring the nature of historical knowledge and its reliance on narrative. Analytical philosopher Arthur C. Danto introduces the concept of "narrative sentences," in which an event is described with reference to later events and discusses why such sentences cannot be understood until the later event happens. Danto compares narrative and scientific explanation and explores the legitimacy of historical laws. He also argues that history is an autonomous and humanist (...) discipline incapable of being reduced to scientific descriptions. Lydia Goehr's new introduction illustrates Danto's main arguments by questioning her very role, first, as an introducer of a book that has not yet been read by readers and, second, as an interpreter of a book written forty years ago. Frank Ankersmit's conclusion revisits the initial impact of the publication of _Narration and Knowledge_ and considers its enduring legacy. (shrink)

History is not the nature or foundation of knowledge, but is rather a language of cultural conventions concerning remembrances of the past. As a system of intellectual history, structuralism argues that historians do not consign meaning to texts of the past. The historians' practice, itself, introduces sense and logic into a past text before that text has meaning. Historical practice, then, presupposes culture. It can be understood by uncovering the linguistic rules which determine what structures and messages can count as (...) historical knowledge. Ideas as different as those of Husserl and Wittgenstein, for example, share the common syntactical basis of philosophy. The primary question for history should not be "What did that mean?" but "How did that phenomenon qualify for a category called history and how has historical writing acquired discursive power?". (shrink)

Any comprehensive theory of narrative must accommodate both the justificational and the creative elements of narrative, the activities leading to narrative, and reflections upon the finished product. This examination of four levels of theory reveals the incompleteness of most extant theories, including those of Hayden White and Ricoeur. The four levels are: 1. narrative discourse and temporal language; 2. narrative and historical constructions; 3. narrative objects or stories; and 4. narrative functions and purposes. We remain far from our goal of (...) achieving a comprehensive theory. However, by placing theories and partial theories within a metatheoretical framework, we can see more clearly their nature, ramifications, and limits, thereby differentiating between the contributions and the philosophical fads. (shrink)

Narrative and the real world are not mutually exclusive. Life is not a structureless sequence of events; it consists of complex structures of temporal configurations that interlock and receive their meaning from within action itself. It is also not true that life lacks a point of view which transforms events into a story by telling them. Our focus of attention is not the past but the future, because we grasp configurations extending into the future. Action involves the adoption of an (...) anticipated future-retrospective point of view on the present. The actions of life can be viewed as the process of telling ourselves stories. The retrospective view of the narrator is an extension and refinement of a viewpoint inherent in action itself. Because storytelling is a social activity, the story of one's life is told as much to others as to oneself. Social human time, like individual human time, is constructed into configured sequences. The practical first-order narrative process that constitutes a person or a community can become a second-order narrative whose subject is unchanged but whose interest is primarily cognitive or aesthetic. (shrink)

The narrativist philosophy of history and the epistemological philosophy of history are opposed to each other and have remarkably little in common. Within the epistemological philosophy, the debate between the coveringlaw model advocates and the analytical hermeneutists has always been moving towards synthesis more than towards perpetuation of the disagreement. But the revolution from epistemological to narrativist philosophy of history enacted in Hayden White's work made the philosophy of history finally catch up with the developments in philosophy since the works (...) of Quine, Kuhn, and Rorty. White stresses the "making" or "poetic" function of narrative at the expense of the "matching" function so dear to the mimetic epistemology of positivism. Philosophers of history should shake off this positivistic past and make history narrativist. (shrink)

Intellectual history—the attempt to write the history of consciousness-in-general, rather than discrete histories of, say, politics, society, economic activity, philosophical thought, or literary expression—is comparatively new as a scholarly discipline; but it can lay claim to a long ancestry. It is arguable that intellectual history has its remote origins in the sectarian disputes of ancient philosophers and theologians, who, by constructing “histories” of their opponents’ doctrines, sought to expose the interests that had led them into error or to locate the (...) precise point at which they had strayed from the path of truth or righteousness. An especial interest in the history of thought and expression is, of course, characteristic of transitional ages in the lives of cultures; it arises when received traditions in thought and mythic endowments appear to have lost their relevance to current social problems or their presumed coherency, as in the Hellenistic age or the late Middle Ages. During such times, thinkers may try, by means of what is usually called “historical perspective,” to gain some purchase on their cultural legacy and to distinguish between “what is living and what is dead” within it. (shrink)

The politics of interpretation should not be confused with interpretive practices such as political theory, political commentary, or histories of political institutions, parties, and conflicts that have politics itself as a specific object of interest. In these other interpretive practices, the politics that informs or motivates them—“politics” in the sense of political values or ideology—is relatively easily perceived and no particular meta-interpretive analysis is required. The politics of interpretation, on the other hand, arises in those interpretive practices which are ostensibly (...) most remote from overtly political concerns, practices which are carried out under the aegis of a purely disinterested search for the truth or inquiry into the natures of things which appear to have no political relevance at all. This “politics” has to do with the kind of authority the interpreter claims vis-à-vis the established political authorities of his society, on the one side, and vis-à-vis other interpreters in his own field of study or investigation, on the other, as the basis of whatever rights he conceives himself to possess and whatever duties he feels obligated to discharge as a professional seeker of truth. This politics which presides over interpretive conflicts is difficult to identity because traditionally, in our culture at least, interpretation is thought to operate properly only as long as the interpreter does not have recourse to the one instrument which the politician per vocationem utilizes as a matter of course in his practice—the appeal to force as a means of resolving disputes and conflicts.11. I have followed the lead of Max Weber in defining the phrase “politics of interpretation.” In “Politics as Vocation,” Weber wrote that “ ‘politics’ means for us striving to share power or striving to influence the distribution of power, either among states or among groups within a state” . Rather than discuss the age-old problem of the professional interpreter’s political responsibilities, I will consider that politics which is endemic to the pursuit of truth—the striving to share power amongst interpreters themselves. The activity of interpreting becomes political at the point where a given interpreter claims authority over rival interpreters. As long as this claim is not reinforced by appeal to the power of the state to compel conformity of belief or conviction, it is “political” only in a metaphorical sense. Of course, interpretation becomes political when a given point of view or finding is taken as orthodoxy of belief by those holding political power, as in the Soviet Union, Germany under Hitler, or any number of religiously puritanical regimes. But these are the easy cases. It is much more difficult to determine the political nature of interpretive practices which, as in literary criticism or antiquarian scholarship, appear to have no bearing upon political policies or practices.Hayden White is a professor and director of the program in the history of consciousness at the University of California, Santa Cruz. He is coeditor of Representing Kenneth Burke and is currently working on a book on the rhetoric of realism. His previous contributions to Critical Inquiry are "The Value of Narrativity in the Representation of Reality" and "The Narrativization of Real Events". (shrink)

A British historian might be excused for looking slightly askance at any collection of recent books relating to the philosophy of history. This is because we have been told, several times over and by distinguished members of the profession, that such speculative and analytic activity has little, if anything, to do with the actual business of historiography. One of the most forthright warnings was delivered on the very first page of Professor G. R. Elton's The Practice of History (1967), when (...) we were advised that: ‘Every new number of History and Theory is liable to contain yet another article struggling to give history a philosophic base, and some of them are interesting. But they do not, I fear, advance the writing of history’. For Elton, therefore, there could be little point in granting his colleague in another discipline the right to assess the cognitive claims of historiography. The historian himself, and he alone, was qualified to determine, for all practical purposes, the aims and applications of historical method. It was left to the late Arnold Toynbee to diagnose (in Toynbee on Toynbee, 1974) the dangers in this protectionist approach. He claimed that Elton was ‘trying deliberately to create a closed circuit of “professional” historians’ which was, in his opinion, ‘fatal to any form of study’. But of course Toynbee's own lack of standing within the historical profession could be put forward as a telling index of the dangers of transgressing the barriers between history and philosophy. (shrink)

We scholars of the Medieval Academy “do” history or “do” studies of art, philosophy, and literature, as a common verb has it. And inelegant as it is, I am rather drawn to the vague, busybody little word. It has the advantage of reminding us of our participation with the dead. We assemble our conclusions from our data and say: here is the significant pattern, here is the principle that underlay the series of actions or thoughts I have analyzed. But we (...) choose the data. We draw the conclusions. We choose to speak. And this choice involves us in responsibilities, as we all are aware. We need to ask ourselves: to whom are we speaking? But let me put that aside for the present. We have another, overriding responsibility. The dead have no voice but ours. (shrink)

One could only suppose that the apparently forgotten beginning of any story was unforgettable; perpetually one was subject to the sense of there having had to be a beginning somewhere. Like the lost first sheet of a letter or missing first pages of a book, the beginning kept on suggesting what must have been its nature. One never was out of reach of the power of what had been written first. Call it what you liked, call it a miscarried love, (...) it imparted, or was always ready and liable to impart, the nature of an alternative, attempted recovery or enforced second start to whatever followed. The beginning, in which was conceived the end, could not but continue to shape the middle part of the story, so that none of the realisations along that course were what had been expected, quite whole, quite final. (shrink)

In this book, the author presents an interpretation of four thinkers: Nietzsche, Heidegger, Foucault, and Derrida. In an attempt to place these thinkers within the wider context of the crisis-oriented modernism and postmodernism that have been the source of much of what is most original and creative in twentieth-century art and thought.

The classic logical positivist account of historical explanation, putting forward what is variously called the "regularity interpretation" (#Gardiner, The Nature of Historical Explanation), the "covering law model" (#Dray, Laws and Explanation in History), or the "deductive model" (Michael #Scriven, "Truisms as Grounds for Historical Explanations"). See also #Danto, Narration and Knowledge, for further criticisms of the model. Hempel formalizes historical explanation as involving (a) statements of determining (initial and boundary) conditions for the event to be explained, and (b) statements of (...) general laws that imply that whenever events of the kind described in (a) occur, an event of the kind to be explained will take place. He admits that in practice historians rarely explain historical events in this way, but instead give only fragmentary "explanation sketches." Such sketches can, however, be "scientifically acceptable," providing it points to where "more specific statements" are to be found (351). An interesting aspect of the article is its "late" positivist, proto‑Kuhnian assertion that "the separation of 'pure description' and 'hypothetical generalization and theory construction' in empirical science is unwarranted" (356). But Hempel does not work out the wider implications of this important conclusion. It is also worth noting that he himself was not much interested in the philosophy of history; other authors took up his model and discussed it within that context. Usefully discussed by #Ricoeur, Time and Narrative, 1:112‑17. (shrink)

Hermeneutics is one of those archaic and refractory, yet fashionable words which seem to crop up in so many places that they take on a power all their own. E. D. Hirsch has observed that the word has become “a rather vague, magical talisman.” For better or worse hermeneutics has entered into the theoretical controversies of literary criticism, history, sociology, anthropology, political science, philosophy—not only the theory of the humane disciplines but even the theory of the natural sciences.

Dray: Mandelbaum legislates regarding the historian's "task" in the guise of descriptive analysis. He seems to envisage two fundamental tasks for the historian: explaining, and relating parts to wholes. Contrary to Mandelbaum's implication, there is no more opposition between narration and either of these tasks than there is between the two tasks themselves.Ely: Mandelbaum refutes White and Danto, who both hold that historical writing is essentially narrative; but not Gallie, who asserts that historical writing is necessarily, but never solely, a (...) narrative construction. The claim that history is essentially narrative is fruitful even though false because it recognizes an important characteristic of historical thinking - the historian's conceptual isolation of a series of intentional human actions from the situations with which they were designed to cope.Gruner: Mandelbaurn is correct in his criticism of narrativism, but does not support his criticism by good reasons. Historians offer both static, non-narrative descriptions and kinetic, narrative descriptions. Historical description is therefore not the same as historical narration; the latter is only a species of the former. (shrink)