philosophy of history after positivism, I think of Quentin Skinner. But he gets only three mentio... more philosophy of history after positivism, I think of Quentin Skinner. But he gets only three mentions in the index, while Hayden White has twenty-five; Ankersmit has twenty-two; Jacques Derrida has eighteen; and Michel Foucault has seventeen. There is clearly a postmodern impulse in this book, and some of it is just plain crazy, as well as angry. Best example: Elizabeth Ermarth says that to be against postmodernism today is about as informed a position as it was once to be against Galileo and Luther. What is going on in the head of someone who would say something like that? There is also a predictable—and now I think a little tired—rant by Joan Scott. Most of the rest of the essays, however, are not predictable. The late Greg Dening, an Australian who pioneered the anthropological history of indigenous peoples, wrote an engaging memoir about his work over the last fifty years. And a large chunk of Wulf Kansteiner's essay considers the ways diat interactive video game culture may be like (or unlike) historical consciousness. Those essays that have taken seriously the charge of the editors to say where they think history ought to go are soberly reflective. They all brood a bit over the state of professional history and what we can hope for it. While the authors have their individual qualms, as a group the writers illuminate a set of recurring problems. As I read Dominick LaCapra, he has become troubled by die popularity of "radical constructivism." He wants to see history in the future attempt to combine critical theory that is always self-questioning with the careful empirical orientation of conventional history. David Harlan, who wrote The Degradation of American History in 1997, here appraises the relationship between historical fiction and history proper: What can history learn from novelists? Ann Rigney worries about how the work of professional historians links up with the historical consciousnesses of the ordinary people with whom professionals are ultimately trying to connect. And Mark Poster wonders how writing die history of die electronic media might transform our understanding of what history is about; grasping the impact of new forms of communication may, he supposes, alter the way we will understand die past. These manifestos and several others all seem to me to be grappling with die same sorts of issues. The authors righdy believe diat history has a public function; if it has no such function, what is the point of historical practice? Indeed, in die eyes of some of die practitioners, history has a radical role to play in a liberating political life. But this actual or hoped-for role is unlikely to flower if historians are shut off from the public by their commitments to an esoteric guild. If they elaborate ideas diat people can't understand or suggest that history is somehow all made up and that historians have no impartial and expert knowledge to lay down, why should die public listen to diem? The manifestos correcdy fret about the role of the professional historian, especially in a time when there are seemingly so many other ways to access the past. I cannot resist making one last observation that has come to concern me more and more in my academic late-middle-age. As I have intimated, many of the questions raised here are worth pondering, but very few people are going to have die time or the energy to go through this volume, for it is virtually unreadable. The prose in the book is almost uniformly atrocious. There are grammatical errors, made-up words, excrutiatingly long sentences, and various pronouns whose antecedents are AWOL. Most of these authors
ABSTRACT Historical debate is a semantic quarrel not about the exact meaning of words, but about ... more ABSTRACT Historical debate is a semantic quarrel not about the exact meaning of words, but about the past. (HR:62) In Historical Representation Frank Ankersmit seeks a juste milieu between postmodern theory and historical practice. But he still insists that the meaning of a historical representation “is not found, but made in and by [the] text.” Thus “there will be nothing, outside the text itself, that can govern or check [the conceptualization].” Accordingly, “a (historical) representation itself cannot be interpreted as one large (true or false) description. I would not hesitate to say that this—and nothing else—is the central problem in the philosophy of history.” On the other hand, he affirms that “a historical representation‘is about’a certain part of the past,” that historical debate is a “semantic quarrel not about the exact meaning of words, but about the past.” Everything hinges on how to grasp this idea of “aboutness.”I propose an alternative reading of postpositivist philosophy of science in hopes of reaching the juste milieu. The issue is whether colligatory concepts in history have a more radically constructed character than theoretical terms in natural‐scientific theory, and whether, as with the latter, they can make intersubjective claims to warrant. My view is that colligatory concepts in historical representations can be conceived to refer in roughly the same way that theoretical terms do in natural‐scientific theories.All the problems I find in Ankersmit's approach come to the fore in his fruitful analogy to portrait painting. First, the personality the portrait evokes is not restricted to the representation, but is of the sitter. We are offered insight not (merely) into painting but into an actual character. That is, there is a cognitive, not simply an aesthetic, dimension to representation. Historical terms pick out something intersubjectively affirmable in reality, and discrimination is possible among rival versions. The question is how to regard—to explain and to evaluate—these underdetermined objects of consideration, not to preclude them by stipulation.
ABSTRACTIn this essay, I examine the key features of Reinhart Koselleck's situatedness in his... more ABSTRACTIn this essay, I examine the key features of Reinhart Koselleck's situatedness in his place and time, insofar as they help us grasp his particular slant on historical writing, and then discuss the main thrust of his Historik, or his theory of the possibility of historical practice. Koselleck argued that historical theory must be a theory about time, or, more accurately, times. In his decisive terminology, the historical “present” consisted in the Gleichzeitigkeit des Ungleichzeitigen (contemporaneity of the noncontemporaneous), or the historical moment was analogous to a geological stratification, with different Zeitschichten (sediments of time) making their presence felt in distinct configurations of pressure and pacing. Koselleck strove, within his German cultural situation, to acknowledge the Gadamerian argument for the linguistic character of historical understanding and, indeed, of the human experience it enunciates, but he also suggested that historical practice had to unearth the prelinguistic structures that also (and inescapably) constrained experience and its articulation. All in all, Koselleck provided heuristic considerations for concrete empirical practice, neither endeavoring nor achieving theoretical prescriptions whereby histories must be constructed or adjudicated.
A Companion to the Works of Johann Gottfried Herder
New, specially commissioned essays providing an in-depth scholarly introduction to the great thin... more New, specially commissioned essays providing an in-depth scholarly introduction to the great thinker of the European Enlightenment.
philosophy of history after positivism, I think of Quentin Skinner. But he gets only three mentio... more philosophy of history after positivism, I think of Quentin Skinner. But he gets only three mentions in the index, while Hayden White has twenty-five; Ankersmit has twenty-two; Jacques Derrida has eighteen; and Michel Foucault has seventeen. There is clearly a postmodern impulse in this book, and some of it is just plain crazy, as well as angry. Best example: Elizabeth Ermarth says that to be against postmodernism today is about as informed a position as it was once to be against Galileo and Luther. What is going on in the head of someone who would say something like that? There is also a predictable—and now I think a little tired—rant by Joan Scott. Most of the rest of the essays, however, are not predictable. The late Greg Dening, an Australian who pioneered the anthropological history of indigenous peoples, wrote an engaging memoir about his work over the last fifty years. And a large chunk of Wulf Kansteiner's essay considers the ways diat interactive video game culture may be like (or unlike) historical consciousness. Those essays that have taken seriously the charge of the editors to say where they think history ought to go are soberly reflective. They all brood a bit over the state of professional history and what we can hope for it. While the authors have their individual qualms, as a group the writers illuminate a set of recurring problems. As I read Dominick LaCapra, he has become troubled by die popularity of "radical constructivism." He wants to see history in the future attempt to combine critical theory that is always self-questioning with the careful empirical orientation of conventional history. David Harlan, who wrote The Degradation of American History in 1997, here appraises the relationship between historical fiction and history proper: What can history learn from novelists? Ann Rigney worries about how the work of professional historians links up with the historical consciousnesses of the ordinary people with whom professionals are ultimately trying to connect. And Mark Poster wonders how writing die history of die electronic media might transform our understanding of what history is about; grasping the impact of new forms of communication may, he supposes, alter the way we will understand die past. These manifestos and several others all seem to me to be grappling with die same sorts of issues. The authors righdy believe diat history has a public function; if it has no such function, what is the point of historical practice? Indeed, in die eyes of some of die practitioners, history has a radical role to play in a liberating political life. But this actual or hoped-for role is unlikely to flower if historians are shut off from the public by their commitments to an esoteric guild. If they elaborate ideas diat people can't understand or suggest that history is somehow all made up and that historians have no impartial and expert knowledge to lay down, why should die public listen to diem? The manifestos correcdy fret about the role of the professional historian, especially in a time when there are seemingly so many other ways to access the past. I cannot resist making one last observation that has come to concern me more and more in my academic late-middle-age. As I have intimated, many of the questions raised here are worth pondering, but very few people are going to have die time or the energy to go through this volume, for it is virtually unreadable. The prose in the book is almost uniformly atrocious. There are grammatical errors, made-up words, excrutiatingly long sentences, and various pronouns whose antecedents are AWOL. Most of these authors
ABSTRACT Historical debate is a semantic quarrel not about the exact meaning of words, but about ... more ABSTRACT Historical debate is a semantic quarrel not about the exact meaning of words, but about the past. (HR:62) In Historical Representation Frank Ankersmit seeks a juste milieu between postmodern theory and historical practice. But he still insists that the meaning of a historical representation “is not found, but made in and by [the] text.” Thus “there will be nothing, outside the text itself, that can govern or check [the conceptualization].” Accordingly, “a (historical) representation itself cannot be interpreted as one large (true or false) description. I would not hesitate to say that this—and nothing else—is the central problem in the philosophy of history.” On the other hand, he affirms that “a historical representation‘is about’a certain part of the past,” that historical debate is a “semantic quarrel not about the exact meaning of words, but about the past.” Everything hinges on how to grasp this idea of “aboutness.”I propose an alternative reading of postpositivist philosophy of science in hopes of reaching the juste milieu. The issue is whether colligatory concepts in history have a more radically constructed character than theoretical terms in natural‐scientific theory, and whether, as with the latter, they can make intersubjective claims to warrant. My view is that colligatory concepts in historical representations can be conceived to refer in roughly the same way that theoretical terms do in natural‐scientific theories.All the problems I find in Ankersmit's approach come to the fore in his fruitful analogy to portrait painting. First, the personality the portrait evokes is not restricted to the representation, but is of the sitter. We are offered insight not (merely) into painting but into an actual character. That is, there is a cognitive, not simply an aesthetic, dimension to representation. Historical terms pick out something intersubjectively affirmable in reality, and discrimination is possible among rival versions. The question is how to regard—to explain and to evaluate—these underdetermined objects of consideration, not to preclude them by stipulation.
ABSTRACTIn this essay, I examine the key features of Reinhart Koselleck's situatedness in his... more ABSTRACTIn this essay, I examine the key features of Reinhart Koselleck's situatedness in his place and time, insofar as they help us grasp his particular slant on historical writing, and then discuss the main thrust of his Historik, or his theory of the possibility of historical practice. Koselleck argued that historical theory must be a theory about time, or, more accurately, times. In his decisive terminology, the historical “present” consisted in the Gleichzeitigkeit des Ungleichzeitigen (contemporaneity of the noncontemporaneous), or the historical moment was analogous to a geological stratification, with different Zeitschichten (sediments of time) making their presence felt in distinct configurations of pressure and pacing. Koselleck strove, within his German cultural situation, to acknowledge the Gadamerian argument for the linguistic character of historical understanding and, indeed, of the human experience it enunciates, but he also suggested that historical practice had to unearth the prelinguistic structures that also (and inescapably) constrained experience and its articulation. All in all, Koselleck provided heuristic considerations for concrete empirical practice, neither endeavoring nor achieving theoretical prescriptions whereby histories must be constructed or adjudicated.
A Companion to the Works of Johann Gottfried Herder
New, specially commissioned essays providing an in-depth scholarly introduction to the great thin... more New, specially commissioned essays providing an in-depth scholarly introduction to the great thinker of the European Enlightenment.
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