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The term history
may be employed in two quite different senses: it may mean (1) the events and
actions that together make up the human past, or (2) the accounts given of that
past and the modes of investigation whereby they are arrived at or constructed.
When used in the first sense, the word refers to what as a matter of fact
happened, while when used in the second sense it refers to the study and
description of those happenings. The notion of philosophical reflection upon
history and its nature is consequently open to more than one interpretation, and
contemporary writers have found it convenient to regard it as covering two main
types of undertaking. On the one hand, they have distinguished philosophy
of history in the traditional or classical sense; this is conceived
to be a first-order enquiry, its subject matter being the historical process as
a whole and its aim being, broadly speaking, one of providing an overall
elucidation or explanation of the course and direction taken by that process. On
the other hand, they have distinguished philosophy of history considered as a
second-order enquiry; here attention is not focussed upon the actual sequence of
events themselves but, instead, upon the procedures and categories used by
practicing historians in approaching and comprehending their material. The
former, often alluded to as speculative philosophy of history, has had a long
and varied career; the latter, which is generally known as critical or
analytical philosophy of history, has only risen to prominence during the 20th
century. (see also historiography)
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4.1.1.1
The idea of an order or design in history.
The belief that it
is possible to discern in the course of human history some general scheme or
design, some all-encompassing purpose or pattern, is very old and has found
expression in various forms at different times and places. The reasons for its
persistence and vitality are numerous, but two very general considerations may
be identified as having exercised a fairly continuous influence. First, it has
often been supposed that, if the belief in an overall pattern is abandoned, one
is obliged to acquiesce in the view that the historical process consists of no
more than an arbitrary succession of occurrences, a mere agglomeration or
patchwork of random incidents and episodes. But such a view (it has been
contended) cannot be seriously entertained, if only because it conflicts with
the basic demand for system and order that underlies and governs all rational
enquiry, all meaningful thought about the world. Second, it has frequently been
felt that to refuse to allow that history is finally intelligible in the
required manner implies a skepticism concerning the value of human life and
existence that constitutes an affront to the dignity of human nature. The
18th-century German philosopher Immanuel
Kant, for example, spoke of the "repugnance" that is
inevitably experienced if the past is viewed |
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as
if the whole web of human history were woven out of folly and childish vanity
and the frenzy of destruction, so that one hardly knows in the end what idea to
form of our race, for all that it is so proud of its prerogatives.
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In more recent
times, a comparable attitude is discernible beneath Arnold
Toynbee's uncompromising repudiation of the idea that history is
"a chaotic, disorderly, fortuitous flux, in which there is no pattern or
rhythm of any kind to be discerned." Thus, it has been the object of a long
line of theorists, representative of widely divergent outlooks, to demonstrate
that such pessimism is unjustified and that the historical process can, when
appropriately viewed, be seen to be both rationally and morally acceptable. (see
also Index: Providence)
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Western speculation
concerning the meaning of history derived in the first instance chiefly from
theological sources. The belief that history conforms to a linear development in
which the influence of providential wisdom can be discerned, rather than to a
recurrent cyclical movement of the kind implicit in much Greco-Roman thought,
was already becoming prevalent early in the Christian Era. Traces of this
approach are to be found in the conception of the past set forth by St.
Augustine in his City of God and elsewhere; it is, for
example, compared on one occasion to "the great melody of some ineffable
composer," its parts being "the dispensations suitable to each
different period." Yet the cautious subtlety of Augustine's suggestions and
the crucial distinction he drew between sacred and secular history make it
important not to confuse his carefully qualified doctrines with the cruder
positions advanced by some of his self-proclaimed successors. This applies, par
excellence, to the work of the most renowned and thorough of these, Jacques-B?igne
Bossuet. Written 1,250 years after Augustine's death, Bossuet's Discours
sur l'histoire universelle (1681; "Discourse on Universal
History") is imbued throughout with a na?e confidence that the entire
course of history owes its pervasive character to the contrivance of a
"higher wisdom." In the eyes of Bossuet, to grasp and understand the
great procession of empires and religions was "to comprehend in one's mind
all that is great in human affairs and have the key to the history of the
universe." For the rise and fall of states and creeds depended in the end
upon the secret orders of Providence, the latter being the source of that
manifest historical justice and retribution to which, on nearly every page, the
annals of the past bore clear and unmistakable witness. Bossuet's vast survey
was, in fact, the last major contribution to its genre. Though it made a
considerable impression when it was first published, it appeared just before the
discoveries of Sir Isaac Newton
effected a massive transformation of the European outlook, and the book's impact
was short-lived. Thus, the development of historical speculation in the 18th
century was generally marked by a tendency to reject theological and
providential interpretations in favour of an approach more closely aligned, in
method and aim, to that adopted by natural scientists in their investigations of
the physical world. (see also Christianity,
"City of God, The," )
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For many Enlightenment
and post-Enlightenment thinkers, the project of establishing a science of
history and society, comprising hypotheses and laws of an explanatory power
analogous to that attained by theories in the physical sciences, acquired an
almost obsessive importance. The age of religious and metaphysical conjectures
concerning the destiny of human affairs had, in their opinion, come to a close.
The task that now presented itself was one of constructing, upon the basis of
hard observable facts, interpretations that would not only rescue the human
studies from ignorance, uncertainty, and primitive superstition but also put
into men's hands an instrument for predicting and controlling their fate. Thus,
the idea of creating a universally valid social
science, capable of accounting for the phenomena of history in terms
of causal principles comparable to those employed in the natural sphere, came to
be linked with the promotion of reformist and revolutionary ideals. Men such as
Condillac and Condorcet in the 18th century and Henri de Saint-Simon, Auguste
Comte, John Stuart Mill, and Henry Thomas Buckle in the 19th century all
believed that it was feasible to apply scientific procedures to the study of
human development. But equally--though in widely different ways--they were men
deeply concerned with practical objects and committed to changing existing
institutions and ways of life. To these men, theory was complementary to
practice; knowledge was power. |
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Yet even in the
19th century, when speculation of this type was at its height, there were
informed skeptics--Joseph de Maistre and Arthur Schopenhauer, for example, and
later the great Swiss historian Jacob Burckhardt--who challenged the optimistic
and rationalistic
presuppositions on which it was founded. It was pointed out that notions such as
that of the perfectibility of man or of the existence of some foreseeable goal
toward which the course of events was inexorably leading were not empirically
established truths but mere articles of faith; in subscribing to them,
historical theorists often appeared to be tacitly importing into their allegedly
scientific interpretations teleological
conceptions of a kind that it had been their declared intention to banish
forever from social enquiry. These objections have been repeated and amplified
by 20th-century critics such as Karl
Popper, who have also maintained that the theorists in question were,
in any case, working with an unacceptably crude notion of scientific reasoning
and that their high-sounding generalities conspicuously failed to measure up to
the requisite standards of conceptual precision and observational testability. |
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Although such
strictures have considerable force, they should not obscure the significant
contribution that had been made toward extending human knowledge and
understanding. The tendency, for example, to insist upon the relevance of
scientific modes of procedure to the areas of historical and social
investigation at least achieved the salutary effect of throwing into relief the
inadequacy of previous work in these domains; moreover, it indirectly brought to
the fore the entire question of the status of history as a legitimate form of
thought. For, if history should prove resistant to attempts to assimilate it to
other accredited branches of enquiry, it would be necessary to show why this was
so and to exhibit those features of historical thinking that lent it its
distinctive and irreducible character. |
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Among the
18th-century theorists, two writers can indeed be picked out who--while
remaining firmly within the speculative tradition--at the same time possessed
sufficient genius and prescience to realize that the solution to the problem of
establishing history as a reputable discipline might be found by pursuing a
course different from one modelled upon the methodology of the natural sciences.
Partly because of the obscure and scholastic manner in which it was written, Giambattista
Vico's Scienza nuova (3rd ed. 1744; "New Science")
was a work whose importance remained for a long time wholly unrecognized, and it
is only fairly recently that its significance and originality have been fully
appreciated. (see also "New
Science of Giambattista Vico, The," ) |
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Central to the book
is the contention that the kind of knowledge that men can achieve of their own
actions, creations, and institutions is of a radically different type from the
knowledge that is acquired by the observation and investigation of the nonhuman
or natural world; knowledge of the former variety is, moreover, held to be in
principle superior to that of the latter. For, in Vico's opinion, in order truly
to know something it is necessary in some sense to have made it: it followed
that, whereas the reality studied by the physical scientist is the creation of
God and therefore only properly known by God, the "world of nations"
that forms the subject matter of history is the creation of men and is therefore
something that men can "hope to know." Thus, Vico was led to stress
the differences rather than the analogies between historical and other forms of
enquiry; in particular, he emphasized the need for the historian to enter
imaginatively into the spirit of past ages, re-creating the outlooks and
attitudes that informed them as opposed to seeking to impose upon them
inappropriate or falsifying interpretations--"pseudomyths"--that
derived from the cultural ethos of his own time. Vico propounded a cyclical
theory of human history, according to which "nations" or societies
pass through determinate stages, and he combined this with the idea that a
providential principle is in some manner immanent within the various forms of
life that men construct. He employed such conceptions, however, in a fashion
that underlined man's nature as a historical being, whose powers and capacities
do not conform to a fixed or static pattern but are necessarily subject to
change and development in the course of time. |
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In a similar vein,
the German writer Johann Gottfried von
Herder, in his influential Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte
der Menschheit (4 vol., 1784-91; Eng. trans., Outlines
of a Philosophy of the History of Man, 1800), implied that
it was vital to view human actions and achievements from a standpoint that took
proper account of "time, place and national character"--in other
words, cultural milieu and the inevitable limits imposed by historical situation
and circumstance. In its general direction, Herder's historical thought
reflected the Enlightenment preconceptions of man as a progressive being.
Herder's chief importance lies, however, in his insistence upon the
misconceptions involved in treating the products of past thought and action as
if they were the manifestations of an unchanging human consciousness and as if
they could be explained by reference to abstract laws eternally valid for men
everywhere. According to Herder, such an approach failed to recognize the
complex influences that act upon human beings as members of particular
historical societies; each of these societies possessed its unique life-style,
subtly but inescapably determining the mentalities of those born within its
confines in a manner that rendered futile all attempts to reduce human
propensities and needs to the terms of some simple set of abstract formulas. |
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Many of Vico's and
Herder's ideas appear familiar today, but it is easy to forget that the
emergence of what has come to be known as the "historical sense" is a
comparatively recent phenomenon, one that represents a genuine revolution in
European thought. It is largely because of this revolution that social and
political theories of the kind elaborated by men such as Thomas Hobbes and
Benedict de Spinoza in the 17th century seem oddly artificial to 20th-century
eyes, so remote are the categories in which they sought to explain human life
and behaviour from those that have subsequently found acceptance. |
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The suggestion that
there is something essentially mistaken in the endeavour to comprehend the
course of history "naturalistically" and within an explanatory
framework deriving from scientific paradigms was powerfully reinforced by
conceptions stemming from the development of German Idealism
in the 19th century. Hegel's
"philosophy of the spirit" made its appearance upon the intellectual
scene contemporaneously with Saint-Simonian and Comtean Positivism,
rivalling the latter in scope and influence and bringing with it its own highly
distinctive theory of historical evolution and change. Hegel's stress upon the
"organic" nature of social wholes and the incommensurability of
different historical epochs owed evident debts to Herderian ideas, but he set
these within an overall view that pictured the movement of history in dynamic
terms. Regularities and recurrences of the sort that typically manifest
themselves in the realm of nature are foreign, Hegel maintained, to the sphere
of mind or spirit, which was
characterized instead as involving a continual drive toward self-transcendence
and the removal of limitations upon thought and action. Man
was not to be conceived according to the mechanistic models of 18th-century Materialism;
essentially he was free, but the freedom that constituted his nature could only
achieve fulfillment through a process of struggle and of overcoming obstacles
that were themselves the expression of his own activity; it was in this sense
that Hegel claimed that spirit was "at war with itself"--"it has
to overcome itself as its most formidable obstacle" (Lectures
on the Philosophy of History). In concrete terms, this meant that historical
advance did not proceed through a series of smooth transitions. Once the
potentialities of a particular society had been realized in the creation of a
certain mode of life, its historical role was over; its members became aware of
its inadequacies, and the laws and institutions they had previously accepted
unquestioningly were now experienced as fetters, inhibiting further development
and no longer reflecting their deepest aspirations. Thus, each phase of the
historical process could be said to contain the seeds of its own destruction and
to "negate" itself; the consequence was the emergence of a fresh
society, representing another stage in a progression whose final outcome was the
formation of a rationally ordered community with which each citizen could
consciously identify himself and in which there would therefore no longer exist
any sense of alienation or constraint. Somewhat curiously, the type of community
Hegel envisaged as exemplifying this satisfactory state of affairs bore a
striking resemblance to the Prussian monarchy of his own time. (see also Hegelianism)
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The notion that
history conforms to a "dialectical"
pattern, according to which contradictions generated at one level are overcome
or transcended at the next, was incorporated--though in a radically new form--in
the theory of social change propounded by Karl
Marx. Like Hegel, Marx adopted a "directional" view of
history; but, whereas Hegel had tended to exhibit it as representing the
unfolding in time of an inner spiritual principle, Marx looked elsewhere for the
ultimate determinants of its course and character. Man, according to Marx, was a
creative being, situated in a material world that stood before him as an
objective reality and provided the field for his activities; this primitive
truth, which had been obscured by Hegel's mystifying abstractions, afforded the
key to a proper understanding of history as a process finally governed by the
changing methods whereby men sought to derive from the natural environment the
means of their subsistence and the satisfaction of their evolving wants and
needs. The productive relations in which men stood to one another, resulting in
such phenomena as the division of labour and the appearance of economically
determined classes, were the factors fundamental to historical movement. What he
termed the superstructure of society--which covered such things as political
institutions and systems of law, ethics, and religion--was in the last analysis
dependent upon the shape taken by the "material production" and the
"material intercourse" of human beings in their struggle to master
nature: "it is not the consciousness of men that determines their being,
but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their
consciousness." Hence, the inner dynamic of history was held to lie in
conflicts arising from changes in the means of production and occurring when
modes of social organization and control, adapted to the development of the
productive forces at one stage, became impediments to it at another; they were
to be resolved, furthermore, not by abstract thought but by concrete action.
Thus, the Hegelian conception of spirit as involved in a relentless struggle
with itself and with what it had created underwent a revolutionary
transformation, explosive in its implications. (see also Marxism)
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Marx's
interpretation of the historical process, with its stress upon necessity and the
operation of ineluctable laws, has often been portrayed by its proponents as
being scientific in character. It has, however, more than one aspect, and it
would be an error to identify its underlying methodology with that associated
with Comtean Positivism. Generally speaking, the basic categories within which
it was framed derived from a theory of human nature that had more in common with
the postulates of German romantic thought than with those of British and French
Empiricism: to this extent, the logical structure Marx sought to impose upon the
data of history belonged to a tradition that stressed the differences rather
than the resemblances between the human and the natural world. |
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The tendency to
detect in history the presence of large-scale patterns and comprehensive
uniformities continued into the 20th century in the work of a number of writers,
most notably Oswald Spengler
and Arnold Toynbee.
Spengler's Decline of the West (originally published in German, 1918-22), wherein the history of mankind
was presented in terms of biologically conceived cultures whose careers
conformed to a predetermined course of growth and decay, was widely acclaimed
during the years of disillusionment that followed World War I; and a somewhat
similar reception was given to Toynbee's massive A Study
of History (1934-61) immediately after World War II. Toynbee,
like Spengler, undertook a comparative study of civilizations,
thereby repudiating attempts to treat the past as if it exhibited a single
linear progression: at the same time, he diverged from Spengler in suggesting
that current Western society might not after all be necessarily doomed to
extinction and in tempering a predominantly deterministic mode of thought with
reservations that allowed a place for human free will and the possibility of
divine intervention. Yet, as some of his critics were quick to point out, such
qualifications were not easy to reconcile with his original insistence upon the
need to adopt "a scientific approach to human affairs"; nor was it
clear that his own use of inductive methods to establish the laws governing the
development of civilizations was above logical suspicion or reproach. Toynbee's
experiment might have been impressive as an individual achievement;
nevertheless, with the multiplication of objections and in a theoretical climate
that had become skeptical of speculative system-building of any kind, the very
feasibility of engaging upon a project of the type he had undertaken came to be
seriously questioned. It was felt increasingly that philosophy of history in the
traditional sense--resting largely upon uncriticized assumptions concerning the
nature of historical enquiry and its relations with other disciplines--had
reached something of an impasse; if history was still to be treated as a proper
subject for philosophical examination, it must be along lines quite different
from those previously pursued. |
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4.1.2.1
The concept of history.
The task of trying
to delineate the specific character of historical knowledge and understanding,
rather than of seeking to construct vast speculative schemes in the earlier
manner, first began to attract the attention of philosophers toward the end of
the 19th century. To such thinkers as Wilhelm
Dilthey and Benedetto Croce,
the claim that, in the absence of some all-embracing system of a teleological or
quasi-scientific kind, the course of history could be regarded as constituting
nothing better than a meaningless chaos appeared to be totally unacceptable.
History is intelligible, they believed, in the sense that historians make it so;
moreover, this was the only type of intelligibility it was either necessary or
legitimate to demand. What could reasonably be looked for was a clearer and
deeper insight into the conditions that render historical knowledge possible, an
elucidation of the presuppositions upon which historical enquiry is founded and
of the principles according to which it proceeds. It was with such an
investigation in mind that R.G.
Collingwood, a British philosopher who owed much to Crocean ideas,
wrote in his Autobiography that "the chief business of
twentieth-century philosophy is to reckon with twentieth-century history."
By contending that the philosopher should eschew the grandiose ambition of
providing a synoptic vision of the entire historical process and concern
himself, instead, with the articulation and justification of existing historical
procedures, Collingwood and his continental precursors made, in effect, a
crucial contribution toward setting philosophy of history on a new path. Their
proposals were, moreover, given additional impetus by the widespread acceptance
of analytical approaches in other branches of philosophy. In consequence,
contemporary thinkers have tended to focus attention upon the explication of
concepts and terms that perform a key role in historical thought and description
as these are actually carried on: among other things, they have been led into
discussing the ways in which historians typically divide up and classify the
past, the manner in which they argue for and substantiate their interpretations,
and the logical structure of the explanations they are accustomed to offer. |
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Both Croce and
Collingwood, in their criticisms of earlier theorists, were especially anxious
to expose what they believed to be recurrent and fundamental misconceptions
regarding the method and subject matter of history: central to these was the
assumption that historical occurrences could be subsumed under, and explained in
terms of, universal laws of the sort that played an essential part in scientific
interpretations of inanimate nature. This assumption was, in their opinion, a
gross error. As Collingwood put it, the moment had arrived for history to be
released from "its state of pupilage to natural science." With this in
mind, he went on to develop an account of historical understanding according to
which the historian explains events by exhibiting them as the expressions of
past thinking on the part of self-conscious purposive agents--thinking that the
historian must imaginatively reconstruct or re-enact in his own mind--rather
than by showing the events to be instances of general uniformities or
regularities that are established by induction. In propounding this view--which
Croce, though he formulated it less clearly and precisely, basically
shared--Collingwood set in motion a controversy concerning knowledge and
explanation in history that has been central to much subsequent discussion. As
Collingwood himself was fully aware, a position similar to his own had been
originally advanced (though in a very different context) by Vico; and it is
indeed noteworthy that the general division, evident at the speculative level,
between those who wished to comprehend historical phenomena in ways suggested by
the physical sciences and those who, by contrast, argued for an altogether
distinct pattern of interpretation has tended, in recent times, to re-emerge at
the level of methodological and conceptual analysis. |
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Thus, on one side
of the dispute, there have ranged philosophers who have taken their stand upon
what has been called "the unity of science" and who have insisted that
the categories and procedures appropriate to the human studies do not enjoy a
unique or privileged status that somehow sets them apart from those
characteristic of systematic empirical enquiry in other domains. In a classical
18th-century discussion, David Hume
had argued that, if two events were said to be causally related, this could only
be in the sense that they instantiated certain regularities of succession that
had been repeatedly observed to hold between such events in the past: to presume
otherwise was to fall back upon an unacceptable belief in "intuitable"
connections that had no warrant either in reason or experience. This doctrine
may be said to have been given more rigorous expression among Positivist
philosophers of the present century in the shape of what is variously known as
the "deductive-nomological" or "covering
law" theory of explanation; as originally applied to history by Carl
Hempel, it amounted to the claim that explaining a given historical
occurrence in terms of some other event or set of events necessarily involves an
appeal, which need not be more than tacit, to laws or general propositions
correlating events of the type to be explained with those of the kind cited as
its causes or conditions. Although the proposed analysis has received a variety
of different formulations, each designed to meet specific objections that have
been raised against it, its adherents have not wavered from the conviction that
some such account must be in principle correct if explanations in history are to
be open to rational assessment of the sort properly demanded within any
legitimate branch of empirical investigation. It is for this reason, together
with others, that they have been strongly opposed to Verstehen,
or "empathy," theories of historical knowledge, regarding the
contention that historical understanding presupposes an allegedly direct
identification with the mental processes of past human agents as representing at
best a heuristic recommendation of doubtful utility, at worst an obscurantist
doctrine that transparently fails to provide an objective criterion whereby
divergent historical interpretations can be evaluated.
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Resistance to the
Positivist approach has come from more than one direction. To a number of
practicing historians, for instance, the account offered has appeared
implausible inasmuch as it overlooks the "irreducible particularity"
of historical occurrences and because it postulates an unjustifiably high degree
of reliance upon the presence of discernible uniformities in the sphere of human
affairs. So far as philosophers are concerned, dissatisfaction has been voiced
both by those to whom the Croce-Collingwood notion of historical thinking as the
"re-enactment of past experience" has seemed to contain an important
element of truth and also by those followers of Ludwig
Wittgenstein who have been impressed by the skepticism concerning the
adequacy of scientific models apparent in his later discussions of mental
concepts. A leading representative of the former group, W.H. Dray,
not only constructed a series of arguments to demonstrate the deficiencies of
the covering-law theory but further proposed an alternative conception of
"rational explanation," which--it was suggested--fitted many of the
familiar ways whereby historians seek to render the past intelligible. Thus,
Dray has maintained that the function of much historical explanation consists of
showing the actions of historical persons to have been "appropriate"
when viewed within the perspective of their specific beliefs, aims, and
principles: it was this consideration, he claims, that was uppermost in the
minds of theorists who were concerned to stress the part played by imaginative
or empathetic understanding in historical reconstruction, their point being
primarily a "logical" one and not necessarily carrying any of the
dubious epistemological implications attacked by Positivist critics. From a
different standpoint, Anglo-U.S. writers influenced by Wittgenstein have
challenged the entire assumption that explanations involving the notions of
human intention and purpose are susceptible to a Humean pattern of causal
analysis; they have also (for example, in the work of Peter Winch) stressed the
extent to which historical descriptions of past behaviour require to be framed
in terms the agents themselves would have recognized as giving meaning to their
activities, terms embodying references to ideas and conventions that defined the
social reality in which they participated.
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Fundamental issues
concerning the status of historical enquiry of the kind just mentioned have
arisen in another crucial area of discussion, centring upon the question of
whether--and, if so, in what sense--history can be said to be an objective
discipline. Some modern philosophers have inclined to the view that the entirely
general problem of whether history is objective cannot sensibly be raised;
legitimate questions regarding objectivity are only in place where some
particular piece of historical work is under consideration, and in that case
there are accepted standards available, involving such matters as documentation
and accuracy, by which they can be settled. To others, however, things have not
seemed so clear, and they have drawn attention to the doubts that may be felt
when history is compared with different branches of investigation, such as
chemistry or biology: by contrast with such enquiries, the historian's
procedure, including the manner in which he conceptualizes his data and the
principles of argument he employs, may appear to be governed by subjective or
culturally determined predilections that are essentially contestable and,
therefore, out of place in a supposedly reputable form of knowledge. One topic
that has been recurrently examined in this connection has been the role of
evaluation (specifically, of moral evaluation) in historical writing--a subject,
incidentally, about which historians themselves are apt to exhibit a certain
uneasiness. Nevertheless, recommendations to the effect that value judgment can
and should be totally excluded from history and, indeed, from the social studies
as a whole have met with a mixed philosophical reception. Among Positivists and
Logical Empiricists, traditionally skeptical of the rationality of value
judgments and anxious in any case to reduce the differences between the human
and the natural sciences, they have found some measure of support. But that has
been by no means a general response. Thus, objectors have pointed out that the
language the historian customarily uses, adapted as it is to the assessment and
appraisal of human motives and characteristics, makes some degree of evaluation
unavoidable; they argue that, even if the possibility of a drastically revised
historical vocabulary allows the ideal of a wertfrei, or objective
history, to be theoretically conceivable, such an ideal can scarcely be
seriously entertained as a realizable practical goal. These considerations have
been reinforced by the further point that every historian, insofar as he has to
select from the mass of material confronting him, is necessarily committed to
forming judgments ascribing relative importance and significance; such
attributions cannot, however, be simply read off from the facts and must,
rather, be said to depend upon the prior acceptance of certain critical
standards. To this extent, then, one is required to acknowledge the presence in
historical writing of an ineliminable evaluative component, which is liable to
obtrude itself into even so "objective" a field as that of causal
analysis: it is notorious that disputes between historians as to the
"true" causes of occurrences such as wars or revolutions often appear
to resist resolution at a purely empirical level, and it has been persuasively
maintained by some philosophers that the basic grounds for such disputes may
often be traced back to one historian's adherence to a moral or political
standpoint not shared by his opponent. |
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Although the topics
discussed above have occupied a central position in 20th-century critical
discussion, they represent only a sample of the issues with which analytical
philosophers of history have been concerned: other problems that have attracted
attention have related to the freedom and responsibility of historical agents,
the nature and description of historical events, and the role of narrative in
history. Here, as elsewhere, the approach adopted has often produced results of
considerable interest, throwing a revealing light on features of historical
enquiry that are easily missed or ignored by theorists in the grip of some
powerful dogma or ideology. Even so, it has perhaps been accompanied by a too
ready acquiescence in the view that history is "in order as it is,"
the philosopher's function being confined to offering a purely descriptive
elucidation of typical modes of historical thought and argument. In accepting
this conception of their role, analytical philosophers of history have no doubt
been partly, and understandably, influenced by a desire to avoid emulating the
heady ambitions of their speculative predecessors. Yet, normative questions
regarding the validity or adequacy of established procedures within any domain
can always be legitimately raised; in the case of history, there seems to be no
compelling reason to assume that such problems necessarily lie beyond the scope
of philosophical criticism and appraisal. (P.L.G.)
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