学科共识、认知美德和学者角色--化解历史知识客观性问题的新思路

通常而言,客观性是客体的属性和特征,与主观性相对立。以此为对照,历史知识的客观性问题就展现为历史实在论与历史相对主义之间的辩难,难分仲伯。换一种思路而言,当代新实用主义历史哲学家则认为客观性与主观性是可区分但不可分离的整体,在横向结构上,历史知识的客观性是"自我、他者与世界"共在的语义三角,在纵向历程上,历史知识的客观性也是一个不断辩证发展的过程。在社会认识论或史学社会学的视野下,在自我与他者所组成的学术共同体之中,历史知识的客观性就具有了规范性的涵义。历史知识作为一种公共性的知识,历史知识的客观性就是历史学家群体之间所签订的"真之契约",是历史学家群体不断协商和试错出来的学科共识,同时也需要史家的认知美德和学者角色提供担保。     

Mixed Messages: The Heterogeneity of Historical Discourse

If, as many historians and theorists now believe, narrative is the formproper to historical explanation, this raises the problem of the terms in which such narratives areto be evaluated. Without a clear account of evaluation, the status of historical knowledge (both initself and in all those social, political, and other contexts in which appeal to historical explanationis made) remains obscure. Beginning with the view, found in Hayden White and others, thathistorical narrative constitutes a meaning not reducible to the factual content it engages, thisessay argues that such meaning can arise only through a synthesis of cognitive and normativediscourses. Narrative combines "heterogeneous" language games in such a waythat neither appeal to "truth content" nor to "justice" suffices todecide the question of which of two competing historical explanations is, as a whole, superior.Examining in critical detail the opposed positions on this issue articulated by two recenttheorists—Frank Ankersmit ("narrative idealism") and David Carr("narrative realism")—the paper concludes that the debate between thosewho hold that historical narratives should be judged in essentially cognitive terms and those whohold that they should be judged in essentially political terms cannot be resolved and that aphilosophical view of historical narrative that is neither realist nor idealist needs to be developed.     

Language and the Shift from Signs to Practices in Cultural Inquiry

A model of culture as a partially coherent system of signs comprised the most widely employed instrument for analyzing cultural meaning among the new cultural historians. However, the model failed to account for meanings that agents produce by executing social practices rather than by only "reading" contrasts among signs. It also encouraged some analysts to conceive the difference between sign system and concrete practice as that between what is graspable as an intellectual form and what remains inaccessibly material or corporeal. This essay introduces three exemplars of the ties between signs and practices to show how the pragmatics of using signs comprises a structure and a generator of meaning in its own right. In the three exemplars, which are based on the tropes of metonymy, metaphor, and irony, I employ the analytic tools of linguistics to appreciate the non-discursive organization of practice. Analysis of the diverse logics for organizing practice offers promising means for investigating how signs come to seem experientially real for their users. Finally, this view of culture in practice suggests new hypotheses about the possible interdependencies as well as the lack of connection among the elements of a cultural setting.     

试论西贝尔的史学观念

本文试图从史料批判、连续性原则和政治观念三方面来探讨德国历史学家西贝尔构建的历史—政治史学观念体系,同时说明这种史学观念不但植根于德意志文化之中,更是针对当时的社会政治问题提出的一种解决方案。在这一体系中,西贝尔强调现实在认识历史中的重要作用,号召历史学家投身社会实践,在历史认识和生命实践之间的不断互动中,对历史进程进行不断的重新理解,由此而化解历史的客观性与历史知识的主观性之间的矛盾,从而体现出历史学对于社会和个人的价值。     

Can Histories Be True? Narrativism,Positivism, and the “MetaphoricalTurn”

Narrativism, as represented by Hayden White and Frank Ankersmit, can fruitfully be analyzed as an inversion of two brands of positivism. First, narrativist epistemology can be regarded as an inversion of empiricism. Its thesis that narratives function as metaphors which do not possess a cognitive content is built on an empiricist, "picture view" of knowledge. Moreover, all the non-cognitive aspects attributed as such are dependent on this picture theory of knowledge and a picture theory of representation. Most of the epistemological characteristics that White and Ankersmit attribute to historical narratives therefore share the problems of this picture theory.
The article's second thesis is that the theories of narrative explanation can also fruitfully be analyzed as inversions of positivist covering-law theory. Ankersmit's brand of narrativism is the most radical in this respect because it posits an opposition between narrative and causal modes of comprehension while simultaneously eliminating causality from narrativist historical understanding. White's brand of narrativism is more of a hybrid than is Ankersmit's as far as its theory of explanation is concerned; nevertheless, it can also be fruitfully interpreted as an inversion of covering-law theory, replacing it by an indefinite multitude of explanatory strategies.
Most of the striking characteristics of both White's and Ankersmit's narrativism pre-suppose positivism in these two senses, especially their claim that historical narratives have a metaphorical structure and therefore no truth-value. These claims are had to reconcile with the factual characteristics of debates by historians; this problem can be tracked down to the absence in "metaphorical” narrativism of a conceptual connection between historical narratives and historical research.     

On Language, Culture, and Social Action

This article outlines the theoretical developments experienced in historical studies over the last two decades. As a consequence of the growing critical reconsideration of some of the main theoretical assumptions underlying historical explanation of individuals' meaningful actions, a new theory of society has taken shape among historians during this time. By emphasizing the empirical and analytical distinction between language as a pattern of meanings and language as a means of communication, a significant group of historians has thoroughly recast the conventional notions of society, experience, interests, culture, and identity, and has developed a new concept of social action. Thus, historiographical debate seems to have started to transcend, for the first time, the longstanding and increasingly futile contest or dilemma between objectivism and subjectivism, between materialism and culturalism, between social and intentional explanation, or between social constraints and human agency. The groundwork has now been laid for an alternative to the declining paradigm of social history that does not entail a revisionist return (be it partial or complete) to idealist history but opens a quite different path.     

Cultural Meanings and Cultural Structures in Historical Explanation

One way to recast the problem of cultural explanation in historical inquiry is to distinguish two conceptualizations involving culture: (1) cultural meanings as contents of signification (however theorized) that inform meaningful courses of action in historically unfolding circumstances; and (2) cultural structures as institutionalized patterns of social life that may be elaborated in more than one concrete construction of meaning. This distinction helps to suggest how explanation can operate in accounting for cultural processes of meaning-formation, as well as in other ways that transcend specific meanings, yet are nonetheless cultural. Examples of historical explanation involving each construct are offered, and their potential examined.     

A History of Normative Theory in Americanist Archaeology

Efforts in the 1960s to demonstrate the value of the new archaeology involved showing that the competing culture-history paradigm was inferior. One allegedly weak plank in that paradigm had to do with how culture historians viewed culture—as a set of ideas transmitted in the form of ideal norms or mental templates. Lewis Binford referred to this view as normative theory. In archaeology that view was manifest in the equation of artifact types with prehistoric norms—an equation that, according to Binford, the culture historians had made so that they could track the flow of ideas through time and thus write culture history. Culture historians regularly subscribed to cultural transmission as the theoretical backdrop for their artifact-based chronometers such as seriation and the direct historical approach, but with few exceptions they perceived only a weak relationship between norms and artifact types. It was not until 1960, in a paper by James Gifford, that what Binford labeled as normative theory appeared in anything approaching a complete form. Ironically, the first applications of normative theory were products of the new archaeologists, not the culture historians.     

Some remarks on ethnicity in medieval archaeology

Recent critiques of the culture‐historical approach to ethnicity have denounced the idea that archaeological cultures are ‘actors’ on the historical stage, playing the role that known individuals or groups have in documentary history. But the critique has gone as far as to claim that, because archaeologists supposedly have no access to the meaning of cultural traditions, medieval ethnicity cannot be studied by archeological means. Ethnicity should be banned from all discussions, if medieval archaeology is to make any progress in the future. The paper examines the theoretical malaise at the root of this scepticism verging on nihilism. The understanding of the archaeological record not as an imprint, but as a text allows for much learning about meaning in the past. Symbols, style and power are the key concepts that currently guide anthropological research on ethnicity as a ‘social construction of primordiality’. As several archaeological examples show, medieval ethnicity was a form of social mobilization used in order to reach certain political goals. Ethnic identity was built upon some pre‐existing cultural identity, in a prototypic manner.     

Stating space in modern Mexico

This paper critiques the largely Anglophone “New Cultural History” (NCH) written on post-revolutionary Mexico, calling for a more robust theoretical and methodological approach to the state than scholars have thus far employed. Earlier trends, each of course inflected with the politics of their times, remained fastened upon the purportedly unified force of Mexican officialdom. Revisionist narratives tended to abstract the state from social and cultural belief and practice. As such, scholars' grasp of social change was weakened by their failure to see politics, culture, and society as interrelated processes. Nevertheless, the closer examination of popular culture stressed by some contemporary historians—an undeniably important analytical tack—still does not obviate the need for a solid, at times even central, focus on processes of state-formation. Herein, I review some of the critical contributions to a growing multidisciplinary field of state/culture studies, and from critical human geography, and suggest ways their insights might be useful for historians and historical geographers focusing on the post-revolutionary Mexican state.     

EXTENDED MEANING AND UNDERSTANDING IN THE HISTORY OF IDEAS

Many historians focus primarily on authors' “intended meanings.” Yet all textual interpreters, including historians, need a second kind of meaning. I call this idea “extended meaning,” a new name for an old idea: “P means Q” is the same as “P logically implies Q.” Extended and intended meaning involve different kinds of understanding: even if we grasp exactly what authors meant, we miss something important if we overlook their errors, for example. Crucially, extended and intended meaning are not alternatives: just as some parts of texts cannot be understood without historical analysis, so too some parts of texts cannot be understood without philosophical analysis. Indeed, some historians are adept at using extended meanings to recover intended meanings. But the failure to make this explicit has led many historians to undervalue philosophical analysis. This article thus applies the idea of extended meaning to three practical questions: whether we can deviate from authors' intended meanings, whether we can use anachronisms, and how we can use extended meanings to recover intended meanings. The idea of extended meaning thus strengthens our theoretical foundations and offers valuable practical tools.     

Historical writing? – Richard Wilton’s “Booke of particular remembrances”, 1584–1634

ABSTRACT

Francis Bacon’s Advancement of Knowledge shaped contemporary and modern conceptions of historical writing and culture which historians have only begun to re-examine more recently. This case study of the “notebook” of Sir Richard Wilton demonstrates the fruitfulness of considering non-narrative texts as “historical”. Wilton self-fashioned his identity from the ideals of gentry culture and his Protestant faith. Wilton’s personal memory was influenced by the Reformation which led to forms of commemoration in texts. He also used elite knowledge networks to negotiate historical networks that were fundamentally oral and local. Finally, early modern historical writing found in personal accounts, commonplace books, and remembrance books could be fluid and dynamic, and it appropriated forms of writing that were highly accessible in the day-to-day lives of the writers that compiled them. The decision to use particular forms of writing was intrinsically associated with the utility and meaning of these forms.     

Objectivity and the writing of history

How do historians approach objectivity? This is addressed by Mark Bevir in his book The Logic of the History of Ideas (1999) by his argument for an anthropological epistemology with objectivity in the historical narrative resting on the explanation of human actions/agent intentionality equating with meaning. The criticism of this position is at several levels. As sophisticated constructionists historians do not usually ask ‘Can history be objective?’ Rather, they work from the balance of evidence reflecting the intersubjectivity of truth and they acknowledge the problematic nature of inferring agent intentionality and the difficulties in equating this with ‘what it means’. Why Abraham Lincoln issued the 1863 emancipation proclamation is a case in point. No historian would claim to have located its true meaning objectively in effect doubting Mark Bevir's claim that ‘objective knowledge arises from a human practice in which we criticise and compare rival webs of theories in terms of agreed facts’ (The Logic of the History of Ideas, 1999, p. 98). There are also further challenges to an over-reliance on rational action theory and the problems associated with the selection of evidence. Equally, most historians in practice doubt objectivity emerges from an accurate knowledge of the motives that can be matched to weak authorial intentions and that this leads to action via decisions. Few historians today accept that their narrative mimics past intentionality and that this provides true meaning. The article offers four reasons for rejecting Bevir's position and concludes with a defence of the narrative-linguistic determination of meaning. This suggests that history is subject to the same narrative and imaginative constraints as other forms of realist writing, rather than being privileged by an access to knowable intentionality and that this constitutes objective historical knowledge.     

Objectivity and the writing of history

How do historians approach objectivity? This is addressed by Mark Bevir in his book The Logic of the History of Ideas (1999) by his argument for an anthropological epistemology with objectivity in the historical narrative resting on the explanation of human actions/agent intentionality equating with meaning. The criticism of this position is at several levels. As sophisticated constructionists historians do not usually ask ‘Can history be objective?’ Rather, they work from the balance of evidence reflecting the intersubjectivity of truth and they acknowledge the problematic nature of inferring agent intentionality and the difficulties in equating this with ‘what it means’. Why Abraham Lincoln issued the 1863 emancipation proclamation is a case in point. No historian would claim to have located its true meaning objectively in effect doubting Mark Bevir's claim that ‘objective knowledge arises from a human practice in which we criticise and compare rival webs of theories in terms of agreed facts’ (The Logic of the History of Ideas, 1999, p. 98). There are also further challenges to an over-reliance on rational action theory and the problems associated with the selection of evidence. Equally, most historians in practice doubt objectivity emerges from an accurate knowledge of the motives that can be matched to weak authorial intentions and that this leads to action via decisions. Few historians today accept that their narrative mimics past intentionality and that this provides true meaning. The article offers four reasons for rejecting Bevir's position and concludes with a defence of the narrative-linguistic determination of meaning. This suggests that history is subject to the same narrative and imaginative constraints as other forms of realist writing, rather than being privileged by an access to knowable intentionality and that this constitutes objective historical knowledge.     

“价值”优先下的“事实”重建：清季民初新史家寻找中国历史“进化”的努力

清末民初的一种流行观点认为,中国自秦汉以下皆在退化或循环中。但按照社会进化论,它也就意味着中国处在人类历史“公例”之外,面临必然被淘汰的危险,这促使一批新史家在中国历史中寻找“进步”的迹象。然而,因为传统政治和学术主流皆被视为“专制的”,他们不得不另辟蹊径。梁启超等人为此提出两个方案,一是把中国历史描述为一步步走向“世界”的过程;一是弱化传统政治史的地位,强调社会史、文明史、民史的重要性。这两种现象皆和社会进化论有密切而曲折的学理关系,结果把一些过去认为非“正统”的现象升格为历史叙述的主线。经过这番改造后,历史的“价值”与“事实”再次统一起来。     

Infection, contagion, and public health in late medieval and early modern German imperial towns

From today's point of view, the concepts of "miasma" and "contagion" appear to be two mutually exclusive perceptions of the spread of epidemic diseases, and quite a number of historians have tried to discuss the history of public health and epidemic diseases in terms of a progression from the miasmic to the contagionist concept. More detailed local studies, however, indicate how extremely misleading it may be to separate such medical concepts and ideas from their actual historical context. The article presented here, based on local studies in late medieval and early modern imperial towns in southern Germany, demonstrates to what extent the inhabitants of these towns had notions of both "miasma" and "contagion." Furthermore, a contextual analysis of language shows that they did not see a necessity to strictly distinguish between these different concepts relating to the spread of diseases. Tracing the meaning of "infection" and "contagion," we find that these terms were used in connection with various diseases, and that a change in the use of the expressions does not necessarily imply a change of the corresponding notion. Moreover, a coexistence of differing perceptions cannot--as some historians have suggested--be attributed to a divergence between the academic medicine and the popular ideas of that period. A survey of measures and actions in the public health sector indicates that a coexistence of--from our point of view--inconsistent concepts helped the authorities as well as the individuals to find means of defense and consolation during all those crises caused by epidemic diseases--crises that occurred very frequently in these towns during the late medieval and early modern periods. As the article demonstrates, the interaction during such crises reveals the continuity of ancient rituals and concepts as well as the adoption of new insights resulting from changes in the economical, political, scientific, religious, and social structures.     

“历程”中的客观性——对柯林武德思想的再认识

柯林武德试图将历史学建立在一种新的客观性概念的基础上。他指出:历史中的客观性是在绵延不断的"历程"中得到体现的,在这一历程中,历史当事人的思想与后来的历史学家对它的反思不是"两个"思想而是"一个"思想,历史体系是历史与历史学家的统一。在历史体系中,历史学家即使不受纯粹历史"事实"的制约,也必然受整体"历程"的制约。柯林武德的这些观点使得一种新的史学"客观性"观念成为可能。     

Revelation and Resolution: Religion as the Key to Cognition,Power, and History in Anthropology

Religion is often considered as key to interpreting human psychological and social processes. Yet, the notion that ritual performance and religious beliefs offer a transparent portal onto the inner workings of culture, power relations, historical change, and cognition are subject to critique. The political and psychological implications of ritual practice differ considerably from culture to culture and religion defies reduction to a single explanatory or etiological framework. Anthropologists best learn about emic and etic understandings of belief by interpreting the historically varied articulations of religious experience with other social domains.     

试析20世纪40年代中国马克思主义史学家对史料和历史考证方法的重视

20世纪30年代,经过中国社会史论战而迅速扩大影响的中国马克思主义史学,存在着明显的教条化和公式化、轻视史料与考证的缺失。40年代的中国马克思主义史学家对此进行了积极的反思和纠正,而且还从理论上论述了史料及考证方法在历史研究中的重要性,阐述了理论观点与材料方法间的辩证关系,极大地促进了马克思主义史学的中国化和学术研究的中国化。     

梁启超《过渡时代论》与当代"过渡期历史观"的构造

对梁启超历史观的评价一般有两种意见,一种观点认为梁启超是中国现代史学的开创者,其主要贡献是把中国历史纳入到世界史的解释框架之内,用线性的因果关系替代了王朝更替的历史观。另一种观点认为梁启超从欧洲归来后完全放弃了他所倡导的“进步史观”,而成为了一个文化保守主义者。实际上,梁启超所采取的是一种过渡期的历史观,这种历史观既强调历史的进步是不可阻挡的一种趋势,又主张解释历史不能仅仅依赖于纯粹科学方法,而尚需运用直觉的手段,同时他又强调文化积淀而不仅仅是物质更新在文明演进中的作用,这样的阐释方法使我们有可能超越西方历史观对我们思维的长期制约,也可避免“现代”与“后现代”两种极端解释取向所造成的偏颇后果。