Historical explanation: From narrative to causation – and back?

This article reflects on the relationship between historical writing and enquiry and philosophy, and more particularly the manner in which the pursuit of a particular natural philosophy can influence historical narratives. The article begins with a comparison of Roman and Greek approaches to history, employing a distinction between narrative and logic. It goes on to consider the impact of Christianity, the relationship between enlightenment narratives and philosophical developments regarding the nature of causation, and the Hegel/Marx critique of the kinds of empiricism associated with Hume. The article ends by considering the counterfactual historical analysis and the proper relationship between history and philosophy for modern historians.     

Wissenschaftsgeschichte und Wissenschaftsphilosophie – Einführende Bemerkungen

History of Science and Philosophy of Science. Introductory Remarks. This article introduces two special issues of the journal History of Science Reports (Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte) with contributions on the relationships of history and philosophy of science since the seventeenth century. The introduction begins with a brief reminder of Thomas Kuhn's provocative discussion of the relationship in the 1970s, placing it in the context of the debate of the period over whether the foundation of university departments for History and Philosophy of Science in the United States had led to a mere “marriage of convenience” or something more. Following this the paper briefly outlines the transformative impact of the “practical turn” in both philosophy and history of science since the 1990s, and contends that the relationship of history and philosophy of science has nonetheless become increasingly distant over time. This is due in large part to the professionalisation of history of science and to the recent turn to cultural approaches in that field; both trends have led to the adoption of strictly historicist rather than analytical perspectives on knowledge. General historians, too, are paying more attention to the increasing impact of science and technology, but have at most instrumental use for philosophical perspectives. Thus, the distinct possibility arises that the debate between historical and analytical approaches in philosophy of science is becoming a conversation within one discipline rather than a dialogue between two disciplines: what was once a ?marriage of convenience”? could end in respectful separation or amicable divorce. The article concludes with brief summaries of the articles published in the two special issues, indicating their relations to specific aspects of the broader topic at hand.     

MIGRATION AND NARRATION: HOW EUROPEAN HISTORIANS IN THE NINETEENTH AND EARLY TWENTIETH CENTURIES TOLD THE HISTORY OF HUMAN MASS MIGRATIONS OR VÖLKERWANDERUNGEN

Historians’ interest in the history of human migrations is not limited to recent years. Migrations had already figured as explanatory factors in connection with cultural and historical change in the work of classical and ancient studies scholars of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In the writings of these scholars, migrations acted as historical landmarks or epochal thresholds and played a key role in the construction of geo-historical areas. This model has been called “migrationism” and cannot be explained simply on the basis of the history of individual disciplines, but must be seen in its complex interaction with scientific and historical contexts. However, “migrationism” does not relate to fixed political and scientific positions or movements. For this reason, it cannot be explained adequately by using a historically or ideologically based approach. Relying on narratological approaches, this article examines migration narratives that historians of this period used to explain the rise and fall of ancient civilizations. Referring to contemporary historiographical representations of the ancient Near East, it distinguishes three main narratives that are still common today: narratives of foundation, narratives of destruction, and narratives of mixtures. In this sense, analyzing older migration narratives helps us to sharpen the critical view on the genealogy of our own views on the history—and present—of human migrations.     

Time travel,labour history,and the null curriculum: new design knowledge for mobile augmented reality history games

This paper presents a case study drawn from design-based research (DBR) on a mobile, place-based augmented reality history game. Using DBR methods, the game was developed by the author as a history learning intervention for fifth to seventh graders. The game is built upon historical narratives of disenfranchised populations that are seldom taught, those typically relegated to the ‘null curriculum’. These narratives include the stories of women immigrant labour leaders in the early twentieth century, more than a decade before suffrage. The project understands the purpose of history education as the preparation of informed citizens. In paying particular attention to historical themes that endure over time, the game aims to draw connections between historical and contemporary narratives of diverse and disenfranchised populations. The study discusses new design knowledge for addressing such narratives. Self-reflexivity, the technique of revealing the means of production of the game technology itself can be used to spotlight contemporary issues of disenfranchisement. Supra-reveals, historical thematic foreshadowing, can help establish key links between themes of disenfranchisement of diverse groups in the past and those in the present. These techniques used together, and the subsequent curriculum, brought focus to teaching issues of diversity and disenfranchisement typically written out of curriculum.     

FUTURE BY HISTORY: RETHINKING PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY

Philosophy of history has a threefold dimension: material, formal, and functional, which have largely been conceptualized as mutually exclusive. It is high time to mediate them into a coherent relationship, and Rohbeck's book is a decisive step toward such a new philosophy of history. The book is divided into three parts: the first deals with the relationship between history and the future, the second analyzes the relationship between history and ethics, and the third synthesizes these two aspects into a pragmatics of history. With regard to the first part, historical thinking is based on a perception of temporal otherness related to the past. Rohbeck prolongs the time perspective by bridging this time gap into the future. As to the second, Rohbeck replaces teleology by ethics. Teleology includes ethics but limits its scope to a one‐sided development. Ethics allows many more options. Finally, who is the agent for historical ethics? Rohbeck proposes the “generation” as the basic actor in historical change and the addressee of ethical commitment. At the end of his work, Rohbeck draws consequences for the idea of philosophy of history from his idea of historical ethics. He shows that history has a new perspective if it is viewed through the lens of ethical elements in the fundamental relationship between past, present, and future. Of course, many questions follow this fascinating new version of the old philosophy of history. I raise only three of them: (1) What synthesizes the three dimensions of time into one and the same history? (2) Did we not learn from historicism that values in ethics have an inbuilt temporality? This argument does not run against the idea of an ethics of history, but should sharpen its genuine historical character. (3) Who is the agent of this change: who brings it about and at the same is subjected to it? An anonymous sum of generations in space and time is not a convincing answer. We need an integrative idea that covers the vast field of experience of the human world in space and time and that covers the strong commitment to universal values. In this respect it would be worthwhile to pick up the idea of humankind as it was conceptualized as the red thread of history in traditional, modern philosophy of history.     

Oral history studies in contemporary China

The rise of oral history is a new trend in historical studies in China that began in the late twentieth century. This promising tendency has so far achieved important results in two areas: theoretical exploration and oral interviews. This article proposes the theory of oral history’s four realities and three curtains and by so doing preliminarily clarifies the relations among historical memories, historical narratives, and the authenticity of oral history. These theories represent the current understanding of the discipline of contemporary Chinese history in regard to the core questions of oral history. Oral history in China has currently reached a new phase of self-conscious disciplinary construction and has the following tentative plans: to strengthen the study of basic theories and methods of oral history; to intensify the training of talented scholars and to establish a professional group of oral historians; to promote the general implementation of oral history projects; to create new oral history websites and academic journals, and to prepare for the establishment of oral history archives in China.     

20世纪西方分析或批判的历史哲学

分析或批判的历史哲学的兴起,一方面批判了思辨的历史哲学,另一方面将历史哲学研究的重点从解释历史的性质转移到解释历史知识的性质上来。这极大地推进了史学理论的发展,也为历史学确立了更为稳固的根基。德国历史哲学家狄尔泰、文德尔班、李凯尔特继承德国历史主义传统,从文化科学与自然科学相异的角度来分析历史知识的性质;克罗齐、柯林武德也遵循了这个传统。分析学派罗素、波普尔、亨佩尔等人,则从语言逻辑的角度来分析理解历史的方式和历史知识的可能性。这两个方向共同构成了20世纪西方历史哲学的主流,进一步深化了人们对自我的认识。     

雅斯贝斯的世界历史纲要与文化研究的历史视野

人类文化在本质上是历史的,只有把文化放在适当的历史视野中才能理解文化的真实内涵。雅斯贝斯的世界历史纲要,就是他为自己打造的一个历史视野。带着对人类文化和历史的困惑,并通过对雅斯贝斯世界历史纲要及其基本概念——“轴心期”的解读,本文尝试着提出一个粗略的人类历史纲要,并在此基础上尝试着提出一个新的历史视野和文化框架。本文认为,在这个新的历史视野和文化框架下,研究、分析和解读全部人类历史也即人类由起源走向未来的自我创造和自我发展的过程,是文化研究的根本任务。     

MODELING IN HISTORICAL RESEARCH PRACTICE AND METHODOLOGY: CONTRIBUTIONS FROM POLAND1

This selection of texts (mostly translations from Polish) should interest those who study analytical philosophy of history, methodology of history, and historical sociology. It contains contributions by Polish historians and philosophers since 1931, with pride of place given to the work of the Poznań school in the philosophy of science and humanities. With Jerzy Kmita, Leszek Nowak, and Jerzy Topolski as its leaders, it emerged in late 1960s as a synthesis of Marxism and the Polish brand of logical positivism known as the Lwow‐Warsaw school. Most papers discuss or exemplify various forms of idealization in historical research. Although the papers demonstrate the usefulness of modeling in historical sociology and nonnarrative history, the collection as a whole does not provide realistic examples to substantiate the Poznań school's stronger claim of the decomposability of historical narratives into separate strips related to hierarchically ordered “essential factors.”     

THE CRITICAL THEORY OF HISTORY: RETHINKING THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY IN THE LIGHT OF KOSELLECK'S WORK

There are many ways to consider the philosophy of history. In this article, I claim that one of the most viable approaches to the philosophy of history today is that of critical theory of history, inspired by Reinhart Koselleck. Critical theory of history is based on what I call known history, history as it has been established and expounded by historians. What it contributes—its added value, so to speak—is a reflection on the categories employed to think about historical experience at its different levels, not only as a narrative but also as a series of events: their origins, contexts, terminology, functions (theoretical or practical), and, finally, eventual relevance.     

THE IMPLICATIONS OF ROBERT BRANDOM'S INFERENTIALISM FOR INTELLECTUAL HISTORY

Quentin Skinner's appropriation of speech act theory for intellectual history has been extremely influential. Even as the model continues to be important for historians, however, philosophers now regard the original speech act theory paradigm as dated. Are there more recent initiatives that might reignite theoretical work in this area? This article argues that the inferentialism of Robert Brandom is one of the most interesting contemporary philosophical projects with historical implications. It shows how Brandom's work emerged out of the broad shift in the philosophy of language from semantics to pragmatics that also informed speech act theory. The article then goes on to unpack the rich implications of Brandom's inferentialism for the theory and practice of intellectual history. It contends that inferentialism clarifies, legitimizes, and informs intellectual historical practice, and it concludes with a consideration of the challenges faced by inferentialist intellectual history, together with an argument for the broader implications of Brandom's work.     

A WORLD CONNECTING? FROM THE UNITY OF HISTORY TO GLOBAL HISTORY

Global history looms large in current historiography, yet its heuristic design and political functions remain ill‐reflected. My article seeks to uncover the historical origins of the assumption that the “world” has one common history and that it is feasible and desirable to write it. I analyze the epistemic infrastructure underlying this assumption and argue that global history as practiced today is predicated on a specific mode of world‐making that provides its basic template: Global history both grew out of and intellectually sustains the conception of an increasingly connected world. The type of connectedness thereby implied and reinscribed was established by what I call the “world‐historical process,” a cognitive framework that co‐emerged with the early modern and modern European conquest of the world through expansion, discovery, commerce, and culture. The article investigates how this process‐template emerged out of the crisis of universal history that could no longer integrate and reconcile the multiple pasts of the world. The format of the world‐historical process was central to Enlightenment historians' assertion of the secular and scientific prestige of their craft, as much as to its ability to discern global epochs, in particular the modern and the premodern. My article traces the fortunes of this template through historicism up to present‐day global history. Current global history remains structured around the growing connectedness of previously distinct parts of the planet whose pasts are transformed into relevant world history by the very process that makes them increasingly interrelated. Global history may be too much a product of the process of globalization it studies to develop epistemologically and politically tenable alternatives to “connectivity.”     

ITALIAN LEGACIES1

This paper discusses David Roberts's latest book in which he seeks to throw some light on urgent postmodern historiographical issues from the angle of Italian historicism, led by Benedetto Croce (1866–1952) and Giovanni Gentile (1875–1944). Focusing on the relationship between theory and practice, Roberts argues that there was a close relationship between Italian historicism and fascism. On the basis of the principle that “reality is nothing but history”, both Croce and Gentile sought to develop a philosophy that connects historical thinking to action. In this context, Gentile's presentist interpretation of the historical sublime eventually led to totalitarianism, whereas Croce's radical historicism formed the basis of a more liberal view of society. In his discussion of the reception of the Italian tradition, Roberts rejects Carlo Ginzburg's and Hayden White's “misreadings” of Croce and Gentile, and concludes that Italian historicism is still relevant to modern historiography. In this paper I show that Roberts, by renouncing an exclusively philosophical approach to the Italian tradition, tends to overlook the underlying issues. In order to redress the balance, I argue that the political issues between Croce and Gentile went back to profound philosophical differences concerning the relationship between philosophy and history on the one hand and between past and present on the other. From this perspective, Ginzburg's and White's debates about the relationship between history and politics, and the role of the historical sublime in historiography, should not be viewed as “misreadings” of Croce and Gentile, but as mere variations on the themes of their predecessors. The relevance of the Italian tradition is therefore not primarily to be found in its response to postmodernism, but in setting the agenda for rethinking the relationship between history and practical life in the contemporary world.     

宅兹中国——重建有关中国的历史论述

班纳迪克·安德森认为所谓庞大的很多国家,实际上只不过是通过想象构成的一个共同体,并不具有实质国家的意义;杜赞奇说,我们不要用现代的民族国家的概念来讨论历史问题,要把历史从民族国家里救出来;施坚雅而以城市为研究对象,改变了将中国作为整体来研究的方式,改变了政治行政区域为单位的研究;日本、韩国强调亚洲史、东亚史,弱化中国与中国史,认为中国不是一个“历史单位”;1996年以后“新清史”诞生,形成一股大潮。看起来似乎只是国外中国学界各种理论、学派、观点的争鸣,但实际上掩藏了很多悬而未决的大问题,“中国”、“中国史”这些概念,面临被消解、结构的困境,学术争鸣的后面又藏着政治的背景。国内学界如何应对,如何解决,本文提出了自己独特的看法。     

历史与记忆

当代史学和历史哲学中关于记忆问题的探讨为我们关于史学的理解提供了新的视角。在这一视野下,记忆超越单纯个体心理的层次获得了作为脑外"文化记忆"的历史维度。在历史与记忆关系的层面上,历史记忆的多元性对历史记载的单一性提供了重要的补益,同时,史学文本的宏观视野对于历史记忆的微观局部性和片断性亦显示出认识上的优越性。在认识论维度之外,历史记忆诉诸历史正义的道义性是其十分显著的特质,于此凸显史学科学性与道义性维度复杂的张力关系,历史科学性不能成为漠视道义性的理由。最后,在历史与记忆关系上传统的历史本位立场之外,对人生有意义的历史终究要落实在人间的历史记忆中,从而彰显记忆本位的合理性,这或许是关注历史记忆所能带给我们的一点理论启示。     

历史与人的意志支配的实践

针对人类历史是不以人的意志为转移的合乎规律的客观发展过程的传统见解,本文提出正是人的意志支配下的对象性实践活动创造和改变了实际历史进程.历史发展的"合力论"不能成立.观察了各种理论派别对人类历史的基本理解,揭示辩证唯心主义、实证主义、人文主义解释学、传统历史唯物主义殊途同归,都将人类历史归结为精神的发展.只有马克思的"新唯物主义"的实践哲学揭示了实际历史过程的实践本质,启迪历史学朝着科学认知的实践的方向发展.     

柯林武德史学理论的阶段性、连续性与体系性

柯林武德被誉为20世纪最有影响力的历史哲学家之一,国内外现有研究主要集中于其史学理论观点的阐释上,忽略了对其思想发展历程的分析。就理论倾向来说,柯林武德经历了由实在论者向唯心主义者的逐渐转化,他的思想发展也由此划分为三个阶段。在这三个阶段之外,历史过程思想作为其史学理论的基本前提之一,体现着他思想发展的连续性。问答逻辑则展现了柯林武德考古学、历史学和哲学三项学术研究之间的和谐关系及其史学理论的体系性。     

ANTHROPOCENE TIME

Beginning with the question of how a sense of geological time remains strangely withdrawn in contemporary discussions of the Anthropocene in the human sciences and yields place to the more human‐centered time of world history, this article proceeds to discuss the differences between human‐historical time and the time of geology as they relate to the concept of the Anthropocene. The article discusses the difficulty of developing a mode of thinking about the present that would attempt to hold together these two rather different senses of time and ends with a ground‐clearing exercise that might enable the development of such thought.     

PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY'S RETURN

Kojin Karatani's Structure of World History seeks to rescue the philosophy of history and restore to it the relationship between philosophical reflection and historical practice. This connection is particularly pertinent in Karatani's case since he had earlier worked out the philosophical scaffolding of this monumental study in his book Transcritique: On Kant and Marx, which embarked on a “return to Capital once more to read the potential that has been overlooked.” By juxtaposing Marx to Kant and vice versa to discover the importance of exchange over production, he found what was to become the informing principle of his later philosophy of history. While Karatani's accounting of the structure of world history presumes to recount the passage of the world's history from nomadic societies to the present as a condition to rethink “social formations” from a perspective that recalls the form of a stagist philosophy of history attributed to Marx and Engels, he has abandoned its informing principle of the modes of production. Instead, he offers the perspective of modes of exchange, which means waiving any consideration concerning who owns the means of production: the putative “economic base” underlying superstructural representations like the state, religion, and culture upheld by a vulgate tradition of Marxian historical writing and discounted by bourgeois historiography as deterministic. The decision to shift to modes of exchange means rooting the primary mode of exchange taking place first in nomadic societies, rather than forms of production and archaic communal ownership of land. Although his revised scheme still accords priority to the economic, the putative division between base and superstructures still persists, even though the latter are still produced by the former, which is now the mode of exchange. Whereas Marx privileged commodity exchange as dominant, Karatani places greater emphasis on the earliest mode of exchange, which consists of the “pure gift,” associated with early nomadic social formations and reciprocity practices by clans, and seems to offer nomadic/clan communalism as a model that resembles Marx's own strategic linking of the surviving Russian commune and contemporary capitalism. The point to this project is to transcend the hegemonic trinity of capital, nation, and state and satisfy a desire to share with other globalists a vision that aims to overcome the defects of capitalism and the nation‐state and the failure of a Marxian expectation that nation‐states will simply wither away with the final surpassing of capitalism. To this end, Karatani's appeal to Kant offers to inject a moral element absent in the merely economic structure of history that will thus provide the promise of “world peace,” which ultimately requires an abolition of the nation‐state as a condition for realizing a “simultaneous bourgeois revolution” that would finally overcome state and capital and establish a world federation.     

LÖWITH,LÖWITH'S HEIDEGGER,AND THE UNITY OF HISTORY

This article is about the problem of the unity of history as seen through the writings of Karl Löwith. By “unity of history” I understand the notion that all history constitutes one and only one range of kinds of objects and/or one field of knowledge. The article argues that the problem of the unity of history—though often neglected as a matter of mere argumentative infrastructure—is central to a number of wider problems, most prominently the possibility of a plural understanding of historicity and the possibility of ultimately avoiding a unified historical teleology. The article revisits Löwith's writings and proposes a variety of novel interpretations with the aim of evincing the centrality, and of exploring diverse aspects, of the problematic of the unity of history. This problematic is shown to have informed Löwith's work on the secularization thesis as well as his debate with Hans Blumenberg. The foundations of Löwith's discussion of the problem are pursued across his ambivalent critique and appropriation of Heidegger's model of an ontology of historicity as marked by inevitable internal conflict and thus disunity. The paper reconstructs the manner in which, after the Second World War, Löwith's philosophy of history sought to salvage basic traits of the Heideggerian model when it tried to establish the possibility of plural historicity from a notion of the natural cosmos. It is demonstrated that the motives for this salvage operation ultimately extended beyond the problem of Löwith's reception of Heidegger and concerned the possibility of continuing any debate on the philosophy of history.