Coda: Postnarrativist Philosophy of Historiography

Kuukkanen, Jouni‐Matti

doi:10.1057/9781137409874_11

Cited by 7 publications

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“…23 Carr's essay seems the more prominent in this respect, and the far less conspicuous disagreements between White and Ricoeur have mostly been obscured by their often sharing the label of 'narrativism' (a typical shorthand term in use now for Carr's 'discontinuity view' theorists) as well as their lumping together in connection with the idea that 'narrative' largely refers to a simple Aristotelian form. (That argument is made by Carr in this essay, and it persists in his later work [for example, Carr 2014] and in other current debates [for example; Kuukkanen 2015]; more nuanced views have naturally also been available early on [for example, Rigney 1991]. ) From my particular perspective, the view explicated by Carr has been adopted by a large number of history professors, and thus has likely already influenced their opinion of White's work as they encountered it in the late 1980s and early 1990s.…”

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“…1 Like Dray (1971), Tucker (2004), and Kuukkanen (2015) I think that the narrative form is a widespread and prominent, but not universal or defining, element of historiography. Some parts of Marx's Das Kapital, for example, can be understood as a non-narrativist historiography.…”

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confidence: 99%

“…Several writers (Kuukkanen 2015;Roth 2017) suggested that assessment and preference of narratives can only be done comparatively. But what is to be compared, and how is the evaluation to be carried out?…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Just as 'evidence' does not dictate which story to construct, so it does not bear on the preference on one story or another" (Mink 1978:145) We are driven back to moral and aesthetic reasons for the choice of one vision over another as the more "realistic" … we are free to conceive history as we please, just as we are free to make it what we will. (White 1973: 433) Other scholars (e.g., Carroll 2001;Kuukkanen 2012Kuukkanen , 2015 maintained that historiographic narratives could be evaluated rationally according to agreed epistemic values. Few attempts were made, however, to see how such narratives are actually assessed and how they come to be accepted or rejected.…”

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confidence: 99%

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Historiographic narratives and empirical evidence: a case study

Wallach

2018

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Several scholars observed that narratives about the human past are evaluated comparatively. Few attempts have been made, however, to explore how such evaluations are actually done. Here I look at a lengthy "contest" among several historiographic narratives, all constructed to make sense of another one-the biblical story of the conquest of Canaan. I conclude that the preference of such narratives can be construed as a rational choice. In particular, an easily comprehensible and emotionally evocative narrative will give way to a complex and mundane one, when the latter provides a more coherent account of the consensually accepted body of evidence. This points to a fundamental difference between historiographic narratives and fiction, contrary to some influential opinions in the philosophy of historiography. Such historiographic narratives have similarities with hypotheses and narrative explanations in natural science.

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“…See discussion of these issues inKuukkanen (2015) and my review (2016). 3 See, e.g.,Velleman (2003) my discussion of Velleman in (2017b).4 At least of the form that I defend (2006).5 In this regard, the attention that literary theorists devote to the analysis of…”

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Essentially narrative explanations

Roth

2017

Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A

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This essay argues that narrative explanations prove uniquely suited to answering certain explanatory questions, and offers reasons why recognizing a type of statement that requires narrative explanations crucially informs on their assessment. My explication of narrative explanation begins by identifying two interrelated sources of philosophical unhappiness with them. The first I term the problem of logical formlessness and the second the problem of evaluative intractability. With regard to the first, narratives simply do not appear to instantiate any logical form recognized as inference licensing. But absent a means of identifying inferential links, what justifies connecting explanans and explanandum? Evaluative intractability, the second problem, thus seems a direct consequence. This essay shows exactly why these complaints prove unfounded by explicating narrative explanations in the process of answering three interrelated questions. First, what determines that an explanation has in some critical or essential respect a narrative form? Second, how does a narrative in such cases come to constitute a plausible explanation? Third, how do the first two considerations yield a basis for evaluating an explanation offered as a narrative? Answers to each of these questions include illustrations of actual narrative explanations and also function to underline attendant dimensions of evaluation.

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Coda: Postnarrativist Philosophy of Historiography

Cited by 7 publications

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Globalizing Hayden White

Globalizing Hayden White

Historiographic narratives and empirical evidence: a case study

Essentially narrative explanations

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