Postnarrativist Philosophy of Historiography
This page intentionally left blank
Postnarrativist Philosophy of Historiography Jouni-Matti Kuukkanen University of Oulu, Finland
Jouni-Matti Kuukkanen 2015 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2015 978-1-137-40986-7 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6 10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The author has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2015 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave and Macmillan are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN 978-1-349-48881-0 ISBN 978-1-137-40987-4 (ebook) DOI 10.1057/9781137409874 This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.
To Akseli
This page intentionally left blank
Contents Preface and Acknowledgments viii 1 Introduction: The Narrativist Insight 1 2 From Analytic Philosophy of History to Narrativism 14 3 Three Tenets of Narrativist Philosophy of Historiography 30 4 Representationalism and Non-representationalism 50 5 Reasoning in Historiography 68 6 Colligation 97 7 Underdetermination and Epistemic Values 116 8 From Truth to Warranted Assertion 131 9 The Tri-partite Theory of Justification of Historiography 148 10 Historiography between Objectivism and Subjectivism 168 11 Coda: Postnarrativist Philosophy of Historiography 198 Notes 202 Bibliography 219 Index 231 vii
Preface and Acknowledgments Writing this book has been like trying to climb to the top of a mountain to get a clear view of the terrain below. Many monographs in the humanities are actually collections of articles published elsewhere, supplemented by an introduction and a conclusion. While I do not deny that some article collections result in balanced accounts, I pointedly wanted to create a connected and progressive chain of reasoning, which takes the reader from the starting point to the end so that the path, the turns on it and the reasons for those turns become evident. Obviously, what the reader has in her or his hand is not the documentation of all the twists and turns of reasoning, but the outcome of this activity. I hope that the book functions like one coherent and comprehensive piece on its topic and that all its parts appear justified. Achieving something like this has been my aim ever since I entered academia, although this dawned on me only much later. It has not been easy to reach the mountaintop. There have been many false awakenings and attempts to force a path through impenetrable terrain. On a number of occasions I have realized that the elevation on which I was standing, and which I thought was the top, was actually only a small hill next to a much bigger one. And it has even happened that I have had to go back down and try another side after finding that an approach would not provide that clear vision that I was after. Now I believe that I am on the top of a mountain and can see far. I am not claiming that this is the only mountain, the highest peak or the only clear view to be had. Far from it. There are innumerable potential visions to be laid out and it is my belief that every author attempts to provide one. The metaphor has its limitations too, as I do not think that the terrain below is or can be ordered only in one way. It is composed of philosophical ideas after all. Perhaps it would be more appropriate to think of the ground below as Lego blocks, which can be ordered and combined in innumerable ways. Some arrangements certainly are more robust than others and some reach higher and are more creative than others. But once there is order, there is clarity. Perhaps someone can arrange the blocks better, or use blocks that I have ignored, but now I have finished my job and am ready to offer my view to the reader. viii
Preface and Acknowledgments ix The planning of this book began implicitly when I decided to teach a course on the philosophy of history and historiography at Leiden University in 2009, which was then repeated the following year in modified form. My participation in the research project Philosophical Foundations of the Historiography of Science in 2008 2011 in Leiden prepared my mind for reflection on historiography. Actual research and writing were made possible by two academic grants. The Emil Aaltonen foundation provided a Young Researcher s Award for 2011 2012 and I was the recipient of a EURIAS fellowship at the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies in 2013 2014. I would like to thank both funding bodies for their generous support. Parts of my paper Representationalism and Non-representationalism in Historiography, published in Journal of the Philosophy of History, 7(3): 453 479, are reproduced in Chapters 3 and 4. I am grateful for Koninklijke Brill NV for permitting the reuse of this material. There are a number of people with whom I have had discussions on the theory and philosophy of history and historiography or whose comments on my texts have helped to draft the final manuscript. I warmly thank all of them and especially the following people: Frank Ankersmit, Aviezer Tucker, Herman Paul, Lisa Muszynski and James W. McAllister have all read some chapters or plans for the book. I am grateful to Kalle Pihlainen, who tirelessly went through the entire manuscript and helped to make the text more readable. I also thank Erika Servin who designed Figure 10.2 in Chapter 10 for me. Jorma Kalela deserves a special mention as he first formulated the idea of historiography as argumentation, which subsequently provided the central inspiration for this book.