The narrativist philosophy of history and the epistemological philosophy of history are opposed to each other and have remarkably little in common. Within the epistemological philosophy, the debate between the coveringlaw model advocates and the analytical hermeneutists has always been moving towards synthesis more than towards perpetuation of the disagreement. But the revolution from epistemological to narrativist philosophy of history enacted in Hayden White's work made the philosophy of history finally catch up with the developments in philosophy since the works (...) of Quine, Kuhn, and Rorty. White stresses the "making" or "poetic" function of narrative at the expense of the "matching" function so dear to the mimetic epistemology of positivism. Philosophers of history should shake off this positivistic past and make history narrativist. (shrink)

The Death of the Past argues that critical problems in the philosophy of history, such as the the truth of historical texts, how texts relate to the past that they are about, and the nature of historical explanation, can be successfully investigated if we accept the claim that historical writing is historicist--perspectival (from the standpoint of the historian) rather than purporting to be like an eyewitness account (as in the first-person "presentist" views critiqued by Enzo Traverso). This approach admits all (...) relevant evidence as subject to analysis in order to determine the widest point of view, as opposed to the biased "eyewitness" approach, which observes only partially. The link between the past itself and historical knowledge is radically broken, giving the latter the wisdom of hindsight across a broader temporal field from the events examined up to the present. The truth about the past is only accessible from a later point in time; "the past" itself is not a reality for the historian; it no longer exists. Frank Ankersmit offers a surprising foundation for the historicist notion of history: Leibniz' monadological universe, in which each monad or substance has its own point of view. There is no deeper ontology to which they owe their status--just an infinity of monads and a corresponding infinity of points of view on other monads. So with historical representations, statements about the past that can be either true or false but not depictions of the past itself. In striking contrast to Hayden White's view, Ankersmit insists that historical writing is no less rational than the sciences-- mathematical and scientific writing has its counterpart in the writing of history. (shrink)