Grices leads the way to Danto

Fragments from:

http://publishing.cdlib.org/ucpressebooks/view?docId=kt9k4016d3&doc.view=content&chunk.id=d0e2680&toc.depth=1&anchor.id=0&brand=eschol

F. Ankersmit writes:

"It is from this ... vantage point that we are able
to assess the growing interest in historical narrative
in recent Anglo-Saxon philosophy of history."




"When philosophy of history finally joined

in the linguistic turn in Anglo-Saxon philosophy it

did so under the guise of narrativism. In fact,

one of the most peculiar characteristics of Anglo-Saxon

philosophy of history is that it was so reluctant to

develop a linguistic philosophy of history."


"Most Anglo-Saxon philosophy has been a philosophy

of language since the wane of neopositivism. However,

neither the [CLM] nor analytical hermeneutics has ever

shown much interest in the characteristics of the historian's

language."

"Only rarely did philosophers of history see historical concepts like "the Enlightenment" or


"revolution"

—- despite their prominent roles in historical debate -- as fruitful topics for serious philosophical investigation, and W. H. Walsh's pioneering work on his so-called colligatory concepts unfortunately failed to undermine narrowly realist and positivist presuppositions.[49]"


-----
Interesting that it's that concept which is so basic -- the one Doctorow mentions: revolution. Grice refers to it vis a vis 'revolution in philosophy' at least once.


"In fact, both the CLM and analytical hermeneutics have

always remained remarkably close to quasi-positivist

ideals—oddly enough, since, of all academic disciplines, history

is undoubtedly the least amenable to

positivist treatment."


"And even nowadays we still find many philosophers of

history who are amazingly indifferent to both actual

historical practice and to all developments in philosophy of

language since, say, Wittgenstein."

----

"An example of this is McCullagh's recent book.[50] For all its merits, this book contains little that could not have been said in the 1940s."

"That does not mean that the transition from epistemological philosophy of history to narrativist philosophy of history was made overnight. It may be useful to distinguish three phases or forms of narrativism."

---

"The first form of narrativism is exemplified in the works of Gallie and Louch.[51]"

"This narrativism could be called

psychologistical --

since it concentrated on the question of which psychological mechanisms the historian has to mobilize in the minds of his readers if they are to follow his story about the past."

"Although serious objections can be made regarding the psychologistical approach,[52] part of it can be salvaged if recast as a theory concerning the role of rhetoric in historiography. This might transform psychologistical philosophy of history at least partly into a purely linguistic philosophy of history."

---- that Grice would enjoy!

"In a later phase, the CLM was the source of inspiration for narrativist philosophy of history.[53] M. White and ARTHUR COLEMAN DANTO (b. 1924) saw the historical narrative as a series of

"narrative arguments,"

to use the latter's term."

---

"That is to say, the historian's narrative mentions a

number of events that can be interrelated by means

of covering laws."

"White and Danto differed as to the exact nature of this connection, but both agreed that what has often been referred to as

"genetic explanations"

provides us with the model for historical narrative."

"The well-deserved popularity of Danto's 1965 book with Cambridge, "Analytic Philosophy of History", did much to contribute to the success of this view of historical narrative."

"In the Anglo-Saxon debate on philosophy of history, Danto's

book has filled a role somewhat comparable to that

of Aquinas's Summa in the Middle Ages."

---

"Like Aquinas, Danto succeeded in epitomizing most of what had already been done; both caught the spirit of the time and convincingly solved a number of problems that still remained."

"Above all, where Aquinas opened a window to the future with his concept of reason, Danto, with his interest in historical narrative, gave modernity some latitude, while his insistence on the role of the CLM prevented this "narrativist fad" from really getting out of hand."

"This probably explains the enthusiastic reaction of philosophers of history to Danto's analysis of the so-called

"narrative sentences"

[54], although it was obvious, as Murphey was quick to point out,[55] that the significance of these narrative sentences for an understanding of historiography was slight."

"For it is not the historians' capacity to describe

the past in new ways —- as emphasized by Danto -- but

their capacity to develop new interpretations, that

makes us continuously see the past in a new light."

----- In this respect, Hintikka, Explanation and Understanding, also relates.

"However, more important, it can be

demonstrated that conformity with the CLM

is neither a sufficient nor a necessary condition

for an acceptable historical narrative.[56]"


"Finally, analytical hermeneutics never became the point of departure for the development of a more or less well-defined narrativist philosophy of history, although, admittedly, philosophers like Dray, Carr, and especially Olafson have come close to it.[57]"

"I find it hard to explain this fact. It may be that

the aversion of analytical hermeneutics

to the perspective of

the unintended consequences of intentional action

proved to be an insurmountable barrier (absent, of course, for the CLM)."

"It is instructive that Carr took particular exception to Mink's characteristically narrativist statement that "stories are not lived but told"[58] and"

"made every conceivable

effort to "pull back" the narrative into

the sphere of intentional human action.

"A similar tendency can be observed in Olafson's work.[59]

"Thus linguistic, narrativist philosophy of history only made its appearance in its true colors with the publication of Hayden White's Metahistory."


"Kellner accurately states that never had a

philosopher of history written

------ "a book so fully and
------ openly about language."[60]

"Since this most revolutionary work on philosophy of history has already been carefully analyzed and discussed on many occasions, I shall restrict myself to a few comments that have to be made if we want to ascertain White's position in the evolution of the debate in philosophy of history.[61]"

"The linguistic turn announces itself unambiguously in White's philosophy when he compares the historical past itself with a text.[62]"

"Just like a text, the past possesses a meaning that we are trying to discover, it needs interpretation, and consists of lexical, grammatical, syntactical, and semantic elements."

"Therefore, what the historian essentially does is translate the text of the past into the narrative text of the historian.[63]"

"This translation procedure is always guided by either one or more of the four tropes."

i. metaphor,
ii. metonymy,
iii. synecdoche, or
iv. irony.

"This most original and surprising view has baffled many of White's readers."

"His argument in favor of this tropological view of historiography can be epitomized as follows."

"When we have to interpret a text (for instance, the text of the past), we are, in fact, looking for a guide to show us how to understand this text of the past."

"This guide finds its embodiment in the historical narrative."

"As a symbolic structure, the historical narrative

does not reproduce the events it describes; it

tells us in what direction to think about the events

and charges our thought about the events with different

emotional valences."

"The historical narrative does not imagine the things it indicates; it
calls to mind images of the things it indicates, in the same
way that a metaphor does. . . . The metaphor does
not image the things it seeks to characterize, it gives
directions for finding the set of images that are
intended to be associated with that thing.[64]"

"This crucial passage teaches us two things. First, it is here that philosophy of history explicitly abandons the epistemological approach and becomes a philosophy of language."

---- Perhaps way too soon. I would have enjoyed a closer look at what Danto had to say about 'motivation' and statements of intention, and explanatory role of intentional ascriptions.

"Naive realism, according to which a historical account of the past is like a picture that is tied to the past itself by epistemological bonds, is rejected; rather, the historical narrative is a complex linguistic structure specially built for the purpose of showing part of the past."

"In other words, the historian's language is not a transparent, passive medium through which we can see the past, as we do perceive what is written in a letter through the glass paperweight lying on top of it. As I have argued elsewhere,[65] the historian's language has more in common with a belvedere: we do not look at the past through the historian's language, but from the vantage point suggested by it."

"The historian's language does not strive to make itself invisible like the glass paperweight of the epistemological model, but it wishes to take on the same solidity and opacity as a thing."

"And, second, since metaphors like "my love is a rose" suggest similar vantage points, are similar guides for how to look at a part of (past) reality, we can conclude that narrative language is essentially metaphorical or tropological."

"Metaphors always show us something in terms of something else; the metaphor I just mentioned invites us to see our beloved from the point of view of everything we have learned to associate with roses. However, the rose is not related to the beloved by epistemological ties or rules; in very much the same way, the historical narrative will put to shame all epistemological efforts to fasten the historian's language to the past it is about."

"At this point we should

consider Danto's view that, from a logical

standpoint, metaphor closely

resembles intensional contexts, such as

we encounter in statements like "m believes that p"".

"In this statement, p cannot be replaced by s

where p and s refer to the same state of affairs, nor by q,

even though p entails q.

Danto:

"Intensional contexts are such
because the sentences in whose formation
they enter are about specific sentences—or
about specific representations—and not
about whatever those sentences or
representations would be about
were they to occur outside those
contexts."[66]

"And the same is true for metaphor since "metaphor presents its subject and presents the way in which it does present it."[67] Both metaphor and the historical narrative display this intensional nature and therefore have an element of self-referentiality; they refer to themselves insofar as the precise way they are formulated has also to be taken into account if we are to assess their truth or plausibility. Metaphor and the historical narrative have the density and opacity we ordinarily associate only with things or objects; in a way, they are things.[68]"

"The combined force of White's and Danto's arguments thus demonstrates the referential opacity of both the historical narrative and the metaphor, and hence the essential shortcoming of the belief in the transparency of language characteristic of all epistemological philosophy of history."

"The historian's task is to offer us not a reflection or model of the past tied to that past by certain translation rules,[69] but the development of a more or less autonomous instrument that can be used for understanding the past. One can agree with LaCapra's apt remark that White's theory stresses the "making" or "poetic" function of narrative at the expense of the "matching" function that has always been so dear to the mimetic epistemology of positivism.[70]"

"This insight may serve to clarify an aspect of White's thesis that has puzzled many of his readers. On what level do his rhetorical tropes function?"

"Is a metaphorical, metonymical (and so on) reduction executed on the past itself, so that only that which is related in a metaphorical, metonymical way to certain parts of the past is mentioned in the historical narrative?"

"Or should metaphorical, metonymical relations only be conceived of on the level of our speaking about the past?"

"Or, a third possibility, do metaphor, metonymy, and so on function only in the transition from the past itself to our "narrative" language?"

"However, as soon as we reject, as did White, the traditional epistemological presupposition of the historian's language as a mirror of the past, it is no longer meaningful to ask this question, and White was correct in omitting the suggestion of any kind of answer. Having stated the essentially metaphorical character of the historical narrative, White reminds us that metaphor is only one of the four tropes. Here White follows Giambattista Vico, but he also seeks the support of writers as diverse as Hegel, Marx, Freud, and Piaget.[71] His stylistic repertory thus embraces metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche, and irony. We might now ask ourselves whether it is not conceivable that there are more tropes—or possibly even fewer, should two or more tropes prove to be reducible to one. White has tried to show that there is a kind of logical sequence among the tropes, metaphor leading to metonymy, metonymy to synecdoche, synecdoche to irony, and irony ultimately bringing us back to metaphor.[72] If we consider White's arguments to be convincing, we can conclude that the system of the four tropes shows neither "gaps" nor duplication."

"It should be noted that, on the one hand, the advantage of this line of argument is that all historical writing can now be absorbed into White's stylistic scheme; but on the other hand, it has the less desirable consequence of predetermining what the aim and the course of all meaningful historical discussion should be: historical debate is condemned to follow the circle of the four tropes. However, if White is correct in claiming that this corso e ricorso of historical styles can actually be observed in the history of historical writing, we must accept the fact whether we like it or not. This would, of course, entail a kind of apotheosis of the linguistic, narrativist approach. For, the conclusion now becomes inevitable that the logical relation among the four tropes (a fact about the historian's language), and not historical data, is the compass in both historical writing and discussion. White's sensitivity to "the compulsion of language" thus becomes even more pronounced than Rorty's."

"This is how the revolution from epistemological to narrativist philosophy of history was enacted in White's work: a revolution which made philosophy of history finally catch up with the developments in philosophy since the works of Quine, Kuhn, and Rorty."

--- and Grice!