Volume 14
Written By Elizabeth Boyle
ARTICLES
Randolph Starn, "Meaning-Levels in the Theme of Historical Decline," History and Theory 14, no. 1 (1975), 1-31.
"Decline" is a concept which organizes a certain randomness of history to formalize a sense of movement. It posits a disjunction from some norm and implies a comparison between norm and "other." Historically, decline was a value-free concept which subsequently came to connote a movement in values from better to worse. The use of decline involves an interplay of ethical norms and a sense of distance between ideal and subsequent states. Decline can be linear (from a specific beginning moving toward an end), or cyclical or spiral, in which a decline is only one part of an overall pattern of historical movement.
Elazar Weinryb, "The Justification of a Causal Thesis: An Analysis of the Controversies over the Theses of Pirenne, Turner, and Weber," History and Theory 14, no. 1 (1975), 32-56.
An examination of the statement, criticism, and reformulation of the Pirenne, Turner, and Weber theses as causal explanations makes possible a clarification of the nature and justification of causal theses in history. Criticisms of such theses typically attack either the description of the cause-phenomenon or the effect-phenomenon, or they attack the (sometimes implicit) generalization or theory which justifies the claim of causal connection. Theses are defended by redescribing the phenomena so as to make the underlying theory (e.g., the psychological mechanisms postulated by Turner and Weber) a stronger justification. The analysis clarifies the essential connection between description and explanation, and shows that "colligatory" descriptions are always theoretical relative to lower-level factual descriptions.
Ernst Nolte, "The Relationship between ‘Bourgeois’ and ‘Marxist’ Historiography," History and Theory 14, no. 1 (1975), 57-73.
"Bourgeois" and "Marxist" historiography are neither irreconcilable nor simply coordinated. While "bourgeois" historiography is characterized by relative distance from its subject, most "Marxist" historiography is absolutely identical with ideology and state interest, often clearly distorting the past. This does not correspond to Marx's concept of scientific method. But there is a difference between ""state Marxism" and "'free Marxism." Free Marxism exists only in a liberal society, "the West," representing the maximum of critical distance and being, insofar, a characteristic part of bourgeois scholarship. Only State Marxism is clearly antagonistic to it, being the product of a mobilized state led by a small minority whose dissensions do not find public expression.
REVIEW ESSAYS
John S. Nelson on Metahistory. The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe by Hayden V. White, History and Theory 14, no. 1 (1975), 74-91.
Frank B. Tipton, Jr. and Clarence E. Walker on Time on the Cross. The Economics of American Negro Slavery by Robert William Fogel and Stanley L. Engerman, History and Theory 14, no. 1 (1975), 91-121.
Frank B. Tipton, Jr. and Clarence E. Walker on The Wish to be Free. Society, Psyche and Value Change by Fred Weinstein and Gerald M. Platt; Psychoanalytic Sociology. An Essay on the Interpretation of Historical Data and the Phenomena of Collective Behavior by Fred Weinstein and Gerald M. Platt, History and Theory 14, no. 1 (1975), 121-137.
ARTICLES
Gerald Izenberg, "Psychohistory and Intellectual History," History and Theory 14, no. 2 (1975), 139-155.
Psychohistory is a limited historical tool, best used in inquiries about irrational behavior and beliefs. Irrational behavior is either an unsuitable means for accomplishing the agent's self-proclaimed purposes or an inappropriate response in terms of social norms. When the agent's behavior displays internal inconsistencies, the historian must look beyond the agent's own reasons. But before looking for unconscious motives, the historian must reconstruct the objective situation from the historical standpoint of the agent to see if the action is intelligible in its context. Irrational beliefs are those which are impervious to disconfirming factual evidence. It is the thought processes behind beliefs which determine their rationality; irrational beliefs only make sense in terms of the social and emotional needs they fulfill.
Anthony T. Grafton, "Joseph Scaliger and Historical Chronology: The Rise and Fall of a Discipline," History and Theory 14, no. 2 (1975), 156-185.
Scaliger (De emendatione temporum, 1583) brought critical standards and methodological innovations to the already extensive sixteenth-century interest in chronology. He invented the Julian Period, a device for the reckoning of dates, exposed historical forgeries, and showed the independent value of non-Biblical sources even acknowledging Egyptian dynastic chronology antedating the Biblical Creation, although he could not satisfactorily resolve this conflict. After Scaliger, the quality of chronological studies declined as questions were argued less on historical grounds than on theological ones, but the confusion this created eventually contributed to breaking the hold of the Bible on chronology, along the lines anticipated by Scaliger.
W. H. Walsh, "The Causation of Ideas," History and Theory 14, no. 2 (1975), 186-199.
Historians generally see ideas as the product of circumstances, looking beyond the idea to the external factor which influenced its acceptance. Behind an idea there are acknowledged or, more commonly, unacknowledged clusters of assumptions shared by a social group. Although these clusters influence thoughts, they cannot be traced as direct causal agents. In the connection between situations and ideas, how the situation is perceived is more important than what is objectively true. Rough causal laws can be outlined by correlating types of social conditions with types of states of mind. Sets of ideas point beyond themselves to the background against which they were framed.
REVIEW ESSAYS
Heinz Lubasz on The Dialectical Imagination. A History of the Frankfurt School and the Institute of Social Research, 1923-1950 by Martin Jay, History and Theory 14, no. 2 (1975), 200-212.
Jacob Neusner on Ideas of Jewish History by Michael A. Meyer, History and Theory 14, no. 2 (1975), 212-226.
Jacqueline de Romilly on Polybius by F. W. Walbank, History and Theory 14, no. 2 (1975), 226-233.
S. C. Humphreys on Émile Durkheim. His Life and Work by Steven Lukes; Durkheim. Morality and Milieu by Ernest Wallwork; and Émile Durkheim. Sociologist and Philosopher by Dominick La Capra, History and Theory 14, no. 2 (1975), 233-242.
Tamara K. Hareven on Household and Family in Past Time by Peter Laslett and Richard Wall, History and Theory 14, no. 2 (1975), 242-251.
ARTICLES
David L. Hull, "Central Subjects and Historical Narratives,'" History and Theory 14, no. 3 (1975), 253-274.
A central subject is the main strand around which the fabric of an historical narrative is woven. Such a subject must possess both spatial and temporal continuity. It is integrated into an historical entity through the relationship between those properties which make it an individual, and their interaction with the historical event. Scientific theory is useful in the reconstruction of past events and the definition of the central subject. Ideas used as central subjects present the problem of finding internal principles of integration which will make the idea continuous over time. The purpose of narratives is to explain an event by integrating it into an organized whole.
Hans D. Kellner, "Time out: The Discontinuity of Historical Consciousness,'" History and Theory 14, no. 3 (1975), 275-296.
Historical thought resembles the model of human consciousness in that the destruction of information, rather than its transmission, constitutes the major activity of both systems. The destruction of information is structured and may be analyzed. Analysis of missing or destroyed information reveals a phenomenology of missing information, ranging in kind from the unrecorded to the unimaginable. Some categories of missing information are usually dismissed as fictitious or imaginary by normal historical practice. However, a close examination suggests that standard historical writing uses tacit conventions not so different from certain highly controversial current trends.
Dale H. Porter, "History as Process,'" History and Theory 14, no. 3 (1975), 297-313.
Alfred North Whitehead's theory of creative process can resolve the conflict between the deductive-law and narrative models of historical understanding. Process theory defines events as actions, extended in time, developing genetically, analyzable according to empirical rules. This testing involves the "mode of presentational immediacy,"' which measures spatial and temporal connections between events. Beneath this operates the "mode of causal efficacy," recording reactions sensed below the level of consciousness. Creative process incorporates these two modes, defining all occasions as patterns of relationships with other occasions, not substances but creative processes. Every phase of process has both subjective and objective elements. The objective action collects data from new occasions, but each datum has the subjective intensity of aiming at its own satisfaction.
Gabrielle M. Spiegel, "Political Utility in Medieval Historiography: A Sketch,'" History and Theory 14, no. 3 (1975), 314-325.
The chronicles of the French Abbey of Saint-Denis illustrate medieval society's dependence on the past for legitimacy. The historical mentality of the Saint-Denis chroniclers was shaped equally by rhetorical principles of classical historiography and by techniques of Biblical typological exegesis. The chroniclers tended to use historical exempla drawn from the past in the same way that Biblical exegesis used types; that is, not only as rhetorical, hortatory examples of morally desirable behavior but as actual prefigurations of events to come with prescriptive force for contemporary life. In this way the chroniclers were able to create an historical framework which permitted them to utilize analogies with events of the past both to explain and to legitimize contemporary political life.
REVIEW ESSAYS
Robert Anchor on Erinnern und Vergessen. Das Gegenwärtigsein des Vergangenen als Grundproblem historischer Wissenschaft by Alice Kohli-Kunz and Praxis der Geschichtswissenschaft. Die Desorientiertheit des historischen Interesses by Joachim Radkau, Orlinde Radkau, History and Theory 14, no. 3 (1975), 326-335.
A. R. Louch on Animate Illusions. Explanations of Narrative Structure by Harold Toliver, History and Theory 14, no. 3 (1975), 335-342.
Henry Pachter on Vorlesungen zur Geschichtstheorie I by Kurt Kluxen, History and Theory 14, no. 3 (1975), 342-349.
Robert E. Bonner on Thomas Hardy and History by R. J. White, History and Theory 14, no. 3 (1975), 342-349.
Essays on Historicism
Leonard Krieger, “Elements of Early Historicism: Experience, Theory, and History in Ranke," History and Theory, Beiheft 14 (1975), 1-14.
The tension between individualism and universalism in historicism goes back to Leopold Ranke's version of the movement's early stage. Ranke's experience of the Revolution of 1830 helped to effect the first of the many resolutions which this tension would receive, but it helped also to endow this resolution with the one-sided individualistic distortion which has burdened the movement ever since. The initial emphasis on the individual as particularizing comes from Ranke's conservative reaction to revolution as a universalizing aspect of history. But despite this overt emphasis, Ranke actually moved toward universal truths in his history, harmonizing them with his historical individualities.
Pietro Rossi, “The Ideological Valences of Twentieth-Century Historicism," History and Theory, Beiheft 14 (1975), 15-29.
Popper is wrong in regarding historicism as a unified idea. On the contrary, later historicism was associated with a variety of ideologies. Meinecke's historicism is closely associated with the development of the German state. Croce emphasizes the development of liberty, looking to the French Orleans monarchy as a model. Meinecke's argument is directed against the idea of natural law, Croce's against the Enlightenment. These were united in the conservative, anti-democratic rejection of the principles of 1789. Weber's system gives rise to a multiplicity of ideological positions. Unlike the retrospective philosophical attitudes of Meinecke and Croce, which use the past to justify the present, Weber's emphasis on understanding the present as a product of the complexities of the past and as a factor in the creation of the future leads away from conservative politics.
John Passmore, “The Poverty of Historicism Revisited," History and Theory, Beiheft 14 (1975), 30-47.
Popper's use of the word "'historicism" is too encompassing. Does "historicism" refer to a theory of the social sciences, a way of doing them, or a "'well-considered and close-knit philosophy?" Here the term is taken to mean a theory about the aims of the social sciences. But even with reference to his other works, Popper's argument proves not to be against historicism as he defined it, but rather against one of the other varieties of Historismus. Nor does the doctrine involve or entail much that Popper seems to think it does. Notwithstanding this critique, Popper has sketched a number of arguments which might be further developed into a refutation of 11 (evolutionary historicism."
Hayden V. White, “Historicism, History, and the Figurative Imagination," History and Theory, Beiheft 14 (1975), 48-67.
Historicism is often regarded (e.g., by Popper) as a distortion of properly "historical" understanding; but if one attends to the rhetorical aspects of historical discourse, it appears that ordinary historical narrative prefigures its subject by the language chosen for description no less than historicism does by its generalizing and theoretical interests. Descriptive language is, in fact, figurative and emplots events to suit one or another type of story. Rhetorical analysis shows even an apparently straightforward passage (by A. J. P. Taylor) to be an encodation of events in the form of pseudo-tragedy. Generic story-types constitute the latent meaning of narratives and are understood by readers, often subliminally, through the figurative language of the story. The acknowledgement of linguistic determinism resolves a number of problems of historical theory and entails a qualified relativism of historical accounts.
Cover image: Untitled, by Fabrizio Verrecchia (26 December 2016)
