Volume 5
Written By Elizabeth Boyle
ARTICLES
Arnaldo Momigliano, "Vico's Scienza nuova: Roman ‘Bestioni’ and Roman ‘Eroi,’" History and Theory 5, no. 1 (1966), 3-23.
Vico, though deriving emotional support from the revival of Catholic scholarship, was intellectually isolated. He addressed himself to problems posed by Protestant and Jewish scholars two generations earlier. His interpretation of history was one of the most serious and profound attempts to re-establish the distinction between sacred and profane history, at the cost--deemed excessive by his contemporaries--of investing Homer and the XII Tables with the same authority as the Bible as records of human origins. His parallel between the Homeric poems and the XII Tables is strained, and his usual talents for misreading and misquotation are much in evidence, but some of his intuitions (e.g., the "true Homer," the early Greek colony in Italy) showed brilliant insight.
Louis O. Mink, "The Autonomy of Historical Understanding," History and Theory 5, no. 1 (1966), 24-47.
On received philosophical doctrine, history is simply methodologically immature. History's autonomy can be established not by showing scientific explanations impossible for "history," but by coupling a demonstration that hypothetico-deductive explanation cannot exhaustively analyze historical knowledge with a critique of the proto-science view's assumption that legitimate modes of understanding must be analyzable by an explicit methodology. Certain views historians accept, e.g., that events are unique, while inadequate as a general theory of events, reveal historical understanding's distinctive feature: synoptic judgment, which, irreducible to analytic techniques, interprets a complex process as a function of component events, their interrelationships, importance, and context.
George Huppert, "The Renaissance Background of Historicism,” History and Theory 4, no. 1 (1966), 48-60.
Meinecke and Hazard were wrong to suppose that the historical-mindedness, peculiar to our culture was almost entirely a development from eighteenth-century thought. La Popelinière, writing in 1599, already stated that historiography should describe "what actually happened," but also recognized the inevitable subjectivity of historians. His contemporaries Vignier and Pasquier rejected rhetoric in favor of research. Unhampered by the classicizing of the Italians, these French historians found in the idea of the nation a new perspective from which to judge the past. Freeing themselves from the chronology of the "four empires," they found-as would their nineteenth-century successors-that national history led to universal history.
REVIEW ESSAYS
H. R. Trevor-Roper on Intellectual Origins of the English Revolution by Christopher Hill, History and Theory 5, no. 1 (1966), 61-82.
George Boas on Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition by Frances A. Yates, History and Theory 5, no. 1 (1966), 82-87.
Jurgen Herbst on History by John Higham, Leonard Krieger, Felix Gilbert, History and Theory 5, no. 1 (1966), 87-93.
Daniel H. Calhoun on American History and the Social Sciences by Edward N. Saveth, History and Theory 5, no. 1 (1966), 82-87.
Paul H. Cootner on A Monetary History of the United States 1867-1960 by Milton Friedman and Anna Jacobson Schwartz, History and Theory 5, no. 1 (1966), 100-108.
ARTICLES
Hayden V. White, "The Burden of History," History and Theory 5, no. 2 (1966), 111-134.
Claims by historians that history is both an art and a science are used to avoid the rigor appropriate to the sciences and to remain blind to the imaginative innovations characteristic of modern art. (This may explain why so many plays and novels of the past century represent historians as the most deadly enemies of sensibility.) Few modern historians have approached the intellectual courage of Burckhardt's "impressionist" view of the Renaissance; yet such courage--even to contemplate the dissolution of historiography as we now know it--is required before artists and scientists will be willing to take history seriously.
Peter Burke, "A Survey of the Popularity of Ancient Historians, 1450-1700," History and Theory 4, no. 2 (1966), 135-152.
Analysis of editions of classical historians-both in original and vernacular languages-as given in F.L.A. Schweiger's Handbuch der classischen Bibliographie, indicates variations in taste for models of historical writing. Many more Roman than Greek historians were reprinted: Sallust was the most popular author, but almost all the Romans were reprinted more often than any of the Greeks. National preferences (e.g., for Tacitus's Germania in Germany) can be seen in statistics of vernacular editions arranged by place of publication. Scholarly readers (using editions in original languages) show a different pattern of preference. Introductions to editions often reveal the social groups to whom the book is expected to appeal, and show qualities particularly admired (e.g., Polybius for historical explanation).
Jacob Neusner, “The Religious Uses of History: Judaism in First-Century A.D. Palestine and Third-Century Babylonia," History and Theory 4, no. 2 (1966), 153-171
Burleigh Taylor Wilkins, “Teleology in Kant's Philosophy of History," History and Theory 4, no. 2 (1966), 172-185.
The development of Talmudic Judaism from the first to the fifth century A.D. is marked by a decline of interest in the knowledge and explanation of historical events. Neither the destruction of the Temple in 70 A.D. nor the advent of the Sasanians in Babylonia in 226 A.D. provoked refiection on history among the Talmudic rabbis. In Jerusalem in the first century, Yohanan ben Zakkai stressed an interim ethic and policy for survival and redemption; Rav and Samuel, in third century Babylonia, converted messianic speculation and scriptural exegesis into a policy of passive acceptance of political events. But lack of interest in political history masked belief that the covenant of Sinai would win redemption not through the course of historical events but apart from it.
REVIEW ESSAYS
W. H. Walsh on Philosophy of History by William H. Dray, History and Theory 5, no. 2 (1966), 186-191.
Roland Robertson on Main Currents in Sociological Thought: Volume I: Montesquieu, Comte, Marx, Tocqueville. The Sociologists and the Revolution of 1848 by Raymond Aron, Richard Howard, and Helen Weaver, History and Theory 5, no. 2 (1966), 191-198.
Alfred Cobban on The Vendée by Charles Tilly, History and Theory 5, no. 2 (1966), 198-201.
Errol E. Harris on R. G. Collingwood, Essays in the Philosophy of History by William Debbins, History and Theory 5, no. 2 (1966), 202-207.
De Lamar Jensen on Machiavelli and Guicciardini: Politics and History in Sixteenth-Century Florence by Felix Gilbert, History and Theory 5, no. 2 (1966), 207-213.
Neil J. Smelser on The Making of the English Working Class by E. P. Thompson, History and Theory 5, no. 2 (1966), 213-217.
Felix Gilbert on The German Historical School in American Scholarship: A Study in the Transfer of Culture by Jurgen Herbst, History and Theory 5, no. 2 (1966), 217-219.
C. W. Newbury on Africa in Time-Perspective. A Discussion of Historical Reconstruction from Unwritten Sources by Daniel F. McCall, History and Theory 5, no. 2 (1966), 220-222.
ARTICLES
Richard L. Bushman, "On the Uses of Psychology: Conflict and Conciliation in Benjamin Franklin,'" History and Theory 5, no. 3 (1966), 225-240.
The difficulties of applying psychology to historiography are considerable, and historians have been reluctant to make the effort. Psychologists seem to work with scanty and dubious evidence and often merely provide new names for familiar facts. Psychology cannot provide a reference point from which men's personalities are automatically diagnosed, but it can enhance the historian's sensitivity to patterns of character. As an extended case study, Franklin's Autobiography exhibits patterns of concern for getting supplies (of food, affection, etc.), fear of being hurt in seeking them, and success in devising methods of getting supplies while withdrawing from hostilities-patterns seen in his vegetarianism, business, and diplomacy.
Klaus Epstein, "Stein in German Historiography,'" History and Theory 5, no. 3 (1966), 241-274.
Stein's career, though relatively devoid of popular appeal, has been the subject of much historical writing which shows the changing preoccupations of German historians, but which also shows some progress in understanding. Claims that Stein's personality was unproblematical, that he drew his main inspiration from the French Revolution, or that all was well with Prussia in 1806-once made by distinguished historiansare now discredited. Stein's weakness in foreign affairs and the archaism of his outlook are generally recognized. Ritter's biography, one of the greatest in the German language, will probably stand, with room for monographs on neglected details.
George H. Nadel, "History as Psychology in Francis Bacon's Theory of History,'" History and Theory 5, no. 3 (1966), 275-287.
In assimilating the study of history to the study of natural science, Bacon emphasized the collection of historical facts and the need to induce general propositions from them. He indicated the psychological character of these propositions and claimed that historians were, and philosophers were not, competent to put moral and mental phenomena on a scientific basis. On the formal side, his theory of history was based on Aristotelian faculty psychology-history, the product of the mnemonic faculty, dealt with phenomena true to life. In intent, his theory was designed to reorient the study of moral philosophy away from rationalism toward an empirical or historical foundation and to emphasize involuntary as well as voluntary aspects of behavior.
John Lange, "The Argument from Silence,'" History and Theory 5, no. 3 (1966), 288-301.
"If event E had occurred, someone would know of documentary evidence for E; someone does not know of documentary evidence (or a functional equivalent) for E; therefore, E did not occur." The conditional in this model of arguments from silence is probabalistic if its consequent is not deducible from the antecedent, relevant conditions, and laws. In interesting cases arguments from silence are rarely rationally, and never logically, conclusive. Specific instances of the argument must be evaluated individually, their persuasiveness depending mainly on the likelihood of documents being available in a given type of case.
John C. Rule and Ralph D. Handen, "Bibliography of Works on Carl Lotus Becker and Charles Austin Beard, 1945- 1963,'" History and Theory 5, no. 3 (1966), 302-314.
REVIEW ESSAYS
Crane Brinton on The Social Interpretation of the French Revolution by A. Cobban, History and Theory 4, no. 3 (1966), 315-320.
George Lichtheim on Sociology and History. Theory and Research by Werner J. Cahnman and Alvin Boskoff, History and Theory 4, no. 3 (1966), 320-325.
Bruce Mazlish on Shapes of Philosophical History by Frank E. Manuel, History and Theory 4, no. 3 (1966), 325-336.
Owen Jenkins on Shakespeare's Historical Plays by S. C. Sen Gupta, History and Theory 4, no. 3 (1966), 336-342.
J. J. Saunders on Ibn Khaldûn's Philosophy of History by Muhsin Mahdi, History and Theory 4, no. 3 (1966), 342-347.
Francis West on Oral Tradition. A Study in Historical Methodology by Jan Vansina, H. M. Wright, History and Theory 4, no. 3 (1966), 348-352.
Frederick Sontag on History, Time and Deity by S. G. F. Brandon, History and Theory 4, no. 3 (1966), 352-357.
History and the Concept of Time
Arnaldo Momigliano, “Time in Ancient Historiography,” History and Theory, Beiheft 6 (1966), 1-23.
The view widely accepted among theologians that Greeks and Hebrews held different conceptions of time is based upon the absence in Hebrew of a future tense and a specific word for time, and upon the claim that the Greeks conceived time as a cycle, the Hebrews as a line. None of these alleged evidences can survive examination. Moreover, whatever Greek philosophers thought about cyclical time, that view cannot be found in the historians. The real differences between Old Testament and Greek historiography lie in differing attitudes toward the continuity of events, kinds of evidence, the significance of remembering the past, and the relation of history and prophecy.
Chester G. Starr, “Historical and Philosophical Time,” History and Theory, Beiheft 6 (1966), 24-35.
Every historian has some attitude toward the speed and direction of human development, and this is the historian's concept of time. Historians should not be seduced by abstract chronology into assuming that time flows evenly; their task is to discern the swiftness or slowness, the advance or retrogression of the movement of events. The alleged difference between the "unhistorical" Greek conception of cyclical time and the "historical" Christian conception of linear time is not supported by the evidence from Greek and Christian historiography; it reflects a confusion between what philosophers have said about time and what historians in all ages have meant.
Elizabeth L. Eisenstein, “Clio and Chronos an Essay on the Making and Breaking of History-Book Time,” History and Theory, Beiheft 6 (1966), 36-64.
Uncertainties about the relation of the present to the past reflect our inability to order coherently the accelerating accumulation of information about the past within a conception of temporal development which originated with the permanence of printed books and records. The orally transmitted memory of events was achronic; succeeding scribal culture, aware of the decay and loss of manuscripts, correspondingly believed in historical decline and in catastrophic and cyclical theories of historical change. The appearance of printed books and records gave rise to uniform time scales, transformed the sense of temporal location, fostered belief in the straight-line direction of history leading to the revolution of the "Present," but also has concealed from historians the extent to which their conceptions and problems reflect a cumulative print-made culture.
Siegfried Kracauer, “Time and History,” History and Theory, Beiheft 6 (1966), 65-78.
The conception of chronological time as a homogeneous medium comprising all events underlies the Western idea of history; but what George Kubler suggests in The Shapes of Time of art works is true of an events: they are better understood by their positions in specific sequences than by their dates in chronological time. General. histories deceptively attribute significance to the chronology of events in different areas; yet, as Burckhardt showed, in some periods the shapes of time in different areas do coalesce. An antinomy of time is revealed: chronological time is superseded by unrelated bundles of sequences, but at the same time retains significance in their confiuence. Attempts to solve this dialectical problem of time (Croce, Proust) have failed; the problem is insoluble before the end of time.
Cover image: Untitled, by Elena Koycheva (11 September 2018)
