Volume 27
Written By Elizabeth Boyle
ARTICLES
Paul A. Roth, “Narrative Explanations: The Case of History," History and Theory 27, no. 1 (1988), 1-13.
The very idea of narrative explanation invites two objections: a methodological objection, stating that narrative structure is too far from the form of a scientific explanation to count as an explanation, and a metaphysical objection, stating that narrative structure situates historical practice too close to the writing of fiction. Both of these objections, however, are illfounded. The methodological objection and the dispute regarding the status of historical explanation can be disposed of by revealing their motivating presupposition: the plausibility of an exclusivist explication of explanation which appeals either to the unity-of-method thesis or some implicit notion of analytic equivalence, both problematic philosophical doctrines. The metaphysical objection fails with the rejection of the idea, in Mink's phrase, of an "untold story." The argument against history as an "untold story" develops from Danto's image of an Ideal Chronicler recording ideal events. A consequence of rejecting this view is that it no longer makes sense to speak of historical narratives as true or false. However, this failure engenders no special problem for assessing the objectivity or explanatory utility of narratives qua explanations.
Daniel Berthold-Bond, “Hegel's Eschatological Vision: Does History Have a Future?" History and Theory 27, no. 1 (1988), 14-29.
There is a strongly entrenched ambiguity in Hegel's philosophy between two opposed ways of describing the End, or "completion" of history: the "absolutist" and the "epochal" readings. Either Hegel's eschatological vision is of a completely final End, where no further progress in history or knowledge is possible, or it is an epochal conception, where the completion he speaks of is the fulfillment of an historical epoch. Passages in Hegel's texts may be found to support either of these alternatives. A non-absolutist reading of Hegel's philosophy is shown to be preferable through a consideration of 1) his unorthodoxly historical interpretation of the Christian eschatological End, to which he lends great importance; 2) the implication that if Christianity were to usher in a radical completion of history and time, spirit would cease to be spirit and God would cease to be God, since for Hegel God is irreducibly the logos, or Word, or spirit; and 3) a closer look at Hegel's conception of the "new world," which shows the paralyzing sacrifice of the dialectical soul necessary to an absolutist reading of Hegel's philosophy. Any attempt to harmonize the absolutist and epochal readings must inevitably fall into confusion.
David F. Lindenfeld, “On Systems and Embodiments as Categories for Intellectual History," History and Theory 27, no. 1 (1988), 30-50.
In response to the unsettled state of modern intellectual history, a model is offered for categorizing its subject matter. Two challenges to intellectual history are first examined: the relation of intellectual to social history and the relation of intellectual history to other disciplines which purport to deal with thought. The model proposed breaks down the "ideas" of intellectual historians into two sorts: 1) systems, complex bodies of thought related in a coherent fashion; and 2) embodiments, a way of fixating or condensing a complex of meanings into a single expression. Each entails a distinct mode of communication, the former by processes of education or socialization, the latter by single symbols or slogans. The distinction between systems and embodiments is clarified by comparison to the abstract-concrete and the discursive-mythical thought distinctions. The "ideas" of intellectual history should ideally include both systems and embodiments as their components, as in the case of the Lutheran Reformation and the French Revolution. By showing their relation to other disciplines, these distinctions can be seen to demarcate the space in which intellectual history can operate.
Nancy S. Struever, “Pasquier's Recherches de la France: The Exemplarity of His Medieval Sources," History and Theory 27, no. 1 (1988), 51-59.
An analysis of the exemplary strategy of Pasquier reveals an intriguing shift in the premises, procedures, and goals of his history, arising from the superimposition of an internalized medieval task on a very different humanist, or classicist, task. Machiavelli's classicizing exempla undermine his theory, while Pasquier's medieval exempla make sense of the Machiavellian project, and can be seen to disconnect the reader from the exemplary. Pasquier retains the Machiavellian analysis of efficiency while subverting the duty of heroic imitation. The priority of consensual purpose over individual action which David assigned to the medieval exemplum reinforces the priority of community over citizen in Pasquier's historical politics. Pasquier's exempla impose on the French reader the obligation of assimilating his or her own laws and history. His initiative is felicitous in comparison with modern projects as well; he reaffirms morality as essentially public, shared, and refuses the inconsistency of deriving a public morality from an infinity of personal acts.
REVIEW ESSAYS
Judith Butler on Spirit in Ashes: Hegel, Heidegger, and Man-Made Mass Death by Edith Wyschogrod, History and Theory 27, no. 1 (1988), 60-70.
Michael S. Roth on Michel Foucault: The Freedom of Philosophy by John Rajchman; Foucault by Gilles Deleuze; Michel Foucault, Special Issue, le débat 41 (1986); Michel Foucault, Du monde entier, Special Issue, Critique 471-472 (1986); and Foucault: A Critical Reader by David Couzens Hoy, History and Theory 27, no. 1 (1988), 70-80.
F. R. Ankersmit on Grundzüge einer Historik II: Rekonstruktion der Vergangenheit by Jörn Rüsen, History and Theory 27, no. 1 (1988), 81-94.
Allan Megill on Reflections on History and Historians by Theodore S. Hamerow, History and Theory 27, no. 1 (1988), 94-106.
ARTICLES
Matt F. Oja, "Fictional History and Historical Fiction: Solzhenitsyn and Kiš as Exemplars," History and Theory 27, no. 2 (1988), 111-124.
Narrative history and narrative fiction can be thought of as opposite ends of a single theoretical continuum. Much of the literature on Stalin's purges and the rise of the Soviet gulag system, however, seems to be something more than fiction, yet less than strict historiography. There are five criteria which ease the difficulty in determining whether a given work is history or fiction: the qualitative degrees of truth, the scope of the work, the purpose of the work, the relationship of the author to his or her subject, and the relationship of the reader to the narrative. In some cases the nature of historical events combines with the peculiar capabilities of narrative description to blur the distinction between reality and invention, and places constraints upon the historian's choice of narrative genre. Two hybrids are used as exemplars of works that are both historical and fictive: Solzhenitsyn's The Gulag Archipelago and Danilo Kis's A Tomb for Boris Davidovich.
Phillip Stambovsky, "Metaphor and Historical Understanding," History and Theory 27, no. 2 (1988), 125-134.
As a contextual phenomenon, metaphor operates in fundamentally different ways in divergent universes of discourse. In historiography, Maurice Mandelbaum's incisive typology of forms of historical discourse affords a comprehensive conceptual basis for foregrounding the three fundamental ways that metaphor functions. Each of the three functions of metaphor facilitates historical understanding on a different epistemological level. Heuristic imagery advances deliberative, analytic understanding and falls within the domain of explanatory discourse. Depictive imagery presentationally facilitates the (phenomenological) apprehension of meanings and occurrences; it is a component of narrative, which includes sequential, discourse. Finally, cognitive imagery, operative on the metahistorical plane, orchestrates interpretive discourse and thereby governs the way that events (or actions) may be known in and of themselves.
Andrus Pork, "Critical Philosophy of History in Soviet Thought," History and Theory 27, no. 2 (1988), 135-145.
There has been almost no real dialogue between Soviet Marxist and Western philosophers of history. In dealing with Western historical texts, Soviet authors usually turn to the relationship between Western philosophers of history and various general philosophical and analytical trends. There are also differences in the exact significance of vocabulary used by Soviet and Western scholars. Soviet authors tend to pay a lot of attention to the social nature and ideological functions of critical philosophy of history, while basing their investigations on the materialist understanding of history. The work of V. 1. Lenin serves as a methodological example of a Marxist approach to non-Marxist philosophy, and is the origin of the tendency of most Soviet authors to reject the general methodological principles of Western authors, but at the same time to acknowledge that many interesting and important problems of historical knowledge are raised in Western writings.
Brian J. Whitton, "Herder's Critique of the Enlightenment: Cultural Community versus Cosmopolitan Rationalism," History and Theory 27, no. 2 (1988), 146-168.
In his theory of history Gottfried von Herder presents a radical critique of the rationalist discourse of cosmopolitan human development advanced by the Enlightenment thinkers of his day. Herder's critique centers around his theory of history as the evolution of the Volk community. He opposed the way the rationalist perspective abstracts historical human development from all connection with the contingent elements of human historical linguistic and cultural practice in the creation of a unified, integrated world. Herder looks instead to a world of infinite cultural diversity, where each historical culture is recognized as a distinct and unique manifestation of all that is rich and progressive in human life. There are some interesting parallels which can be drawn between Herder's relativistic conception of cultural community and the ideas on language and human cultural development presented in the writings of Franqois Lyotard. Both attack the Enlightenment paradigm of cultural knowledge, its pretensions to objectivity, and its claim of constituting a higher knowledge. There is a basic paradox in Herder's vision, for although Herder denies the validity of the universal claims of Enlightenment reason, his conception would appear to require the development of a form of universal rationality encompassing all national cultures.
REVIEW ESSAYS
Barrington Moore, Jr. on The Sources of Social Power, Volume 1: A History of Power from the Beginning to A.D. 1760 by Michael Mann, History and Theory 27, no. 2 (1988), 169-177.
David Konstan on Ancient History: Evidence and Models by M. I. Finley, History and Theory 27, no. 2 (1988), 178-187.
David Carrier on The End of the History of Art? by Hans Belting and Christopher S. Wood, History and Theory 27, no. 2 (1988), 188-199.
ARTICLES
F. R. Ankersmit, "Historical Representation,” History and Theory 27, no. 3 (1988), 205-228.
The vocabulary of representation is better suited to an understanding of historiography than the vocabularies of description and interpretation. Since both art and historiography represent the world, they are closer to science than are criticism and the history of art because the interpretation of meaning is the specialty of the latter two fields. Historiography is less secure in its attempt to represent the world than art is; historiography is more artificial, more an expression of cultural codes than art itself. Historiography is a suitable paradigm for studying certain philosophical problems, particularly epistemology, or codified representation. Representation always requires the presence of two sets of non-referential logical dummies; disturbing the symmetry between these logical dummies gives rise to the position of realism and idealism. Epistemology is strongly inclined to disturb this symmetry. The parallels between recent developments in art and those in historiography demonstrate how much historiography is part of the contemporary cultural world. The deficiencies of modern philosophy of history can largely be explained by its tendency to neglect the cultural significance of the writing of history.
William Casement, "Husserl and the Philosophy of History,” History and Theory 27, no. 3 (1988), 229-240.
In the writings of Husserl one can uncover what could be labeled a "critical" philosophy of history, as well as what some scholars have deemed a "speculative" philosophy of history. Concerning the former, Husserl offers three criticisms of historicism: the incapability of historicism to establish that any particular theory is false, the impossibility of demonstrating inductively that there are no absolute truths, and the paradox of the claim that there are no absolute truths, for it rests on an assumption of apodicticity. However, Husserl's own notion of the historical character of the life-world seems vulnerable to the assertion that it falls into an historicist position. His defense relies on the third of the above criticisms: that historicism should recognize its own fundamental assumption of apodicticity. Regarding a "speculative" philosophy of history, if Husserl demonstrates one, it is of a very limited sort, and it relies on his reading of the history of philosophy.
Jacob Neusner, "When Intellectual Paradigms Shift: Does the End of the Old Mark the Beginning of the New?” History and Theory 27, no. 3 (1988), 241-260.
In the age of change in the institutional and conceptual setting in which the ancient tradition of Jewish learning would go forward, what we see in the two most important figures of the transitional generation is only the end of the old, not the beginning of the new. Saul Lieberman continued the received tradition that learning means exegesis of texts, but did not fully master the logic of that received tradition and so distorted it. Salo W. Baron undertook a new intellectual tradition, one that pursued historical study in place of the exegesis of texts, but did. not really grasp the requirements of the kind of new history that he proposed to write. Announcing the advent of social history into the academy of Jewish learning, what he wrote as the economic part of that social history was merely the paraphrase of received texts, with glosses that look suspiciously like a kind of free-associative exegesis. While the one scholar demonstrated the decadence of an old tradition of learning, the other succeeded in showing only the difficulty of actually mastering the discourse of an entirely new academic world.
Daniel Milo, "L'an Mil: Un Problème d'historiographie moderne,” History and Theory 27, no. 3 (1988), 261-281.
Since the end of the nineteenth century it has been known that the year 1000 passed without any particular notice in Europe; only one writer is known to have claimed that the reign of Christ would begin then, and there is no basis for tales of widespread public panic. Only around 1600 did it assume millenarian significance; it is thus a problem in modern, not medieval, historiography. The origin of the myth is Volume XI of the Annales ecclesiastici of Baronius (1605), elaborating on a reference by the Burgundian monk Raoul Glaber. Different passages of Glaber were cited, however: some authors referred to the alleged terror inspired by this year as an illustration of medieval mentalité; others saw in them a remote cause of the Crusades; still others (notably the French) believed that when the anticipated millennium failed to materialize, the result was a decisive change in medieval attitudes. Only in France was the myth of the year 1000 widespread, and only from 1830 to 1870. Michelet was its most important advocate, and it is related to his conception of the epoch-making nature of the French Revolutions of 1789 and especially 1830.
REVIEW ESSAYS
William H. Dray on The Content of the Form: Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation by Hayden White, History and Theory 27, no. 3 (1988), 282-287.
Brian Fay on A History and Philosophy of the Social Sciences by Peter T. Manicas, History and Theory 27, no. 3 (1988), 287-296.
Noël Carroll on Time, Narrative, and History by David Carr, History and Theory 27, no. 3 (1988), 297-306.
Daniel P. Tompkins on The Invention of Athens by Nicole Loraux, History and Theory 27, no. 3 (1988), 306-312.
Leonard Tennenhouse on Revolution and Rebellion: State and Society in England in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries by J. C. D. Clark, History and Theory 27, no. 3 (1988), 312-321.
Essays in Jewish Historiography
Shaye J. D. Cohen, “History and Historiography in the Against Apion of Josephus," History and Theory, Beiheft 27 (1988), 1-11.
The Against Apion of Josephus is not only a defense of Judaism and Jewish history, but also an essay in historiography and historical criticism, as an outline of the work reveals. Josephus explains how history should and should not be written, and attempts to prove that certain versions of the past are truer than others. The Against Apion may attack the reliability and integrity of Greek historiography as being divisive and instable, but it is from the Greeks that Josephus learned the idea and techniques of historical criticism. He develops his argument by appeal to the superiority of Jewish history, canon, and community, but all these pro-Jewish and anti-Greek arguments have Greek origins. The Greek argument from consensus shaped the historical and theological argumentation of the Against Apion, and Greek precedents provided the basis for the ahistorical or antihistorical view of Judaism that Josephus proposes. Josephus' polemic proves weakest in his argument from canon, and in his contrasting Jewish stability with Greek restiveness.
Jacob Neusner, “Judaic Uses of History in Talmudic Times," History and Theory, Beiheft 27 (1988), 12-39.
Talmudic history, understood as how events are organized and narrated to teach, cannot be said to deal with great affairs; it simply tells what those responsible for compiling it thought about the world around them. But if manifest history is scarcely present, a rich and complex world of latent history does lie ready at hand. The Talmud and related literature contain two sorts of historical information: stories about events within an estate of clerks, and data on the debates of those who produced the Talmud. The authors of the Mishnah found no reason to narrate history because what was important in Israel's existence was sanctification, an ongoing process. Its framers recognized the pastness of the past and hence, by definition, laid out a conception of the past that constitutes an historical doctrine. The Talmud of the Land of Israel, spurred by the story of the suffering of Israel and efforts to explain the tragedy, moves toward an interest in the periodization of history and a willingness to include events of far greater diversity than the Mishnah. A teleology lacking all eschatological dimension - the Mishnah - here gives way to an explicitly messianic statement that the purpose of the law is to attain Israel's salvation -the Talmud of the Land of Israel.
Robert Chazan, “Representation of Events in the Middle Ages," History and Theory, Beiheft 27 (1988), 40-55.
In medieval Jewish perception and representation of self and other there was a propensity toward viewing current happenings through the prism of the past. The general human inclination toward patterning, acting in combination with a strong Jewish sense of historic continuum, produced a pronounced tendency toward archetypical representation, such as that found in rabbinic literature and synagogue liturgy, as well as in the chronicles penned in the wake of the crusader assaults of 1096. At- the same time, a host of specific needs and a similarly broad human inclination towards particularity engendered perceptions and descriptions that were remarkably free of stereotyping -perceptions and descriptions that are rooted in full awareness of the inevitable complexity of everyday human experience.
Bruno Chiesa, “A Note on Early Karaite Historiography," History and Theory, Beiheft 27 (1988), 56-65.
Poznanski's Mabo' 'al 'ofen ketibat ha-Qara'im 'et dibrey yemehem (An Introduction to Karaites'Manner of Writing in Their Own History) remains, despite its flaws, the only essay expressly devoted to Karaite historiography. al-Qirqisani's Kitab al-an war wal-maraqib (The Book of Lights and Watchtowers) is an historical piece of work viewed, by personal choice or owing to his own cultural development or under the historical circumstances, through theological glasses. al-Qirqisani was writing for the benefit of his own co-religionists in order to strengthen their faith. However limited his historical perspective may appear, it resolves into a public appreciation of the author's party, which is founded on a recovery of the past, and which aimed to strengthen the Selbstverstandnis of a Jewish minority. It would be difficult to describe such an approach otherwise than as an attempt to historicize the past. The Kitab al-anwar appears not only as a document of the literary history of Karaism, but as an original reading of the history of Judaism, the differentiation between secular and religious being only ours.
Louis Jacobs, “Historical Thinking in the Post-Talmudic Halakhah," History and Theory, Beiheft 27 (1988), 66-77.
Investigation into the history of the Talmud was sparked by the Karaite rebellion against the authority of the Talmud at the beginning of the eighth century. The most influential work of Talmudic chronology is the Iggeret de-Rav Sherira Gaon ("The Letter of Rabbi Sherira Gaon"), composed in 986, which sought to explain how the Mishnah and the Talmud were compiled, and demonstrate the unbroken chain of the tradition. Maimonides gives a summary of the history of the tradition in his Commentary to the Mishnah. Although Maimonides' reconstruction is an artificial one, with no attempt to verify sources or test their reliability, he stated that the Babylonian Talmud was compiled about one hundred years after the Jerusalem (or Palestinian) Talmud; in cases of disagreement, therefore, the rulings of the Babylonian Talmud were the ones adopted by the post-Talmudic Halakhah. The French glossators, or Tosafists, argued that a law in the Talmud could be changed when the original circumstances in which it was promulgated were no longer evident. More objective, critical historical accounts have been given by more modern scholars, particularly Yon Tov Lippmann Heller, Jeheil Heilprin, and Hayyim Joseph David Agulai.
Robert Bonfil, “How Golden was the Age of the Renaissance in Jewish Historiography?" History and Theory, Beiheft 27 (1988), 78-102.
Jewish historiographical production of the Renaissance and Baroque periods was in fact the expression of the unsuccessful attempt by a handful of individuals to make sense of Jewish history as a living history in diaspora conditions. Their failure was the inevitable result of the essential incompatibility of the subject matter of history, in those days conceived mainly as political and military narrative, and the destiny of their people the world over. Jewish historiographic output can be seen as part of the Jewish endeavor to redefine Jewish identity at the dawn of the modern era. However, the time had not yet come for a "New History" among both Jews and non-Jews -attempted in particular by Joseph ha-Cohen, David Ganz, and most perhaps most successfully by Azariah de Rossi-which might have provided a possible answer to the crisis of Renaissance historiography.
Natalie Zemon Davis, “Fame and Secrecy: Leon Modena's Life as an Early Modern Autobiography," History and Theory, Beiheft 27 (1988), 103-118.
European autobiography of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was fed particularly by the religious exploration of the self and the desire to tell about and place oneself within the web of one's family. Jewish autobiography has behind it these same impulses, though it is more likely to be an expansion of ethical teachings appended to a will than an elaboration from an account book. It also differs from Christian autobiography in lacking a definitive conversion. Rather the life is imbued with a cyclical sense of sin, of God's power and punishment, and of the unpredictable: the individual's life is a recapitulation of the history of the Jewish people. Leon Modena's Life of Judah is a combination of confession, lament, and self-celebration. It bears comparison to Girolamo Cardano's Book of My Life, for both men express pride in their fame and many books, despair about their sons, and admit to the vice of gambling. Cardano's glory and complaints delimited a secular sphere within the Christian universe of meaning, while Modena's were still closely tied to God's tangled relations with His chosen people. Further, the realm of the "secret" was defined differently by Christian and Jew. Christian writers usually assumed the inside/outside contrast to apply especially to the individual and that secrecy was bad but inevitable in a society of preferment. For Jewish writers the inside went beyond the individual and his or her family to the wider Jewish community. In that protected space and in the safe language of Hebrew, a range of situations and feelings could be explored with considerable frankness, the inner/outer contrast leading to surprising self-discovery.
Ada Rapoport-Albert, “Hagiography with Footnotes: Edifying Tales and the Writing of History in Hasidism," History and Theory, Beiheft 27 (1988), 119-159.
The sources to which one has to turn for information about the lives of Hasidic masters belong to the hagiographical tradition. During its first stage of compilation in the early nineteenth century, this tradition preserved much authentic historical and biographical material, in spite of the explicit disavowal of any historiographical intent by its editors. They were apologetic about the publication of "mere tales and histories" whose value lay not in the preservation of historical records but rather in their capacity for moral and religious edification. Up until then, this material had been circulating orally but, in contrast to speculative-homiletical works, was not recognized as a legitimate and useful tool for the propagation of Hasidism. However, from the second half of the nineteenth century, in response to the challenges of Jewish Enlightenment, secularization, and most directly in response to the scornful critique of Hasidism and its hagiography which was emanating from the new school of modern Jewish historiography, Hasidic authors, like the exponents of other nineteenth-century ideologies, were beginning to appeal to history for validation. They were adopting the scholarly mannerisms if not quite the historical methodology of their critics. Since the hagiographical tales, and the chain of oral transmission which had traditionally preserved and authenticated them, were both losing their credibility in the new atmosphere of rationalistic skepticism and scientific rigor, Hasidic hagiographers were now eager to present their morally edifying oral traditions as reliable historical records by anchoring them in concrete documentary evidence. The forgeries of the Kherson Genizah supplied what appeared to be incontestable "archival" verification of the tales. The Admor Joseph Isaac Schneersohn exploited the Kherson "documents" in his extensive histories of early Hasidism which reveal his anachronistic, typological thinking and are often incompatible with the facts. As a leader of HaBaD Hasidism at a time of crisis, he saw it as his duty to harness the powerful historiographical idiom to the tasks of rehabilitating the HaBaD movement and of campaigning for the preservation of Orthodox Jewish life in conditions of unprecedented adversity.
Michael A. Meyer, “The Emergence of Jewish Historiography: Motives and Motifs," History and Theory, Beiheft 27 (1988), 160-175.
During the Enlightenment, Jews began to attribute major significance to history in general and to Jewish history in particular. The past was used, particularly by Marcus Fischer, to provide precedents for present-day in struction, and was employed, by Solomon Maimon, Peter Beer, and Abraham Geiger, for the sake of destroying encrusted contemporary norms by demonstrating their late importation into Jewish tradition. The emer gence of modern Jewish historiography was given further impetus by external factors: the increased prominence of general historical studies in Germany, which lent history its objective, rather than exemplary, tone while revising ideas of natural law and eternal truths; and the attention paid by non-Jewish historians, in particular Jacques Basnage and Hannah Adams, to Jewish history. Isaac Marcus Jost gave an account of the external history of the Jews, the shifting relations between the Jews and the governments under which they lived, and later focused on issues of Jewish religious and cultural history. Heinrich Graetz's history served to draw together and find roots for a broader political and spiritual Jewish identity, and used the Jewish past to regain a sense of Jewish separateness by revealing the separate historical path of the Jews.
Cover image: Grease ice in Foxe Basin, Canadian Arctic, by USGS (23 January 2020)
