Volume 30

ARTICLES

George A. Reisch, “Chaos, History, and Narrative," History and Theory 30, no. 1 (1991), 1-20.
Hempel's proposal of covering laws which explain historical events has a certain plausibility, but can never be actually realized due to the chaotic nature of history. The natural laws that would govern both individual lives and greater history would be nonlinear; consequently, in the terminology of chaos theory, the final states of both are extremely sensitive to initial conditions. Initial conditions would need to be exactly known in order to account correctly for historic phenomena, especially for causes and effects which span long, historically interesting, lengths of time. Covering-law history therefore fails because the details of initial conditions are generally unknowable. Since this constraint diminishes as the time over which covering laws operate is divided into smaller consecutive intervals of scenes, covering-law explanations resolve into those having a narrative temporal structure.

Donald N. McCloskey, “History, Differential Equations, and the Problem of Narration," History and Theory 30, no. 1 (1991), 21-36.
There is a similarity between the most technical scientific reasoning and the most humanistic literary reasoning. While engineers and historians make use of both metaphors and stories, engineers specialize in metaphors, and historians in stories. Placing metaphor, or pure comparison, at one end of a scale and simply a listing of events, or pure story, at the other, it can be seen that what connects them is a theme. The theme providing the connecting link between poles for both the engineer and the historian is time. Themes in engineering that mention time are those titled differential equations. The differential equation is story-like because it speaks of time and therefore organizes experience in time, at least implicitly. Time- speaking themes shape the raw experience, as a story does when it is more than a mere unthematized chronicle. The chaotic nature of non-linear differential equations parallels the chaotic nature of history in that large results need not have large causes. Narration becomes difficult in chaotic systems because the knowledge of initial conditions is rarely sufficiently detailed to allow for accurate explanation or prediction for either engineers or historians.

Jack Amariglio and Bruce Norton, “Marxist Historians and the Question of Class in the French Revolution," History and Theory 30, no. 1 (1991), 37-55

This article evaluates the centrality of class in the "social interpretation" of the French Revolution put forward by George Lefebvre, Albert Soboul, and others. The social interpreters introduce an admirable complexity into their explanations of the causes and dynamics of the Revolution, but this complexity stems from their use of loose, multiple, and often contradictory notions of class influenced partly by Joseph Barnave's "stage theory" of pre-Revolutionary France and by "vulgar Marxism." These notions contrast with the concept of class - surplus-labor extraction - developed in the three volumes of Marx's Capital, and they also are the focus of criticisms advanced by revisionist historians such as Alfred Cobban and Franqois Furet. While the revisionists' criticisms are often justified and provide useful theoretical directions, the social interpreters' focus on class can be preserved by using this alternative concept. Using this concept can consistently convey the many class divisions in pre-Revolutionary France and the multiple class positions historical agents simultaneously occupied before, during, and after the Revolution.

Patrick H. Hutton, “The Role of Memory in the Historiography of the French Revolution," History and Theory 30, no. 1 (1991), 56-69.

The works of three well-remembered French historians- Jules Michelet, Alphonse Aulard, and François Furet - raise the issue of memory's relationship to history, but each treats it in a different way. History for Michelet concerned the sustaining of tradition. His conceptions of the past grew directly out of a living tradition, from which he established comparatively little distance. For Aulard, history meant consecrating its events in the guise of science. History for Furet demanded the deconstruction of the commemorative forms in which the history of the Revolution had been enshrined. Today's historians may not wish to commemorate the past, but a historiography that dismisses the significance of a tradition of understanding the passions of the past is likely to lose its appeal to posterity. The writings emanating from this tradition hold great power to reveal the meaning the Revolution held for its participants. Overlooking the potency of these writings in order to underscore their power to shape the form of the Revolution's commemoration would be to deprive the event itself of enduring appeal.

REVIEW ESSAYS

Charles Tilly on Dimensions of the Historical Process by Leszek Nowak, History and Theory 30, no. 1 (1991), 112-114.

ARTICLES

Andrew P. Norman, "Telling it Like it Was: Historical Narratives on Their Own Terms," History and Theory 30, no. 2 (1991), 119-135.Sweeping denials of the story's capacity to accurately reflect the past are ever catalyzing equally misleading global affirmations. The impositionalists, such as theorist Hayden White, view historical narratives as imposing a falsifying narrative structure on the past, and conclude that narratives cannot be true. Plot-reifiers, such as Alasdair MacIntyre, David Carr, and Frederick Olafson, posit that the past is already narratively structured; historical plots are reified in order for there to be something in the world to which narrative structures can correspond in being true. The antireferentialists such as JeanFrançois Lyotard and Roland Barthes deny that narrative histories even claim truth. Escaping this trilemma of theoretical interpretation involves accepting the idea that construction of a history does not entail its falsification. Historical narrative need to be allowed to function both figurally, in the sense of generating new discursive figures, and at the same time literally, in the sense of asking to be understood literally. Narratives need to be understood on their own terms, and not treated as an approximation to some foreign ideal.

Jacob Neusner, "The Historical Event as a Cultural Indicator: The Case of Judaism," History and Theory 30, no. 2 (1991), 136-152.It is only in the recent past that we have begun to recognize that history forms a discourse of contemporary taste and judgment. It is the historical system itself that forms its events, not as a matter of mere consciousness, but as a Diktat of culture. The historian must serve the same role as the archaeologist: examining cultural artifacts as evidence for the working out of an older social order in detail. When relatively ordinary events are examined in Judaism, it becomes evident that they not only have no autonomous standing, but also that events constitute no species even within a genus, or historical order. In davar aher constructions, events are included in the same taxonomic compositions as names, places, and actions. An event becomes simply a component in a culture that combines facts into structures of its own design. "Event" has no meaning at all in Judaism, since Judaism forms culture through other than historical modes of organizing existence. Within the system and structure of Judaism, history forms no taxon, no happening is unique, and no event bears consequence.

Joseph Fracchia, "Marx's Aufhebung of Philosophy and the Foundations of a Materialist Science of History," History and Theory 30, no. 2 (1991), 153-179.Critics have wrongly dismissed Marx's theory as an archaic "essentialist" approach to history due to the inadequate understanding of the intentionally tentative character of Marx's theoretical works, the accompanying epistemological demand for historical analysis, the dialectical tension between theory and empirical analysis and, therefore, of Marx's open- ended definition of historical knowledge. Through a reconstruction of Marx's project it becomes clear that because Marx's materialist conception of history and his view that abstract representation represents not a universal philosophy of history, but rather elements of an epistemologically modest materialist science of history, his project contains an inbuilt epistemological demand for continued historical analyses as the praxis of that science. Such analyses are necessary elements of the process of moving beyond the abstract representation of the mode of production. They are crucial both to correct the conceptual presentation itself, and to enlarge the scope of the conception from the mode of production to the totality of bourgeois society.

Christopher Lloyd, "The Methodologies of Social History: A Critical Survey and Defense of Structurism," History and Theory 30, no. 2 (1991), 180-219.There should not be a material/mental methodological division in the frameworks used by social historians, but rather, a structure/action heuristic division. A survey of methodological approaches to social history becomes possible after clearing confusion between philosophical questions, methodological questions, and theories, as well as presenting a preliminary discussion of philosophical issues pertaining to the study of social history. The five general categories of approaches according to their philosophical foundations are: the empiricist and individualist, the systemic- functionalist, the interpretist, the structuralist and poststructuralist, and relational structurist. All those approaches that adopt methodological structurism are able to overcome fundamental epistemological problems in explaining social history; and so they are able to support a sufficiently powerful methodology for studying how action and structure causally interrelate over time. Social history gains an increasing degree of plausibility and can be labelled "scientific" when it is based on a realist ontology of structures and a commitment to discovering the complex, multileveled, structural reality of the world.

REVIEW ESSAYS

Ronald Aronson on The Principle of Hope by Ernst Bloch, Neville Plaice, Stephen Plaice, and Paul Knight, History and Theory 30, no. 2 (1991), 220-232.

Peter Hanns Reill on Geschichtsschreibung Zwischen Aufklärung und Historismus: Johannes von Müller and Friedrich Christoph Schlosser by Michael Gottlob, History and Theory 30, no. 2 (1991), 232-246.

John Moreland on What is Archaeology? An Essay on the Nature of Archaeological Research by Paul Courbin, History and Theory 30, no. 2 (1991), 246-261.

Peter N. Stearns on History of Old Age From Antiquity to the Renaissance by Georges Minois and Sarah Hanbury Tenison, History and Theory 30, no. 2 (1991), 261-270.

ARTICLES

Masayuki Sato, "Comparative Ideas of Chronology,” History and Theory 30, no. 3 (1991), 275-301.Most literate societies which have introduced a chronology take a fixed point in time, but the Japanese did not introduce a single era count system, despite the strong potential that existed during the "Buddhist era. " In examining East Asian ideas of chronology the following issues are discussed: (a) the rationale of the combined system of era names and the sexagesimal cycle; (b) the historical development of chronology in the East Asian countries-China, Korea, Vietnam, and Japan; (c) some theoretical, political, and sociocultural interpretations of chronology in comparison with Christian chronology; and (d) the relation of chronology to East Asian historiography. The lack of a single era count system in East Asian historiography has many reasons: the combined system of era names and the sexagesimal system was sufficiently endowed with chronological faculties, and the era names system fulfilled an important political function. In addition, it is shown that there is a passive but significant feature of Buddhism as a religion which had let the combined system of chronology have its own way.

C. Behan McCullagh, "Can Our Understanding of Old Texts be Objective?” History and Theory 30, no. 3 (1991), 302-323.Those who doubt the objectivity of historical interpretations of the meaning of texts either ignore the quite stringent conventional criteria by which such interpretations are justified, as Jacques Derrida did, or they overlook the cognitive significance of those criteria, as Hans-Georg Gadamer did. Historical interpretations of the meaning of old texts which satisfy five presented criteria are objective both in the sense of being rationally defensible and in the sense of being correct. The five criteria are that the interpretation (1) does not violate any of the semantic and syntactic rules of the language in which it is written; (2) resolves any obscurities of reference and ambiguities of meaning arising from these rules; (3) provides a coherent body of information; (4) performs the first three functions to a much greater degree than any other interpretation which the text warrants; and perhaps (5) convincingly explains away any failure to perform the first three functions. To arrive at an interpretation which satisfies these criteria, an interpreter first studies the literal meaning of the text, according to the rules of its language, and if need be, then examines the literary and the historical contexts in which the text was produced, and finally may even find it necessary to reconstruct the author's intention in writing it. Secondary interpretations of a text are preferred which colligate a large number of facts about the text, and give a fair representation of its meaning as a whole. Numerous examples both illustrate and confirm the theory presented.

Jerzy Topolski, "Towards an Integrated Model of Historical Explanation,” History and Theory 30, no. 3 (1991), 324-338.In attempting to establish a correspondence between the content of historical narrative and that of past facts, F. R. Ankersmit identifies a "mechanism" which enables one to arrive at a narrative representation of the past. He asserts that the mechanism cannot be called a "translation," since the correspondence is indirect. Narrative is, however, closer to the truth than he has stated. Historical narratives can be evaluated on their proximity to the truth by the degree of their coherence. Coherence can be judged on two criteria: the kind of temporal content and the kind of conceptual organization of the worldview of the annalist. The chronicle emerged in the late Middle Ages. Temporally, the chronicler uses retrospection to introduce causal links in a chain of events. The worldview of the chronicler provides the conceptual organization. Strictly historical narratives took form in the nineteenth century and have a temporal organization which is both retrospective and prospective. The control of the theoretical organization of a narrative by an historian can be said to be one of the fundamental rules whereby historiography becomes a more and more coherent and integrated presentation of the past.

REVIEW ESSAYS

Philip Pomper on History and Theory after the Fall by Fred Weinstein, History and Theory 30, no. 3 (1991), 339-347.

Robert Anchor on Lebendige Geschichte: Grundzüge einer Historik III: Formen und Funktionen des Historischen Wissens by Jörn Rüsen, History and Theory 30, no. 3 (1991), 347-356.

J. L. Gorman on Language and Historical Representation: Getting the Story Crooked by Hans Kellner, History and Theory 30, no. 3 (1991), 356-368.

David Carrier on Courbet's Realism by Michael Fried and Realism, Writing, Disfiguration: On Thomas Eakins and Stephen Crane by Michael Fried, History and Theory 30, no. 3 (1991), 368-381.

Gerd Muller on Arnold K. Toynbee: A Life by William H. McNeill and Arnold K. Toynbee, History and Theory 30, no. 3 (1991), 381-384.

Michael A. Kissell on Epohi I Idei: Stanovlenie Istorisma [Epochs and Ideas: The Becoming of Historism] by M. A. Barg, History and Theory 30, no. 3 (1991), 384-387.

The Presence of the Historian: Essays in Memory of Arnaldo Momigliano

Michael P. Steinberg, “Introduction," History and Theory, Beiheft 30 (1991), 1-4.

Karl Christ, “Arnaldo Momigliano and the History of Historiography," History and Theory, Beiheft 30 (1991), 5-12.Unlike so many present-day historians, Momigliano did not proceed according to the absolute dogmas of a new program of historical scholarship, method, or perspective. Rather, his scholarly work grew organically from the connection between personal initiatives and existential forces. Momigliano's lifelong theme was the historical dimension of the contacts among cultures, religions, and civilization. He made no absolute claims for his own method. His scholarly works are briefly summarized, including: his concern with the problematic of Johann Gustav Droysen's position and of Hellenism in general; his general review of the Italian investigations into Greek history and examination of the structure of the history of the Imperium Romanum; his activities during the years at Oxford; and his inaugural lecture as professor of ancient history at University College London in 1952, as well as the wide variety of individual studies which followed. Momigliano welcomed the worldwide expansion of scholarly work in his field, but saw more clearly and earlier than others the dangers that grew with the field. In his view, only the safeguarding of the historical foundations and precise knowledge of the history of historiography solidly based on them would ensure the continuation of historical scholarship.

Joanna Weinberg, “Where Three Civilizations Meet," History and Theory, Beiheft 30 (1991), 13-26.Resonances of Samuel David Luzzatto's characterization of Italian Jewry can be heard in the personal memoirs of Arnaldo Momigliano. Pagan, Jewish, and Christian -these were the three civilizations which dominated Momigliano's life work. Between 1930 and 1934 Momigliano wrote four major works on representative areas of the triple civilizations: one on the Maccabean tradition; two articles on Josephus' defense of Judaism, the Contra Apionem; a presentation of his conception of first century Pharisaic Judaism; and Alien Wisdom, in which he explored the Hellenistic discovery of Jews, Celts, Romans, and Iranians, and Rome's meeting of these cultures. Momigliano's discussions of the ways that Judaism both absorbed GrecoRoman culture and reacted to it should be taken into account when examining the central texts of rabbinic literature, for the Rabbis themselves were conscious that they belonged to the triple civilizations. Through an analysis of the Midrash, it is shown that Momigliano helps us to appreciate some of the characteristics which emunah holds in common with pistis or fides. An example of the way Jews reacted to the imposition of Roman rule is given in their reaction to the imperial cult.

G. W. Bowersock, “Momigliano's Quest for the Person," History and Theory, Beiheft 30 (1991), 27-36.The concept of the person provides a convenient point of entry into a nexus of problems that much engaged Arnaldo Momigliano during his final three years. The closer one looks at Momigliano's papers on the person between 1985 and 1987, the more the disparate elements that he emphasized there can be seen to have a common core. Biography and autobiography, race and religion, traditional Judaism, and apocalyptic literature -which he introduced in the discussion of Judaism and biography in the Graeco-Roman period - all point in one direction, that is to Momigliano himself. As he had suggested in his first paper on Marcel Mauss, the quest for the person led directly to a quest for self- knowledge as reflected in autobiographical texts. The presence of Momigliano's own person in his discussion of the person illustrates admirably the views that he expounded. The link that Momigliano forged between Judaism and biography (and autobiography), for example, represented simultaneously a sense that there was a parallel between rabbinic interpretations of personal character and Greek ones, and his own private preoccupations with Judaism. From biography and autobiography by way of the person Momigliano reached what was for him the ultimate person: himself.

Carlo Ginzburg, “Momigliano and de Martino," History and Theory, Beiheft 30 (1991), 37-48.De Martino offered Momigliano an opportunity to reflect on his own analogous yet different experience. The connection between the study of prehistory and the threat of the end of the world, and more generally, the idea that we need to respond to today's crisis by enlarging historical research to unknown and unpredictable phenomena might lead us to conclude that, at least momentarily, Momigliano's and De Martino's paths had touched. In reality, however, as Momigliano lucidly saw, theirs were parallel paths that could never meet. Studies that culminated in Il Mondo Magico had carried De Martino, albeit temporarily, outside Croceanism, and toward a more radical historicism immune from ethnocentric limitations, in particular with regard to Cassirer's works. Momigliano's detachment from Croceanism can be located between two divergent statements: that the sun had set on the idea of antiquitates, while also looking forward to the affirmation of a new antiquarianism under the guise of sociology or anthropology. It became increasingly clear as the years passed that for Momigliano all forms of historicism were unacceptable because they were threatened by relativism.

Oswyn Murray, “Arnaldo Momigliano in England," History and Theory, Beiheft 30 (1991), 49-64.The impact on Momigliano of being an academic refugee of "the Bund" group at Oxford during the war was profound. It is this experience which turned him from the learned but orthodox Italian ancient historian into the European polymath, who took the whole classical tradition as his domain. A crucial turning-point for Momigliano was his decision to study the history of historiography. From 1951 Momigliano, as Professor of Ancient History at University College London, was a central figure in historical studies. Three grand themes had matured in his mind during his middle period in England: the history of late antiquity, the history of historiography, and the origins of Rome. The first two were to have great impact on English classical scholarship. In 1965 there began a series of seminars at the Warburg Institute in which Momigliano played a significant role, and which focused particularly on the relationship between ancient history and anthropology and the attempt to write a history of Greek biography. In studying Momigliano's life in England, the distinctive quality of his literary style and the continuities in his approach to history become especially clear.

Cover image: “Enlightening Math,” by John Moeses Bauan (3 June 2018)

1991

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Volume 30

1991

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