how should one understand the relation between The Primacy of Method in Historical Research Philosophy of History and

orical Research Philosophy of History and the

past and present in historical research? Perspective of Meaning
Jonas Ahlskog
Emily comedis for DLSAU

• “The main reason for this shortcoming is that constructivist and

narrativist positions fail properly to appreciate what it means for the
historical past to be mediated by the historical method.
Historical method • This flaw has led to a detrimental and one-sided priority of the
present in contemporary narrativist philosophy of history – an error
as applied that currently feeds the idea that historical research, critically
understood, does not relate to the past at all but merely to
constructions of present evidence.”

Narrativism Narrativism The Disappearance of the Past in Narrativist

• the flawed understanding of relations to the past in narrativism has • Second, the constructivism that underlies narrativist accounts “How historians integrate a great number of historical facts
two different roots. tends tacitly to rely on positivist into one synthetical whole” Frank Ankersmit , 1983
First, narrativists tend to construe retrospective description, which • conceptions about ‘the real past’ and thereby fails to understand
is indeed one central aspect of the historian’s work, as if it was the the proper function of that concept in historical research, and
only way historical research relates to the past. consequently the reality of the historical past.
Consequently, narrativist accounts fail to acknowledge the ways in
which historical narratives – if they are to qualify as being
historical – must presuppose reconstructions of the perspective of
meaning of historical agents.

Danto’s ideal Chronicle The historian’s lack of direct

Danto’s ideal Chronicle access to the past was
• As Danto (1965, 95) clearly
viewed not as a deficiency
but as part and parcel of states: “It is just because we
• One of the most debated ways to • Danto’s by now classical example was the sentence “The
Thirty Years War began in 1618.” Narrative sentences what it means to know a do not have direct access to
illustrate the temporality of historical show that historical knowledge contains elements that
fact historically. the past that we have history
understanding was Danto’s idea of were not (logically) available to the agents themselves
because truths about the significance of an event to begin with: history owes its
narrative sentences. Such sentences continue to accrue after the latter has happened. existence to this fact: it makes
synthesize individual facts in order to
history possible rather than
reveal truths about the significance of
impossible or unnecessary.
an earlier event in light of later events.
 Narrativism
• Later forms of narrativism, best
• Danto further emphasizes that it is
the whole point of history to know
about the actions of past agents, not
as contemporary witnesses might
have seen them, but in connection to
later events and temporal wholes.
Reference
• Ahlskog, J. (2021) The Primacy of Method in Historical Research
Philosophy of History and the Perspective of Meaning. Routledge
exemplified in the works of Hayden
White and Frank Ankersmit,
emphasize the synthetization of
narratives by utilizing a two-level
hierarchy of historiography.
1. there is a basic level of raw
(individual) statements about
events in the past ;
2. there is a higher level at which
raw data are integrated into a
synthetic whole (narrative).
Later narrativism
• The main idea of later narrativism is that
historical narratives are structured not by past
events themselves but rather by the story or
narrative form of literary fiction and by the
culturally specific concepts that historians use for
representing past events.
• This change in focus is directly related to the fact
that, for later narrativists, the object of analysis is
not individual ‘narrative sentences’ but rather
entire historical monographs.