A Companion to the Philosophy of History and Historiography
Blackwell Companions to Philosophy
1. Edition October 2008
576 Pages, Hardcover
Practical Approach Book
Short Description
The philosophy of historiography examines our representations and knowledge of the past, the relation between evidence, inference, explanation, and narrative. The philosophy of history is the direct philosophical examination of history, whether it is necessary or contingent, whether it has a direction, or whether it is coincidental. The fifty entries in this Companion cover the main issues in the philosophies of historiography and history, including natural history and the practices of historians. Written by an international and multi-disciplinary group of experts, these clearly written entries present a cutting-edge updated picture of current research in the philosophies of historiography and history.
The philosophy of historiography examines our representations and knowledge of the past, the relation between evidence, inference, explanation and narrative. Do we possess knowledge of the past? Do we just have probable beliefs about the past, or is historiography a piece of convincing fiction? The philosophy of history is the direct philosophical examination of history, whether it is necessary or contingent, whether it has a direction or whether it is coincidental, and if it has a direction, what it is, and how and why it is unfolding?
The fifty entries in this Companion cover the main issues in the philosophies of historiography and history, including natural history and the practices of historians. Written by an international and multi-disciplinary group of experts, these clearly written entries present a cutting-edge updated picture of current research in the philosophies of historiography and history.
This Companion will be of interest to philosophers, historians, natural historians, and social scientists.
1. Introduction.
Part I: Major Fields.
2. Philosophy of Historiography.
3. Philosophy of History.
4. Philosophical Issues in Natural History and its Historiography.
5. Historians and Philosophy of Historiography.
Part II: Basic Problems.
6. Historiographic Evidence and Confirmation.
7. Causation In Historiography.
8. Historiographic Counterfactuals.
9. Historical Necessity and Contingency.
10. Explanation in Historiography.
11. Historiographic Understanding.
12. Colligation.
13. The Laws of History.
14. Historiographic Objectivity.
15. Realism about the Past.
16. Anti-Realism about the Past.
17. Narrative and Interpretation.
18. The Ontology of the Objects of Historiography.
19. Origins: Common Causes in Historiographic Reasoning.
20. Phylogenetic Inference.
21. Historicism.
22. Ethics and the Writing of Historiography.
23. Logical Fallacies of Historians.
24. Historical Fallacies of Historians.
Part III: Philosophy and Sub-Fields of Historiography.
25. Philosophy of History of Science.
26. Philosophies of Historiography and the Social Sciences.
27. The Philosophy of Evolutionary Theory.
28. The Philosophy of Geology.
29. Philosophy of Archaeology.
30. Reductionism: Historiography and Psychology.
31. Historiography and Myth.
32. Historiography and Memory.
33. Historiographic Schools.
Part IV: Classical Schools and Philosophers of Historiography and History.
34. Leopold Ranke.
35. Scientific Historiography.
36. Darwin.
37. Logical Empiricism and Logical Positivism.
38. Jewish and Christian Philosophy of History.
39. Moslem Philosophy of History.
40. Vico.
41. Kant and Herder.
42. Hegel.
43. Neo-Kantianism.
44. Marx.
45. Collingwood and Croce.
46. Phenomenology.
47. Jan Pato ka.
48. Hermeneutics.
49. Post-Modernism.
50. Philosophy of History at the End of the Cold War.
Index
