Abstract
Some of the most important questions historians have to answer are “What happened in the past?” and “Why did it happen?” and the epistemological question “How do we know?” or, more modestly, “How are our historical hypotheses epistemically justified?” It is important to note that answers to these questions require not only epistemological but also metaphysical, especially ontological, investigations. Due to the failures of speculative metaphysics of history (in the style of Augustine, Hegel, and Marx), metaphysical questions were frowned upon by recent philosophy of history. Thus, the focus has been on questions of logical form, conceptual analysis, and methodology (analytical philosophy of history) on the one hand and on questions of the literary and rhetorical forms of historical representations on the other hand (narrativism). In both research programs, the reality of history is in danger of disappearing. By discussing recent attempts to reduce the philosophy of history to the epistemology of historiography, I will argue that philosophy of history and scientific historiography are in need of metaphysical, especially ontological, investigations without falling back into the fallacies of a speculative metaphysics of history. Finally, the fertility of such enquiries shall be illustrated by raising an important question, namely, “How close can the contact with the historical past be?” and by attempting an answer.
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Notes
- 1.
Similar problems can be found in natural philosophy. Here, too, speculative flights of fancy were followed by a total renunciation of metaphysics.
- 2.
For pertinent arguments against various forms of relativism, anti-realism, and constructivism, see Boghossian (2006).
- 3.
Tucker (2004).
- 4.
- 5.
- 6.
As we will see below, on closer examination, perception or observation (as supported by proper background information) is to be added.
- 7.
- 8.
According to an influential current, historians are instead concerned with structures. Sometimes, it is absurdly suggested to students of the historical sciences that they have to choose between an investigation of events and an investigation of structures.
- 9.
- 10.
At this point, one must be careful to distinguish between causal and epistemic intermediaries. Of course, in any causal process many intermediate causal links can be distinguished. What I want to dispute is that our access to the past is mediated by epistemic intermediaries (in the form of inferred beliefs) in every case. Some aspects of past reality can be perceived without such epistemic intermediaries, and in this sense directly.
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Acknowledgments
This chapter is part of the project “Explanations, Causality and Laws in Historical Science” of the research group “Causation, Laws, Dispositions and Explanation at the Intersection of Science and Metaphysics,” funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG). For helpful comments, I want to thank Eva-Maria Jung, Benedikt Kahmen, Martin Kusch, Daniel Plenge, Peter Rohs, Ansgar Seide, Markus Seidel, and Aviezer Tucker.
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Scholz, O.R. (2014). Philosophy of History: Metaphysics and Epistemology. In: Kaiser, M.I., Scholz, O.R., Plenge, D., Hüttemann, A. (eds) Explanation in the Special Sciences. Synthese Library, vol 367. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-7563-3_11
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