Narrative as a form of explanation

Disputatio

Volumn , Issue 9, 2000, Pages 10-18

  Bevir, Mark ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 84861865367     PISSN: 0873626X     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2478/disp-2000-0009     Document Type: Article

References (20)

1. H. Matthew, Gladstone, 1875-1898 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), p. 236.
2. L. Stone, The Family, Sex and Marriage in England 1500-1800, abridged ed. (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1979), partic. pp. 176-80.
3. Many of the words we would naturally use to describe certain actions, however, presuppose that the actor possesses certain inter-subjective meanings or beliefs. See C. Taylor, "Interpretation and the Sciences of Man,", Review of Metaphysics 25 (1971-72), 3-51.
4. Compare D. Davidson, "Mental Events,", in Essays on Actions and Events (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980), pp. 207-27.
5. Thus the well known debate over whether or not narrative explained revolved around the issue of whether or not narrative could be assimilated to a strictly causal or a covering-law form of explanation associated with the natural sciences. See, in particular, the classic argument that narrative is a sketchy or partial version of the nomological-deductive form of explanation, as found in C. Hempel, "The Function of General Laws in History,", Journal of Philosophy 39 (1942), 35-48.
6. For a general account of the debate, see M. Murphy, "Explanation, Causes, and Covering Laws,", History and Theory 25 (1986), Beiheft 25: Knowing and Telling History: The Anglo-Saxon Debate, 43-57.
7. The annales school are associated with this position. See, in particular, F. Furet, "From Narrative History to Problem-oriented History,", in In the Workshop of History, trans. J. Mandelbaum (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), pp. 54-67.
8. On colligation, see L. Cebik, "Colligation and the Writing of History,", Monist 53 (1969), 40-57;
9. W. Dray, On History and Philosophers of History (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1989), chap. 2;
10. C. McCullagh, "Colligation and Classification in History,", History and Theory 27 (1978), 267-84;
11. W. Walsh, "Colligatory Concepts in History,", in P. Gardiner, ed., The Philosophy of History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1974), pp. 127-44.
12. On configuration, see L. Mink, "History and Fiction as Modes of Comprehension,", New Literary History 1 (1970), 541-58;
13. P. Ricoeur, Time and Narrative, 3 vols., trans. K. McLaughlin & D. Pellauer (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984-88), Vol. 1, chap. 2.
14. L. Mink, "Narrative Form as a Cognitive Instrument,", in The Writing of History, ed. R. Canary & H. Kozicki (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1978), p. 145.
15. H. White, "The Question of Narrative in Contemporary Historical Theory,", in The Content of the Form (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987), p. 47.
16. White, "Question of Narrative,", p. 47.
17. For my preferred post-positivist epistemology, see M. Bevir, "Objectivity in History,", History and Theory 33 (1994), 328-44.
18. Contrast White's, again implicitly positivist, argument that "it is because real events do not offer themselves as stories that their narrativization is so difficult." H. White, "Value of Narrativity,", in Content of the Form, p. 4.
19. Several phenomenologists emphasise we experience history as narrative. See D. Carr, Time, Narrative, and History (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986);
20. Ricoeur, Time and Narrative. Typically, however, their analyses of narrative as part of our experience of the world rely primarily on an analysis of temporality not folk psychology.