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The Limits of Historical Explanations

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 February 2009

Quentin Skinner
Quentin Skinner
Affiliation:
Christ's College, Cambridge.
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Although the literature on the logic of historical enquiry is already vast and still growing, it continues to polarise overwhelmingly around a single disputed point—whether historical explanations have their own logic, or whether every successful explanation must conform to the same deductive model. Recent discussion, moreover, has shown an increasing element of agreement—there has been a marked trend away from accepting any strictly positivist view of the matter. It will be argued here that both the traditional polarity and the recent trend in this debate have tended to be misleading. The positiviste (it will be conceded) have been damagingly criticised. But their opponents (it will be suggested) have produced no satisfying alternative. They have tended instead to accept as proper historical explanations whatever has been offered by the historians themselves in the course of trying to explain the past. But a further type of analysis must be required (and will be attempted here) if some account is to be given of the status, and not merely the function, of the language in which these explanations are offered. Such an analysis, moreover (it will finally be suggested) has implications of some importance in considering the appropriate strategy for historical enquiries.

Type
Articles
Information
Philosophy , Volume 41 , Issue 157 , July 1966 , pp. 199 - 215
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1966

References

page 199 note 1 Recent anti-positivist discussions: Joynt, Carey B. and Rescher, Nicholas, ‘The Problem of Uniqueness in History’, History and Theory, I (1961), pp. 150–162CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Donagan, Alan, ‘Historical Explanation: The Popper-Hempel Theory Reconsidered’, History and Theory, IV (1964), pp. 3–26CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Recent attempts to provide a logic of historical explanation independent of positivist assumptions: Dray, W., Laws and Explanation in History (Oxford, 1957)Google Scholar—attacks even the attenuated positivism of Gardiner, P., The Nature of Historical Explanation (Oxford, 1952)Google Scholar; Gallic, W. B., Philosophy and the Historical Understanding (London, 1964)Google Scholar—plea for focus on special function of explanations in history.

page 199 note 2 Two earlier versions of this paper were read at research seminars in Cambridge University. I have benefited very greatly from the guidance and criticisms of Dr John Burrow, Mr Peter Laslett, and especially Mr John Dunn, who will shortly be publishing a partly similar argument.

page 200 note 1 Classic formulation by Hempel, C. G., ‘The Function of General Laws in History’, Journal of Philosophy, XXXIX (1942), pp. 35–48CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Popper, K. R., The Open Society and its Enemies (London, 2 vols., 1945), II, pp. 248–252 and 342–3.Google Scholar

page 200 note 2 On the ‘context bound’ character of historical explanations see Scriven, Michael, ‘Truisms as the Grounds for Historical Explanations’, in Gardiner, P. (Ed.), Theories of History (Glencoe, 1959), p. 450Google Scholar. See also Gardiner on ‘contextual reference’ in Historical Explanation, cited by Dray, , p. 20.Google Scholar

page 200 note 3 Terminology is Dray's suggestion, p. 1.

page 201 note 1 Usefully so labelled by Mandelbaum, Maurice, ‘Historical Explanation: The Problem of “Covering Laws”’, History and Theory, I (1961) pp. 229–242CrossRefGoogle Scholar, to distinguish analysis in conformity with historians' statements from typically Idealist analysis of the alleged uniqueness of historical events.

page 201 note 2 Donagan, , p. 14.Google Scholar

page 201 note 3 Walsh, W. H., An Introduction to Philosophy of History (London, 1951), p. 23.Google Scholar

page 201 note 4 Gallie, , p. 107.Google Scholar

page 201 note 5 Ibid., p. 123.

page 201 note 6 Dray, , p. 21.Google Scholar

page 201 note 7 Gallie, , p. 107.Google Scholar

page 202 note 1 The aim of Popper's original discussion in Logik der Forschung (1934)Google Scholar was to propose a general theory of explanation. See the translation, The Logic of Scientific Discovery (London, 1959), pp. 59–60.Google Scholar

page 202 note 2 Dray, , p. 112.Google Scholar

page 202 note 3 Ibid., p. 158.

page 202 note 4 Walsh, , p. 62.Google Scholar

page 202 note 5 Ibid., p. 23.

page 203 note 1 Ibid., pp. 23–4. See also Dray's full-scale attempt (Ch. V) to supply abstract accounts of historians' actual procedures.

page 203 note 2 Walsh has defended this idea in ‘“Plain” and “Significant” Narrative in History’, Journal of Philosophy, LV (1958), pp. 479–484.Google Scholar

page 203 note 3 ‘Theory and Practice in Historical Studies’, Bulletin no. 54 of the American Social Science Research Council, p. 110, cited in Dray, , p. 89Google Scholar. For a similar view see Gallie, , p. 113.Google Scholar

page 204 note 1 Runciman, W. G., Social Science and Political Theory (Cambridge, Eng., 1963), p. 10.Google Scholar

page 204 note 2 E.g., Walsh, , Introduction, p. 63Google Scholar, remarks, ‘I say nothing about the origin of the ideas on which the historian seizes; it is enough for me that those ideas were influential at the time of which he writes’.

page 205 note 1 Taylor, A. J. P., Bismarck, The Man and the Statesman (London, 1955), p. 35.Google Scholar

page 205 note 2 Plamenatz, J., The English Utilitarians (London, 1949), pp. 41–2 and 66–7.Google Scholar

page 205 note 3 Leavis, F. R., The Great Tradition (London, 1962 Edn.), pp. 142–3.Google Scholar

page 206 note 1 E.g., Hill, Christopher, Intellectual Origins of the English Revolution (Oxford, 1965).Google Scholar

page 206 note 2 E.g., Mornet, Daniel, Les Origines intellectuelles de la révolution française, 1715–1787 (Paris, 1933).Google Scholar

page 206 note 3 E.g., Carr, E. H., The Bolshevik Revolution, 1917–1923 (London, 3 vols., 1950–1953), Vol. I, Part I.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 207 note 1 E.g., Macpherson, C. B., The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism, Hobbes to Locke (Oxford, 1962), p. 270.Google Scholar

page 207 note 2 Popper, , The Open Society, II, pp. 20–24.Google Scholar

page 210 note 1 E.g., Macpherson's comment on. his own method of dealing with internal contradictions in a philosopher's work. They can be ‘examined and used as clues to the thinker's implicit assumptions; so treated, the contradictions pointed to a fuller understanding of the whole theory’. (Preface.)

page 211 note 1 Though claims of ‘influence’ can of course be falsified in a commonsense manner—e.g., the claim that P1 influenced P2 is falsified when it is shown that P2 lived earlier.

page 211 note 2 E.g., the view of Strauss, Leo, Natural Right and History (Chicago, 1953)Google Scholar that although not closely familiar with his works (p. 211) Locke ‘followed the lead given by Hobbes’ (p. 221).

page 213 note 1 The theme of Macpherson's book: see Possessive Individualism, Preface.

page 213 note 2 E.g., Ibid., Ch. VI.

page 213 note 3 For development of a similar point see Pocock, J. G. A., ‘The History of Political Thought: A Methodological Enquiry’, in Laslett, P. and Runciman, W. G. (Eds.), Philosophy, Politics and Society, Second Series (Oxford, 1962), 183–202.Google Scholar

page 214 note 1 Walsh, , Introduction, p. 16.Google Scholar

page 214 note 2 For development of this suggestion see Nowell-Smith, P. H., ‘Are Historical Events Unique?’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, New Series, LVII (1957), pp. 107–160.CrossRefGoogle Scholar