The notes from the lectures and seminars for Theory of History () as given at Utrecht University. This also contains notes on the BA-thesis and a library exercise at the UB (these notes are in Dutch)
Theory of History, 2018-2019
Lectures.................................................................................................................................................2
1. Introductory lecture.......................................................................................................................2
2. Philosophy of science in the 20th century.......................................................................................4
3. Philosophy of the Humanities........................................................................................................8
4. Historiography and the political relation.....................................................................................12
5. Explaining in history....................................................................................................................15
6. Historical knowledge...................................................................................................................18
7. Overview and reflection...............................................................................................................21
Seminars..............................................................................................................................................25
Week 1.............................................................................................................................................25
Week 2.............................................................................................................................................25
Week 3.............................................................................................................................................26
Week 4.............................................................................................................................................26
Library Exercise (in Dutch).........................................................................................................26
Preparation for the debate............................................................................................................27
Notes............................................................................................................................................27
Week 5.............................................................................................................................................28
Week 6.............................................................................................................................................29
,Lectures
1. Introductory lecture
What is Theory of History?
Philosophy of science
o What is science?
Depends on language
English: Science – men, microscopes etc.
German: Wissenschaft (wetenschap) – more than laboratory;
more encompassing
o It needs to be philosophically and historically adequate
o How can we justify scientific knowledge? (PHILOSOPICAL)
Important because we believe science to be reliable
Type of epistemology
What is knowledge and how can we justify it?
o Philosophy of science needs to describe what scientists do (HISTORICAL)
From the 1960s more interest in this
o Two contexts:
Discovery: historical
Justification: philosophical
This is an old division; the way you discover is not the same as
justifying what you’ve discovered
Philosophy of history
o Two meanings which relate to the concepts of history
Historia res gestae: history as the past
Substantive philosophy of history
Karl Marx performed this version
Where are we going to?
Historia rerum gestarum: stories about what happened in the past
Analytical philosophy of history
What can we know about the past?
What are good explanations of the past?
How should we write/study the past?
Close to the philosophy of science
But this division is not as easy; you should have an idea about what
history is before being able to say what you should do with it
Substantive and analytical philosophy of history are linked; you have a
substantive historical idea which influences your analytical philosophy
o You could disregard the division in the use of the term of theory of history;
moving on
o We can have several relations with the past; economic, epistemic, political etc.
Standard image of science
Science deal with theories that are based on empirical observation
Theories and laws which describe a fixed way of nature
, The laws are always universally valid and formulated in mathematical formulas
The theory should correspond with reality, which is why it is true
It describes reality as it truly is
This standard image was born during the scientific revolution
Before the revolution the Aristotelian image was dominant
o Everyday experience can lead to knowledge
o Formulating in ordinary language
After the revolution:
o Experimenting can lead to knowledge
o Formulating in mathematics
The revolution provided a more mechanical view on the world; the world ticks like a
machine so you would need mathematics to describe it
This has become the normal way; we have obtained a different worldview
o The worldview now consists of fundamental divisions;
OBJECT: body, nature, matter
Empiricism: we get knowledge, the object leaves an impression
(observations), through the observations you get to
generalizations and this leads to theories
Inductive reasoning
SUBJECT: mind, reason, consciousness
Rationalism: the base of knowledge can be found in ratio;
perception is problematic because you can be deceived by
impressions
Starting with the subject; the most certain form of knowledge
comes from reason
Deductive reasoning
o Before people believed in a closed worldview where there were no divisions
between mind and body
Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)
Transcendental question: there is something as reliable knowledge, but how can that
be?
We have knowledge of the objective, but how do we obtain it?
Transcendental subject
o The subject is not problematic; it is what makes knowledge possible
o Problem of causality
We think a lot of causality
We cannot observe causal connections
How do we get the knowledge of causality?
We know this because of habit
Kant believed it to be a pure category that we possess which is prior to
experience – we are hardwired to make causal connections
o Pure categories and forms of intuition
Like causality
They offer us to gain knowledge of the world
We are hardwired to understand the world as ordered in time and space
o Our knowledge rests on two sources
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