Pragmatism and Historical Representation

This Element redefines historical representation, emphasizing representative perspectives over traditional objective neutrality.

Serge Grigoriev (Author)

9781009055109, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 6 February 2025

78 pages
23 x 15 x 0.7 cm, 0.128 kg

No prominent pragmatist philosopher to date has offered us a fully developed theory of history or historical interpretation. Nevertheless, a number of pivotal arguments and suggestions made by the pragmatists appeared to many both insightful and pertinent enough to offer a distinctive promise of a cohesive and distinctive general pragmatist perspective in historical theory. The present contribution is intended to secure some advances in this direction, focusing on the relationships between objectivity and perspective; between representation as an accurate correspondence to reality and the social, cultural sense of representation as being represented and being representative; as well as the relationship between individualizing comprehension and generalizing abstraction in historical contexts.

List of abbreviations
Introduction
1. Emerson: representing the human potential
2. Dewey: representative situations and historical knowledge
3. Richard Rorty's critique of representational correspondence
4. Brandom on representation and historical recollection
Conclusion
Bibliography.

Subject Areas: History: theory & methods [HBA]