Weak Historicism: On Hierarchies of Intellectual Virtues and Goods
In: Journal of the Philosophy of HistorySearch for other papers by Herman Paul in
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Abstract
This article seeks to reconcile a historicist sensitivity to how intellectually virtuous behavior is shaped by historical contexts with a non-relativist account of historical scholarship. To that end, it distinguishes between hierarchies of intellectual virtues and hierarchies of intellectual goods. The first hierarchy rejects a one-size-fits-all model of historical virtuousness in favor of a model that allows for significant varieties between the relative weight that historians must assign to intellectual virtues in order to acquire justified historical understanding. It grounds such differences, not on the historians’ interests or preferences, but on their historiographical situations, so that hierarchies of virtues are a function of the demands that historiographical situations (defined as interplays of genre, research question, and state of scholarship) make upon historians. Likewise, the second hierarchy allows for the pursuit of various intellectual goods, but banishes the specter of relativism by treating historical understanding as an intellectual good that is constitutive of historical scholarship and therefore deserves priority over alternative goods. The position that emerges from this is classified as a form of weak historicism.
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2)
Robert C. Roberts and W. Jay Wood, Intellectual Virtues: An Essay in Regulative Epistemology (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2007), p. 8. Linda Zagzebski makes a similar point in her “Recovering Understanding” in Matthias Steup (ed.), Knowledge, Truth, and Duty: Essays on Epistemic Justification, Responsibility, and Virtue (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), pp. 235–251. See also Wayne D. Riggs, “Understanding ‘Virtue’ and the Virtue of Understanding”, in Michael DePaul and Linda Zagzebski (eds.), Intellectual Virtue: Perspectives from Ethics and Epistemology (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2003), pp. 203–226; Jonathan L. Kvanvig, The Value of Knowledge and the Pursuit of Understanding (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), pp. 185–203.
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3)
Herman Paul, “Performing History: How Historical Scholarship is Shaped by Epistemic Virtues”, History and Theory, 50 (2011), 1–19.
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7)
Alvin Plantinga, Warrant: The Current Debate (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), p. 4.
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11)
Mark Day, The Philosophy of History: An Introduction (London; New York: Continuum, 2008), p. 42.
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15)
F.-H. Mutschler, “Sima Qian and His Western Colleagues: On Possible Categories of Description”, History and Theory, 46 (2007), 197.
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16)
Adriaan H. B. Beukelaar, Historiography and Episcopal Authority in Sixth-Century Gaul: The Histories of Gregory of Tours Interpreted in their Historical Context (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1994), pp. 52–54.
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17)
Mark Bevir, The Logic of the History of Ideas (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 106–124.
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21)
Stephen W. Durrant, The Cloudy Mirror: Tension and Conflict in the Writings of Sima Qian (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1995), p. 27.
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27)
Quoted in Lionel Gossman, Basel in the Age of Burckhardt: A Study in Unseasonable Ideas (Chicago; London: University of Chicago Press, 2000), p. 272.
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31)
Graham Swift, Waterland (London: William Heinemann, 1983). Thanks to Madeleine Kasten for urging me to read this wonderful novel.
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32)
Carl Page, Philosophical Historicism and the Betrayal of First Philosophy (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1995), pp. xi, 3.
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Weak Historicism: On Hierarchies of Intellectual Virtues and Goods
In: Journal of the Philosophy of HistorySearch for other papers by Herman Paul in
Current site
Google Scholar
PubMed
Abstract
This article seeks to reconcile a historicist sensitivity to how intellectually virtuous behavior is shaped by historical contexts with a non-relativist account of historical scholarship. To that end, it distinguishes between hierarchies of intellectual virtues and hierarchies of intellectual goods. The first hierarchy rejects a one-size-fits-all model of historical virtuousness in favor of a model that allows for significant varieties between the relative weight that historians must assign to intellectual virtues in order to acquire justified historical understanding. It grounds such differences, not on the historians’ interests or preferences, but on their historiographical situations, so that hierarchies of virtues are a function of the demands that historiographical situations (defined as interplays of genre, research question, and state of scholarship) make upon historians. Likewise, the second hierarchy allows for the pursuit of various intellectual goods, but banishes the specter of relativism by treating historical understanding as an intellectual good that is constitutive of historical scholarship and therefore deserves priority over alternative goods. The position that emerges from this is classified as a form of weak historicism.
| All Time | Past 365 days | Past 30 Days | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Abstract Views | 526 | 93 | 9 |
| Full Text Views | 123 | 0 | 0 |
| PDF Views & Downloads | 76 | 4 | 0 |