SCIENTISM, HERMENEUTICS AND NARRATIVE - ON MODES OF EXPLANATION IN HISTORY

The author's main thesis is that the most adequate mode of explanation in history is to be sought in a combination of hermeneutics and narrative. He starts by discussing and rejecting the relevance of Carl Hempel's subsumption-theoretical model of explanation. In accordance with G. H. von Wright, this ''scientistic'' tradition is placed within a wider, ''positivist'' frame of mind, characterized by 1) methodological monism, 2) the natural sciences as the ideal type, and 3) the reliance on general laws. The hermeneutic tradition constitutes an alternative and more fruitful approach to the analysis of specifically human activities. The author criticizes certain elements in the ''philosophical'' strand of thought within hermeneutics, associated primarily with Martin Heidegger and H.-G. Gadamer. He notes, with reference especially to Paul Ricoeur, the conceptual fog in Heidegger and draws attention to the problems concerning the distinction between ''fusion of horizons'' and confusion of horizons. He finds that Emilio Betti's so-called hermeneutical canons within the tradition of ''methodological'' hermeneutics are more adequate and fruitful from the standpoint of the practising historian. The relative objectivity aimed at by methodological hermeneutics, and the ambition of seeking ''historical truth'', are goals shared also by the narrativist theoreticians analysed. Inspired by Ricoeur's radical analysis of the aporetics of time in bis monumental Time and Narrative, and by Arthur C. Danto's important Analytical Philosophy of History, the author addresses the question of historical explanation as a structured, but necessarily incomplete, description of a continuant subject unfolding or developing over time. A reliable and convincing historical explanation, it is held, can only be achieved on the basis of an understanding of the actors involved - by means of the indispensable insights provided by methodogical hermeneutics - and an adequate description of the relevant historical context. The search for ''general laws'' - which reduces history and culture to nature in a positivist manner - is considered a blind alley in this regard.