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1993, Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A
2018 •
This article discusses History's role in Psychoanalysis as well as its possible consequences within analytical theory and praxis. First, we turn to two Freudian texts that provide paradigmatic notions about History: Moses and Monotheism and Constructions in Analysis, in order to emphasize Freud's different notions of History. It is demonstrated how the psychoanalytical notion of History can allow us to rethink concepts such as truth and materiality. Then we analyse the place given to History by Lacan to indicate its centrality, proposing a tripartite distinction between different levels of historicity – real, symbolic and imaginary. Lastly, we present the clinical unfolding of a comparison made by Lacan between analyst and historian.
Historiography from the Hagiographic Novel to Predictive Science - Sect. II - Book VIII
Historiography from the Hagiographic Novel to Predictive Science - Sect. II Book VIII2022 •
We are easily surprised to see the gap between the progress that has been made, and are constantly being made, in the field of physical-mathematical sciences and the difficulty of finding similar progress in the field of social and human knowledge (in fact: in these fields, beyond the beliefs of the experts, the actual knowledge on the mechanisms that determine historical evolution, not to mention the elements that make up the essence of human nature, actual knowledge seems to have stopped at the dawn of philosophical speculation). The cause of this gap derives not so much from the difficulties, and from the specific complexity, which these fields of investigation present, but from the different type of motivation that drives researchers in the two different great fields of investigation. If for the physical-mathematical sciences the researchers seem driven only by the desire to contribute to increasing knowledge, without taking into account the advantages and personal dangers that can derive from such action (think of the risks run by Galileo Galilei, had following the disclosure of the deductions derived from their own telescopic observations), the thinkers of the field of social and human knowledge seem to be driven, mainly, by the desire to acquire: fame, glory and power. Only when the “scientists” of these last two sectors radically change their basic objectives, will knowledge in these fields make genuine cognitive progress. The knowledge of the actual historical evolution and of the actually relevant events in relation to this evolution is constantly relegated to allusions and metaphors, never to a timely analysis and such that it can be confirmed, or denied, by the comparison with the reality of the facts. This is due to the need for historians to justify historical reality and, indeed, to magnify it, to the greater glory of the powerful they serve, or those powerful whom they believe may prevail in the near future. The maximum of historical objectivity can be found in those historians who, considering themselves free, prepare an analysis of history that they believe cannot be refuted by future historians, who, like them, would inevitably be subjected to the decisive conditioning of historical reality. they are about to analyze. However, human beings who are truly aware of their own dignity and of the need to bring about effective progress in the process of civilizing, cannot but undertake to analyze in a truly comparable way with historical events actually relevant to the evolutionary dynamics of historical reality, in its essence in act. This is, in fact, the indispensable premise for groped to design a new model of society which corresponds to the desires, needs and purposes of individuals and which evolves in harmony with them.
The familiar challenges to historiographical knowledge turn on epistemological concerns having to do with the unobservability of historical events, or with the problem of establishing a sufficiently strong inferential connection between evidence and the historiographical claim one wishes to convert from a true belief into knowledge. This paper argues that these challenges miss a deeper problem, viz., the lack of obvious truth-makers for historiographical claims. The metaphysical challenge to historiogra-phy is that reality does not appear to cooperate in our cognitive endeavours by providing truth-makers for claims about historical entities and events. Setting out this less familiar, but more fundamental, challenge to the very possibility of historiography is the first aim of this paper. The various ways in which this challenge might be met are then set out, including ontologically inflationary appeals to abstract objects of various kinds, or to " block " theories of time. The paper closes with the articulation of an ontologically parsimonious solution to the metaphysical challenge to historiography. The cost of this approach is a revision to standard theories of truth. The central claim here is that the standard theories of truth have mistaken distinct causes of truth for truth itself. This mistake leads to distorted expectations regarding truth-makers for historio-graphical claims. The truth-makers of historiographical claims are not so much the historical events themselves (for they do not exist) but atemporal modal facts about the order of things of which those events were a part. Keywords historiography – knowledge – truth – truth-makers – real relations – time – abstract objects
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