The Tri-partite Theory of Justification of Historiography

Abstract

I have built this book on the contributions of the narrativist philosophy of historiography although I have also departed substantially from its model. It is now possible to reformulate the central contribution of the narrativist school as the insight that historical knowledge in synthesized form — regardless of whether this is taken to mean historical theses and/ or colligatory expressions — is the most important and interesting kind of knowledge that historiography produces. This to say that philosoph-ical analyses should pay particular attention to this kind of knowledge. The fundamental problem with narrativism is that it cannot provide an epistemologically or otherwise cognitively meaningful evaluative framework for this kind of higher-order historical knowledge. Now, it is time to explain how we can keep the essence of the narrativist insight but to also formulate a cognitively meaningful approach to evaluation in historiography. The answer provided is in part based on the conclusions of earlier chapters and in part a continuation of the reasoning that led to them.