The Mind of the Historian

Professional training in history presumably inculcates certain standards of conduct and modes of scholarship. That historians must be socialized to their trade is an implicit justification for the existence of the graduate school. We assume that there is a craft of the The clarification of just what these presuppositions amount to in practice is the purpose of this study. Postulating that the psychic makeup of historians will be manifested, if at all, in their works, I try to show that their works do have certain predictable characteristics, that discussions of human conduct move along the same lines, and that certain kinds of judgments always recur. To explain these peculiarities I construct a model of the mind of the historian. The construction of the model requires first that we examine one recently espoused philosophical theory concerning the nature of evaluative terms, because it is from this theory that we derive the model. The model will be used in a fairly standard way and will encompass the following: a characterization of the theory as applicable to historical material, an interrelated series of constructs and concepts specifying this applicability, a way of using the theory, constructs, and concepts in connection with the material, and a series of examples illustrating their use

Epistemology · Psychoanalysis · History · Philosophy · Philosophy, History, and Historiography · Psychology

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