On the Historical Understanding

Professor W. B. Gallie has advanced an interesting thesis in his book Philosophy and the Historical Understanding, which starts out explicitly from the point of view that the historian aims at a kind of understanding quite different from that which is characteristic of the natural sciences.' The question he is concerned is not the vindication of historical statements, but simply it is . . . to construct an historical narrative.2 This question he intends to illuminate by considering the simpler problem, What is a and what does it mean to follow a story? He argues that, in reading a story, we understand the actions with a peculiar directness.3

Epistemology · History · Philosophy · Philosophy, History, and Historiography