The Paradox of Historical Constructionism
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 4773788 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Michael E Hobart (corresponding author) |
| Year | 1989 |
| Volume | 28 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 43 |
| Publication date | 1989-02-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | History and Theory (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0018-2656 • E-ISSN: 1468-2303 |
| Publisher | JSTOR (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.2307/2505269 |
| OpenAlex | W2316337482 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 4 |
We owe the term as philosophical doctrine to Jack W. Meiland, whose Scepticism and Historical Knowledge explicated and defended history as, roughly, a fable agreed upon. Meiland asserted that historians must be regarded as constructing or creating the rather than as reporting the past in order to develop critique of idealist theories of history, such as those of Oakeshott, Croce, and Collingwood, and to present the skeptic's case for doubting any putative objectivity in historical knowledge. Although he employed constructionism to ground skeptical perspective, Meiland denied the doctrine's necessary ties to any particular philosophical persuasion (for example, idealism or realism) or to any specific methodological program of historians. Rather, he sought to show that because objective knowledge of the is impossible, historians should be considered as constructing their accounts for other purposes than discovery of the per se. I In short, history should be understood as product of the perspective-laden conventions of historians.2 Since the appearance of Meiland's book in 1965, two families of conventions, rhetorical and conceptual, have steadily gained the attention of philosophers and historians alike, and have served as foci for discussions about constructionism. Rhetorical constructionism stresses the figurative or rhetorical use of language as the key to understanding historical accounts and is most frequently associated with the tropistic analysis of Hayden White.4 For White, histories are narratives
Constructionism · Epistemology · Sociology · Strict constructionism · History · Philosophy · Philosophy, History, and Historiography
| Unique citing works | 4 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,12 |
| Citation span | 1993 - 2016 (24) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 3 |