Virtue language in historical scholarship
The cases of Georg Waitz, Gabriel Monod and Henri Pirenne
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 7093983 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Camille Creyghton (0000-0002-9423-5163, Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences), Pieter Huistra (0000-0002-0349-8436, Utrecht University, corresponding author), Sarah Keymeulen (Ghent University), Hugh Paul (0000-0002-9365-6329, Leiden University) |
| Year | 2016 |
| Volume | 42 |
| Issue | 7 |
| Pages | 924-936 |
| Publication date | 2016-05-25 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | History of European Ideas (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0191-6599 • E-ISSN: 1873-541X |
| Publisher | Routledge (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/01916599.2016.1161536 |
| OpenAlex | W2404082116 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 7 |
Historians of historiography have recently adopted the language of epistemic virtues' to refer to character traits believed to be conducive to good historical scholarship. While epistemic virtues' is a modern philosophical concept, virtues such as objectivity', meticulousness' and carefulness' historically also served as actors' categories. Especially in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, historians frequently used virtue language to describe what it took to be a good', reliable' or professional' scholar. Based on three European case studiesthe German historian Georg Waitz (1813-86), his French pupil Gabriel Monod (1844-1912) and the Belgian historian Henri Pirenne (1862-1935)this article argues that such virtues cannot neatly be classified as epistemic' ones. For what is characteristic about virtue language in historical scholarship around 1900 is an overlap or entanglement of epistemic, moral and political connotations. The virtues embodied by, or attributed to, Waitz, Monod and Pirenne were almost invariably aimed at epistemic, moral and political goods at once, though not always to the same degrees. Consequently, if epistemic virtues' is going to be a helpful category, it must not be interpreted in a strong sense (only epistemic'), but in a weak one (epistemic' as one layer of meaning among others
Embodied cognition · Epistemic virtue · Epistemology · German · Historiography · Linguistics · Objectivity (philosophy · Political science · Politics · Scholarship · Sociology · Virtue · Data Analysis and Archiving · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · Law · Philosophy · Philosophy, History, and Historiography
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| Citations per year | 0.78 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2017 - 2025 (9) |
| Highly cited | No |