Post-Analytic Philosophy of History and Reconstructing the Objectivity of Historical Knowledge: A New Trend of the Theory in Contemporary Western Historiography

Social Sciences in China Review

No.4, 2017

Post-Analytic Philosophy of History and Reconstructing the Objectivity of Historical Knowledge: A New Trend of the Theory in Contemporary Western Historiography(Abstract)

Gu Xiaowei

Since the advent of the new century, there have been continued debates in Western historiographical circles on the direction of the philosophy of history. Two seemly integrating but essentially opposing approaches can be sorted out from it. One is the adjustment and transcendence within the narrativist philosophy of history. The other is the new development and breakthrough of the analytic philosophy of history. Post-analytic philosophers of history, constantly learning from the latest outcomes of British and American philosophy of science and philosophy of language, especially absorbing logical pragmatist Quine’s criticism on the two dogmas of empiricism and his advocacy of naturalized epistemology, focus on historical evidence and historical epistemology that have been obscured by narrators, trying to find a simple and effective way for rebuilding the objectivity of historical knowledge.