Coda: Postnarrativist Philosophy of Historiography

Abstract

The perception that it is necessary to choose between a nihilistic ‘anything goes’ postmodernism and an absolutist objectivism has bewitched much of the contemporary philosophical discussion on historiography and beyond. This book has tried to show the way in which historiography, and specifically its main cognitive products, can be evaluated and ranked rationally, but without a commitment to the correspondence theory of truth. Postnarrativist philosophy of historiography endorses the initial insight of narrativism that the texts and entire books of history are the main knowledge contributions of historiography and must be the subjects of philosophical analysis, but it understands them as exemplifying historiographical reasoning for theses of history.