Abstract
In this chapter, three conceptions of historical inquiry represent middle ways between the poles of positivism and postmodernism: John Dewey’s, Michael Oakeshott’s, and Hans-Georg Gadamer’s. Their philosophies of history are pragmatist in that they refuse to efface the subjectivity of the historian in terms of one’s purposes, guiding interests, and conceptual schemes. They are conservative because they refuse to let the subjectivity of the historian become the whole of history. They till and harvest the soil of history in the admission that the field of potential data is greater than the engines of their conceptual combines. Much as the blades of the combine’s thrasher jam when they encounter a stubborn rock in the soil, the historian’s ability to spin a tale may be resisted by the text she interprets, according to the theories of Dewey, Oakeshott, and Gadamer. Thus, there is always a limit to the narratives they tell and always denotative reference points, offered by texts, surviving artifacts, and other honest historians’ inquiries, to restrict their excesses.1
“I am concerned with what may, perhaps, be called the logic of historical enquiry, ‘logic’ being understood as a concern not with the truth of conclusions but with the conditions in terms of which they may be recognized to be conclusions.”
Michael Oakeshott, On History*
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Notes
* Michael Oakeshott, (1999) On History and Other Essays, (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund), p. 6.
Seth Vannatta, (2012) “Between Science and Fiction: Pragmatism and Conservatism in History and Law,” European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, 4(1), pp. 160–161.
David Luban, Legal Modernism, (1997) (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press) p. 138.
Michael Sullivan, (2007) Legal Pragmatism, (Bloomington: Indiana University Press) p. 53.
Dewey, LW 1: 34. This reference was cited by Randall Auxier, (1990) “Dewey on Religion and History,” Southwest Philosophy Review, 6(1), p. 46.
Larry, A. (2007) Hickman, Pragmatism as Post-postmodernism: Lessons from John Dewey, (New York: Fordham University Press) p. 21.
Michael Oakeshott, (1999) On History, (Oxford: Liberty Fund) p. x.
Michael Oakeshott, (1991) Rationalism in Politics and Other Essays, (Oxford: Liberty Fund) p. 181.
Seth Vannatta, (2014), “Conservatism, Pragmatism, and Historical Inquiry,” The Pluralist, 9(1), 57–58.
Edmund Husserl, (1983) Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and a Phenomenological Philosophy, First Book, Trans. F. Kersten, (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers) p. 65.
That Husserl wrote with naturalism in the background as a tacit or explicit opponent should not prevent the building of any bridges between phenomenology and pragmatism. Dewey was a naturalist, but he worked with a method of non-reductive empiricism, which refused to reduce experience to sensation, as some British empiricists and the positivists did. See John Dewey, “The Reflex Arc Concept in Psychology,” (Dewey 1975), p. 159. Further, Dewey offered the postulate that “things — anything and everything — are what they are experienced as” (Dewey 1977). His naturalism was radically empirical, inspired in part by William James, of whom Husserl was another inspired reader. His turn to view things as they are experienced can be described according to the phenomenological catch phrase, “to the things themselves.” Dewey, too, was looking at the how of givenness, although never articulating any explicit epoché, as Peirce, a fellow pragmatist, did in his description of presentness when he wrote: “The first and foremost is that rare faculty, the faculty of seeing what stares one in the face, just as it presents itself, unre-placed by any interpretation, unsophisticated by any allowance for this or for that supposed modifying circumstance. This is the faculty of the artist who sees for example the apparent colors of nature as they appear” (Peirce, 1958– 1966, 5: 1.42). Here, Peirce, the founder of American pragmatism, “brackets” “interpretation” and “modifying circumstances.” Such was Dewey’s task in his postulate of immediate empiricism (Dewey 1905). For even more insight into the historical connections between pragmatism and phenomenology, see Jason M. Bell, (2011) “The German Translation of Royce’s Epistemology,” The Pluralist, 6(1) pp. 46–62. Husserl advised a dissertation on Royce by Winthrop Bell, and Husserl was therefore well aware of Royce’s pragmatic idealism.
Edmund Husserl, (1989) Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and a Pheno- menological Philosophy Studies in the Phenomenology of Constitution, Second Book, Trans. R. Rojcewicz and A. Schuwer, (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publisher).
Edmund Husserl, (2001) Analyses Concerning Passive and Active Synthesis: Lectures in Transcendental Logic, Trans. Anthony Steinbock, (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publisher).
Martin Heidegger, (1962) Being and Time, Trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson, (San Francisco: Harper) p. 149.
Hans Georg Gadamer, (2006) Truth and Method, (London: Continuum) p. 241.
Tsenay Serequeberhan (1987), “Heidegger and Gadamer: Thinking as ‘Meditative’ and as ‘Effective Historical Consciousness,’” Man and World, 20, p. 53.
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Vannatta, S. (2014). Conservative and Pragmatist Historical Inquiry. In: Conservatism and Pragmatism. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137466839_6
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