1991 Fiscal Year Final Research Report Summary
An analytic philosophical study of historical narratives
| Project/Area Number |
02610001
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| Research Category |
Grant-in-Aid for General Scientific Research (C)
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| Allocation Type | Single-year Grants |
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| Research Field |
Philosophy
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| Research Institution | Tohoku University |
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Principal Investigator |
NOE Keiichi Tohoku University, Faculty of Arts and Letters, Professor, 文学部, 教授 (40103220)
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| Project Period (FY) |
1990 – 1991
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| Keywords | philosophy of history / historiography / narrative sentence / narrative act / ideal chronicle / folklore / hermeneutic / speech act theory |
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| Research Abstract |
The traditional philosophy of history mainly treated with such a global problem as "the meaning of history" or "the direction of history. " It was generally characterized as "the science of a world-view. " But now, after the sense of value is diversified and the Europe-centered view of history is radically criticized, the Hegelian philosophy of history which totally explained the development of world history become useless and the emergence of new philosophy of history is in expectation. This requires an investigation to focus not on the macroscopic world-view, but on the microscopic "historical narrative. " In this study, I tried to explicate the basic structure of historical narrative by means of the analytic philosophy, especially the speech act theory.
In essence, history is not "made" or "become" but "narrated. " This thesis is nothing other than the starting-point of my study. Historical events which are objects of historical narrative, are not bare reproductions of past events as they were. They are selected and reorganized by our perspectives of remembrance, in other words "hermeneutically transformed. " Thus, historical events should be called "hermeneutical facts" rather than "objective facts. " But, if remembrance of the past is not mediated by an act of narrative, it remains mere personal reminiscence. It is the "structurization" and the "intersubjectivization" through speech acts that makes the necessary condition of historical facts. We would like to call this kind of speech act which constitutes the basic unit of historiography "narrative act. " History is nothing but the product of "poiesis" of narrative acts. The result of this study is that we elucidate the concept of narrative act and combine it with the basic theory for the philosophy of history.
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