Acts, Events, and Stories. On the History of Danto’s Compatibilist Narrativism

Thomas Uebel

doi:10.1163/18722636-12341412

Abstract

Abstract The response given to C.G. Hempel’s well-known challenge by Arthur Danto in his Analytical Philosophy of History of 1965 – that deductive-nomological and narrative explanations are logically compatible yet employ incommensurable schemata – is here investigated from a historical perspective. It is shown that the developmental trajectory that emerges from an analysis of Danto’s previous writings – including not only a forgotten paper of 1958 but also his PhD dissertation of 1952 – contains distinctive step-changes with publications of 1953 and 1956 still prior to that of 1958–59 which enabled his subsequent discovery of narrative sentences. It is also argued that Danto’s developmental trajectory runs contrary to that presumed by some prominent commentators. Analytical History of Philosophy was not the midpoint of his ascent from mainstream philosopher of science to high priest of postmodern aesthetics, but represents a reasoned retreat from his early historical idealism.

Highlights

Arthur Danto’s Analytical Philosophy of History (APH, 1965) is widely recognized to have inaugurated the post-positivist phase of analytical philosophy of history by defending the autonomy of narrative explanations against demands for reduction to nomological explanations
Since Danto conceded, that both narrative and nomological explanations can be given of historical events, questions have increasingly been asked whether Danto had really plumbed the true depth of the phenomenon he brought to prominence and whether the position he developed made the sharp break with logical positivism’s scientism that appeared to be required
The distinctive thesis of APH is that narratives by themselves can provide an explanation of historical events

Summary

Introduction

Arthur Danto’s Analytical Philosophy of History (APH, 1965) is widely recognized to have inaugurated the post-positivist phase of analytical philosophy of history by defending the autonomy of narrative explanations against demands for reduction to nomological explanations. The distinctive thesis of APH is that narratives by themselves can provide an explanation of historical events It is clear that the discovery of narrative sentences brought Danto to the threshold of his distinctive philosophy of history While they do not make it impossible to give DN-explanations of the events mentioned in them (albeit under different descriptions), they do bring out that properly historical explanation is essentially retrospective such that, as noted, the symmetry of nomological explanation and prediction does not apply. Frank Ankersmit once mused that “there is something odd” about APH as the beginning of Danto’s distinguished career: “What analytical philosopher in the 1960s would have planned to make his name with a book on so outlandish a topic as philosophy of history?” (2007a, 175) In her “Afterwords: An Introduction to Arthur Danto’s Philosophies of History and Art” Lydia Goehr appears to have dug deeper and wrote: Danto began his professional life in the 1950s as a philosopher of science. More importantly, its APH version does not represent Danto’s breaking out of a positivist confinement he was previously held in but rather, as we shall see, his attainment of a balance between scientific and humanist demands on history that his previous efforts had failed to achieve

Danto on History 1953–1956

Danto’s Lost Paper of 1958

Findings

Danto’s Philosophical Development