Exploring holism in Frank Ankersmit's historical representation

Abstract

For over 20 years Frank Ankersmit has been one of the leading figures of narrativist philosophy of history. Despite the fact that his work has received considerable attention from other philosophers of history, few authors have attempted to provide a favorable interpretation of the interesting things he says about history. In this article I argue that such an interpretation of his account of historical representation may reveal a very important point he makes concerning the nature of historical work. Following a discussion of theory-ladenness and underdetermination from the general philosophy of science I show that these concepts should be taken into account better to understand Ankersmit's holistic view of historical representation. Although it is possible to find several types of holism in his writings, this article tries to emphasize the significance of one of them. It could be summarized in the so-called new holism thesis claiming that historical representation is a whole produced by the interplay of factual and conceptual elements. Thus, the important lesson to be learnt from Ankersmit's work and deserving further study is that there is not only an empirical but also a conceptual component playing a crucial role in writing history.