Die Idee geschichtswissenschaftlicher Objektivität
Eine tugendepistemologische Erkundung
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2018-11
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Doctoral Thesis
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Abstract
This study explores the idea of historiographical objectivity. What could it mean to say that a historical account is objective? One might distinguish between ontological, methodological, and dispositional dimensions of objectivity. Hereby I mean that an objective historical account is about past reality; it is warranted by established methods, and produced in a virtuous manner.
Objectivity is a normative idea. It predicates epistemic value of historical accounts. This evaluative nature of objectivity especially comes to the fore in the dispositional dimension the current study focuses on. This dimension of objectivity is mainly explained with so called epistemic virtues. These are qualities of a person like accuracy, critical thinking, or open-mindedness. They are of crucial importance for successfully producing objective historical accounts.
My argument for this approach starts with a basic account of epistemologically relevant parts of historiographical research practice. It states that epistemic virtues of a knowing person are important reasons for successful and accordingly objective knowledge (chapter 1). I argue for this close connection between qualities of a person and qualities of knowledge with Miranda Fricker’s social epistemology. Historiographical practice clearly shows the phenomena of epistemologically salient social recognition. A close look reveals that for historians epistemic virtues are important reasons to evaluate historiographical accounts as epistemologically successful. They recognise the objectivity of accounts to a considerable extend on grounds of the epistemologically virtuous behaviour of those who produced them. Epistemic virtues are thus considered fairly stable and commonly shared values of the practical production of objective accounts (chapter 5). Based on literature about the historiographical method and a critical inquiry of some positions in virtue epistemology, I take epistemic virtues to be attitudes and skills of a person. Epistemic virtues are qualities that help historians to be properly focused on the production of objective historiographical accounts, and to really produce such accounts reliably (chapter 4). On the one hand, I try to explain their stability as epistemic values with Bernard Williams’ vindicatory account of genealogy. This concept will be analysed in depth (chapter 2). On the other hand, a structuring interpretation of shared values expressed in a statement on standards of professional conduct of the American Historical Association reveals the central normative status of epistemic virtues in historical research. It is guided by Richard Münch’s sociology of knowledge (chapter 3). In both of these explanatory strands – the genealogical and the sociological – I state that with a virtue epistemological account of historiographical objectivity we are able to consider historians’ epistemic behaviour as intrinsically motivated. They treat the goal of their work – i.e. to produce as epistemically good accounts of the past as possible – like a purpose in itself. In order to understand historiographical objectivity’s dispositional dimension, this intrinsic value of epistemic virtues as well as their instrumental value is important.
In an appendix a systematic analysis of 425 evaluative judgements from the historiographical review journal sehepunkte underpins the theoretical findings. Epistemic virtues turn out to be one of reviewer’s crucial judgment criteria.
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ETH Zürich
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Subject
Genealogy; Philosophy of Historiography; Virtues; Epistemology; Objectivity; Science and Technology Studies (STS); Historiography
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03665 - Hampe, Michael / Hampe, Michael