Pragmatism and Historical Representation (Elements in Historical Theory and Practice)

By: Serge Grigoriev

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Synopsis: No prominent pragmatist philosopher to date has offered us a fully developed theory of history or historical interpretation. Nevertheless, a number of pivotal arguments and suggestions made by the pragmatists appeared to many both insightful and pertinent enough to offer a distinctive promise of a cohesive and distinctive general pragmatist perspective in historical theory. The present contribution is intended to secure some advances in this direction, focusing on the relationships between objectivity and perspective; between representation as an accurate correspondence to reality and the social, cultural sense of representation as being represented and being representative; as well as the relationship between individualizing comprehension and generalizing abstraction in historical contexts.