En el 2008 se cumplen 25 años de la aparición de Metahistoria: la imaginación histórica en el siglo XIX, punto de inflexión para la filosofía de la historia en tanto se aviene a su giro lingüístico. 2008 también es el 80 aniversario del propio Hayden White, ocasión que ha convocado a los filósofos d..

The place that Arthur Danto gives to history, as constitutive to as and our world, as well as a discipline able to produce knowledge of the past, reach its cenit with his philosophy of art. In “the End of Art”, Danto announces an end of the history of the search of the philosophical definition of art and the beginning of the era of pluralism. It is in this account where essencialism and historicism are combined in a way that estimules a (...) heat debate that continues today. In this paper, I give a reconstruction of Danto’s Philosophy of historical language in order to show why this combination is possible and which compromises that should be assumed by an authentic historicism. (shrink)

The second half of the twentieth century has been witness to a blooming of reflections on the status of historical narrative. One of the main achievements of a narrativist philosophy of history (NPH) consists of having reinforced the worth of an autonomous historical knowledge vis à vis standard conceptions of science which made history appear as underdeveloped. Although NPH does not dismiss the importance of documentary evidence, it did not produce an integrative account of both dimensions (the work of writing (...) and the work with evidence), being slave of a number of epistemological dualism. On one hand, NPH seems to remain in the representationalist paradigm in the case of evidence, while, on the other hand, it only admits pragmatic evaluation in the case of narrative discourse. In this paper, I sustain that John Dewey’s and George H. Mead’s reflections on our knowledge of the past offer NPH good reasons to assess the role that literary theory can play in reconstructing historical controversies, without neglecting the importance of empirical research. For instance, Dewey holds that historical writing is a case of the judgments produced in response to problematic research situations. By virtue of this, the meaning of judgments referred to the past (that is, historical narrations) “have a future reference and function,” and thus understanding their meaning involves displaying the consequences that follow from such judgments. Mead, for his part, has argued that by appealing to the independent reality of the past as ground for our beliefs about it, rather than contributing to the rational resolution of our historical problems, we stray towards the search of something which is by definition unattainable. As a consequence, I shall show the urgency of advancing in the development of a narrativist, pragmatistically-informed philosophy of history. My considerations will be illustrated through the analysis of a controversial case about a past event: the main plot of the memorable film The man who shot Liberty Valance, by the equally memorable John Ford. (shrink)

En "La evidencia de la experiencia" Joan Scott lanzó un desafío a las concepciones que sustentan las políticas de la identidad, de tal profundidad y agudeza, que llega incluso a cuestionar la razonabilidad de sus reclamos y la eficacia de tal política. Las reacciones no tardaron en llegar, generando múltiples intentos de responder al desafío. Se destacan entre ellos el programa Realista pospositivista de Satya Mohanty, cuyo objetivo primordial será ofrecer una consideración alternativa de la noción de experiencia subjetiva -antiesencialista (...) pero se opondrá a la disolución deconstructiva del posmodernismo. En el presente trabajo, analizaré cómo una u otra consideración puede responder más eficazmente a reclamos de legitimidad de identidades marginalizadas. In "The Evidence of Experience" Joan Scott challenged the philosophical accounts that support identity politics based on the fact that this tradition puts the razonability of the claims and the efficiency of this policies at risk. Multiples responses have been given to this argument, but the most profound and sharpest critiques were introduced by the Realist Post-positivist Programme. This theory, developed by Satya Mohanty and et al, tries to give an alternative consideration of the notion of "subjective experience"-antiessencialist but the opposite to the posmodernist deconstructive dissolution of this term. In this paper I analyze both positions and I will try to give a consideration on my own in order to offer a better and more efficient response to identity-claims. (shrink)

The year 2008 is the 25th of the publication of Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe, a milestone for the philosophy of history, since it comprehends its linguistic turn. 2008 is also the 80th birthday of Hayden White, an occasion for philosophers of history and historians from several areas to revisit his work and reconsider the challenges that it has delegated to us. A fundamental challenge is the necessity of going back, again and again, to literary theory to elucidate (...) the nature of historical discourse. This article makes a critical evaluation on the consequences that literary information has for the cognitive status of historical representation. (shrink)

La sensación de la imposibilidad de alcanzar la versión definitiva del pasado resulta en la urgencia a tematizar los discursos que se arrogan su representación. En respuesta a las guerras de los discursos, la filosofía de la historia en el siglo XX examina centralmente el lenguaje en el que se expre..