History and Causality

271 Pages·2014·1.861 MB·English

by  Mark Hewitson

History and Causality
Also by Mark Hewitson
EUROPE IN CRISIS: Intellectuals and the European Idea, 1 917– 1957
(eds, with Matthew D’Auria, 2012)
NATIONALISM IN GERMANY, 1 848– 1866: Revolutionary Nation
(Palgrave Macmillan, 2010)
WHAT IS A NATION? EUROPE, 1 789– 1914 (eds, with Timothy Baycroft, 2006)
GERMANY AND THE CAUSES OF THE FIRST WORLD WAR (2004)
NATIONAL IDENTITY AND POLITICAL THOUGHT IN GERMANY: Wilhelmine
Depictions of the French Third Republic, 1 890– 1914 (2000)
History and Causality
Mark Hewitson
Senior Lecturer in German History and Politics, University College London
© Mark Hewitson 2014
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Contents
Acknowledgements vi
Introduction: Causality after the Linguistic Turn 1
1 Intellectual Historians and the Content of the Form 26
Telling the truth about Derrida 27
Textualism and contextualism 31
Explaining metahistories 34
Context and cause 38
2 Social History, Cultural History, Other Histories 52
The languages of social history 52
The new cultural history 61
Other histories and histories of the other 68
3 Causes, Events and Evidence 86
What is history? Causation and determinism 86
Theories of the event 93
Selection of evidence 100
4 Time, Narrative and Causality 117
Emplotment and s tory- telling 118
Narrative, history and fiction 122
Problem- oriented history 127
Narration and explanation 132
5 Explanation and Understanding 149
Explaining actions 149
Why-questions, generalizations and theories 159
Comparative and counterfactual methods 164
6 Theories of Action and the Archaeology of Knowledge 180
Culture, practices and actions 180
Communicative actions 184
Structuration and the de- centred individual 192
Power and discourse 196
Conclusion 217
Select Bibliography 225
Index 254
v
Acknowledgements
This book examines problems and questions faced by most, if not all
historians, but which relatively few have treated explicitly. The ques-
tions are not new, first formulated in the eighteenth (Hume, Kant)
and nineteenth centuries (Dilthey, Nietzsche, Windelband and Rickert,
amongst others). Here, I aim to look at them, through reference to works of
philosophy, sociology, political science and anthropology, from a histori-
cal point of view. The potential rewards of the u ndertaking, investigating
problems in other disciplines from a particular standpoint, outweigh the
attendant difficulties and dangers, in my opinion. Philosophers and other
social scientists might find the questions inapposite or poorly defined
and the answers – which are necessarily provisional – largely irrelevant
or simply wrong. Even within the discipline of history, many will object
to the a rguments presented here. At least some ‘practising historians’, in
the ambivalent terminology of historical theory, will probably wonder
whether it is worth addressing such obvious questions, whose practical
import seems limited; some post- modern historians, or s elf- confessed
‘turners’, will no doubt consider the characterizations of their posi-
tions overblown and their acceptance of causality overlooked; and some
intellectual historians and philosophers of history might deny that their
focus is mainly individual or textual. Few historical theorists will find all
the claims made in this study convincing and many will be able to point
to earlier and b etter treatments of the same topics.
Nonetheless, I believe that a study of this kind can be justified.
My decision to write the book derives from different sources (or can
be said – to prejudge the issue – to have different causes). Like many
practising historians, I have grappled with these questions more or
less constantly. Having attempted to incorporate a class on causality
and history into a wider course for undergraduates from various disci-
plines at UCL (an Introduction to European History, Law, Politics and
Philosophy for students of European Social and Political Studies), I was
surprised to find so little material on the subject in the recent literature
on historical theory. There are, of course, relevant works in philosophy
and other social sciences, but these are rarely read, cited or analysed
by historians. Works of social theory, from Durkheim and Weber to
Habermas and Foucault, are consulted more regularly, but they tend to
treat the problem of causation in passing or in ways which can seem
vi
Acknowledgements vii
far removed from the central concerns of historians. I am grateful to
the graduates at UCL’s Centre for European Studies (now renamed),
whom I have had the pleasure of teaching over the years (on courses
about Social Theory and Theoretical Issues in History and Literature),
for pointing out – and contesting – the relevance of such theories for
historical enquiry. Students in ESPS, the German Department and the
CES have regularly reinforced a long- standing conviction that reports
of the differences between history, literary criticism, social science and
philosophy have been grossly (or, more often, subtly) exaggerated.
In addition to the students who have provided inspiration and objec-
tions, I am indebted to colleagues with whom I have taught relevant
courses at UCL: in particular, Stephanie Bird, Mary Fulbrook, Martin
Liebscher and Matthew D’Auria. I owe a great debt, too, to Joan Wallach
Scott, who helped to arrange a very enjoyable and stimulating stay at
the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, where I was able to begin
this study. Both she and Didier Fassin were excellent academic hosts,
as – in Princeton, in a more general sense – were Jan Müller, Erika Kiss,
Matilda Luk and Alan Patten. At the IAS, I was aided by the construc-
tive suggestions of Jeff Stout, Rohini Somanathan, Judith Surkis, Manu
Goswami, Rita Chin and Jay Cook, with whom I had many informative
and agreeable conversations, together with more occasional thrashings
on a tennis court. During that year and afterwards, I have enjoyed the
support, toleration and distraction – for a work which I was meant to
be completing in my spare time – of my family, both extended and
nuclear. This is probably the first book (of mine) that Anna and Camille
can read: I am sorry that it is not more readable. To Cécile, who has read
parts of it, professing more of an interest in this volume than in others
from the viewpoint of her own discipline, I am also very thankful.
London, June 2013

Introduction: Causality after
the Linguistic Turn
Before the effect, one believes in different causes than
one does afterwards.
Friedrich Nietzsche, Die fröhliche Wissenschaft (1887)1
The question ‘What is history?’ has elicited many different answers. For
Herodotus, one of the first historians, it was a form of ‘inquiry’ such
‘that neither the deeds of men may be forgotten by lapse of time, nor
the works great and marvellous, which have been produced some by
Hellenes and some by Barbarians, may lose their renown; and especially
that the causes may be remembered for which these waged war with
one another’.2 Historians continue to debate which part of Herodotus’s
definition is the principal one: a story of ‘deeds’ (human actions), a
record of ‘works’ (artefacts and other traces) or an evaluation of ‘causes’
(reasons why actions or events occurred or ‘causes’ were taken up).
Many now contend that history is ‘an authored narrative’, which tells a
story by recounting a sequence of events in a particular manner, as an
act of narration.3 More empirically minded scholars emphasize facts
and evidence, which are held to constitute the record and structure the
narrative. Post- s tructuralists, appealing to hermeneutics and literary
criticism, concentrate on the techniques, lapses, tropes, genres, epis-
temology and ideology of representation and narration by h istorians-
as- authors within historical texts and discourses. Neither pay much, if
any, attention to causes. Few recent works on historical methods and
theory have devoted chapters to the examination of causality and to the
identification, framing, analysis and justification of questions.4 One of
the handful of authors who have treated causation recently concludes
that ‘little has happened since [the early 1980s] to alter this situation.’5
1