Role of History in the Era of Post-truth
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.26806/fd.v11i1.302Abstract
What is the role of history in the age of post-truth? Can philosophy of history help us to hedge against deliberate misuse of historical narratives on ideological grounds? This paper aims to inquire into the philosophical reflections of history and their relation to ideologies. It is shown that during the inception of this field of philosophy, philosophers like Karl Popper or C. G. Hempel aimed to eliminate political and ideological colouring from history. However, the narrativist insight of Hayden White implies that such task is unattainable and historical writing is necessarily ideological. Antirealist philosophy of history, embodied by L. J. Goldstein, even discarded the real past as a goal of historical research and accented the situatedness of historians in relation to their evidence. It is argued that the outlined version of historical antirealism approaches history as a present kind of inquiry that shares many features with critical thinking and focuses mainly on the examination of empirical data that require the postulation of an inaccessible past. This resemblance should be highlighted by teaching history as an inquiry, not a mere story.
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