FILOZOFIA HISTÓRIE MEDZI PREDPISOVANÍM A OPISOVANÍM

• Authors: Zeleňak Eugen

Title variants

EN

Philosophy of history between prescribing and describing

• Languages of publication: SK

Abstracts

EN

In the course of their discussion of historical explanation, historical narrative etc. philosophers of history repeatedly touched upon the metaphilosophical questions concerning the nature and the role of the philosophy of history. Especially during the last decades, some of the critics of the prescriptive approach advocated the need to focus on describing the actual historical works and the genuine historical practice. According to the advocates of the descriptive or bottom-up approach, philosophers of history should prescribe historians neither what they ought to do nor how their works ought to look like. Philosophers should rather follow the views of historians and describe their outcomes. Although this return to historical works and historical practice looks appealing, the author argues that one should not naively reduce philosophy of history to a mere description. It is important that philosophers of history follow the work of historians but they must anyway interpret what they find in historical discipline. Making use of examples from the writings of Paul Roth, he concludes that philosophy of history should try to fruitfully combine descriptive and prescriptive approaches.

Keywords

EN

PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY; METAPHILOSOPHY; HISTORICAL WORK; ROTH PAUL; PRESCRIBING; DESCRIBING

• Publisher: Institute of Philosophy, Slovak Academy of Sciences
• Journal: Filozofia (Philosophy)
• Year: 2018
• Volume: 73
• Issue: 5
• Pages: 356 – 365

Contributors

author

Zeleňak Eugen

• Katedra filozofie, Filozofická fakulta Katolíckej univerzity v Ružomberku, Ružomberok, Slovak Republic