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Tony Brewer asks "What is Whig history?" "Is it the view that the history
of ideas records progress from error to truth?" What relation does it bear
to "internal history"? Does condemning Whig history force us into
relativism? Has Whig history dominated the history of economics over the
last several decades?
My response:
1. Here is my interpretation of "Whig history." It is consistent with H.
Butterfield's original formulation of the notion in "The Whig
Interpretation of History" although as with all ideas, my use of it is
shaped the traditions of discourse in which I participate.
"Whig" history justifies the "victory" of a particular group over their
adversaries by recounting why the victory was "inevitable" in terms
established by the victorious group themselves.
There are several aspects of this construction of "Whig history" which
bear pointing out:
a) intellectual history is not the only historical realm in which Whig
histories can be constructed (for example, Butterfield referred originally
to political history);
b) the terms of reference for the history are set by the victorious group,
and often (IMHO) implicitly account for the "inevitability" of the
victory (Tony's reference to Marxist "Whig" history is dead-on in this
particular regard!). The flip-side of this, of course, is that the
"losers" couldn't possibly have "won," because only in hindsight could we
know what the rules of "winning" were!;
c) Whig history is not necessarily the same as "internal history" as the
latter term has been used in the literature of the historiography of
economics. Internal histories are rational reconstructions of the logic of
argumentation used by historical figures, and are to be constrasted with
"externalist" histories, which explain the arguments of historical figures
**only** in terms of some aspect of their context (Malthus as the
"mouthpiece" of the landlord class, or Keynes' _General Theory_ as a
product of the Great Depression, for example). Internalist histories
become "Whig" histories when they insist that the standard (or mode) of
argumentative logic to be used in the rational reconstruction is the
standard (or mode) employed by today's "winners" (of course, historians
may differ as to what standards are currently winning!).
(Note: while I try not to write Whig history, my own historiography
rejects the distinction between "internalist" and "externalist" histories
-- as a historian, I can only make sense of accounts which weave
intellectual argument and context together. Thus, I am not trying to write
histories which show the impact of context and other external forces on an
economic argument; rather, in order to construct good historical accounts
of economics, I find it necessary to build what Roy called "thick
descriptions.")
2. With this identification of Whig history, I can address some of the
questions Tony asks:
a) Is Whig history (of ideas) the view that history records progress from
error to truth? -- While they may purport to be records of progress, Whig
histories are really apologies for the "winning" standard of what
constitutes "truth." Robert Fogel once called economic science the "asymptotic
approach to truth"; but I say that to approach the history of economics
that way is to "know" in advance the units in which truth is measured.
Since Whig histories of ideas are written from perspectives which claim
knowledge
of the units in which truth is measured, they typically appear as stories
of the progress from error into truth, but in fact, they could do nothing
else!
b) Has Whig history dominated the history of economics over the past
several decades? -- Brad and others have attempted answers to this
question and I won't add much, except to say that one of Butterfield's
original points was that Whig history is sterile -- the winners don't
really need their victory justified, and any losers who remain won't buy
the history presented anyway (they're either licking their wounds or
constructing histories which show why they should have won, or why their
loss is really a victory, or why they'll win in the long run!).
c) Does rejection of Whig history condemn us to relativism?
Here we come to the most difficult set of issues, because behind every
historiography lies an epistemology. Let me start on relatively safe
ground: opposition to Whig history has often come from those who, while
recognizing that no historian can ever escape entirely her own
perspective, argue that writing good histories requires us to "bracket"
our own perspective as much as is possible in order to pursue
historical understanding. I suspect many historians of economics currently
opposed to Whig history are among this group.
There is a second group, however, which takes a more aggressive
epistemological stance toward Whig history. To represent this group, I can
do no better than to quote the words Roy Weintraub put in the mouth of the
"teacher" in his Socratic dialogue in _Stabilizing Dynamics_ (pp. 109-11):
"My argument is simply that the success of the enterprise, the human
activity, we call 'science' does not depend on 'Truth' at all; rather, it
is contingent on the propositions and statements and claims and arguments
and counterarguments that are created by individual scientists."
Some will say that those who have taken the "linguistic turn" are
relativist because they refuse to be committed to Truth. I prefer to say
that there is little or nothing interesting that can be said about Truth,
but lots of interesting things to say about how and why specific
economists made the arguments and claims they did.
Ross B. Emmett Editor, HES and CIRLA-L
Augustana University College
Camrose, Alberta CANADA T4V 2R3
voice: (403) 679-1517 fax: (403) 679-1129
e-mail: [log in to unmask] or [log in to unmask]
URL: http://www.augustana.ab.ca/~emmer
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