===================== HES POSTING ==================== 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 ============ FOOTER TO HES POSTING ============ For information, send the message "info HES" to [log in to unmask]