Mandelbaum On Historical Narrative A Discussion

Wesleyan University
Mandelbaum on Historical Narrative: A Discussion

Author(s): Richard G. Ely, Rolf Gruner and William H. Dray
Source: History and Theory, Vol. 8, No. 2 (1969), pp. 275-294
Published by: Wiley for Wesleyan University
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/2504326
Accessed: 17-07-2019 09:47 UTC
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide
range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and
facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
https://about.jstor.org/terms
Wesleyan University, Wiley are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend
access to History and Theory
This content downloaded from 89.216.250.24 on Wed, 17 Jul 2019 09:47:35 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
MANDELBAUM ON HISTORICAL NARRATIVE:
A DISCUSSION
1. By RICHARD G. ELY
A familiar method of discrediting a procedural recommendation in any field of

inquiry is to show that it is based on a supposition which is false. In his "A Note
on History as Narrative,"* Professor Maurice Mandelbaum has mounted an
assault of this kind against the claim that: "If we are to understand what his-
torians actually do, we should examine what features are characteristic of narra-
tives, and should consider the manner in which a narrative may be said to explain
the events included within it" (413). This hypothetical claim, which he attributes
to White, Danto, and Gallie, he regards as based upon the following assumption:
"Historical inquiry and historical writing are essentially [that is, need only be]
matters of constructing stories, narratives, or connected chronicles" (terms which
he takes as designating a single concept or a cluster of inseparable concepts). His
note is mainly devoted to the task of demonstrating that this assumption is in
fact defective in two separate, but equally important ways: on the one hand it
sets up a model for historiography - the narrative model - which "is far too
simplistic"; and on the other hand, by identifying history with storytelling, it
induces a neglect of the role of inquiry in the historians' enterprise. Clearly, if
the assumption is defective in either of these ways, let alone both, it must be
rejected as false; and any procedural recommendation whose correctness is de-
pendent upon the truth of such an assumption must thereby stand discredited.
I first wish to consider whether the procedural recommendation which Mandel-

baum has attributed to White, Danto, and Gallie really is based on the assumption
which he has attempted to falsify. I am prepared to accept, for reasons to which
I shall refer later, that Mandelbaum has sufficiently established the falsity of the
view that historical writing and historical inquiry are essentially matters of con-
structing stories, narratives, or connected chronicles. My inquiry here is con-
cerned, more modestly, with the relevance of this demonstration to the task of
determining the correctness of that procedural recommendation.
Superficially, it might seem that the claim which Mandelbaum attributes to
White, Danto, and Gallie must be false, provided it is false that "historical inquiry
and historical writing are essentially matters of constructing stories, narratives, or
connected chronicles." However, a closer analysis indicates that Mandelbaum's
account of these theorists' position is susceptible of two quite distinct interpreta-
tions:
1. If we are to understand what historians actually do, we need to examine

what features are characteristic of narratives, and so forth; and
* History and Theory 6 (1967), 413-419.
276 RICHARD G. ELY
2. If we are to understand what historians actually do, it suffices to examine

what features are characteristic of narratives, and so forth.
Closer inspection reveals that it is the first interpretation which is by far the
most natural; but that it is only the second interpretation which presupposes the
truth of the proposition: "Historical inquiry and historical writing are essentially
[that is, need only be] matters of constructing stories, narratives, or connected
chronicles." Even if one concedes, as I am prepared to do, that Mandelbaum has
effectively demonstrated that this proposition is false, it becomes suddenly unclear
whether any demonstration of its falsity is, in fact, relevant to the task of falsify-
ing the actual positions of White, Danto, and Gallie. It is to that question that I
now turn.
II
I shall argue that Mandelbaum in fact refutes White and Danto, who both hold
that historical writing is essentially narrative; but not Gallie, who, maintaining
that histories always contain features other than sequences of events, asserts that
historical writing is necessarily, but never solely, a narrative construction.
Morton White has stated that all the conclusions which he reached in his at-
tempt to answer the question: "What is history?" have grown out of "reflection
on narratives."1 On his view, the task of the historian (whom he describes as
"the narrator") is "to give a connected account" of some "entity."2 This connected
account (or explanatory or connected chronicle) is a "logical conjunction of
explanatory assertions."3 White provides the following brief example of a con-
nected account -a history- of the development of an "entity." The entity he
nominates is the reigning house of England during a certain period of time: "The
King of England died, so the Queen of England died of grief. And because he
worried so much about the Queen's death, the Prince of England committed
suicide; and therefore the Princess of England died later of loneliness. And so
endeth our lugubrious history."4 In this, the simplest case, a history of some
central subject S consists in asserting: "Because A was true of S at time t1, B was
true of S at time t2, and because B was true of S at time t2, C was true of S at
time t3, and so on."5
White is evidently committed to the following propositions: firstly, that his-
torical writing is essentially and necessarily narrative; secondly, that the events
which form a unitary strand of history are to be conceived of as forming a linear,
sequential series: A leads to B, B to C, C to D, and so on; and thirdly that, in
consequence, causal effectiveness within such unitary strands of history is solely
the property of antecedents.
Mandelbaum directs against this view an argument designed to show that such
a narrative model of historiography is "too simplistic." He suggests that the
1. M. White, "The Logic of Historical Narration," in Philosophy and History, ed.

Sidney Hook (New York, 1963), 3.
2. Ibid., 4.
3. Ibid., 6.
4. Idern.
5. Ibid., 6-7.
MANDELBAUM ON HISTORICAL NARRATIVE 277
assumption that an historical account can be construed in terms of this linear

model (A leads to B, B to C, C to D, and so on) is not one which can withstand
scrutiny, even in the most favorable instances. To establish this claim he ex-
amines two types of historical account, each of which, he claims, falls into the
"most favorable" category. One is the type of historical account which would
normally be given of an election campaign; the other type is biographical writing.
He selects these types of historical account for analysis because the subject matter
of such accounts normally consists of specific events "whose connections . . . are
. . . determined by the decisions and actions of individual men," and it is in
precisely such accounts as these that historians are most likely to feel the need
to narrate.
Mandelbaum attempts to show that an historian of an election campaign, such
as a campaign to elect a particular candidate to the U.S. Presidency, could not
but hold a distorted view of his subject matter, the campaign itself, if he regarded
its constituent events simply "as a linear series (or a criss-crossing set of linear
series) in which each event is causally related to a particular antecedent and
itself leads to a particular consequent." For, what a politican does and what he
decides are as much determined by what is happening concurrently, by prevailing
factors in the political situation, as by what happened previously. In order "to
understand the various stratagems which each party will employ, the historian
must grasp their relationships to longer enduring factors which are not themselves
links in the sequential chain of events which constitute the 'story' of the cam-
paign." But - and in this lies the weakness of a merely sequential narrative-
such a narrative makes no provision for the historian to refer directly to these
"longer enduring factors." It must therefore inevitably provide a distorted and
superficial view of the campaign itself.
In arguing against the adequacy of the linear model in the field of biographical
writing Mandelbaum makes the additional point that "Among the important
elements to which biographers make reference in their attempts to bring us to an
understanding of the lives of their subjects will be dispositional properties which
are not themselves specific episodic events which form part of a sequential chain."
His general point, however, and evidently his basic objection to the linear series
model of historiography, is that those who adopt such a model "mistakenly draw
a sharp line between 'causes' and 'conditions,' and mistakenly believe that the
historian's primary concern is with what they look upon as causes, not condi-
tions."6
If Mandelbaum's argument against the view that historical writing "is essentially
a matter of constructing stories, narratives, or connected chronicles" is sound,
White's position is untenable. The crucial question is of course: Is it sound? There
are two points in the foregoing argument on which Mandelbaum could well be
challenged: his view of what constitutes an historical narrative, and his position
on causation in history.
It might be suggested that Mandelbaum's model of an historical narrative (A
leads to B, B to C, etc.) is unnecessarily narrow, and that this is why he is able
to make it seem unequal to the normal demands of a biographer, or of an historian
writing the history of an election campaign. Narrative in the ordinary sense, so
6. Mandelbaum, "Note," 416-417.
278 RICHARD G. ELY
the objection might be developed, is never merely the tracing of a series (or a
criss-crossing set of series) of sequential steps; in its normal form narrative incor-
porates reference to contemporaneous conditions, and often attributes to these
conditions some causal significance. This is apparently a serious difficulty. It is
not, I believe, an insuperable one.
In the first place, it is hard to see how such a critic could make his point that
situational descriptions and analyses can be incorporated into historical narratives,
without drawing a distinction - between situational descriptions and analyses on
the one hand, and narratives on the other - which invalidates his point. That is,
in order to make his point, he needs to use the term "narrative" in Mandelbaum's
sense. A second, and more serious, reply to such a critic would consist in pointing
out that while we do narrate actions, we do not narrate situations: we describe
or analyze them. Even when historians incorporate situational reference into their
narratives, they do not, normally, speak about narrating the situations therein
referred to. And this suggests that a narrative which solely consisted of events
which were narrated would not normally contain such situational references;7
that is, it would in fact generally conform to Mandelbaum's definition of a
narrative.
The other feature of Mandelbaum's argument which is open to criticism is
Mandelbaum's not fully worked out view that a sharp line should not be drawn
between "causes" and "conditions."8 Implicit in the narrative, linear-series model
of historical writing is a view of causality in history according to which the
occurrence of an historical event is primarily or invariably due to an antecedent
human action, or to a set of antecedent human actions. On this view, it would not
usually be necessary for an historian who is seeking to discover the cause of an
historical occurrence to refer beyond some antecedent set or series of human
actions to (say) conditions contemporaneous with that occurrence. Given this
view of causality, the only model of historical writing which would not provide a
distorted view of the historian's subject matter would be the narrative, linear-
series model. However there are, in fact, good reasons for accepting Mandelbaum's
view of causality. And this implies that the linear-series model of historiography,
if relied upon exclusively, would only rarely be a satisfactory vehicle for the
history of something.
An important, although not in itself decisive, consideration which lends support
to Mandelbaum's claim that "conditions" as well as antecedent "causes" have
causal significance is that this is a view which historians themselves feel the need
7. Such a narrative would contain no situation references, but this is not to say that
it provides no clues regarding the situation in which the narrated actions were per
formed. The statement "Luther joined in the persecution of the Anabaptists," whic
could well appear in an historical narrative, indirectly conveys some information about
Luther's situation - namely that the Anabaptists were being persecuted. But, drawin
a distinction between what a statement means and what it presupposes, I would den
that: "The Anabaptists were persecuted" was part of the meaning of the statement
"Luther joined the persecution of the Anabaptists."
8. The view is not fully worked out in the "Note" under discussion. In The Problem
of Historical Knowledge (New York, 1938), Mandelbaum has attempted a comprehen-
sive analysis of historical causation, but I do not know whether he now accepts all the
theses he there argued for. I refer in particular to his analysis of historical causation
solely in terms of "existential dependence."
to accept. It is historians who constantly stress that circumstances alter cases, that
the question of what a person is able to do should he choose to do it, or unable to
do even if he chooses to do it, cannot be settled without reference to what that
person's situation "allows."
Nor, of course, is this view solely the preserve of historians; it is demonstrably
the view of those whose activities they study: the history makers. The successful
politician, for example, is successful because he manages to take advantage of
some feature of his situation, or the situations of those with whom he has transac-
tions. Admittedly, such a politician is only able to take advantage of such situations
if he does certain things, but, by the same token, doing those things will not
bring him the success he seeks unless the situations in question really do possess
certain determinate characteristics.
Probably, however, the most decisive argument against the view that "condi-
tions" are not causally significant is what might be called the "experimental"
argument. If "conditions" did not affect the consequences of human actions (or
non-human actions for that matter), it would not be necessary for laboratory ex-
periments to be conducted under "controlled" conditions. But, of course, it is
necessary for such conditions to be controlled, as far as possible, for the simple
reason that it can be shown that very often variations in conditions measurably
affect experimental results.
Consequently, the view of causation in history which underlies Mandelbaum's
rejection of White's narrative, linear-series model of historical writing is basically
correct; as is also, for the reasons which have been detailed, Mandelbaum's view
of what (for purposes of argument) constitutes an historical narrative. This,
however, implies that White's view of the nature of historical writing is quite
untenable.
A. C. Danto advances a position similar in many respects to that of White, but
one which reveals the exercise of considerably more caution. Where White
affirmed that his view of history was the product of his "reflection on narrativ
Danto put forward the more careful thesis that "narrative sentences are so
peculiarly related to our concept of history, that analysis of them must indicate
what some of the main features of that concept are."9
Like White, Danto takes the view that a history is fundamentally a narrative,
and that any genuine history is a history of some continuous subject. However,
his view of the structure or skeleton of a narrative differs from that of White in
one crucial respect. If Danto were to use the symbols White has employed, he
would need to affirm that, in the simplest case, a history of some central subject
S consists in asserting: Because H happened to S at to, S, which at t, was A, be-
came, at t3, B; because I happened to S at t4, S, which at t3 was B, became, at t5,
C, and so on.10 In marked contrast to this, White holds a view of the structure
of an historical narrative according to which A led to (or caused) B, and B led to
(or caused) C.
When the accounts of Danto and White are juxtaposed in this way, one may
readily discern the crucial difference between them. All we are entitled to say
about the relationship between A, B, and C, on Danto's account, is merely that
A was followed by B, and B was followed by C. In Danto's account, as contrasted
9. A. C. Danto, Analytic Philosophy of History (Cambridge, 1965), 143.

10. Ibid., Chap. XI, passim.
280 RICHARD G. ELY
with White's, the connection between A, B, and C is not a causal one.-" They
are connected, rather, as parts of a certain kind of whole-namely the change:
SA -SB -SC.12 The whole point of the historian's narrative, on Danto's view,
is to account causally for changes in some continuous subject. Narratives are used
in history "to explain changes, and, most characteristically, large-scale changes
taking place, sometimes, over periods of time vast in relation to single human
lives. It is the job of history to reveal to us these changes, to organize the past
into temporal wholes, and to explain these changes at the same time as they tell
what happened - albeit with the aid of the sort of temporal perspective
linguistically reflected in narrative sentences. The skeleton of a narrative has this
form:
I.././............/
[The vertical strokes represent the termini of successive changes in some con-
tinuous subject; the intervening dots represent whatever happened to the con-
tinuous subject to cause its successive changes]."''3
Danto, then, is also committed to the view that historical writing is essentially
and necessarily narrative; but, as we saw, his view of what constitutes an historical
narrative differs in certain respects from the narrative model against which
Mandelbaum directs his criticism: A led to B, B led to C, etc. On Danto's view,
one would need to say that: Action H at t2 led to S (which at t, was A) changing
into B at t3; Action 1 at t4 led to S (which at t3 was B) changing into C at t5;
and so on. But although Danto's model of historical narrative is more complex
than the one which Mandelbaum actually describes, and although it entails a
different view of the relations between A, B, and C, it does not differ in any
important respect from the model which Mandelbaum criticizes so severely. It,
also, presupposes that the events which form a unitary strand of history are to
be envisaged as forming a linear sequential series: /./././ and so on; and it
also presupposes the unsound view that causal efficacy in history is solely the
property of antecedents. There is, further, no place in Danto's model for the
specification of conditions, as distinct from causes.
In the last analysis, therefore, Danto's position is untenable. It is quite as
vulnerable as is that of White to Mandelbaum's arguments.
In the preface to his Philosophy and the Historical Understanding, W. B. Gallie
declares that: "What is new in my account of historical understanding is the
emphasis that I have put on the idea of narrative."''4 But this remark shoul
be misunderstood: his claim with respect to the position of narrative in history is
merely, as he himself puts it, that narrative is "essential" to all history.'5 He
nowhere asserts the adequacy of a solely narrative history. In fact, he spends
considerable time discussing the question of "the place and function of narrative
11. Ibid., 235.

12. Idem.
13. Ibid., 255.
14. W. B. Gallie, Philosophy and the Historical Understanding (New York, 1964),
Preface.
15. Ibid., 65. His claim that narrative is "essential" to history (i.e., is a necessary
ingredient in it) should be clearly distinguished from the claim that history is "essen-
tially" (i.e., really only) narrative.
vis-a-vis other features or aspects of works of history, e.g., the discussions,

analyses, and explanations that they contain."'16
Hence, to summarize the argument in this section: the refutation of the claim
that history is essentially a narrative construction entails the untenability of those
views concerning historical writing which have recently been advanced by White
and Danto; but Gallie is not, unlike these two theorists, committed to the truth
of this claim, so that its refutation has no bearing on the question of the correctness
of his position.
III
I wish to conclude this paper by suggesting that although the claim that history is
essentially narrative is false, it is the kind of false claim which is likely to be fruit-
ful in discussions of the nature of the historian's enterprise. It is likely to be
fruitful because it reflects-even if it only imperfectly expresses-a genuine
insight into the practice of history.
It is possible that theorists like White and Danto, who have argued that history
is essentially narrative, have recognized, but misunderstood and misapplied, an
important characteristic of historical thinking.
When an historian describes a series of human actions which were intended
to achieve, and did achieve, some goal, he will need to describe the actions con-
stituting such a series with reference to the circumstances in which they were
performed. In principle, the historian might describe and analyze the entrepreneur's
situation at the very beginning of his account; and this would then leave him
free, during the remainder of his account, solely to narrate. So that, under such
special circumstances, it really is the case that an historian needs only to narrate.
But in any historical study of an enterprise of some magnitude, the placement of
such situational analyses and descriptions at the beginning would impose an
almost impossible burden on the historian's memory, and on that of his readers.
16. It is appropriate to note in passing a further unwarranted criticism. On p. 415

Mandelbaum refers, without elaboration but critically, to Gallie's claim that history is a
species of the genus, story. Mandelbaum would, perhaps, argue that if historical writing
is not essentially a matter of constructing stories, narratives, or connected chronicles,
it necessarily follows that history cannot be a species of the genus story. But to this
hypothetical argument Gallie could well reply that this conclusion would only follow
if he were committed to a much stronger claim than that history was a species of the
genus, story; the claim, namely, that history was a species only of the genus story.
Certainly, in Philosophy and the Historical Understanding Gallie spends very little
time discussing history as a form of inquiry, but his omission is deliberate, and
it is in no sense a recommendation to philosophers of history to refrain from an-
alyzing such matters as the vindication of historical understanding, the testing of
historical theses, and the avoidance of bias. Gallie's position is, rather, that questions
concerning the nature of historical understanding tend to be of a different type from
questions concerning the methods whereby such understanding can be obtained and
authenticated; that questions of the former type have hitherto been poorly handled, at
least partly through being run together with questions of the latter type; and that, there-
fore, questions of the former type, questions concerning the nature of historical under-
standing, can more profitably be considered in isolation from questions of the logical
and methodological type (Gallie, ibid., 12).
282 RICHARD G. ELY
It would moreover make it extremely difficult for the historian's readers to en-
visage the entrepreneur, or the entrepreneurs, successively overcoming the prac-
tical problems created by a (probably) changing situation. It would not, of
course, be hard in such a case for the historian and his readers merely to envisage
the series of actions performed by some entrepreneur. What would be difficult
and complicated would be the envisaging of such a series of actions as a succession
of practical solutions. For this would require, further, a sustained recollection
of the nature of the problems which such actions solved, something which would
be especially tricky when the problems arising were created by changes in the
situations facing the entrepreneur. Hence, it is a characteristic feature of the
historical study of human projects and human achievements, that, as was noted
in section II, historians link together their descriptions of purposeful human ac-
tions with their descriptions of the circumstances under which such actions were
performed.
It is therefore unwise and unprofitable for an historian who is describing a
series of purposeful actions to seek to create for himself opportunities solely to
describe such a series of actions. But it is neither unwise nor impossible for the
historian conceptually to isolate such a series of actions from the often changing
situations with which they were, individually, designed to deal. The conceptual
isolation of a series of actions, even of a highly complex series of actions, is not,
normally, very difficult. Furthermore, in the so-called "narrative histories," and
most notably in the historical study of the self-aware and successful pursuit of
tangible goals, the conceptual isolation of a series of purposeful human actions
is a necessary ingredient in the sort of understanding of his subject matter which
the historian typically strives to obtain and communicate.
The truth of this claim is readily demonstrated by reference to the historical
study of successful enterprise. The historian, in order to conceive of the actions
of some entrepreneur as a successful means to a certain objective, must think of
those actions as together constituting the solution to a certain kind of practical
problem. That is, the historian must think of those actions as conceptually isolated
(in the way that solution and problem are conceptually isolated) from the cir-
cumstances in relation to which they were performed. For circumstances alter
cases; they affect the consequences of human actions. They must accordingly be
specified in the statement of the entrepreneur's problem. The historian cannot
possibly obtain, let alone convey, an understanding of why a particular successful
enterprise was successful, unless he conceptually isolates - isolates from the
circumstances in which they happen to be performed - a particular series of
actions which, in those circumstances, actually insured the attainment of the
desired objective.
It is, perhaps, a recognition of this aspect of the historian's work -the his-
torian's conceptual isolation of a series of intentional human actions from the
situations with which they were designed to cope -which has induced theorists
such as White and Danto to regard historical writing as essentially narrative.
That is, such theorists may have recognized, correctly, that "narrative" historians
(such as Macaulay and Trevelyan) have principally sought to narrate a complex
series of actions which they have conceptually isolated from the various situations
in relation to which such actions have needed to be understood. But where such
theorists have been seriously mistaken is in assuming that what can be con-
ceptually isolated can always be described and appropriately understood without
reference to that from which it is isolated. Certainly one can describe the leg of a
chair without making reference to the chair itself. But in the case of the historical
study of successful enterprises the matter is more complex. It is admittedly true
in such cases that, regarded as a series of physical motions, the set of actions
which the narrative historian has conceptually isolated can be satisfactorily de-
scribed without reference to the circumstances in which they were performed.
But what is not true- and this may be the fundamental error of White and
Danto - is that although such a series of actions can be conceptually isolated
from the set of problems which they in fact solved, they cannot be narrated as
solutions unless they are described in conjunction with the problems which they
solved.
My suggestion is, therefore, that the deficiencies which Mandelbaum has noted
in the views of White and Danto are basically the result of a failure on the part
of these two theorists to distinguish clearly between the question of how
historians think, and the question of how historians may, perforce, have to
communicate what they think.
Sydney, A ustralia
2. By ROLF GRUNER
I quite agree with Maurice Mandelbaum' that "the present tendency to view his-
tory as narrative is unfortunate, and stands in need of correction," but I do not
think he has supported his criticism by very good reasons. After all, his opponents
might very well subscribe to all or most of his points without being obliged to shift
their position. They might simply maintain that when they speak of "story" or
"narrative" what they have in mind is something in the nature of a classic Eu-
ropean novel and that what Mandelbaum says of history can also be said of this
kind of work. For such a novel, too, is by no means a "linear series," but some-
thing much more complex. Its author also must refer to an "essential background"
which cannot itself be "formulated in terms of narrative," and he, too, can be
said to describe the relationships of parts to a non-simultaneous whole. But since
this does not mean that a novel is non-narrative, how can Mandelbaum's argu-
ments, however sound they may be, refute the view of the narrative, or essentially
narrative, character of history?
The main reason why the thesis that history is necessarily narrative must never-
theless be rejected is touched upon by Mandelbaum in the second paragraph of
his paper, but is quickly dismissed. This reason is that there exist works of history
which do not follow a chronological pattern and which, therefore, cannot be nar-
rative. He dismisses it because "an opponent might claim that such studies are
merely adjuncts to 'history proper,' rather than being instances of it." But this
is just what cannot be claimed, or rather, though it is claimed - as it has indeed
often been claimed - the claim is wrong.
More generally, what I have in mind is the following. It is certainly true that
there is a close kinship between the words "history" and "story"; in other lan-
guages, such as French, Italian, or German, one and the same word may denote
both. And it is also probable that history as it is known today has developed from
1. "A Note on History as Narrative," History and Theory 6 (1967), 413-419.
284 ROLF GRUNER
epic poetry. The expression "the history of a" (where "a" can either be the name
of an individual such as "the earth," "the Seven Years' War," "England," or a
general term such as "the horse," "democracy," "banking") indicates an evolution
or development (or its written or oral account). In a book called History of
England in the Eighteenth Century we expect to read the story of England during
that time-span, as we expect to find in The History of Henry Esmond the life-
story of the person bearing that name. We expect to be told how the subject
progressed from a certain point on the time-scale to a certain later point, that is,
how it reached a final state via a number of intermediate stages.
However, the origin of history or the close relationship between the words "his-
tory" and "story" is hardly relevant for characterizing the activity of present-day
historians. Even if history has indeed sprung from story-telling and has exclu-
sively consisted in story-telling at one time, this does not mean that in general
it is, or must be, always story-telling. Although it is true that an "history of a"
cannot be anything but a story of a, not all works of history are histories of
something, and there are accounts of subjects which are not histories of those
subjects but which are nevertheless historical accounts. There are "cross-sectional"
works of history, accounts of past periods which are not, or not mainly, concerned
with changes over time, with evolutions or developments, but which are descrip-
tions of past states of affairs, that is, of situations or conditions conceived as static.
(One could also say here that there are "eventless" works of history, works in
which not events- including actions- but states of affairs are the things which
matter most.) Their existence refutes the thesis that evolution or development is
the "essential dimension of historical reality"2 or-as Mandelbaum himself has
maintained -that historians see everything "in the light of an actual process
of change,"3 for their emphasis is not on a series of happenings over time but on
the state of things at a certain time.4 To mention two well-known examples, Burck-
hardt's The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy and Huizinga's The Waning of
the Middle Ages are certainly not stories of their subjects and do not adopt a
narrative form. One glance at their tables of contents will show that they are not
organized on chronological lines; and since chronological order is the external
hallmark of a story, they cannot be conceived as stories - although here and
there one can find narrative elements in them, as one can find static-descriptive
elements in narrative works, for instance in the approximately one hundred and
fifty pages of the third chapter of Macaulay's History of England. Of course, their
authors knew very well that changes did take place during the periods they
described, but changes were not the things they were really interested in, and by
and large they chose to disregard them.
In the face of such examples one can try in several ways to save the thesis ac-
cording to which all history is narrative. Firstly, one might say that such works are
2. R. Aron, Introduction to the Philosophy of History (London, 1961), 120.

3. M. Mandelbaum, The Problem of Historical Knowledge (New York, 1938), 5-6.
4. So also H. Butterfield, History and Human Relations (London, 1951), 230 ff. It
seems that some historians would like to have it both ways. J. H. Hexter, for instance,
declares on page 21 of his book Reappraisals in History (London, 1961) that the his-
torian's real business is the telling of a story, while on the next page he distinguishes
between "file history" (which deals with events in temporal order) and "rank history"
(which deals with relations of more or less simultaneous events). But how can "rank
history" be brought under the heading "story"?
not historical in character. But then one would be obliged to point out what they are
if they are not history. They cannot be counted as works of the social sciences.
For, apart from the fact that they are concerned with the past, the concepts
they employ are individual, historical concepts, and their authors were neither
interested in the establishment or testing of social, cultural, or psychological gen-
eralizations of universal validity; nor was it their purpose to provide material for
such establishment or testing in the form of a "case-study." It is true that there
are descriptive works in present-day social science which deal with a singular
and particular piece of reality - for instance with an individual tribe or some
historical "Middletown." They may be narrative and concerned with "social
change" or they may be non-narrative and concerned with "social structure" or
"social system," but they are not historical. The concepts they employ are scien-
tific concepts; their aims are the aims of science; they are geared to the wider
context of the scientific discipline to which they belong. That is, such a work is
intended to serve as an illustration of some social law or laws, or to provide
grounds for scrapping or modifying certain widely held social generalizations, or
simply as a contribution to the ever-growing corpus of empirical material without
which no social science seems to be able to manage. (This is not to deny that an
author in the course of his "field work" may develop an intimate or even sym-
pathetic interest and concern for his subject, so that his finished work is something
more than a case-study. But this alone does not make him into an historian.)
In short, its raison d'etre is different from the raison d'e'tre of a work of history.
If Rickert was right and the criterion for distinguishing between science and his-
tory is to be found in the aims of the investigation, then these books by Burckhardt
and Huizinga, although non-narrative, cannot be of a scientific nature. The in-
terest of their authors was in the individualities of the periods concerned, in what
they did not share with other periods but what was unique and specific to them.
Such interest is the typically historical interest, and the works are works of history
or they are nothing.
Secondly - and this brings me to the reason why Mandelbaum has dismissed
the main argument - one might admit that there are non-narrative works of his-
tory but might regard them as merely "ancillary" to or "parasitic" upon history
proper.5 One might hold, for example, that they are no more than "monographs"
conceived as preparations of or contributions to the narrative history of the sub-
ject. But although there are works which, in this sense, have no interest in their
own right, it is impossible to maintain that books such as those by Burckhardt or
Huizinga are just ancillary or preparatory studies and cannot stand on their own
feet. This would go against the judgment of almost all historians, and it would
mean tying the value of an historical account to the way in which this account
is organized. The reference to usage, to the fact that the two works are regarded
as works of history, is not as irrelevant as it may seem to some people. As a
philosopher of science cannot form a concept of, say, a scientific law which would
deny the status of law to some generalizations which according to scientists are
laws-for instance to Kepler's laws of planetary motion -so a philosopher of
history cannot ignore the views of historians and intelligent laymen when he
decides what is to count as history or as "real" history. In particular, he cannot
make the value of an historical account dependent on its narrative or non-narra-
5. These strong terms are used by W. B. Gallie, Philosophy and the Historical Under-
standing (London, 1964), 65.
286 ROLF GRUNER
tive character, and cannot lay down the law in accordance with some precon-
ceived ideas as to what history should or should not be like.
Thirdly, one might deny that the books I have used as examples of non-narra-
tive history are in fact non-narrative. One might deny, for instance, that chrono-
logical order is a necessary condition of "narrativeness." Again, this would mean
violating common usage, for there can be little doubt that development over
time, from an initial point t, through intermediate points t2, t3 . . . . t
point ti,1 is commonly regarded as necessary so that one can speak of
narrative. Alternatively, one might say that the two works, though not overtly
narrative, are nevertheless tacitly referring to change over time and hence are
implicitly narratives But insofar as this is true, it is trivially true. Any individual
state of affairs is transient and momentary in the flow of reality. Consequently,
we know that the states before and after the state which is described are different
from this state. And if one is interested in its particularity and singularity, it fol-
lows that one must have some knowledge of what went before and what came
after, for otherwise this "uniqueness" could not be recognized at all. (Even the
term "Renaissance" as used by Burckhardt makes sense only to someone who has
an idea of what went before and what came after.) So if this is taken as a reason
for viewing the description of such a state as narrative, then there can be no
individualizing description of any singular state of affairs which is not narrative.
Of course, if one prefers one can equate "individualizing" and "narrating" in this
way (and thus make it analytically true that all history is narrative), but then
one will still be left with the difference between giving a "kinetic" description of
a phenomenon and giving a "static" description of the same phenomenon, between
writing the history of the Renaissance in the sense of giving an account of the
changes which took place within this period, and painting an overall picture of
it in which such internal changes do not enter.
Finally, one might get hold of the fact which I have acknowledged myself,
namely that there are narrative elements in non-narrative works and vice versa,
and infer from this that the difference is just a matter of degree, of more or less,
and thus does not support my thesis. There are fewer narrative elements in Burck-
hardt than there are in Macaulay; there are more non-narrative elements in the
former than there are in the latter; and that is all. In any given case the number
of such elements may approach zero, but since it never reaches zero there is no
justification for asserting the possibility of non-narrative history. This, however,
is to confuse empirical matter of fact with a point of logic. Even if "pure" cases
cannot be found in the reality of historiography, it still remains true that if a
completely non-narrative work of a certain character were to be found -if, for
instance, there were no narrative elements in Burckhardt's book - it would still
have to be called a work of history.
In other words, there are two principally different ways of conceiving and
portraying an individual stretch of reality, a static-descriptive or non-narrative
and a kinetic-descriptive or narrative way.7 I can give an individualizing account
6. Danto, for instance, (in Analytical Philosophy of History [Cambridge, 1965], 140)
admits that if an historian is only interested in establishing a fact, he is not narrating.
But he holds that even then his activity will presuppose a narrative. What, however,
does "presuppose" mean here? In a sense every description presupposes a narrative.
7. It is obvious that a story or narrative cannot be static in this sense; that is, cannot
be used to describe a state of affairs conceived as static. To say with G. J. Renier,
of, say, the political system of a country in a certain historical period by describing
the Wirkungszusammmenhang of all its parts - that is, by describing how these
parts functionally and teleologically interact and hang together - and then there
is in principle no need for any reference to the temporal change of the system or
any particular part. Nevertheless, if my interest is in, and my emphasis on, unique-
ness and on what the system does not have in common with other systems, and
especially if the system is a system of the past,8 my description will be an his-
torical description. Alternatively, I can describe the same system by reference to
its development, by showing how the parts changed themselves and in their
relationships to each other and how, consequently, the system as a whole under-
went a change. In this case, too, if my aim is individualizing, I am active as an
historian. These are at least logical possibilities, and the fact that in practice they
are perhaps never realized in pure form and that one can find borderline cases
where one is unable to say with firmness that a work is narrative or non-narrative
does not affect the issue.
The issue is that it is principally possible to describe something historically with-
out telling a story of it or about it. Historical description is not the same as his-
torical narration (as Mandelbaum is or was inclined to believe9); the latter is only
a species of the former. And the existence of works such as those by Burckhardt
and Huizinga is an indication of the fact that indeed not all history is narrative
in character, which entails that "narrativeness" cannot be an, or even the, essential
characteristic of history or one of its defining features. This needs to be said at
a time when many philosophers believe that historical understanding is best dis-
cussed by discussing "what it is to follow a story," that the logic of historical
statements can be sufficiently characterized as a logic of narration or that ex-
planation in history is explicable in terms of story-telling.
St. Mary's University, Halifax
3. By WILLIAM H. DRAY
Maurice Mandelbaum's "A Note on History as Narrative" complains that certain

recent theorists of history - whom I shall refer to, for convenience, as "the
narrativists" - have often written as if no history is or ought to be written other
than the kind which tells a story. On this point of fact I think he is undoubtedly
correct; and that this can be misleading is shown convincingly enough by Rolf
Gruner's examples of "cross-sectional" or "static" historical works. As Gruner
makes clear, the point is not just that historians may often, for long stretches, be
describing yet not narrating; it is that some of their accounts have a non-narrative
overall principle of organization. Even if such works contain narrative, they are
not, as a whole, narrations.
History (London, 1950), 39, that a story can be static is to express a contradiction in
terms.
8. The question of whether a description must be of a past phenomenon in order to
be called an historical description need not occupy us here. No matter what conclusion
one may come to in this respect, it will not affect the point I am making in this paper.
9. Mandelbaum, Problem of Historical Knowledge, 5: "the historian's whole purpose
as historian is to describe, to narrate."
288 WILLIAM H. DRAY
Gruner goes on to distinguish, usefully, between works of history which are

histories of something and those which are not, conceding that the histories, at
least, would assume a narrative form. This is a concession of some importance for
Mandelbaum's opponents, since some of them have said explicitly that it is the
attempt to analyze the concept of "a history of something" which drives them to
elucidate what is sometimes called "the logic of narration."' Those opponents
might also, with justice, point out that, until recently, such questions had been
almost entirely neglected by analytical philosophers of history, to the impoverish-
ment of their discipline. Mandelbaum's "Note" might nevertheless be welcomed,
even by them, if it could be conceived simply as an attempt once again to redress
the balance of the discussion. But Mandelbaum himself seems to aim at consider-
ably more than this; and in my own comments on what he says, I should like to
look critically at some exaggerations into which I think he falls in consequence.
Since these are connected with a special sense which he sometimes appears to
give to the denial that history is "essentially narrative," I shall begin with some
remarks about the use of that expression in the controversy.
Mandelbaum says that he is challenging "the belief that historical inquiry and
historical writing are essentially matters of constructing stories, narratives or
connected chronicles." How is this alleged belief to be understood? As Richard Ely
points out, the question might be whether narrative is a sufficient condition of a
work's being historical, or whether it is simply a necessary one. Now the former
may appear to be an unlikely view for Mandelbaum to attribute to an opponent.
Yet his actual words do sometimes suggest that the more extreme claim is the
one he had principally in mind. This is the natural conclusion to draw, for ex-
ample, when he protests that other criteria besides "interest and intelligibility"
the marks of a good story - are applicable to what the historian does. The sense
in which Mandelbaum thinks this is a point to be urged against the narrativists is
unfortunately somewhat obscured by his calling attention, in this connection, to
such "other criteria" as that an historical work be based upon inquiry. I shall
have something further to say below about what I consider to be the excessive
narrowness of Mandelbaum's conception of what may constitute historical "in-
quiry." But it should be clear enough that none of the cited narrativists seriously
held that inquiry, even in what seems to be Mandelbaum's own sense of evidential
arguments for particular factual assertions and explanations, could be dispensed
with by historians. They don't even give the impression that they think it could.
Ely is wise, therefore, in considering the alleged claim of the narrativists in its
sufficient condition interpretation, to concentrate rather on the question whether,
according to theorists like White, Danto, and Gallie, the content of an historical
work need include anything more than the story sequence itself. Certainly the
actual models of historical narrative which have been sketched by all three leave
little room for what Mandelbaum calls "background" factors. And it is easy to
agree that, without knowledge of these, the narrative itself would scarcely be
intelligible for long. As Ely and Gruner show, the claim that intelligible narrative
requires knowledge of a background, whether actually sketched or only assumed,
is quite compatible with there being good histories containing long stretches of
straight narration, and also histories whose overall aim is to narrate something.
1. See, for example, M. G. White, Foundations of Historical Knowledge (New York,

1965), 221.
The contrast Ely draws among White, Danto, and Gallie with respect to the
sufficient condition claim seems to me rather less convincing. Gallie's explicit
admission that historians have to interrupt their narratives from time to time in
order to offer "discussions, analyses and explanations" does indeed put him clear
of criticism in this regard. But it is rather hard on White and Danto to represent
them as disagreeing with him, simply because they make no mention of this matter
while trying to elucidate the structure of narrative itself. White, for example,
claims only that narration is "the typical form of discourse employed by the
historian."2
With respect to the contention that narrative form is at least a necessary condi-
tion of a work's counting as historical, Gruner's comment has made the most
important points. Considered as an assertion that, whatever additional conditions
may have to be satisfied, a work of history must have the overall aim of narrating,
with a structure appropriate thereto, the claim is simply false. It is false even if a
model of narrative less simplistic than those of White, Danto, and even Gallie,
could be elaborated-one which would incorporate background factors in the
way in which, as Gruner reminds us, great novels always do. As Gruner has
further shown, it is even false that a work must contain narrative to be properly
considered a work of history, however unlikely it may be that we shall ever find
one without some. This undermines in advance what may seem a more plausible,
weaker version of the necessary condition claim, namely, that narrative is at least
a necessary element in all historical writing (a possible interpretation of Gallie's
position, although I think, unlike Ely, that he intends to claim more than this).
Still a weaker version, recognizing Gruner's distinction between two fundamentally
different types of historical investigations, and holding therefore only that some
histories would have to be, or contain, narrative, would likewise fail.
It would be plausible, perhaps, to say that narrative is necessary to history at
least in the sense that narrative history is needed; that the discipline of history
would be the poorer, indeed in a sorry state, if historians were ever to restrict
themselves entirely to cross-sectional works. Faced with Gruner's distinction,
doubtless many narrativists would want to say precisely this. If they did, however,
they would be no nearer the desired conclusion that history is essentially narrative
in the sense of narrative's being one of its necessary conditions. To have brought
this sharply to our attention seems to me a considerable merit of the exchange
between Mandelbaum and Gruner. It might be added (and here I argue implicitly
against Ely on how the "procedural recommendation" of the narrativists may be
"discredited"), that the acceptance of this position does not entirely eliminate a
rationale for the claim which Mandelbaum, at the beginning of his "Note," attrib-
utes to his opponents: the claim that "if we are to understand what historians
actually do, we should examine what features are characteristic of narratives."
For there remains the fact that a good deal of what historians produce is narrative
history. And facts, as well as necessities, can generate philosophical obligations.
But besides the senses mentioned so far, I think there is still a further sense in
which history might be considered to be "essentially narrative," and one which is
at least strongly suggested by Mandelbaum's own treatment of the question. It
lurks, it seems to me, in his daring contention that the narrativist view of history
2. Ibid., 4.
290 WILLIAM H. DRAY
is misleading even in what might appear to be the most favorable case for it: the
sort of case in which it is admittedly "the aim of the historian to construct an
historical account in which the precise sequence of occurrences does provide an
essential framework." In saying that history is not essentially narrative even in
such a case, Mandelbaum does not seem just to be arguing (although he could
conceivably be) that narration is less than a sufficient condition of a work's being
historical. It is even less likely, surely, that he is holding narration not to be a
necessary condition of an historical account which aims to set out a "precise
sequence of occurrences," for that would be absurd. But another and more inter-
esting interpretation could be placed upon what he says. His point could be that
the envisaged history would still not be essentially narrative because the elabora-
tion of its story would not be the really important aspect of what it must achieve.
There are a number of other remarks in Mandelbaum's "Note" which are open
to this sort of interpretation. We are told, for example, that "the task of the his-
torian is not one of tracing a series of links in a temporal chain; rather, it is his
task to analyze a complex pattern of change into the factors which served to make
it precisely what it was." Since this is presumably said with the "most favorable
case" in mind, the point seems to be that mere narration would fail to discharge
the central obligation of an historian. We are told, further, that in historiography it
is part-to-whole, not antecedent-to-consequent, that is "the fundamental relation" -
the latter, but apparently not the former, lending itself especially to narrative
construction. A similar emphasis on what is central or fundamental may perhaps
be found even in the phrasing of Mandelbaum's initial statement of his position:
the denial that historical inquiry is essentially "a matter of" constructing stories.
The desired conclusion seems to be that if historians narrate, they do it, or ought
to do it, only with their eyes on higher things. The real goal of historiography, the
"essence" of history, is to be found in something else.
One objection which at least some of Mandelbaum's opponents can be expected
to make to this is that it can only plausibly be read as a prescription: it can hardly
be considered a generalization derived from analysis of existing historical writing.
The extent to which Mandelbaum appears ready to legislate regarding the his-
torian's "task" is most clearly illustrated in his astonishing claim, when he comes
to consider biography as a source for historical theory, that even when an author
traces events in his subject's life leading up, say, to a great defeat or victory, "it is
not the sequential story which will be in the forefront of his attention, but the
question of why those events which made up the framework of that story should
in each case have followed as they did." Now to deny all prescriptive function to
the philosophy of any discipline would certainly be a mistake. But philosophical
prescription of the present kind, it seems to me, should be offered only for very
convincing reasons, which I do not find in Mandelbaum's "Note." It should be
offered, furthermore, in conjunction with a thorough philosophical understanding
of what is already done and aimed at by the discipline concerned, which I do not
think has yet been achieved by any recent analytical study of history (although
progress is being made). Most important of all, it should not be offered in the
guise of descriptive analysis, which I fear may be true of the present case. For
Mandelbaum's pronouncements do read as if he is still (as he put it at the begin-
ning) challenging narrativist views of "what historians actually do."
These are large issues which cannot be pursued very far in a brief comment
upon an even briefer "Note." But I do want to raise a question or two about one
aspect of what Mandelbaum says about the historian's "task" which I think bears
directly upon its acceptability as prescription. In his attacks upon the narrativists,
Mandelbaum makes it clear enough what he thinks the task of the historian is not.
His account of what, positively, he thinks it consists in I find a good deal less
straightforward. For even in the passages cited above, there seem to be envisaged
two quite different tasks: the task of explaining, and the task of relating parts to
wholes; and the question of their relationship raises problems.
Not that Mandelbaum himself always explicitly treats the two as distinct, even
though complementary, enterprises. His discussion of the unpopularity of Louis
XIV (in footnote 6), for example, which is supposed to explicate his own view
of the historian's task as the analysis of a given change into the factors "which
served to make it precisely what it was," directs attention to certain quotations
from Gardiner. But these, without his apparently noticing it, employ the notion
of "making" the unpopularity what it was both in the sense of causing it to be so,
and in the quite different sense of constituting it so. Thus we oscillate covertly
between the thesis that it is the historian's obligation to give an explanation which
makes it impossible for his analysis of the King's unpopularity to yield a narra-
tive, and the thesis that what rules this out is his obligation to show the full
nature of the unpopularity, and thereby (unless I have seriously misunderstood
Mandelbaum) to relate parts to whole. Mandelbaum also appears to argue (on
page 417) that it is because explanation in history cannot be achieved simply by
the narration of a linear series of events, but must take account of a vast complex
of broader societal factors, that the "fundamental" relation in historiography is
part-to-whole. But this is surely a non sequitur; for it is only the "whole explana-
tion" which would be at issue here. In consequence, it is hard to be sure exactly
what Mandelbaum's own conception is of the relation between the two "tasks"
which he does ascribe to historians. I shall take it, however, that these are at least
logically or structurally distinguishable, and that Mandelbaum thinks both are
fundamental to historiography. I shall take it also that it is the historian's commit-
ment to both of them that in his view makes it impossible to accord the task of
narration a similar status.
But how great, really, is this implied opposition, this practical incompatibility,
between an historian's aiming to narrate and his aiming to explain or to delineate
wholes? Greater, one would have to assume, than any similar opposition which
might be found to hold between the latter two tasks themselves. But it is difficult,
surely, to argue that this is in fact the case. A whole, for example, may be
explained by its causes; but it can scarcely be said to include them - the less so if
we accept Mandelbaum's requirement that causal explanations extend to a whole
environment. The only reason I find Mandelbaum giving for disposing of narrative
as non-fundamental is that the demands of the other tasks necessarily interrupt
the elaboration of the story line: the narrative, as it were, bogs down. But by
parity of reasoning, could it not be urged, taking one of Mandelbaum's own
examples, that the task of explaining the incidents of a career, whether personal
or institutional, would also constantly interrupt and divert attention from the task
of assembling those incidents into a whole with that "unity and pattern" which
Mandelbaum rightly represents historians as looking for? Certainly the actual
giving of such explanations and the constructing of such wholes would inter-
penetrate and overlap; they are not neatly separable activities. But the same could
be said of the relation of narrative to either of them. Why then do we have to
292 WILLIAM H. DRAY
choose between narrating and the other two activities in determining what "the
task" of the historian is?
All this can be said, it should be noted, without challenging Mandelbaum's
apparently monolithic conception of the sort of explanation historians are under
obligation to give. To the extent to which we are prepared to admit other accounts
of what explanation itself may be seeking to achieve in various contexts of inquiry,
the opposition between explaining and narrating might grow even less. Like Gallie,
I think that explanations themselves would often properly assume narrative form,
and that "following" an historical narrative with understanding would often
require sensitivity to a host of subtly different relations which are completely
missed by a theory of "full causal explanation" like Mandelbaum's. Ely has some
interesting suggestions to make in this connection; but there are others in the
literature. It is relevant to note, too, that Mandelbaum himself, in emphasizing
the historian's concern with wholes composed of non-simultaneous parts, has di-
rected attention to cases of part-to-whole relating which would often naturally
yield a narrative: the reconstruction of a development or a decline, for example.
Faced with Mandelbaum's argument for the alleged incompatibility of narration
with the other two "tasks," a narrativist could always, of course, take the high
line. He could claim that what this argument shows is only that, in view of the
primacy of narration, certain limits would necessarily be imposed in historiography
upon explanation and the relating of part to whole. The argument, in other words,
cuts both ways. But if the considerations I have sketched have any validity, there
will scarcely be need for any such heroic response.
In conclusion, I should like to say something about each of three supposed errors
which, according to Mandelbaum, have from time to time given false comfort to
the narrativists, and which he consequently warns us against in his "Note."3 These
are the confusion of the expository device of story-construction with the under-
lying inquiry which is the real work of the historian; the giving of undue causal im-
portance to intentional human acts, leading to a neglect of background factors in
history; and the misinterpretation of the teleological role played by selected out-
comes in the explanations historians give.
Mandelbaum draws a sharp distinction between the historian's problem of
finding out what happened - historical "inquiry" or "research" - and of pre-
senting the results of such inquiry in a manner which will be "clear and intelligi-
ble" to a reader. At the second stage, he maintains, the historian is no longer
"engaged in an inquiry which aims to establish what did in fact occur"; he is
engaged in "recasting," in the form of a story, results which might have been
achieved in quite a different order. This contrast seems to me to be misleadingly
overdrawn, especially (although not just) when read in connection with Mandel-
baum's complaint that a story-teller "typically" recounts (if not "invents") what
is already known. Of course, when the historian "writes up" his results, that is,
when he narrates, he tells us what he already knows. But the same could be said
of an activity of which Mandelbaum. clearly approves: explaining. For when the
historian explains, he is similarly telling us what he already knows - "recast,"
too, very likely, in the order he thinks most "clear and intelligible." By Mandel-
baum's test, he could thus no longer be said to be engaged in historical inquiry.
3. I have not followed the order in which Mandelbaum considered them.
To this it may be replied that what belongs to the inquiry is the actual discovery
of the explanations which are subsequently set forth in historical works. But could
it not equally be said that it is part of that inquiry to discover stories, if there are
any? Mandelbaum does not seem to see that the search for "what did in fact occur"
may reach as far as the story itself. "What's the story?" is as legitimate a form
of historical questioning as "What's the explanation?" Running through all of
Mandelbaum's account, it seems to me, is far too narrow a conception of the
questions that may enter into historical inquiry. Some questions, like "How did
things get into this state?" or "What train of consequences did that set in motion?",
are clearly story-generating. The ensuing historical narrative is, in such cases,
the goal of the inquiry, not something the historian brings in ab extra.
The view of causation which Mandelbaum thinks encourages narrativists is said
to regard what happened in history as "primarily, or even exclusively, due to
intentional human actions," leading to the interpretation of historical change as "a
linear series of intelligible human actions." What is puzzling about this is not
Mandelbaum's thinking that the stated view of causation would help provide ex-
cellent materials for story-telling. It is that he is so careful not to challenge the
account of causation itself. For that account is quite obviously false if it means
that what happens in history is always brought about by one or a few individual
historical agents, and even more clearly so if it means that historical causes are
always "choices" in the sense of deliberate acts. I do not recollect having defended
such a view myself, although Mandelbaum apparently attributes it to me. The
belief that Collingwood committed himself to something like it may perhaps find
some excuse in what is said about specifically historical causation (Cause Sense I)
in the Essay on Metaphysics, although I think a careful reading would show that,
if anything, it was historical effects, not causes, that Collingwood there represented
as necessarily human actions.4 Even this view is itself scarcely defensible without
serious qualification, of course. But its error is at any rate not obviously the
exclusion of reference to "long-standing interests, disaffections and needs."
An associated point which Mandelbaum urges against the use of the causal
concept by narrativists - although only in a footnote - is that they draw too
sharp a distinction between causes and conditions, as if the main business of history
was with causes. This matter, like the last, is too large for adequate treatment here.
But it might be observed at least that it would be odd if Mandelbaum's point were
simply, as Ely apparently believes, that conditions as well as causes are "relevant"
to what happens in history. The more interesting question is what Mandelbaum is
attacking when he denies that causes are the historian's "primary concern." In a
given history, causes will surely be the primary concern of an historian if he has
asked himself a "What was the cause?" sort of question. If he has, we can expect
him to distinguish causes sharply from "mere conditions," and to give them a
special place in his eventual explanatory account. I see no necessary connection,
however, between such distinguishing of causes from conditions and the elabora-
tion of oversimplified, chain-like causal sequences; for the demand, not just for
explanation, but for causes, can arise even in the case of Gruner's non-sequential
4. Mandelbaum himself seems to slide into considering the latter thesis as his dis-
cussion develops, although he does not actually say that he has shifted his target. It is
possible, of course, that the view he has in mind represents both causes and effects in
history as intentional actions.
294 WILLIAM H. DRAY
historical accounts. Nor, unlike Ely, do I see any especially close connection be-
tween drawing the cause-condition distinction clearly and holding a view of his-
torical causation requiring reference to intentional human actions. For -to take
a stock example -to ask a causal question about an explosion in a powder
factory may require us to draw the distinction no less sharply.
Regarding Mandelbaum's third temptation to narrativism, I have only one
simple point to make. The contention Mandelbaum apparently wishes to counter is
that the "relationships which an historian purportedly finds within his materials
are actually regulated by the story he wishes to tell." More specifically, he wishes
to deny that this contention follows from another which he admits: that a pre-
selected outcome is one of the factors governing the relevance of various items
in an historical account.5 As he appears to understand these claims, I should
have to agree that there is no legitimate inference from the one to the other; for
the first is surely concerned with the truth of the various assertions of relationship,
while the second refers specifically to their relevance. It is hard to see, however,
how Mandelbaum can think that by showing this he strengthens our defenses
against the relativism of White and Danto. For it is precisely the question of
relevance that the latter have in mind in holding that at least some of the facts
and relations included in a history are "functions of the historian's choice of the
particular story he wanted to tell."
Of course, Mandelbaum, as in the case of the alleged causal theories of the
narrativists, does not explicitly say he disapproves of relativism. Even without
knowledge of his other writings, however, it could plausibly be assumed that he
does. If so, it is perhaps worth asking, finally, why he appears to think that the
"fundamental" historical activity of relating part to whole, as he himself represents
it, does not similarly open the door to relativism. For at least some of the kinds of
wholes in which an historian can be expected to be interested, will surely, in their
construction, require the exercise of value judgment on the historian's part. In at
least one place, Mandelbaum seems close to acknowledging this himself, namely,
where he explores the implications of taking biography as a model for histori-
ography. As he rightly observes, the "unity and pattern" of a "life" may be
elaborated on the basis of the biographer's judgments of the "various accomplish-
ments and failures" of his subject.
Trent University
5. That every work of history has a pre-selected outcome, meaning selected before
the historian begins his inquiry, and not just before he sets himself to communicate
his results, seems to me in any case false. That Mandelbaum here accepts it without
question may be due to his apparently having only explanatory history in mind.

Mandelbaum On Historical Narrative A Discussion

Încărcat de

Informații document

Titlu original

Drepturi de autor

Formate disponibile

Partajați acest document

Partajați sau inserați document

Opțiuni de partajare

Vi se pare util acest document?

Este necorespunzător acest conținut?

Drepturi de autor:

Formate disponibile

Mandelbaum On Historical Narrative A Discussion

Încărcat de

Drepturi de autor:

Formate disponibile

Wesleyan University

Mandelbaum on Historical Narrative: A Discussion

A familiar method of discrediting a procedural recommendation in any field of

I first wish to consider whether the procedural recommendation which Mandel-

1. If we are to understand what historians actually do, we need to examine

* History and Theory 6 (1967), 413-419.

2. If we are to understand what historians actually do, it suffices to examine

1. M. White, "The Logic of Historical Narration," in Philosophy and History, ed.

assumption that an historical account can be construed in terms of this linear

6. Mandelbaum, "Note," 416-417.

9. A. C. Danto, Analytic Philosophy of History (Cambridge, 1965), 143.

11. Ibid., 235.

vis-a-vis other features or aspects of works of history, e.g., the discussions,

16. It is appropriate to note in passing a further unwarranted criticism. On p. 415

1. "A Note on History as Narrative," History and Theory 6 (1967), 413-419.

2. R. Aron, Introduction to the Philosophy of History (London, 1961), 120.

St. Mary's University, Halifax

Maurice Mandelbaum's "A Note on History as Narrative" complains that certain

Gruner goes on to distinguish, usefully, between works of history which are

1. See, for example, M. G. White, Foundations of Historical Knowledge (New York,

3. I have not followed the order in which Mandelbaum considered them.

S-ar putea să vă placă și