西方历史学经典名著选读读书笔记4

Meaning and Understanding in the History of Ideas

Historians of ideas focus on two types of meaning – literal and intended meaning. Quentin Skinner makes two key distinctions: between literal and intended meaning, and between text and contexts. These distinctions should be considere considered separately. A statement‘s intended meaning may differ from its literal meaning –?the sense and reference of the terms used to express it. Skinner‘s first example is irony. Taken literally, Defoe‘s The Shortest-Way With the Dissenters argues that dissenters should be executed. Taken ironically, as Defoe actually intended, the argument is for toleration, not persecution. To conclude that Defoe meant to defend persecution would be to confuse literal and intended meanings, to confuse what the words say and what Defoe meant by them. Irony is the ?textbook case‘ of ?a divergence between what a person says and what she means‘.

Skinner‘s second example is ambiguity. We should look to intended meanings when literal meanings are unclear –when ?the speaker fails to make clear how exactly the utterance is to be taken or understood‘. Ambiguity is ?rampant‘ in natural languages, and perhaps no statement is ever entirely unambiguous. Much more could be said about speech-act theory. The basic point is that intended and literal meanings diverge, and we usually prioritise intended meanings. This

view is standard for philosophers of language, although they differ from each other in many details. Of course, my brief account cannot fully justify this position. But three points are briefly worth emphasising.

The value of textual analysis should be briefly highlighted. We do not need contextual analysis to reject obvious misreadings, like Geoffrey Hill‘s bizarre claim that Hobbes believed in i ntrinsic value. Indeed, the Cambridge school‘s huge contribution to intellectual history partly reflects high-quality textual analysis. Reading a text carefully is necessary – but not sufficient. Ultimately, the combination of textual and contextual analys is is crucial, as in Skinner‘s superlative analysis of Hobbes‘s changing account of liberty.

In summary, for many intellectual historians the aim is to uncover intended meanings, and the means to that end are textual and/or contextual analysis, both of which may involve analysing literal meaning.

斯金纳

斯金纳是行为主义学派最负盛名的代表人物——被称为―彻底的行为主义者‖。也是世界心理学史上最为著名的心理学家之一.

在哈佛大学攻读心理学硕士的时候，他受到了行为主义心理学的吸引，成为了一名彻头彻尾的行为主义者，从此开始了他一生的心理学家生涯。他在华生等人的基础上向前迈进了一大步，提出了有别于巴甫洛夫的条件反射的另一种条件反射行为，并将二者做了区分，在此基础上提出了自己的行为主义理论——操作性条件反射理论。他长期致力于研究鸽子和老鼠的操作性条件反射行为，提出了―及时强化‖的概念以及强化的时间规律，形成了自己的一套理论。斯金纳还将操作性条件反射理论应用于对人的研究，他认为，人是没有尊严和自由的，人们作出某种行为，不做出某种行为，只取决于一个影响因素，那就是行为的后果。人并不能自由选择自己的行为，而是根据奖惩来决定自己以何种方式行动，因此，

人既没有选择自己行为的自由，也没有任何的尊严，人和动物没有什么两样。

The Historical Text as Literary Artifact

White applies theories of fiction to historical writing (ie historiography). His essay raises questions about the disciplinary boundaries between HISTORY and LITERATURE . He coins the term ―meta-history ‖，stories about history. This theory attempts to blur the disciplinary

distinctions between Historiography and Literature. He argues strongly that historians employ the

― historical imagination ‖ when depicting the past. In other words the historian relies on the

narrative strategies of a literary writer. His idea is that HISTORY is narrative prose shaped by literary conventions and the historian‘s imagination. Perhaps historical narrative even employs types of ―plots ‖ or ―emplotments ‖ of tragic, comic, romantic, satiric.

Hayden White returns to age-old considerations; like Aristotle who in the POETICS questioned the fundamental dif ferences between ―history‖ and ?poetry‘:

―Poetry tends to express the

univ ersal, history the particular.‖ Notion of a truly scientific historical representation has its origins in the mid-19th century; postwar theory questions the objectivity of the historiography.

海登?怀特

怀特的历史诗学在研究历史修撰及历史研究本身的方法的同时，始终不离文学和文学批评的理论基础，特别在转义、虚构、话语、叙事和文本性等方面清楚地勾勒了历史修撰与文学创作、历史研究与文学批评之间的相关性，对于文学的历史主义批评尤其具有借鉴意义。

新历史主义（New Historicism）是诞生于80年代的英美文化界和文学界的―新‖的文学批评方法，一种对历史本文加以重新阐释和政治解读的―文化诗学‖。新历史主义对旧历史主义和形式主义文学批评方法加以批判，在张扬―主体‖、―历史‖和―意识形态‖中，使―本文的历史性‖与―历史的本文性‖成为文学批评的主要范畴。新历史主义的主将是格林布拉特（Stephen Greenblatt）和海登·怀特（Hayden White）。

怀特强调，历史的预想形式可用弗莱关于诗的四种语言转义（即隐喻、转喻、提喻和讽喻）来表示，这正是历史意识的四种主要方式。这样一来，怀特就将历史事实、历史意识和历史阐释的差异填平了。他坚持认为，人不可能去找到―历史‖，因为那是业已逝去不可重现和复原的，而只能找到关于历史的叙述，或仅仅找到被阐释和编织过的―历史‖。因此，历史意识就显得尤为重要了。在怀特看来，不可能有什么真的历史，历史的思辨哲学编纂使历史呈现出历史哲学形态，并带有诗人看世界的想象虚构性。这样，历史就不是一种，而是有多少理论的阐释就有多少种。人们只选择自己认同的被阐释过的―历史‖。这种选择往往不是认

识论的，而是审美的或道德的。经过这一番阐释，使人注意到怀特对历史意识、阐释框架和语言，以及诗意的想象和合理的虚构的特别强调，因为这正是怀特元历史理论的核心思想。

他认为解决本文与历史的关系是新历史主义研究的关键，要解决好这一问题，主要应选择语言叙事理论，在文学本文研究中采用历史本文研究法，在历史本文研究中采用文学研究法，使文学本文与历史本文在元历史的理论框架中恢复叙述（return to narrative），使文史哲和社会科学的界限淡化并打通边界。这种重叙事结构、重意义想象、重语言阐释的―元历史‖，是获得意义之―真‖的唯一途径。因为，历史事实不是―真实‖，事实漂流在历史中并可以与任何观念结合，而历史―真实‖只能出现在追求真实的话语阐释和观念构造之中。因此，怀特所理解的新历史主义就必然是一种诗意直觉的、印象主义的、本文细读式而非理论式的，因为―新‖历史主义仍然是一种历史主义，仍受制于元历史的理论框架规约。

Questions raised:

? Can events ― value neutral‖ ? does the historian ―emplot ‖ historical events and to give them meaning?

? What are t he possible modes of historical REPRESENTATION?

? Where l ies the balance between factual reconstruction and imagination recreation? We often questio n the ―realism ‖ of literature; Hayden White inverts this old question and questions the ― fiction ‖ in history! Can we make use of this idea in our study of literary texts and histories dealing with the WWII-period in the Nordic/Baltic region.