Seventeenth International Conference on the Arts in Society

Abstract

Have you ever wondered why is it that we have different interpretations about the same historical event? Take the so-called Conquest of Mexico, for example. Some say it was a conquest, some say it was a civil war, some say it was a rebellion, and others say it was an invasion. How can we explain this multiplicity? My paper provides an account that can explain the multiplicity of historical explanations in the historical discipline. To do so, I first discuss two different views on the matter that aim to answer the same question. On the one hand, the realist view holds a metaphysical commitment to the past that, as I will show, precludes it from fully recognizing the legitimacy of variability of historical interpretations. This view takes the multiplicity as a problem rather than as a natural state of the discipline. On the other hand, Ankersmit’s representationalism seeks to overcome the realist view by introducing the notion of aspects. Nevertheless, I contend that this latter position ultimately proves indistinguishable from the sort of realist commitments it claims to avoid. In order to overcome these views and the related questions it generates; I argue that a new conception of historical aspects is needed. By developing a Wittgenstenien notion of aspect perception I provide a novel account of aspects as applied to the case of historical explanation, one that provides a more philosophically satisfactory answer to the “diversity problem” and can ultimately explain different ways of seeing in history.