Verity and Truth as a Key Concepts of the Philosophy of History: Epistemological Evaluation of Historical Works
The article is devoted to the analysis of epistemological grounds for assessing the status of history as a scientific discipline. To this end, authors distinguish two types of historical research: “pure” historical studies and studies of “historical memory”, and also consider different approaches to the interpretation of the concept of “truth” as applied to historical studies of different types and identify the related difficulties, concerning the “objectivity” of historians describing the events of the past. Starting from the thesis of Frank Ankersmit about the impossibility of evaluating historical narratives from the point of their truth-value, the authors fix the limitation of the correspondent theory of truth as a justification for the scientific status of history. Two key theoretical points remain in the focus of the article: alternative epistemological justifications for the scientific status of history and the impact of collective historical memory on the results of the historian’s research activities. A conclusion is made about the illegitimacy of using the concept of Verity as an epistemological justification for the scientific status of history and it is noted that the research of collective and historical memory belongs to the sphere of interdisciplinary research, and therefore combines the method of “pure” history with the methodological approaches of other humanitarian disciplines. On the one hand, this allows researchers of collective historical memory to identify such aspects of the “functioning” of history in society that are significant to “pure” history. On the other hand, methodological pluralism leads to dissipation of the “historical” part of the investigation and puts in doubt scientific status of a historian.