Daniel Boorstin, Historian Thought

Daniel J. Boorstin was one of the most famous historians in the 20^th-century post-war America. The dissertation unscrambles his historical thoughts to show his contributions to and important influence on American historiography. I believe it will display the character of American and western historiography in its changing stage. The following is the primary content of each chapter:The prologue is an overview of Boorstin's general background, academic achievements and the related researches on Boorstin. Considering the fact that so far, there is no systematic research on Boorstin's overall historical thoughts, I hope this dissertation will fill in the blank in western historiography.Chapter one deals with Boorstin's pragmatism with John Dewey and William James's pragmatism as reference. The chapter explores Boorstin's pragmatistic characters from different dimensions such as theory and practice, experimentalistic exploration, pragmatistic value, etc. The author wants to claim that Boorstin's pragmatism is a value deeply rooted in the America's specific soil of history and culture.Chapter two looks at how Boorstin connects the past, the present and the future with "way of life "as the clue. The focus of the chapter is Boorstin's understanding of "law". Boorstin's "law" is the institutionalized representation of "way of life" in a society. Law is the important voucher with which people understand the past. Law is the extension of religion. Law is the emotional element that ties the past, the present and the future. A distorted thought about law will unavoidably cause crisis in a society.Chapter three explores the four features of Boorstin's social political view---conservatism, that is, the providential thought of a naturalist, anti-rationalism skepticism, constitutional politics and a historical democracy. One of the important points of the chapter is that conservatism is a philosophy of life. Through this chapter, the author hopes to mitigate people's misunderstanding about conservatism.Chapter four approaches Boorstin's historical writing from the perspective of historical aesthetics. The author's main argument here is that Boorstin writes for the people and about the people.