"Practical Realism"; Study On Arthur Danto's Theory Of Historical Narrative

This article studies on Arthur Danto's theory of historical narrative which include preface, the main body and the conclusion. The preface is about Danto's lives and works, the reason that the writer chooses this topic and the review of research on Arthur Danto. The main body of this article includes five parts.The first part tells the context of Danto's theory of historical narrative from the view of the rise of analytical philosophy, the putting-forward of the mode of covering-law and the revolution of philosophy of science.The second part researches on the type and essence of historical narrative. Danto thinks that in essence historical narrative is selective description, and there are no essential differences between the pain narrative and the significant narrative. The writer thinks that it's necessary to distinguish the plain narrative and the significant narrative.The third part studies on narrative sentence. The narrative sentence has characteristics of timely and story structure. It reflects the cogency of past and the study about the past. It also reveals the asymmetry between the study about past and that about future. The writer thinks that historians should not only rethink the perspective of agents and other researchers, but also themselves. By contentious and verification, we may approach the goal of objectivity of narrative.The fourth part is about the mode of narrative explanation of history, which could trace back to Oakeshott's mode of continuous series. The explanadum of narrative explanation is the description of change. The explanation includes abstract redescription and law covering. Neither universal laws, as the grounds of explanation, nor deduction is one of necessary conditions of narrative explanation. The general abstraction work in the narrative explanation. The necessity and principle of narrative explanation is in pursuit of historical continuity. In the sense of weaken-law and weaken-deduction, narrative explanation is close to the mode of covering-law. It has already contained the study of whole-part. The rational explanation and narrative explanation have limits because of their perspectives. The synthesis of perspectives of narrator and agent may be a better device for explanation.The fifth part is review and introspection. The writer thinks that Danto reveals that the essence of history is narrative. In his theory of historical narrative, there is fusion and duality between narrative realism and narrative idealism, and there is dialectical tension between historical realism and anti-realism. The writer defines Danto's theory as practical realism.The conclusion is about Danto's research methods.