「歴史の説明」について

Abstract

The current discussions about the nature of historical explanation have their origin in an article by C. G. Hempel entitled 'The Function of General Laws in History'. Hempel argues that the logical structure of explanation, or the function of general laws in explanation, is basically the same in all areas of scientific inquiry, and in this sense he stresses the methodological unity of all empirical sciences. Thus the nature of historical method comes to be unravelled through the analysis of the logical structure of 'explanation'. Admittedly history as one of empirical sciences seeks for 'die denkende Ordnung der empirischen Wirklichkeit', and for that purpose it uses general concepts or generalizations. Moreover history can give us explanations of events. However 'historical explanation' is fundamentally different from 'scientific explanation'. For what historical explanation seeks to attain is in essence 'Verstehen', and its logical structure is not causal but teleological. In this paper I try to show this by examining the characters of historical causal explanation and explanation of action.