历史研究中的一致性与非一致性(上)——从年鉴学派到新文化史

Coherence and Incoherence in Historical Studies

本文考察的是从20世纪30年代产生的所谓年鉴学派到80年代产生于美国的“新文化史”之间的历史思维与历史编撰中的一致性问题。直到20世纪早期,史学界一直假定历史研究很快会产生出统一的人类历史。但并非像阿克顿与伯里这些历史学家想象的那样,一致性很难实现。年鉴学派的史学家费弗尔和布罗代尔提出了“总体历史”的观念,力图全面描述具体的历史真实,如菲利普二世时期的地中海。但适得其反的是,这种撰写“总体”历史的努力却产生了非一致性。“新文化史”的推崇者放弃了总体历史的计划,并提出历史学家应当统一在这样那样的史学研究的“范式”之中。这些历史学家中最为纯熟的人(比如亨特,LynnHunt)承认范式的选择从根本上讲是随意性的。本文置疑将范式一致性加于史学之上是否值得。历史学家应当力图发展批判的视点,并遵循认识论的高标准。这些均比有一种统一的历史编撰重要。

This article examines the problem of coherence in historical thinking and writing from the so-called Annales school in France in the 1930s to the “new cultural history” that emerged in the 1980s in the United States. Until the early 20th century, it was often assumed that historical research would soon generate a unified history of humanity. But coherence proved harder to a- chieve than such historians as Lord Acton and J. B. Bury hoped. The Annales school historians Lucien Febvre and Fernand Braudel proposed a “total history” aiming at the comprehensive description of specific historical realities, such as the Mediterranean in the age of Philip II, but the attempt to write “total” history tended, ironically, to generate incoherence. The promoters of the “new cultural history” abandoned the project of total history and instead proposed that historians should unite around one or another “paradigm” of historical research. The most sophisticated of these historians （e. g. , Lynn Hunt） acknowledge that the choice of paradigm is fundamentally arbitrary. The present article questions whether the imposed coherence of a paradigm is worth the price. Historians ought to aim for a critical perspective and adherence to high epistemological standards. These are more important than having a unified historiography.