Arthur Danto philosophy of history position paper (The wise story teller)

The wise story teller

First of all, I would like to state the fact that I love narrative history. While growing up, I’ve heard many different narrative histories from my parents and historians whom I respect. The reason that I got really interested in studying the history was actually because these narrative stories inspired me and made me desire more about the past events that has really happened.

The reason that I stated the fact that I love narratives is because Arthur C. Danto has written a book that is called “Narration and knowledge.” Narration according to AC Danto wasn’t just a fairytale or other imaginary stories but it was based on the belief of science and other important factors that makes us believe that history is truly important tool that helps us know what has happened.

According to Danto’s theory, history can be subdivided into three major categories. The first are the pragmatic issues such as racism, slavery, sexual discrimination and other moralistic issues that surrounds us. Pragmatic issues are also ideological. Second is the history that is organized around Freudian history and finally the last type of history is the history that is organized around consequential consideration which deals with the conclusion the outcome of an event.

Each sentence of the narrative refers to two events. But always, the latter describes the first event that took place. For instance the Gomburza incident brought the Philippine nationalism to spread. The dying priests probably couldn’t even imagine that their death was the starting point of the rise of the Philippine nationalism. But this rise of the nationalism explains the importance of the Gomburza incident and the death of innocent liberal Indio priests in the Philippines.

In narrating a history, Danto uses the term project verbs. Project verb is used to describe history that is not discrete. What I mean by discrete event is for instance walking or running. This could be a discrete event because it has happened in a specific space and time. Events like war that lasted for several years, revolution and growth that took place for hundreds of bloody warfare isn’t a discrete event. This is called the temporal structures according to Danto. It is truly crucial to use project verb in order to narrate stories in a more precise and accurate manners.

Danto also argues about the relativity of historical knowledge. Historians argue the relativity of history and that history cannot provide any source of reasonable knowledge. And Danto responds to these arguments stating three mistaken charges of relativism.

The first error is the positivism viewpoint. Positivist says that the statement about the past is meaningless because it can’t be verified. But the problem is that all our experience is of the past. And for this cause, positivism viewpoint can’t be a valid argument rather it is just an error that could be ignored.

The second error is the skeptical arguments that were offered by Bertand Russell. He tried to prove through his view point that history in fact is just a bunk. He proposes the idea that the world is created five minutes ago and everything in relation to it. All the documents of the past was also created five minutes ago therefore the history would be a bunk because there wasn’t any past.

The argument against the skepticism is defended by Danto through saying that Russell is not arguing about the historical skepticism but the skepticism itself. Danto is saying that skepticism might work and it has been working for some cases but not in historic grounds.

The last argument states that history is relative because it is biased. But Danto argues that history is in fact a narrative and the idea of ideal chronicle which is to say that everything is recorded but if historians doesn’t arrange this events that has occurred in a narrative way, then nothing could be known and nothing could be said.

I believe that narrative history in the sense of AC Danto is truly important for us historians to engage more in history. The narration process of AC Danto has three steps. Beginning, middle, and the end and this are in comparison to Hegel’s philosophy of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis.

Of course the accuracy should be questioned because every human being has their subjective view towards history and they might distort the history according to their likes and dislikes.

I agree with AC Danto’s theory because it truly help me to gain more insights about the importance of narrative history and logicality that lies underneath the surface of history.



Danto, A.C. (1985). Narration and knowledge. Columbia University.