Narrative as a Form of Explanation

Many scholars have argued that history embodies a different form of explanation from natural science. This paper provides an analysis of narrative conceived as the form of explanation appropriate to history. In narratives, actions, beliefs, and proattitudes are joined to one another by means of conditional and volitional connections. Conditional connections exist when beliefs and pro-attitudes pick up themes contained in one another. Volitional connections exist when agents command themselves to do something having decided to do it because of a pro-attitude they hold. The fear remains, however, that all narratives are constructed in part by the imagination of the writer, so if the human sciences deploy narratives, they lack proper epistemic legitimacy. The paper dispels this fear by arguing that we have proper epistemic grounds for postulating conditional and volitional connections because these connections are given to us by a folk psychology we accept as true. Our standard way of explaining actions is by reference to the beliefs and proattitudes of actors. The most obvious historical examples are explanations of particular actions whether decided upon by an individual or group. Consider, for example, Colin Matthew’s explanation of W. E. Gladstone’s sensational production in 1886 of the controversial Government of Ireland Bill. Matthew describes how the Liberal Party was excluded from the process of discussion and how even the Cabinet was not given adequate time to examine the proposals. “Gladstone,” he explains, “hoped to trump Cabinet doubts and party unease by the production of a great bill.” The tactics Gladstone deployed are explained here by reference to his wish to win support for his proposals and his belief, albeit surrounded by doubts, that he could do so through the drama of a great bill. A similar form of explanation appears whenever historians treat classes, institutions, states, and the like as akin to people by ascribing intentions and reasons to them. ————— 1 H. Matthew, Gladstone, 1875-1898 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), p. 236. NARRATIVE AS A FORM OF EXPLANATION 11 Numerous historical explanations work by pointing to the beliefs and proattitudes that informed an action or set of actions. Historians explain all sorts of aspects of life in this way, including not only particular actions or sets of actions, but also broad patterns of behaviour associated with social movements, social structures, and the dynamics of social change. Although the relevant beliefs and pro-attitudes can become multiple, complex, and hard to disentangle, it is still to them historians turn, at least implicitly, in explaining human life. Consider, for example, Lawrence Stone’s explanation of the rise of the nuclear family in Britain. Stone explains the decline of kinship and clientage largely by reference to the rise of beliefs that emphasised allegiances other than private and local loyalties to individuals: the Reformation stressed a moral allegiance to God; a grammar school and university education in humanism stressed allegiance to the prince; and an Inns of Court education stressed allegiance to an abstraction, the common law. Similarly, Stone explains the rise of a form of family life based on affective individualism largely by reference to the spread of Puritan beliefs. The Puritans bequeathed a legacy, including an ideal of matrimony based on love, and a respect for the individual, which reached beyond the religious sphere of life. Puritanism, humanism, and the like, moreover, provided the context in which Enlightenment beliefs took root. “Family relationships were powerfully affected by the concept that the pursuit of individual happiness is one of the basic laws of nature, and also by the growing movement to put some check on man’s inhumanity to man.” Stone explains large patterns of social change by showing how new beliefs inspired new patterns of human action. He allows, of course, that the spread of the new beliefs can be related, in a mutually supportive fashion, to changes in the state and the economy. But although people become attached to new beliefs in a social context which makes the beliefs meaningful to them, it is, as Stone recognises, the new beliefs that explain the new patterns of behaviour and so the changes in social structure. A prominent form of historical explanation unpacks actions by reference to beliefs and pro-attitudes. My aim in what follows is to analyse this narrative form of explanation. Perhaps we can describe some actions in purely physical terms: we can say “Susan crossed the road”. As soon as we try to explain an action, however, we necessarily place it, at least implicitly, in the context of beliefs ————— 2 L. Stone, The Family, Sex and Marriage in England 1500-1800, abridged ed. (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1979), partic. pp. 176-80. 3 Ibid., p. 178. 4 Many of the words we would naturally use to describe certain actions, however, presuppose that the actor possesses certain inter-subjective meanings or beliefs. See C. Taylor, “Interpretation and the Sciences of Man”, Review of Metaphysics 25 (1971-72),