Objectivity and Historical Understanding

Booknews

An introduction to Bernard Lonergan's philosophy applying his approach to the areas of epistemology and the philosophy of historiography. Beards defends Lonergan's position on cognitional structure and epistemology, comparing his thought with other philosophers such as Rorty and Wittgenstein, and outlines his approach to problems concerning objectivity in the knowledge of history, arguing from Lonergan's position that the goal of historical writing is "understanding what was going forward in the human community in the past" pitting this position against that of Hayden White and Louis Mink while also concluding that reality does have an aspect in the "narrative" accounts of historians. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.