John Dewey and the Ethics of Historical Belief: Religion and the Representation of the Past

Contents

CONTENTS PREFACE vii HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION Providing Reliable Witness to the Past: The New Troubled Relationship between Historians and Believers ix Testes Veritatis: An Old Debate ix Testes Veritatis: New Developments x The Ethics of Historical Belief: Religion and the Representation of the Past xii CHAPTER ONE The Ethics of Finding and Making the Past 1 Discovering the Past: The Epistemological Ethics of Scientific Historiography 1 Creating the Past: The Ethics of the Interpretation of the Past 9 Summary: Ranke and White 15 CHAPTER TWO Dewey and the Ethics of Historical Belief 17 Dewey on the Justification of Historical Belief 17 Dewey’s Critique of Finding and Making the Past 19 Dewey’s Alternative Approach to the Ethics of Historical Belief 34 CHAPTER THREE The Two Faces of Deweyan Pragmatism 47 Pragmatism without Method? 47 Richard Rorty on the Ethics of Historical Belief 48 Richard Bernstein on the Ethics of Historical Belief 51 Dewey on Interpretation and Inquiry 56 CHAPTER FOUR Justification, Entitlement, and Tradition: Debate After Dewey 61 From Van Harvey to the New Traditionalism 61 The Historian and the Believer: The Morality of Historical Knowledge and Christian Belief 63 Justification, Entitlement, and Tradition 78 CHAPTER FIvE Dewey and the Ethics of Historical Belief 101 Representing the Past 101 NOTES 111 BIBLIOgRAPHY 145 INDEx 155 vi CONTENTS ...