Philosophy of History After Hayden White

Robert Doran is Associate Professor of French and Comparative Literature at the University of Rochester, USA. He is the author of The Theory of the Sublime from Longinus to Kant and the editor of The Fiction of Narrative: Essays on History, Literature, and Theory, 1957-2007, by Hayden White, and Mimesis and Theory, Essays on Literature and Criticism, 1953-2005, by René Girard.

Hayden White’s diagnosis of history as constructed narrative has wreaked permanent damage to traditional conceptions of history, philosophy, and narrative alike; it is no longer the moment simply to assess that damage, but rather to respond to it with new proposals and new creativity, something this extraordinarily stimulating collection does in exemplary fashion.

• Editor's Note \ List of Contributors \ List of Illustrations \ Introduction: Choosing the Past: Hayden White and the Philosophy of History Robert Doran \ 1. History as Fulfillment Hayden White \ 2. A Cognitivist Approach to Tropology F. R. Ankersmit \ 3. Deliver Us from A-Historicism: Metahistory for Non-Historians Mieke Bal \ 4. Hayden White's Hope, or the Politics of Prefiguration Karyn Ball \ 5. Hayden White and Me: Two Systems of Philosophy of History Arthur C. Danto \ 6. Uneven Temporalities / Untimely Pasts: Hayden White and the Question of Temporal Form Harry Harootunian \ 7. Hopeful Monsters or, The Unfulfilled Figure in Hayden White's Conceptual System Hans Kellner \ 8. Rhetorical Theory / Theoretical Rhetoric: Some Ambiguities in the Reception of Hayden White's Work Gabrielle M. Spiegel \ 9. Hayden White and Non-non-Histories Richard T. Vann \ 10. From the Problem of Evil to Hermeneutic Philosophy of History: For Hayden White Gianni Vattimo \ 11. Comment Hayden White \ Notes \ Index