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Narrative Theme in Modern Western Philosophy of History // Tomsk State Pedagogical University Bulletin. 2000. Issue 7 (23). P. 14-18

Our task in this paper is to point out some stages in the development of narrativist turn in philosophy of history. We argue that the narrativist theme now moved away from what were formerly dominant perspectives focused primarily on literary texts and moved towards analysis of narratives as our primary way of organizing our experience of time and life. In philosophy of history that turn was formulated in agonistic relationship to Hempelian covering-law models. W.H. Dray has written that one of the best means of explaining a change is to trace the course of events by which it came about. The new step was realized by L. Mink. Mink criticized concept of following a story elaborated by W. B. Gallie and asserted configurational character of narrative activity. He says that the author derives the structure from telling the story itself, not from the events it relates. And developing this idea H. White concluded that historians draw on the «plot-structure» identified by N. Frye as Romance, Comedy, Tragedy and Satire. D. Carr says that it is an «escape» from reality. He stresses continuity between narrative and everyday life and recon-figurational character of historical and fictional narrative. We account for productivity of this displacement of theme in philosophy of history.