Tarihyazımı Tartışmalarının Felsefe Açısından Değerlendirilmesi

Abstract

This study aims to examine the changes undergone by the discussions concerning the philosophy of history and historiography in terms of the concepts of “law”, “structure” and “narration”. The idea of a law-centered history tries to give “history” a regular and definite structure by saving it from narrations and stories. In the first part of the thesis, the search for a law in history, which creates the possibility of establishing integrity in history by revealing the possibility of the actualization of events, shall be examined in terms of the concept of history as it is treated by İbni Haldun and G.W.F. Hegel. Both İbni Haldun and Hegel explained the development of history with reference to the recognition and power relations among the states and the people. The criticisms which say that this approach ignored daily life, culture and the relation of history with other disciplines constitute the foundation of the idea of structure-centered history. In this context, in the second part of the thesis, how this “structure” which is formed by the relationship networks would be constructed in an interdisciplinary approach shall be investigated with reference to Fernand Braudel and Marc Bloch. The claim “history represents reality” has become more debatable because of the position of the fictionality in the relation between historiography and historical reality. In this context, in the third part of the thesis, the hypothesis which claims that no matter how much history depends on documents, it has a narrative quality in literary terms is discussed with reference to Hayden White. As a result, in this study, the relation rather than an opposition between the concepts of law, structure and narrative and between different approaches concerning the relation of history and historiography shall be revealed. It is claimed that the limits of history and therefore, historiography could be set forth with the relationality that is tried to be established.