An apology for narrativism

Abstract

The article is devoted to the ongoing discussion around the narrative approach in modern philosophy of history, and is a response to the article "Postmodernism as Narrativism in Modern Philosophy of History" by Dr. N. I. Fatiev, published in the journal "Sociology." In his critique of narrativism, the author identifies the principles of this methodology with the ideology of postmodernism, which I believe is not entirely accurate, as the topic of narrative in historical knowledge has deeper roots. The ideas of this approach are primarily associated with the so-called "linguistic turn" in the methodology of the social sciences and humanities, which can be traced back to Giambattista Vico's famous book "The Foundations of a New Science on the General Nature of Nations," and has since been further developed by renowned historians and philosophers of history such as B. G. Niebuhr, T. Mommsen, and A. Toynbee. The author of this article also tries to show that the narrative approach provides a very effective toolkit for solving current problems in modern historical epistemology.