Truth, Time and History: A Philosophical Inquiry

Description

Truth, Time and History investigates the reality of the past by connecting arguments across areas which are conventionally discussed in isolation from each other. Breaking the impasse within the narrower analytic debate between Dummett's semantic anti-realists and the truth value link realists as to whether the past exists independently of our methods of verification, the book argues, through an examination of the puzzles concerning identity over time, that only the present exists. Drawing on Lewis's analogy between times and possible worlds, and work by Collingwood and Oakeshott, and the continental philosopher, Barthes, the author advances a wholly novel proposal, as to how aspects of ersatz presentism may be combined with historical coherentism to uphold the legitimacy of discourse about the past. In highlighting the role of historians in the creation and construction of temporality, Truth, Time and History offers a convincing philosophical argument for the inherence of an unreal past in the real present.

Sophie Botros is Honorary Research Associate at the School of Advanced Study, Institute of Philosophy, University of London, UK and author of Hume, Reason and Morality: A legacy of contradiction (2006).

Sophie Botros offers engaging, highly original and always insightful reflections on the three concepts in her title: truth, time and history. This is analytical metaphysics at its best. -- Peter Lamarque, Professor of Philosophy University of York, UK Botros' book has the virtue of being both incredibly insightful philosophically on all the topics it covers - truth, time and history - and very accessible. Her case for presentism and a rejection of the past as an independent entity is a daring yet persuasive one, and philosophers (of history) and historians would do well to acquaint themselves with it. * Philosophy: The Journal of the Royal Institute of Philosophy *