Abstract

The contemporary debate on philosophy of history is the main issue of this essay. The Author investigates at length the main criticisms formulated by Carlo Ginzburg, Paul Ricoeur and Dominique LaCapra towards the narrativistic turn of the philosophy of history. These scholars challenged, from the different perspectives of realism, phenomenology and hermeneutic, the prominent role assigned to language and textuality in Louis O. Mink's and Hayden White's studies on history. By following their paths we discover new ways of articulating the problems of historical truth, evidence and fiction, beyond the linguistic turn. Overall, we detect the prominence of sublime and traumatic experience for the contemporary theory of history.