Experience and Explanation: What the History of Experiences Can Add to Historical Understanding

This article contributes to the discussion of the problem of explanation in historical research. It begins with the classic questions of the very nature of explanation in humanities as they were raised in the 1960s. The starting point here is the model of explanation presented by Georg Henrik von Wright. He defended the causal explanation of history, but in his model intentional action replaced the idea of the ‘covering law’ originally presented by Carl Hempel. Another route at the same time was taken by those who invented the explanatory power of narrative. Here I begin with Louis Mink, who also criticised positivism and inspired those who became known as postmodernist thinkers of history. My contribution here is to present the importance of explanation in the historian’s work by deepening the explanatory value of intentional action in conjunction with the study of experiences. I defend the analytical history of experiences, which focuses on individual and collective experiences but explains them in their societal and narrative contexts. When thus bridging story-telling and the analytical study of the past, the approach I develop here may be called‘narrative realism’.