Storia controfattuale e great men in Erodoto e Tucidide

Thinking about the role of great men in virtual history of contemporary age, in this paper we intend to conduct an analysis of this theme starting from some significant texts of Herodotus and Thucydides, to evaluate the existence of a recourse to counterfactual reasoning in connection with the role of the individual also in Greek historiography. It emerges that counterfactuals, used perhaps not always intentionally, but, in any case, as a powerful narrative tool, help to define causal relationships and to highlight the important factors, moral and political responsibilities, including above all the ability of the leader to take reasonable decisions. The story of the past as it could have been, or, in other words, counterfactual history and not just real history, could thus encourage readers to reflect in a more engaging way than through the historical account alone, judging more actively the behaviour of great men of the past and learning from their decisions, both correct and incorrect.

Kontrafaktualna istorija kao deo naučne discipline

The emergence of the first alternative history of Serbia and the thematic issue of a literary journal devoted to counterfactual history drew attention to the necessity to analyze this phenomenon from a historiographical perspective. This paper outlines the historical and theoretical foundations of counterfactualism in European and American historiography and literature.

Modal History versus Counterfactual History: History as Intention

The distinction of whether real or counterfactual history makes sense only post factum. However, modal history is to be defined only as ones’ intention and thus, ex-ante. Modal history is probable history, and its probability is subjective. One needs phenomenological “epoché” in relation to its reality (respectively, counterfactuality). Thus, modal history describes historical “phenomena” in Husserl’s sense and would need a specific application of phenomenological reduction, which can be called historical reduction. Modal history doubles history just as the recorded history of historiography does it. That doubling is a necessary condition of historical objectivity including one’s subjectivity: whether actors’, ex-ante or historians’, post factum. The objectivity doubled by ones’ subjectivity constitute “hermeneutical circle”.

Scripting a Role for the Speaker of Private Prayer: 2 and 3 Henry VI

Private prayer creates narrative lines about its beneficiaries. Collections of model prayers show kitchen maids how to empathize with war heroes, or gentlemen with pregnant women, or merchants with coalminers, imagining their beneficiaries’ problems in loving detail. Pray-ers refer to themselves as marginalized (sick, criminal, in chains), yet at the same time as provided with an almighty weapons system to change the world. Praying could be a form of ethical and pragmatic life coaching, a way to steel the self to unpalatable actions or perform a thought experiment in alternative outcomes—but it could also shut down radical possibilities. This chapter discusses how alternative plot lines developed by the king’s prayer in Shakespeare’s 2 Henry VI and 3 Henry VI create a counterfactual history, one opposed by the normative pray-ers in the factions around Henry.