Theoretical Argumentation in the Historical Narrative of Ukraine of the Second Half of the 19th – First Half of the 20th century (on the Example of Research in the History of Education)

Abstract

The purpose of the paper is to present the results of the study on the application of theoretical argumentation in the works of scholars in the field of the history of education who lived and worked in Ukraine during the second half of the 19^th – the first half of the 20^th century.

The scientific novelty is that for the first time, based on the works of scholars in the field of the history of education, the methods of theoretical argumentation in the academic and historical narratives of Ukrainian scholars are analyzed, and the most specific, and sometimes nonspecific, uses of deductive, systematic, and methodological argumentation by the scholars in the field of the history of education are shown.

Conclusions. Theoretical argumentation in the studies of historians of the studied period became widely used under the influence of the philosophical concepts of positivism, Marxism, various philosophical schools of neo-romanticism, and neo-Kantianism. Within the framework of theoretical argumentation, scholars actively used deductive and systematic argumentation. The first was actively used even by positivist historians, who declared their sympathy for induction and considered deductive justifications to be unnecessary metaphysics. We should note that the persuasiveness of deductive substantiations depended on mainly theoretically defined main premises and factual minor premises. In extended substantiations, the main and minor premises were often conclusions of other deductive and inductive syllogisms. It has been found out that under the influence of ideological doctrines or false scientific (pseudo-scientific) theories, deductive argumentation in the studies of the researchers of the history of education was aimed at proving wrong statements. For the same reason, there were also cases of violation of the rules of logic when substantiating provisions, the main premises of which were dictated by ideological postulates.

Systemic argumentation was particularly consistently implemented by Ukrainian scholars in the field of the history of education in the Soviet era, which was caused by the dominance of Marxism philosophical concept. Sometimes, scholars in the field of the history of education built their substantiations within the framework of certain theories: linguistic, political and legal, purely historical, etc. An example of systematic argumentation is the use by scholars of historical and theoretical concepts, which were given a certain explanatory power. Scholars applied methodological argumentation infrequently, only under conditions when they understood that applying only one method would be the most optimal. Among Ukrainian scholars of the studied period, only H. Ivanytsa tried to propose a universal method (‘the method of socio-genetic analysis’) for studying the views of historical figures in the field of education. However, the method proposed by him was characterized by Marxism schematism caused by false ideas about ‘class consciousness’.