The Epistemic Goals of the Humanities
The sciences aim to get at the truth about the nature of the world. Do the humanities have a similar goal–namely, to get at the truth about things like novels, paintings, and historical events? I consider a few different ways in which the humanities aim at the truth about their objects, in the process giving rise to epistemic goods such as knowledge and understanding. A work of history (Tyler Stovall’s 1996 book Paris Noir) is used as a test case, to consider the ways in which narrative often plays an essential role in leading us to understanding.