主　題：“History as Misunderstanding and Critique: On the Current System of Nation-States and
　　　　 Borders.”(歷史作為誤解與批判：論現行民族國家與疆界制度)

主講人：Professor Allan Megill(Department of History, University of Virginia)

主持人：劉巧楣 先生(國立臺灣大學歷史學系)

時　間：2009年10月22日(四)10：00 ~ 12：00

地　點：臺灣大學歷史學系會議室

敬邀對該議題有興趣之老師及研究室成員共同參與 ~

Allan Megill’s presentation will start out from Nietzsche’s claim, “I am not understood. Hence my authority.” Megill basically rejects this mythic conception of misunderstanding, while retaining Nietzsche’s intuition that misunderstanding needs to be seen as a positive and not merely a negative phenomenon, in history as well as elsewhere.

Megill suggests that it is easier to criticize inadequate historical representations than it is to have any deep certainty concerning their likely persisting validity. He points out that to “comprehend” something has two meanings: to grasp the specifics of the case, and to grasp something in terms of its place within a larger framework. Since this larger framework (which includes the future) always escapes us, comprehension in the second sense can never be certain. Megill notes that in inter-personal or inter-cultural communication, “misunderstanding” has two meanings: miscommunication and difference of perspective, with the latter having a family resemblance to the second type of comprehension.

While acknowledging the pervasive presence of this second type, Megill suggests that it is often possible to calibrate the degree of certainty of our knowledge—by “inferring to the best explanation,” for example. He also suggests that we need to distinguish between misunderstandings of perception and misunderstandings of conception. The not uncommon experience of discovering that a conceptualization that we previously thought adequate is, on the contrary, defective suggests that historical research needs to include not only a critique of evidence but also a critique of conceptualizations—that is, a critique of theory. Megill explores this idea in relation to the notion of national self-determination that played such an important role in the political history of the twentieth century.